There are two clear contenders for the best board game of 2022

Many board game publishers make a tidy profit from improved components – things like metal coins and card sleeves that make their products more attractive at the table. But some companies build entire games around these kinds of bits. Just check out the poker style chips and custom dice used by Chip Theory Games or the neoprene game board at the center of Leder Games. Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile. Another rare and expensive component made its breakthrough that year: clear plastic playing cards.

These unusual transparent sheets feel like normal playing cards. You can shuffle them and put them in sleeves, allowing them to integrate seamlessly into traditional card decks. But they can also be printed, allowing designers to overlay artwork or hide certain game elements from view. Used in a clever way, clear cards offer players new mechanics and features that were previously simply not available in board games. Two of the best games of the year – that of John D. Clair dead reckoning and Corey Konieczkas 3,000 villains — use them in their own creative way.

dead reckoning is a sandbox style exploration and conflict game on the high seas. Each player at the table has a crew of sailors manning their ship. This crew can be upgraded over time, giving players a greater sense of ownership. Clair uses a clear plastic card for each of these crew members – the boatswain, first mate, deckhand, and so on.

The art on these transparent cards only takes up the top half of a page. Each is then paired with an identically sized traditional card and matching card sleeve. As players level up their crew, they simply take the traditional playing card out of its sleeve and turn or flip it over, revealing new stats visible through the transparent card at the top. It’s a clever system, both in terms of the use of novel materials and how it increases players’ sense of investment in their crew.

in the 3,000 villains, designer Konieczka has created an elaborate bidding game in which players match other characters to work with them to amass the most treasure. Konieczka uses a lot more of these transparent cards in his design – 60, versus dead reckoning‘s 8. These 60 unique cards combine with 50 traditional cards to create thousands of potential characters, a villain gallery that similarly supports the game’s promise of variety implied in the title.

The implementation of clear maps in 3,000 villains is particularly awesome. While the game’s traditional cards have art for NPC faces, clear job cards overlay clothing and other props – a kind of paper doll. The traditional and the clear cards also interact, creating new combinations of stats, benefits, and costs depending on how they’re paired. It makes setting up for each new game an act of discovery – further reinforcing the game’s futuristic time travel storyline.

Of course, this isn’t the first time clear cards have been used in tabletop games. One of my personal favorites gloomhas been around since 2005. Indeed dead reckoning is just the latest in a long line of similar games from AEG, titles like Mystical Valley and Custom Heroes. The company even copyrighted a name for their particular solution: they call it the Card Crafting System.

But why did two different companies launch such high-profile games with such similar parts? Well, that’s one of the joys of tabletop gaming. While names, locations, and certain mechanics can be legally protected and other companies prevented from using them in their own games, more common items like dice cannot be protected. The idea of ​​using cards to play games is as old as gaming itself, leading to these kinds of co-evolutionary designs.

What’s even more interesting is that while both games use clear maps in similar ways to accomplish different things, the games also occupy very different places on the commercial landscape. 3,000 villains is available at a very affordable, big-box-friendly price $49.95. dead reckoning, on the other hand, has incredibly expensive components, like plastic miniatures, sturdy tuck boxes, and 3D resin tokens. It also carries a premium price of $79.95which you can expect to rise once it hits retail.

You can find dead reckoning on baking kitwhere a second print is currently available for pre-order. 3,000 villains goes to pre-order at the Asmodee website and in friendly local game stores on September 23, with a worldwide retail release on October 7.

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