Shards of Infinity is a card deckbuilder published by Portal Games in the Polish language version. In the box you will find components for the basic version of the game, i.e. four character boards with health and proficiency counters and cards, as well as the Relics of the Future expansion , i.e. more cards, among which there are title relics that do not appear in the base game.
Both the artwork on the cover and the characters on the cards match the futuristic theme of the game, but unfortunately in the gameplay the theme is not felt at all. The box is too big for its content, but in addition to the included add-on, there are also many others that, if released in Poland, will be stored in one package.
As befits a duel card game, we will play cards and attack heroes and opponent characters to eliminate them and become the winner. The rules are very simple, and if you’ve played other deck-building titles before, the general gameplay is similar.
Each player receives a board of the selected character and sets the life counter to 50. The level of proficiency, however, depends on the order. The first person starts with zero, the second with one point, and so on. Then everyone gets an identical starting deck of ten cards, makes a face-down pile of them, and draws five into their hand.
In the center of the table, place the remaining deck of cards face down and deal out six. This is the Central Government, which is our market from which we will buy new cards. And that’s enough to start playing the basic version of Shards of Infinity .
On your turn, you play cards from your hand to gain the indicated perks. For crystals, we can buy cards from the market, the power allows us to attack the opponent, and thanks to the health and proficiency points, we move the appropriate counters up. In addition, we can also use the skill of the hero or character and play mercenaries from the market without adding them to our deck. As in most card games of this type, for most of the game we are guided by what is written on the cards.
A lot of duel deckbuilders are very similar to each other, but some have elements that make them stand out from the crowd. In the case of Shards of Infinity, it is the ability to hire mercenaries from the market. You have to pay their cost in crystals and they work for you in a given turn. This procedure allows you to immediately use a card that you do not want to wait for and add it to your deck, which is also useful when you want to remove it from the market, because it would be very useful to a rival. It can also be very useful in a given turn, but we don’t necessarily want it to clutter our deck.
The second interesting, although common in other games, treatment is making some actions dependent on the level of proficiency. Depending on our development in this area, we will be able to use increasingly stronger variants of certain actions. This is a great incentive to improve our character first, and then move on to stronger attacks, instead of immediately focusing on less powerful attacks.
In these types of games, I always have reservations about the number of players. When we’re about to kill each other, it seems natural for us to play one-on-one. The game with three or four people, although allowed, most often annoys me. There is no “fuse” that will help one player when everyone else is after him. In this way, you can quickly get rid of one victim and then continue the duel with only two people. And the eliminated player can cheer or get bored. It would be enough to introduce an additional rule, e.g. that you cannot attack the characters with the lowest number of health points until those with more hit a lower level. Although in this way, in the case of a three-person party, almost all decision-making regarding the target of the attack is taken away. As in other card games of this type – it is best played in a duo.
The disadvantages also include the unused potential of the four characters from which we choose at the beginning of the game. The factions have an interesting backstory that could have been developed and added one small skill at a time to make them asymmetrical. The attached add-on has two relic cards assigned to each character, from which we choose one and start the game with it. This fixes the lack of distinction between characters a bit, so it’s good that additional cards were introduced in the Polish edition right away.
Shards of Infinity may not be a revealing deckbuilder, but after the first playthrough, I found it to be quite enjoyable. We have a lot of possibilities not only to deprive someone of life points, but also to recover them. During one of the games, I had 2 starting points out of 50, and my opponent had 36. In the end, I won with 16 left. This makes the games exciting because you never know what your opponent will do, but also what kind of chain we will be able to create with each other triggering actions.
