Sins: Preview

Sins: Preview

Information:

Mechanics: Deck Building, Hand Management, 

Player Age: 12+ 

Player Count: 1 - 6 Players (1 Deck is only for 2 players)

Time to Play: 15 - 90 Minutes 
Game Designer: Daniel Greve, Jacob Lindborg
Game Artist: Darryl Petrucci

Publisher: Cortadoo Games

Disclaimer: A preview copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

Objective:

'Sins' is a deck building game where you are trying to attack the opponent with power on the bottom of your cards to fill your opponent with despair. At the beginning of a turn, you may choose to check your opponents despair pile. If they have five weakness then you will successfully gain a dominance, where gaining two dominance will successfully win you the game.

Card Anatomy:

Kosmos Cards:

These are the starter cards. Each kosmos  card has a unique artwork and one omni power (white). This power can be used to match any weakness.

Sin Cards:

Each sin card has an ability that can be activated when played and a power (as shown on the image below) on the bottom of the card that will match any of the five powers. These five powers are known as currencies and can be green, pink, blue, orange and white.

Every sin card also has a cost in weakness (as shown below) which will be displayed in the middle of the card above the ability. For example a card will have four weakness. If you wish to purchase this card you have to spend power equal to four green or white power.

Dominance Cards:

This is where you hold the despair given by the other player and dictate what level of victory points you have. Remember if you have two dominance you win the game.

Set Up:

In this review the two player rules will be discussed. To play with more than two players another deck of sins will be required.

- Deal 10 kosmos cards (starter cards) to each player.
 - Give each player a dominance card with the 0 dominance shown.
- Shuffle all sins together, this will be the the main deck. Reveal five cards face up in the centre of the table to create the ‘Realm’ (this is where you can buy cards from).

- Every player must reveal one card from the top of the sin deck. Whoever has the highest number on the bottom left will be the first player. Discard these cards after this is done.

How to Play:

There are four stages to each turn: status, buy, attack and refresh. For ease of explanation the status phase will be explained last.

Buy Phase:

At the start of this phase refill the realm back to five cards. This is the phase that you will use to improve your deck. First off, play any amount of cards and activate their individual abilities (optional). Then total the power on cards played and purchase any amount of cards by spending power that match the card weakness (if you’re missing the correct colour, you can substitute any two power for any one weakness). Once all the power has been used this turn, discard all cards played and purchased this turn.

Attack Phase:

This is where you will try to give your opponents despair (thus bringing you closer to victory).
When attacking you will first play a card from your hand with the option of activating their ability. Then, the defending player can play a card from their hand, again with the option to activate the ability. The opponent may alternatively choose to pass. If they do, they are no longer allowed to play cards defensively for the rest of this turn. This will be repeated until the attacker chooses to stop playing cards. The aim of attacking is to have unblocked power that can’t cause despair. The power is blocked by the defending players cards via matching coloured weakness. For example, if a defence card has four orange weakness, it can block two orange power and two omni power.
Any power that was not successfully blocked will deal one despair to the defending player.
To give that player despair, the attacking player will remove cards from the top of their deck and place these cards face down under the defending players dominance card, equal to the power that went unblocked. To end this phase discard all cards played by the attacking and defending players.

Refresh Phase:

The first step of this phase is to keep any of the cards in your hand that you want for the next turn and discard the rest. Now draw back up to your hand limit (five cards) minus the cards in your hand and the amount of despair you currently have.   So if you currently have two despair in your despair pile and no cards in your hand you will draw three cards.

Status Phase:

Now that attacking has been established, this phase will be much easier to understand. Remember that the status phase is actually the first phase of the turn. Here, you can resolve your opponents despair pile by revealing each of the cards and removing them from the game. If a total of five weakness or more is revealed on these opposing cards, you will gain one dominance. Once you have two dominance, you win the game.

Who's it for:

This is an easy to setup deck building game with a unique system of deconstructing your deck while attacking your opponent. The game itself breaks the mould of a lot of other deck building games so it can take time to orientate your mind around these mechanisms. Once learnt though, the game can easily be played to create an interesting back and forth attack dynamic, as well as trying to manage your despair pile and plan when to effectively resolve others.

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