If you dip back to early July of this year, we released our annual Gen Con preview article, where we talked about our most anticipated board games of the convention. It’s always enjoyable to look over the hundreds of new releases for the convention and figure out which one has sparked your interest the most. And for me, it was Tag Team from publisher Scorpion Masque.
Designed by Gricha German and Corentin Lebrat, who teamed up to make the excellent Sky Team, this is the newest offering from this duo. Instead of landing a plane, they designed a quick-playing auto battler. It’s certainly unique, but is it as good as Sky Team? Let’s find out.
Gameplay Overview:
Tag Team comes with a lineup of 12 very unique fighters. To start each game, both players draft 2 fighters and shuffle their decks together. Each fighter also has a starting card that’s added to the player’s deck in the order they prefer.
Turns are simultaneous, with each player turning over the top card of their deck. Every card will have an ability such as attacking, defending, or using a character-specific power. The goal here is to reduce one of your opponent’s fighters to zero health. After each card is resolved, the next card in both decks are revealed.
After all the cards in the decks are played, the round ends with a drafting phase. Each player draws 3 cards from their reserve deck and chooses one to add to their play deck. They can slot the card in anywhere they want in their deck, but they can’t change the order of previously played cards. Also note that this deck is never shuffled, so the cards will come out in the same order each round.
Turns go by in this manner until one fighter is defeated.
Game Experience:
I’ve only played a few auto-battler video games, and I’m not sure if it’s the genre for me. They were fun, but I tend to like more control of my units on the battlefield. Regardless, I was still intrigued by how an auto battler would work on the tabletop without a computer to control your fighters.
And for Tag Team, I’m not sure how much of the video game autobattler feel that it pulls in, but in either case, the game itself is great. This is due to both the unique lineup of fighters and the smooth, streamlined gameplay. Teaching the game is very simple. Flip a card, do what it says, add a new card. Rinse, repeat. Yet within that onion are layers of strategy.
When you are drawing cards, you’ll draw three from your mixed deck. So you not only have to decide which of your two fighters you want to buff, but which card you are going to use. And then you have to figure out where in your deck the card is going to go. Do you put the defense card in the same position as your opponent’s big attack card? Or maybe they know you might do that, so they put a card of their own in the same position. There is definitely a mind game aspect here of both trying to read your opponent and also thinking about what’s best for your own team.
I will say that those with good memories will be at an advantage here. If you can remember that your opponent has an attack card, followed by a defense card, then you will have a better idea of where to play your own cards to counter (or take advantage of) theirs. Or, if you are like me and distracted by kids and dogs running around, you’ll just slot it I somewhere and hope for the best (Ala Leeroy Jenkins).
But despite the mind games, the overall gameplay of Tag Team is super simple. So it’s really the diverse lineup of characters that helps keep the game fresh. You have your high damage characters, meat shields, support, control, and random ones. There is just so much variety here that it not only keeps plays interesting, but since you are using two characters, you can work out synergies between them. Perhaps I want to pair the fighter that rages into a bear with the high defense or healer character to feed into his power. Or maybe I just want to grab the two coolest-looking fighters and send them to battle. Both strategies are viable.
Finally, I want to give some props to the production values of the game. The cards are high quality and the art is really well done. But one nice thing is that the cards have both iconography and full text. So if your card is “Do an attack and then gain one power”, you’ll have icons for attack, and then a +power icon. However, at the bottom of the card is the full text that says exactly what those icons mean. So if you are new to the fighter, you can just read the text and know exactly what the card does. And after you’ve played a few rounds, you can just look at the icons and know what happens. This made learning the game a breeze.
Final Thoughts:
Tag Team is another win for designers Gricha German and Corentin Lebrat. The gameplay is both unique and a to of fun. I like how easy it is to get to the table, and there is a lot of variety in the fighters. Included in the box is a flyer that teases more characters next year, so I’m all in on that. If you are looking for a unique game that’s both quick to play and has a to of variety, than Tag Team is it.
Final Score: 4 Stars – Tag Team back again…it’s a great playing, 2-player dueling game with a bucket of variety.
Hits:
• Good production values
• Lots of variety in the characters
• Easy to learn and play
• Lots of possibilities for future fighters
Misses:
• The memory aspect might put some players at an advantage
