We tried playing the highly-rated tug-of-war game Watergate, and I appreciate that it's a great game in abstract with how almost every card can have crazy effects, but the theme of tireless reporters in legacy media taking down a corrupt republican president with just a handful of pieces of evidence... playing it in these deeply stupid times only led to bad moods and angry rants afterward.
Luckily Compile is a cheaper and prettier game of tug-of-war with a deck of OP game-breaking cards, with the less disquieting theme of rogue AI achieving sentience and rewriting reality in its image:
The experience of playing the game starts out with confusion as you try out decks that sound interesting. Then a lightbulb goes off as you realize how each deck works (eg. "Gravity" draws cards from other lines to itself, while "Death" is full of cards that kill the other player's cards, but don't stick around that long themselves) and you start to work out synergies between decks.
While the synergies and combos you can form can get pretty complex, each player takes only one action per turn, so it avoids becoming overwhelming for beginners.
Also the cards are super thick and have foil highlights so it all looks super cool and cyberpunk. Unfortunately the ink they used stinks.
The main complaint I have about the game is the shitty instruction manual. It's just a single double-sided sheet. This youtube video is essential. You can shell out an extra $20 for a rubber mat that kinda acts as a player aid, in that it lists all the steps of a player's round, but you really need extra copies of the glossary that's in the corner of the instruction sheet.
Love it, and it's super cheap. Fantastic 2-player game!
