So Many Panties (Review of Goblivion)

I really don't Kickstart many games, and when I do, it's usually from a tried and true company. However, when I saw Goblivion pop up there, I knew I needed this game. I love deckbuilders as a game mechanic. It feels so satisfying to start off weak and pathetic and build yourself into a powerhouse. It's why I'm designing my own deckbuilder.

Jean-Francois Gauthier's first game is a castle defense (think Castle Panic) deckbuilder for 1-2 players. You start with a deck of relatively awful peasants and need to balance getting rid of them with adding newer, stronger cards. To do this, you train your peasants into soldiers, archers, berserkers and more. When you train them, you replace the old card with the new. You also add new cards to your deck by defeating the enemies that slowly creep towards your castle. Defeated a giant troll? Now you can turn the card upside down and add his giant knife to your deck.

As in most deckbuilders, the cards (peasants and items) that you collect/buy have special powers. Some let you draw more cards, some give you attack bonues. The headsman is a fun one - if you destroy another card you get a +2 attack bonus. I guess lopping off heads really makes him ready for battle. 

So, what did I think?

TOTAL PLAYS: 20 solo, 3 co-operative

COMPONENTS

Everything in here is really nicely done. There aren't a lot of tokens, but the ones they do have are nice quality cardboard ones. The training piece is wooden which is nice, but just kind of makes me wish that the rest were wooden too. Either way, tokens are not a huge part of this game. I wouldn't call myself an expert on cards, but these cards seems just fine. After being shuffled a million times over 13 games, they still seem to be holding up great. The art is not my favourite style (my Crashin' the Boards partner, Logan, loves it, however), but it's fun and quirky. I wasn't so sure I'd love the sheer number of panties you find in this game, but it's fun to use a pair of dirty goblin panties and "train" them into a mechanical golem. 4/5

RULES

This is not a difficult game to learn. It's not heavy or complex so the rules are simple and succint. The rulebook lays things out nicely and gives examples of how training and combat are resolved. 4/5

GAMEPLAY

This is where the game really shines, in my opinion. How you collect new cards through battles is very reminiscient of Friday (which I love as a solo deckbuilder). When you defeat an enemy, you add that card to your discard pile for future use as a positive card. That system works great here and it makes sense (e.g. if you defeat a cow riding goblin, you use his cow to sell the milk and get resources). What I love about this game is what it adds. 

The other way you add cards to your deck is during the training phase. Similar to the combat phase, you need to earn enough combat/skill points to buy the new card. How this works, though, is that you choose the card you want to train (e.g. you want to train an archer). To train the archer, you draw 3 cards and need to get a score of 2. If you can't make it, you can choose to abandon the training or spend some of your resources (which basically work as your health) to gain that new card. Since you're training your crummy peasants, you choose one of the cards from the battle (let's say, the -1 pyromaniac) and replace it with the new card. Hence, you've "trained" that peasant into a warrior. If you want to train one of the items, such as a mechanical golem or a catapult, you need to have an item card (which is more rare) in your hand to replace it with. This is where the many dropped pairs of goblin panties comes in handy (and probably the only time in your life that goblin panties will be helpful). 

This adds a whole new dynamic to the Friday system that actually builds in a lot of strategy and choice as you decide what types of cards you're going to focus on training.

I'll add one point here that both the solo and co-operative games are really well done. They're basically the same with the exception of being able to spend resources to send cards to your partner in a co-op game. This works really well and adds a new strategy to the game without changing the rules or gameplay. 5/5

REPLAYABILITY

In my Kickstarter version, there are a handful of different kings/queens you can choose from with different powers. There are 9 diferent soldiers you can train. There are 40 starting peasant cards and you only start with half of them. You also only use about half of the enemies and bosses that you'll face as well. There are three game modes (easy, medium, hard). That being said, I think this game could benefit from some more variety in thr enemies. I'd love to see an expansion for that. Evebn though there are a lot of different options for replayability, the games tend to feel a lot the same. Its a good thing that sameness is very enjoyable. 4/5

FUN

We play games to have fun, right? At least I do. I have fun when I am challenged by a game, when it has an engaging and unique gameplay system and when I feel immersed in a theme. This game scratches those itches. After a game, win or lose, I usually see myself quickly setting up (yes, set up is quick) for another game because it was so fun. If the art were more my style and there was a little more replayability, this game would be even closer to perfect. 9/10

TOTAL SCORE - 26/30

Goblivion Games has really put together a winner for their first game. I'm excited to see what's next for this game and this Quebec-based company. Canada represent!