Crayne: Fractured Empire - Review

Crayne: Fractured Empire - Review

Information:

Mechanics: Player Elimination, Head to Head, Deck Building, Simultaneous 
Player Age: 12+

Player Count: 1 - 6 Players

Time to Play: 30 - 90 Minutes 

Publisher: Krunchy Games

Game Designer: Chris Fielder

Game Artist: Matthew Burger, Devin Hoyt, Luiz Prado

Year Published: 2021

BGG Weight: 2.00

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

Introduction:

Deck building and head to head games are two of my favourite genres in board games. So I love when they are combined well. For my collection Shards of Infinity, Command of Nature and Power Rangers Deck Building Game come to mind instantly. 

Is Crayne going to be a new addition to this prestige? Crayne interestingly slows down the decision space by having each card played one at a time out of a hand of three cards, but speeds up the pace by mostly being simultaneous. 

In Crayne Fractured Empire, players are building their deck by adding faction specific cards into their deck. The more of one faction type the higher the synergy for that style of play and the better the recruitment power will be. Players are recruiting these cards to ultimately build strong attacks to defeat their opponents. Players aren't targeting specific players or keeping cards around for long, instead the attack they generate that round will hit players on their left and right as they use the defence they generated simultaneously. In this game players are not targeted as much, but are instead more focused on how they generate either attack, defence or revenue to focus on defeating all enemies, survival or how best to enhance their deck.

Game Anatomy:

Cards:

Each card in the game will have a faction or mercenary symbol on the top left, cost to purchase on the top right. At the bottom on the left is the attack, followed by the revenue and lastly defence.

Majority of the cards will have abilities that could activate at certain phases or activate immediately denoted by  "Teeth" at the start of the ability.

Some cards contain strongholds at the bottom of the card. Strongholds act as extra defence, when played the player must choose if they are adding defence to the player on the left's or right attack. Until a stronghold is destroyed it will stay in play between rounds, protecting the player from damage until it is destroyed.

Trade Cart, Mercenary Camp and Mercenary:

Trade Cart is the bulk of the players starting deck, they are the first cards to be removed but in the meantime they are used for generating revenue. Mercenary and Mercenary Camp are static cards next to the market with limited stack (based on player count) which can be bought from during the players revenue phase. The Mercenary are great they have low generation of any two resources, which helps with variability on a turn and is a much better card to have in your deck than trade Cart. Mercenary Camp is a standard card for creating stronghold defences against opponents.

Setup:

- Select factions equal to the player count plus two. 
- There are four one cost factions, which will be put aside into a separate deck. The rest of the factions are shuffled together creating the main deck.
- Deal six in a pile to create the pot
- Cards equal to the player count plus three are revealed from the main deck to create the auxiliary market.
- Each player will gain a deck made up of eight trade Cart cards and four cards randomly shuffled from the deck of one cost cards.

- Setup a seperate pile next to the auxiliary market of mercenary camps equal to the player count and mercenary cards equal to the player count multiplied by three 
- Each player shuffles their deck and draws three cards.

How to Play:

Crayne is a head to head deck building game with mostly simultaneous gameplay. Until a player's influence is depleted to zero, players will play the same round, made up of four phases; assembly, attack, revenue and cleanup.

Assembly:

Players will have a hand of three cards at all times, at the same time players in the assembly phase will select one card to play and reveal simultaneously. When revealed any teeth effects will occur, other effects may occur at later phases in the game. Each player will then draw back to three cards. This will continue until players have played five cards. 

Attack:

Simultaneously all players calculate how much attack they produce. This attack will hit the player to the left and right. Each attack will have that player's defence deducted. The same defence will be used with the attack from the left and the right. Some players may have stronghold cards defending from specifically the player on the left or the right, this decision is made when the stronghold card is played. If enough damage isn't delivered this round to destroy stronghold cards, they will get to remain in play for the following rounds.

Revenue:

In player order, players can now buy as many cards as they would like from the market with their revenue. When a card is purchased a new card is immediately drawn. What makes Crayne fascinating is the discount mechanism. Any card in the players discard pile will give a discount of one to the cards in the faction they belong in. These discounts stack and can be used on multiple cards. No card can be reduced below the cost of one.  In the image below there is two revenue discount for purple and a one revenue discount for the green faction.

The challenge of this discount system, is normally in deck building games players want a small manageable deck to create better synergies and more predictable turns. However, in Crayne there is a benefit to having a larger deck. Since there will be more time to build a larger discard pile creating larger and more frequent discounts. 

Clean Up:

Players will now move their played and purchased cards into their discard pile. Leaving any surviving stronghold cards in play. A key component of the game is the player's hand is not discarded in this phase, instead the three cards the player has remain in their hand for the next round. This allows a hand management strategy where players may decide to withhold playing certain cards hoping for better synergy or waiting for their deck to re-shuffle. The first player medallion will also now pass to the left.

Factions:

Each game factions plus two are used to build the market deck and part of the players starting deck. The factions are what build the variability especially at lower player count games.

Free Elves of Springlake:

The Free Elves of Springlake really focus on hand management. They allow players to draw and discard a card. What makes this truly exciting is the discount options they allow the player to unlock. If players are focused on gaining certain cards this round discarding cards of the players choice heavily create control of the discount system Crayne offers.

Servants of the Baron:

This faction focuses heavily on discard piles, whether this is the own players discard pile or manipulating and purchasing from the pit (the main decks discard pile).

Dwarves of Emerald Peaks:

This faction has a split focus on the one hand its aggression towards destroying strongholds. The other focus is that they lean towards gaining more and additional benefits from revenue like attack or defence.

Greenskins of Chak:

The greenskins have a horde mentality they focus on additional plays in the assembly phase of the same faction. If that's not strong enough they also benefit based on the more greenskins that are in play in the round.

Demons of the Rift:

Demons also focus on benefiting from other demons played. Unlike greenskins they don't help with playing more, they assist with streamlining the players deck by sacrificing themself or other cards. This is a double edged sword in this game. The smaller the deck the better the synergies, but it creates a lower chance of getting faction discounts when purchasing. So in this way the demons are a very aggressive faction that focuses on defeating opponents. 

Mages of Illiban-Sina:

Like the Mercenary basic card, the mages are focused on giving the players choice in the benefit gained when the card is played. 

Knights of Kalimas:

The Knights are very good at keeping the players influence (health) strong.

Malrathian's Chosen:

This faction focuses on disrupting the other players decks. Whether their hand, deck or what they have played this round all can be disrupted with this faction.

Final Thoughts:

- Really smart discount system that creates the need for larger decks, since players want to avoid having an empty discard pile.
- Mostly simultaneous gameplay isn't common in head to head games, however this one does it with great success. The way the cards are played also help players pivot towards a different resources of attack, defence or money.
- Cards are not discarded at the end of a round, letting players have more agency in timing of when the play a certain card (that could be reliant on size of graveyard or what opponents are doing).
- The attacking isn't targeted to any player, more about power accumulated from a player's synergies working.

Crayne: Fractured Empire is going to earn a Silver Seal of approval. The combined genre of head to head and deck-building game is a favourite of mine. I have played so many of these now that I hold onto the unique ones more. I will be keeping Crayne in my collection. The game is simultaneously slowed down and sped up. Slowing down the decision process is that it creates more decisions for players as they try to manage their discard pile to gain the best discounts (each card in the players discard pile offers one discount of revenue to buy any new cards of that faction for the round). As well players carefully manage their hand of three cards, each time a card is played a new one is drawn, which is quite different. Instead of playing the whole hand at once, players are responding to how opponents are progressing on the round. That's how the game speeds up gameplay, the game is mostly simultaneous, and the combat is indirect with both the left and right player being attacked each round by each player.  If like me you are a fan of this genre of games, this is an instant purchase in my opinion, it has snappy gameplay while having a unique decision space, which can be a challenge to master.

Click...feed the addiction: 

krunchy Games 
Crayne Fractured Empire on BGG

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