Resident Evil has always been one of my favorite video games to play. Now it has finally been released in card game format! The creators at Bandai have taken advantage of the new deck building trend to market their zombie slaying game. Late last year they released the original game and have finally released the anticipated second release Resident Evil the Deck Building Game: Alliance (I will now refer to the two as the original game and the alliance game).
What is a deck building game?
A deck building game is very different than a card collecting game or even a living card game (examples being Magic the Gathering or Warhammer Invasion). The main difference is that each player typically starts the game with the same small deck (usually about 10-12 cards) of preset cards. Each turn a player will draw his/her hand from his own deck and then use that hand to complete tasks for that turn. Usually the most common task is to beef up their deck by purchasing cards from a "store" of some kind. In resident evil there are at least 18 piles of different purchasable cards to select from each game. Cards in your hand that have a gold value on them may be added up to buy one card per turn. Upon purchasing a card it is put into your discard pile. Upon drawing the last card from your deck and needing to draw yet another card the player reshuffles his own discard pile to form his deck/draw pile yet again, enabling you to be able to use your newly purchased cards.
What makes it different than the other deck building games?
The main difference is very obvious, the ridiculously cool Resident Evil theme! The other main difference is that Resident Evil the Deck Building Game has multiple game modes. The story mode has you working individually to eliminate the threats in the mansion and ultimately defeating a boss to end the game. Mercenary mode allows you to form teams (either every man for himself, 2 vs.2, or 1 vs. 3) and fight against a time limit to destroy the threats in the mansion. Versus mode introduces the unique opportunity to directly fight against the other characters. Alliance introduces the partner mode which can be used with any of the above mentioned game modes. Each player now controls a main character and a partner to dish out more damage and have more abilities! By far this is the best way to play and you may never want to play without partner mode again.
Does the game follow the video games or movies?
The card game mainly appears to follow the video games. The more games you have played in the series, the more you should recognize. For example, Leon is one of the characters that was seen in the video game Resident Evil 4. As far as the movies are concerned, you will only recognize certain things that overlapped from the video games to the movies. Carlos Olivera is introduced in the alliance game as a character and was also a character in the Apocalypse and Extinction movies.
So what's in the box? What's in the box?!?
I have scanned the images of all of the cards in each of the games. Some of the cards only have one copy of each in the box (such as characters and special weapons) while many have duplicates (such as actions, ammunition and basic weapons). Background colors will be used to show which cards are available in each set. Red will represent the original game while blue will represent the alliance game. If the background is striped it means that the cards are in both games.
(To better view text simply click on an image to enlarge it to full-screen).
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| Original Game Characters |
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| Original Characters with Promo Versions |
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| Alliance Characters that were also in the original game. They have new images and new abilities. |
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| New Alliance Characters |
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| Original Action Cards |
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| More Original Action Cards |
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| Alliance Action Cards |
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| More Alliance Action Cards |
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| Token cards in both games |
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| Ammunition Cards from both games |
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| Events: An Alliance only Feature |
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| Items: can't live without them |
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| Basic Weapons |
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| Shotguns and Automatics |
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| Elite Pistols and Long-range Rifles |
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| Other Miscellaneous Weaponry |
I've had a go with both the core game and the expansion and I think it's a brillian game, I really do. It's not a bad game to play with people who don't play games very often; the rules aren't that hard, it doesn't take too long to play, it's a familiar theme and even if you don't know too much about Resident Evil, you can appreciate being able to use shotguns and rocket launchers...
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