INTRODUCTION

Ever since the first time I played the classic card game Magic the Gathering in my early teens, I have always been interested in deckbuilding as a game mechanism; the notion of tinkering with card composition to achieve the highest reward in terms of synergistic effects is a fascinating proposition. At least from a theoretical point of view, in practice I find the task of approaching this particular school of board game design fairly daunting. One reason for my hesitation and even to a certain extent trepidation originates from the fact that compared to the rest of my gaming group I am way behind the curve when it comes to card based, deckbuilding games. When playing board and card games in the company of friends, my primary goal is not to win but to enjoy the experience both from a social but also game design context. However, even I have my limits as to how often I can play a particular game and lose every single time before the attraction starts to diminish. When Lucky Duck Games announced that the company was set to publish Mutants, a deckbuilding game with an official solo mode designed by Sen-Foong Lim and Jessey Wright I was immediately curious to learn more about this game of genetically enhanced creatures duking it out in the gladiator arena of the future.      

Full disclosure: a review copy of Mutants was kindly provided by publisher Lucky Duck Games

COMPONENTS

The first time I came across Mutants was last year when Lucky Duck Games ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the game in question. I remember thinking to myself that I thought the design of the characters bore a striking resemblance to the style of art which is present in classic fighting video games like for example the Darkstalkers franchise. Turns out I was not completely off my mark, as Mutants the card game is indeed based on a popular digital app game with a similar thematic setting. As such, because this mutated offspring shares the same DNA as it’s digital ancestor as far as art goes this analogue iteration is one of the most visually stunning productions I have seen in quite some time, as each and every illustration is a veritable firework of colours and bold lines., Everyone I have shown Mutants to has been immediately intrigued to learn more and for good reason, even the cover art is a visual feast with its striking colour palette and spot gloss varnish.

Included in the base box is also a really nice custom insert that even has a “cheat sheet” printed on thick cardboard denoting where the various cards are meant to be stored and organised. Unfortunately, in its original form the insert does not accommodate for sleeved cards. However, if you are feeling a bit brave then a little surgical modification using a precision knife will allow you to store the cards as intended. Overall, Mutants is a very pleasing board game production in terms of component quality and especially the art direction that is on display.

OVERVIEW

“Tonight is the big night of the big fight. Brutal beasties in a bout to the death! Gore, galore!” – Love, Death & Robots

Welcome to a future where blood sport is the name of the game, figuratively that is. The year is 2313 A.D., a time when mankind through advanced scientific breakthroughs in the field of genetics is able to create mutants; genetically enhanced, highly lethal creatures that are pitted against one another in mortal combat on the arena for our entertainment. These abominations of nature can only be controlled by humans gifted with rare psychic abilities called Psy-Captains, acting as the cognitive handler on this gladiator battleground of the future. Players will arrive at the Mutants World Tournament with a selection of low-level, basic creatures with the goal of breeding new and more powerful fighters by utilizing the gene pool at their disposal. Will you dominate the opposition and become the next big thing in the world of Mutants?

Mutants is a deck-building game, where one to four players are putting together a crew of motley creatures and characters in order to exert dominance over the competing Psy-Captains. In order to achieve this lofty ambition, you will need to breed and evolve the right type of mutants capable of inflicting damage against the opposing creatures whilst simultaneously setting you up to receive ample amounts of victory points when the bright arena lights go dark and the final round is over. In practice, this translates to adding more powerful cards to your deck and simultaneously balancing it as to not become bloated and inefficient. If you are familiar with the genre or has experience in playing any of the countless board games that feature deck-building as a core mechanism, a lot of this will definitely feel like familiar waters. However, Mutants does have a couple of tricks up its sleeves that makes the game standout from the rest of the crowd, at least that has been my impressions as someone fairly new to card-based games.

At the start of the game, each player will have an identical deck of cards composed of basic, one-gene mutants that acts as your initial genetic stew from which you will splice DNA in order to bring more powerful creatures into play thus making your deck stronger as the game progresses. This higher tier of advanced mutants, known as the Gene Pool, is created during setup by the process of card drafting where each player is dealt a hand of nine advanced mutant cards, picks one and then passes the remaining cards to their neighbour at the game table. This act of selecting cards continues until you have chosen six cards that are then paired with their matching sibling for a total of 12 advanced mutants. These cards are then shuffled and divided into three stacks of cards where the top card is always face-up. As such, each player has their own card market to peruse and obtain cards from, making the in-game economy incredibly easy to manage as there is zero competition over cards that would otherwise be present had the game instead featured a shared market tableau.

Alternatively, players who have previous experience playing Mutants or are accustomed with deck-building in general can decide to pick and choose any 12 advanced mutants to form their Gene Pool from all the available cards provided in the game, allowing for some truly interesting combinations. If however you are like me and have little experience or feel uncomfortable diving headfirst into the deep end of the gene-splicing end of the pool then fear not for Mutants also includes four preconstructed Gene Pools, designed to aid new players learning the game without burdening them with a possible cognitive overload of decisions. Not only does these deck compositions provide you with information as to which specific advanced cards to select, they also contain a written description as to why these cards haven been included in the set and also how they key off one another which I thought was a really nice touch on behalf of the designers Sen-Foong Lim and Jessey Wright. I played my first four solo games of Mutants using only the preconstructed Gene Pools and had a marvellous time learning the ropes in terms of both individual card abilities as overall strategies when deciding which advanced mutants to add the deck.

Once every player has created their Gene Pool, then it is time to enter the arena and pit your genetically spliced gladiators against your rivals mutated creations. At its core, playing a game of Mutants is all about applying enough pressure against the opposition in order to assure that you are the top dog at the end of each round earning you victory points. This fluctuating act of players increasing and decreasing their dominance in the arena is represented by the Power Track. This board consists of nine spaces, ranging from the Dread Zone at the far left and going all the way to Fury at the other end of the spectrum. By playing mutant cards and activating their inherent special abilities, players will move their token on the Power Track whilst simultaneously trying to knock-down the opponent(s) into the dreaded zone. Because, if you manage to start your current round in the Fury space and anyone opponent has been beaten to a pulp and as a result has slipped into the Dread Zone of the board, then you are essentially crushing the opposition which will earn you with an increasing amount of victory points for each passing round.

This mechanism of players alternating back and forth in terms of their position on the Power Track is important, primarily because it is one of the two main ways that you will earn victory points with the other venue being the act of placing your mutants in the Freezer which is a result of certain card effects and also anytime you shuffle your discard pile to form a new deck. Personally, I find this ebb and flow of player dominance to be really fascinating for a couple of reasons. It is undoubtedly the case that this mechanism creates a highly dynamic and engaging game state, as players are constantly jockeying for positions on the Power Track whilst trying to outfox their opponents in order to come out on top when the round ends. Also, and this is more of a personal preference, but I find the notion of being bumped down a track to be a form of player interaction far more enjoyable than compared to more direct conflict-oriented game designs. A large part has to do with how the mutant cards are designed in general, as the majority of them are geared towards providing the active player with an increase on the Power Track which is a proposition that appeals to my inner care bear.

So how do you exactly go about becoming the reigning Psy-Captain champion of the gene-spliced gladiator arena? By activating your mutants of course. Every player has their own individual board that is divided into several sections, each one being associated with the various actions that can be performed on a turn. The central area of the player board is known as the Arena which is composed of three slots where mutant cards will be designated. Regardless of its origin, every mutant that enters play does so by entering the arena through the central card slot thus triggering the Deploy ability of the card. Unless a mutant has an ongoing effect, every creature has a dual set of special abilities; one that triggers when entering play and the other when the mutant exits. The way this idea translates into actual gameplay is by having cycling your cards through the arena portion of the player board. At the start of your turn, if there is a card present in the Active Mutant section then it has to move either to the left or right slot always prioritising an empty space. However, if both the left and right slots are already occupied then it is up to you to decide where to move the active mutant in order to make room for freshly gene-spliced creatures to enter the battlegrounds. This will result in an existing card being “bumped” out of its card slot, thus triggering the Leave ability of the mutant exiting the Arena.

This is one of the main reasons why I find Mutants the card game to be a really clever piece of game design; the notion of having to take into consideration not only the effect a mutant has when entering the fray, but also how to coordinate so that the creature in question exits the Arena in such a way as to maximize the Leave ability of the card. This mental arithmetic is in and of itself a puzzle to solve, as players are trying to apply long-term strategic decisions whilst also having to take into consideration the evolving state of the Power track. That juicy, powerful Leave ability you had planned to execute in order to set yourself up for future turns might suddenly not be at all suited given the current game state upon which you are forced to quickly reconsider resulting in delaying the departure of the card in question in favour of an alternative action, either Breed or Incubate. When performing the former, by discarding two cards from their hand players can acquire an advanced mutant from their Gene Pool with matching symbols on the cards used to pay for the genetically enhanced creature which then immediately enters play. Alternatively, there is the option to discard any one card regardless of gene symbol in order to place an advanced mutant in the Incubator. At the end of a round, before drawing a new hand of six cards any creature present in the Incubator is placed on top of the players draw deck thus ensuring that the card enters play during the upcoming round. Play continues for five rounds and whoever has the most victory points is crowned the Psy-Captain champion of the Mutants World Tournament.

THE SOLO MODE

Uprising, the solo mode for Mutants, shares certain traits with the multiplayer design whilst also being a fundamentally unique experience in regard to other game mechanisms. But I am getting ahead of myself. When solo playing Mutants you have the option of competing against one of two automated opponents: The Singularity Wizard or Jack Ice, each with their own unique deck of boss cards and special abilities. When playing the Uprising variant, you are free to construct your Gene Pool consisting of 12 advanced mutants anyway you see fit, making the solo mode an excellent way to try out various deck compositions. Much like yourself, the neutral player will deploy cards onto their own board triggering abilities as the cards cycle through the three slots of the Arena. In order to decide onto which of the slots the automated opponent pushes, each of the solo cards has an arrow at the top indicating the order of which current card exits the arena. Not only does this design choice make the process of managing the neutral player’s turns exceptionally easy, but it also provides you with valuable tactical information.

Seeing that you know beforehand which card that withdraws from the automated opponent’s board in the upcoming turn and in the process triggering a Leave effect, you need to tailor your strategy accordingly in order to minimize the negative effect or even cancel it altogether. Because some of the boss cards will indicate a chink in their armour, an area of vulnerability for you to exploit if you are able to meet the requirements. A card might say “Freeze an advanced mutant in order to shatter this weakness” or “Gain power while having fury” et cetera. If you are able to fulfil the requirement, the card in question is removed from the game thus thinning down the automated opponent’s bag of tricks whilst also chipping away at their health. Unlike the multiplayer experience when solo playing Mutants, the goal is not for you to acquire end-of-game victory points. Instead, whenever you would do so you instead reduce the health of the neutral player. If you manage to knock it down to zero by the end of the fifth round or earlier then you are the winner, otherwise you will scamper home tail tucked between your legs and lick your wounds of flesh and pride.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Going into this review, based on my limited knowledge and skill level I was not quite sure what to expect. But I have to say, for me personally Mutants is the kind of game that sings and what a beautiful song it is. The concept of managing your own personal board timing the abilities of the mutants entering and exiting play is a really interesting puzzle to solve, the same way players have to take into consideration whether to pour energy and effort in chasing the short-term end of round point award or instead aim for a slow and steady approach by adding your mutants to the Freezer. That being said, Mutants is definitely a game on the lighter end of the complexity spectrum and if you are experienced in the field of deck-building then this game may very well be too “simplistic”. For some, the idea of having a deck consisting of only 12 advanced cards will probably come off as not having enough depth and variation come time to construct and optimize your deck. But if you are like me, someone who wants to dip their toes without being showed into the deep end of the (gene) pool, then I genuinely believe that Mutants is an excellent starting-point.