Crayne - Mercenaries of Mindassa: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Player Elimination, Head to Head, Deck Building, Simultaneous
Player Age: 12+Player Count: 1 - 6 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 90 Minutes
Player Age: 12+
Introduction:
Crayne is a deck-building where players are creating synergies of attack power to eliminate their opponents. For the full review click here. One of the best elements of alteration is the variable setup that comes from selecting which factions are in play, this is more important in the lower player counts. Mercenary of Mindassa adds two more factions to the game to increase this variability but also adds a new mercenary deck which removes the static mercenary stacks and instead creates a constant flow of new mercenaries.
New Factions:
The Hive:
The hive adds an insect inspired faction.
The hive gains benefits off existing hive cards in the discard pile whether this is an increase in attributes or a way to play these cards back to the field for free. The hive cards played on a round can also reduce the cost of hive cards purchased that turn, resulting in the discount system not being weakened by re-summoning the hive.
Ancients of Mindassa:
This faction works with a new mechanism called offering.
In the attack phase the player may activate all their offering abilities by discarding one Ancients of Mindassa card in their hand. This activates all offering abilities except for the small selection that requires a larger amount of offerings.
Mercenaries:
Instead of setting up a mercenary and mercenary Camp stack. Players will instead shuffle these cards into a new mercenary deck. This deck will have two mercenaries revealed each round, with new cards drawn as mercenaries are purchased. To keep this pile fresh they will also be discarded and re-drawn each round. One very key element players have to remember is that mercenaries are not a faction which means there will be no discounts for purchasing mercenary cards.
Final Thoughts:
- Mercenaries are revamped from a static pile into its own separate deck with new reveals every round.
Crayne is a great deck-building game that creates an interesting layer of discard management. Any card in the players discard pile gives a discount to the matching faction when purchasing. This makes synergies of factions a much larger focus in this game. Mercenaries of Mindassa creates new strategies and synergies for the players to explore with two new factions. Not all factions are used in a game instead the players shuffle multiple factions together to create the deck players will be purchasing from. These factions alone are enough to add this expansion to your collection if you enjoyed the original Crayne. The bigger addition to this expansion though is the re-work on how mercenaries work. Instead of a static pool of cards the mercenaries now have their own deck which will keep revealing new cards that don't create faction synergy but instead create different ways to add new synergies to every game. If you enjoy Crayne already this is an easy addition to your collection creating a new way to play and two new factions which are easy to shift into the main game.
Comments
Post a Comment