So, Lane Battlers. These are generally card game, though not by necessity. And generally speaking, duel games. Each player will form some sort of force directly opposite their opponent’s matching force, and at some point something will be decided.
And I’ll break this up into True lane battlers where lanes are fixed (e.g. Air Land & Sea, Schotten Totten, Nawalli) and Loose lane battlers where there are attackers and lanes, but a player can use any lane to attack any other lane (meaning the “directly across” positioning rule is loosened) (e.g. Pixel Tactics, Radlands, one could argue Netrunner though only one side has lanes).
What have you played in this genre? What makes it work or not?
I thought of Caper / Caper Europe, but that’s not technically a lane towards an opponent, just competing in the same lanes (I think, I don’t know it very well).
I’ve played Air, Land and Sea and really enjoyed it, and I’ve picked up its sequel but never played it! Is it significantly different to the original? I have no idea but they look very nice sitting together on the shelf…
The Lane Battler that I know that goes above 2 players is Reiner Knizia’s Knights of Charlemagne (although that game might have a different entry now on BGG. Something about Anthropomorphic animals maybe)
Netrunner - excellent. Depth upon depth. I wish I have the time, devotion, and the crowd that I used to have to play, like, properly.
My go-to on a simple lane battler is still Battle Line/Schotten Totten. Compile if I want to spice it up. DvVH is still fun but I sold it in my quest to have a small collection
I am waiting on my preorder of Compile and have been for over 6 months now… I am a software dev. How could I not order this?
Mandala: sold. This time because I couldn’t grok it. My partner liked it.
Hanamikoji: sold. My partner couldn’t win against me and accused me of underhanded mean tactics. I don’t recall what I did. I wish I still had it.
Caper: Europe: still here because of the nice production.
Radlands: still here. Just so pretty. But we only played a couple of times which I both won as far as I recall. I am still kind of thinking of getting the expansion. I just like the artwork a lot. So much pink
Air Land and Sea: I should like this in theory. In practice… it feels too short. I have the Critter version. It switches between shelf and sell-pile every month.
Schotten Totten: played this against my partner, he hated it. Sold it despite really wanting to like this.
Almost backed/bought Skytear Horde multiple times. Tried it on TTS and it seemed okay but through multiple rounds of crowdfunding I was overwhelmed with the stuff and I felt I have enough cool solo games to not buy this. Still I am eyeing it whenever it pops up on my radar.
Riftforce: I like it in theory. Played on BGA at some point.
Lost Cities: I played the app a few times. Don’t even need to try this against my partner. He would hate it.
Netrunner: friends lent me their copy for a while but I failed to learn the rules and teach them to my partner and by the time I was very much done with deck construction… it’s a little sad. Being a huge fan of cyberpunk in general, and also Neuromancer (our relationship is complicated though, it doesn’t hold up all that well) I want to love this game. I probably would be playing this exclusively if I had started it way back when… but I didn’t. This is one of those examples of games where I feel “you had to be there” when it was hot new stuff. I played the OG collectible Netrunner card game from the late 90s though. That was really cool but since I was already into MtG and RPGs, I couldn’t afford another money-sink.
Most of these games end up very abstract. This and that they are usually tight two player competitions make them very much unsuited for my partner and me to play together. And for other 2 player settings I have other preferences. I keep trying them… but so far nothing has really grabbed me. Radlands for me is the one that I most enjoyed I think but that may be due to how pretty it is more than it being a better game than Schotten Totten.
Eh. I was only “kinda there” but it was fun. Played it with a local group with its local culture. Not sure if they compete out there, but that was my group
It’s still hot today with Null Signal keeping it alive
I think some games just grow and if you grow with them those are awesome. But when you get into them later… it is hard to ever grow enough to fully grasp what’s there.
Netrunner feels like one of those to me and Skytear Horde overwhelmed me in a similar way. This may be a battle between my FOMO and my sense of self-preservation? Money-preservation? Shelf-space?
It seems impossible to ever catch up and fully appreciate all of it. And the lack of full context makes it difficult for me to even get started knowing that if I enjoy it how deep I would have to get into it… it is difficult to explain what might have kept me from learning and playing it. Possibly it was simply that I would have had to teach my partner and who wasn’t very motivated to play in the first place.
LCG in theory doesn’t have the “gambling” problem that CCGs have. Ironically, it is this specific problem that makes Magic and Pokemon thrive even to this day
I think this is where many fans would suggest that just revised core, or revised + kitara, or the new startup nisei set, are at least as versatile as a Summoner wars collection and provide a complete game experience for under $100. You probably don’t need to collect as long as you treat it as a complete game and bring your own cards to game night.
… And many fans would be lying if they said that. Power creep is real, and you can’t really engage with the game or hope to win unless you keep up with all the things that might be in your opponents’ decks. You can’t expect people to play down to your level by limiting their own builds either, at least not in my experience.
Very true… and power creep is the business model or people don’t play with the new cards.
I mean a bigger paradigm shift… like everyone doesn’t bring their own copy of terra mystica to a game night and pull out a faction from their box. If you can get Netrunner into that paradigm, and have everyone play preconstructed from one box that someone brings, like a normal game, the game has plenty of legs even in that framework.
Maybe workdbreakers is the best metaphor.
But no, you can’t enter “the scene” with a bare bones card pool.
