TDG: Dark Pact
Transcript
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the discriminating gamer. You know, it doesn't matter what kind of music you listen to when you go fishing, as long as it's catchy. Ladies and gentlemen, today we're going to go ahead and take a look at Dark Pact from Trick or Treat Studios.
In Dark Pact, one to four players take on the roles of a cult researchers as they make crazy deals with otherworldly beings. Yikes. All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is a deck-building game. Now, essentially, what you're going to do is you are going to have kind of a supply of 10 cards in front of you. You're going to have a starting deck of 10 cards, but you're also going to have a grimoire. These are three cards that are going to be underneath your grimoire, and these are cards that only you can buy from. Now, initially, both your uh cards, and I believe your grimoire among all the players are identical, but you'll have chance to put other cards from the supply into your grimoire so only you can buy them. You're going to have the main deck there, and you're also going to have a place where you can exile cards as well as a graveyard.
So, what you're going to do over the course of this game is you will get five cards on your turn. Now, you only get one action per turn, which is you can only play one card. But, as you play the cards, some of those cards may give you additional actions, and you can do things like draw more cards or again play more actions. Uh but, you're trying to get you're trying to use money, gold or treasure, in order to purchase more cards. Now, here's the dealio. When you purchase a card, it does not go into a discard pile. It goes immediately into your hand. Now, you're so you're trying trying to optimize your deck for your next turn. Uh but, as you're playing this, you can also you kind of create kind of you know, action trees of where you can uh you know, what which cards are actually giving you more actions, and you can keep playing until you run out of actions or you don't have any money to spend.
So, you go ahead, and at that point you can discard all the cards you played, and any cards from your hand you can also go ahead and discard, and then you draw your hand back up to five cards at that time. Now, when you're playing a starter game, you're actually going to start with a random dark pack. There are four kind of starter dark packs. You're going to each start with a different dark pack. And these dark packs essentially are your individual win conditions. This is the only way you can win the game. But, as the game progresses, you can purchase more dark pack cards as they come out, and these are keeper cards. They just go in front of you, and that is now another way you can potentially win the game. Now, as I say, there are various different kinds of cards, and as you're playing these cards uh in different ways, they give you different advantages and different uh abilities. Uh some of the cards are necessary for meeting some of your uh conditions here. But, critically, some of the cards are multipliers. And multiplier cards essentially multiply a a a number on your card a a a numeral on your card.
So, normally, if I have two gold, two treasure, I can actually spend a multiplier with it. If it's a times two, then suddenly that is worth four. Uh so, I can always play a multiplier with another card to kind of enhance it. But, I can also play that. So, if I'm drawing a card and I play a times two, I can draw two cards, right? Or, you know, if it's actions, you know, if I got two actions, I play a three multiplier, I got six actions. So, there's different ways that you can increase the number of actions or gold or draws that you get during your turn with these multiplier cards. Now, as I say, at some point in the game, you can actually purchase one of your grimoire cards that will allow you when you play it to push a card from the supply into the grimoire, either to deny other people from having it or you want to buy it, you just don't have the money yet. You can never have more than three cards in your grimoire.
So, players are going around and around, they are playing cards, they are hoping for extra activations, more treasure, more draws. And again, they're playing the multiplier cards to add those things up to make them more powerful. Now, as soon as one player meets their victory objective on one of their dark pact cards, then they win! Dark Pact. We'll get back to the review in just a moment. I want to take a minute to ask you to check out my other channel, that is Cody Carlson, PhD, where we talk about history, books on history, military history. I even post some of my lectures for my classes on there. Please check that out. Please subscribe to that channel. And now, back to the review. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is just a basic basic overview of this game. Uh there's there's there's more going on here. There's a lot of more nuance in the cards, but basically, that is how you play the game.
Now, I got to tell you, I've never played Dominion, but the whole time we're playing this, Ray is saying, "This game really reminds me of Dominion." And I'm like, "Okay, okay, fine. I've never played it." Um the game that this reminded me the most of in the way you do the deck building and play the cards was Moonrakers, right? Because Moonrakers has that idea where you play an action and you get multiple actions. I guess that's in Dominion. I've never played Dominion. So so so that seemed very familiar to me. In fact, that's why I was making the trees. I don't know if it says to make the trees. I don't think it says to make the trees in the in the game here, but it just that's what I would do. Two actions, I get an action here, an action card here, and that's the way I played it just to help me keep track of stuff. Um so I really like the deck building in Moonrakers, and I really liked it here. I liked that aspect of the game quite a bit where you've only got the one action, but hopefully you can get more actions, and there's other other fun and interesting things you can do.
One other really cool aspect of the game is those multiplier cards because they are incredibly important. You actually have to believe start with one in your grimoire, um and you can actually, as I say, purchase more as they come out in the in on the game board, and they're expensive, but they are very powerful, and they they make you a far more formidable you can they give you a far more formidable turn formidable turn when you take it. And so I really really like that quite a bit as well. Now, I have some criticisms of this game. And the biggest Well, the first criticism I have in this game is it does feel a lot like multiplayer solitaire. It feels like you're doing your thing, everybody else is doing their thing. Now, the only real concession to actual interaction is you have some of the cards that do attack other players.
And so you've got that aspect of it, okay. But just know that going into it. This does feel very much like a multiplayer solitaire game. In and of itself, in a nutshell that's not in any way a deal breaker for me. Um I do like a lot of games that I consider to be kind of a multiplayer solitaire. So that that's not a thing, but I know a lot of people have a problem with it. So be aware of that. I'm I'm not the biggest fan of it, which is why I'm calling it a criticism, but it's not a deal breaker for me. Now, my biggest criticism of the game, and what might be a deal breaker for me, is downtime. Now, when you are playing this game, as the game progresses and your deck's getting more complex and interesting, on your turn, you're going to I'm going here, I'm going here, I'm going here, I'm going here, I'm going here, I got this, I got this, I got this, I got this, and it's taking a while. And if you're not playing the game, you're sitting there just kind of It's not your turn, you're just you know, you're kind of out of it.
So, I'm not wild of a long downtime. I'm not a big fan of that. You know, so so again, it kind of is what it is, cuz you're building stuff up, but, you know, I'm not wild about it. And then kind of tied to that, too, is in this game, as much as I like the deck building, when those combos work, because really deck building is all about building combos and and seeing them play off each other. There were There was enough in this game There were There were There were enough turns I had in this game where I felt like, well, I've got a lot of actions, but I can't really do as much as I want to do. Or, you know, I've got just so much gold, and I can't buy anything. And so, I had I had enough turns in the game where I couldn't really do anything fun.
That it bothered me, and it probably wouldn't have bothered me that much, except I got to wait for a long time for it to get back to me. So, that was a problem. When I look at Dark Pact in its totality, I'm going to call it a mixed bag. Um it's a fun game. I don't know that I'm going to be hanging on to it. I I I kind of feel like um that same kind of deck building experience I I get out of Moonrakers, and Moonrakers is definitely not multiplayer solitaire, because you'd have to negotiate these contracts. Um so I get that same kind of vibe from Moonrakers as far as the deck building goes. And you don't have that downtime. And and I'll tell you this right now, too. It's got this kind of, you know, a cult artwork and stuff and which is great. I love the artwork here and stuff and that works really well.
But I don't know that the theme really shines through this one, either. Um which, you know, I mean, I like a strong theme, but if gameplay is really good, you can kind of go, "Okay." Uh so there's that. If you were looking for to get more into this horror theme, I don't know that that's going to quite do it for you. But all told, like I say, it's it's a it's a bit of a mixed bag. I love There's stuff about this game I really liked, but I think the stuff I didn't like maybe just tips the scales a little. Um I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to give this a five out of 10, meaning I think it's an average game. It's got stuff I like, but it's got stuff I don't like. Um I think you're going to have to decide based on, you know, seeing reviews and and and reading it, what what's going to work for you. Uh good game, not a great game.
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They say I got to have me on my feet again, AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, AND I DON'T know where I've been. Please
[screaming]
Not quite there, but the four money on that is going to be multiplied by three, by two, by two, and by two. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine times four?
36, huh?
36.