How bad is it? – review of the game “Eternal Evil” with the addition of “Rogues”

Eternal evil cannot be compared to the previous game Superhero Duelfrom the same creators (engine developed by Matt Hyra and Ben Stoll). The games are almost identical. The main difference is that this time we play as villains, not heroes, to defeat Superheroes instead of Super Villains. The idea itself is therefore not very original. Even looking at the box – I know I’ve seen it somewhere. The game is exactly the same: we build up our decks to get as many victory points as possible. We start with quite weak Hit cards, then we buy Kicks and stronger and stronger Equipment, Superpowers and other goodies. In the meantime, we break the pile of our biggest opponents, in this case Superheroes. The game ends when we defeat them all or the main deck is exhausted. The surprise here are the extra victory points in the form of tokens and of course the new themes taken from the seriesEternal Evil Geoff Johnes and illustrators Richard Friend and David Finch.

Inspired by the Eternal Evil comic book series

Among the Location cards we will find “Earth-three”, where the main action of the comics takes place, where the mysterious newcomers, deceptively resembling members of the Justice League, smashed its original composition, killing most of the Superheroes and taking their place; and “Happy Harbor” with an overturned superhero tower, which has now become the seat of the villains gathered by the visitors, the so-called Crime Syndicate. In the main deck of cards, of course, we will find the new “evil counterparts” of the Justice League, i.e. Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman, Power Ring, Johnny Quick and the Atomic, and a lot of other themes related to this world.

We play the well-known characters from DC Comics, such as Lex Luthor, Harley Quinn, Deathstroke or Sinestro. Each of them has its own individual property that we can constantly use. Interestingly, some of them combine perfectly with thematically linked cards, e.g. when playing Bizarro, we will not hesitate to take Bizarro’s Power into our hand, which other players definitely avoid.

In the game, the Justice League is still alive and our task is to destroy it (we have to kill Flash, Batman, Superman, Aquaman or Green Arrow) and defeat a few other Superheroes such as Constantine, Martian Hunter, Cyborg, Shazam! or the Swamp Monster.

The graphics of the basic cards of Blows, Helplessness, Kicks and Weakness have also changed to suit the new atmosphere. This is, of course, only a cosmetic change.

What’s new since the Superhero Duel ?

In addition to the changes in the graphic design, the aforementioned victory point tokens and freezing tokens appeared from the novelties. In addition, we perform actions of destroying cards much more often and their pile began to play an important role in the game. Victory points in the form of tokens differ from those on cards in that it is much easier to lose them (e.g. when Constantine attacks us, he takes three such points from each player), but you can also steal them from your opponents using Catwoman’s attack. The Rogues expansion significantly expands their use, which you will read more about later in this text.

Freezing tokens are, for me, a definite excess of form over content. They are used only by the Freezing Pistol, which allows us to reserve the card in the bank for the next turn. I haven’t used this action very often and I think that we could mark frozen cards in some other way, e.g. by placing them sideways.

As befits evil, we have plenty of destruction in Eternal Evil ! Starting with removing disposable cards such as Steve Trevor, Word of Power and Emperor Penguin, eliminating positions from the bank, which the Justice League bad doubles allow, or getting rid of those on your own or your discard pile, for example via Messenger, Transfiguration or Superintellect, even ending with weakening the deck of opponents with the use of Broadsword.

These activities make player turns much longer, especially later in the game, when the decks are already very large and it takes a lot of time to browse through the cards. So why are we doing this?

Of course, it is important to undermine the power of the opponents and to get rid of cards with negative points and poor positions from your own deck, which would weaken your hand. Additionally, while in possession of Deathstroke, we will get as much as ten points at the end of the game, if we limit the size of our deck to only twenty positions. The same is true for the Spectral Visitor, for whom we remove all zero cost cards.

When playing Superwoman, Power Ring, Owlman or Ultraman, we not only rob the bank out of pure malice (although this would also fit the plot of the game), our goal is to have as many elements of a specific type as possible in the pile of destroyed cards (e.g. Inventories, Superpowers, Heroes) which will then give us more power points. We also use selected types, for example, with Superman or Batman.

In practice, it is more convenient to immediately spread the destroyed cards into several separate piles, which takes up more space on the table, but gives more transparency.

Staggered turns and a long, boring game

Browsing the discard and destroyed card stacks effectively extends player turns. But that’s not all, they are also drawn out by numerous new cards, e.g. thanks to the Poker Gang.

In my opinion, far too much of the action is focused on destroying, drawing or other combining, and at the cost of this, there are no simpler cards with a basically high power, as happened in Superhero Duel. Because of this, you have to be much more lucky and really think a lot and sweat while defeating some Superheroes. As a result, the game time can be much longer than stated on the packaging. Instead of the expected seventy-five minutes, we sometimes even reach two or three hours. As my colleague said, “the fun never ends”.

We can, of course, finalize the game without defeating them, and instead exhausting the main deck, which we will unfold faster, e.g. thanks to Pandora’s Box, which allows you to add a lot of cards to the bank at once. However, when we play for the first time, you also have to take into account that it will take longer for each player to read all descriptions.

If, however, we undertake a fight, the following will be helpful in destroying the biggest enemies: Word of power, thanks to which defeating them in a given turn will be cheaper by as much as four points, Serum Man-Bata, for which we will receive as much power as we have victory points, and Unfortunately, the few cards of previously defeated Superheroes. The “Rogues” expansion pack will also be very useful, as it introduces a new mechanic for Cooperation.

Rogue crossover addon

Playing with this add-on, we play the role of thugs from the group called Rogues, such as the Lord of Mirrors, Captain Cool or Heat Wave – known opponents of the Flash, which of course we have to defeat with his allies. This team includes Hawkman, Jay Garrick, Jesse Quick, among others. The major change introduced by the add-on is the stacking of Superheroes according to their strength. The longer we play, the stronger enemies we have to face, thanks to which the game does not lose dynamics.

The most important novelty is the aforementioned cooperation. It consists in playing cards from the opponent’s deck, in return for which he receives one victory point from the bank. The points in the form of tokens have been used to the maximum here. In the new cards of the main deck, there are no victory points assigned to them at all, and instead, by earning each of them, we get a specific value in tokens. As a consequence – they are perfect for destruction.

In addition, we can now pay with points, e.g. by buying a card using Abra Kadabra, gaining extra power and drawing more cards from our deck with the Tricks Bag, or by paying protection costs in the Iron Heights Prison. It is also worth being prepared for the appearance of the last Superhero – the most powerful Flash, because of which we lose one victory point every turn.

Rogues can be combined with Eternal Evil and with a Superhero Duel . It is definitely more suited to the former, because it perfectly matches the destruction actions. In the latter, you also need to prepare a replacement for the tokens, because they are not included in the set.

The fight between good and evil, i.e. a combination of Eternal Evil and a Duel of Superheroes

In the “Good” vs “Bad” variant, we combine both games: Eternal Evil and Superhero Duel . I was very afraid of this option at first, expecting it would already have too much of everything. However, she surprised me very positively! It turned out to be much less complicated than the very basis of Eternal Evil . To my joy, more powerful cards such as Doomsday, Superhuman Strength and Swamp Monster have returned, and as there are more simpler actions, they have also sped up player turns.

We also have treatments similar to teamwork with Rogues , but (at least in my opinion) much better! Thanks to X-ray vision, we reveal the top cards of the opponents and play one of them, and with Starro we can play all of them, and then instead of the active decks, they return to the discarded ones. Additionally, our rivals do not receive any victory points!

The most important novelty in this variant is a team game divided into two teams: Good and Bad. Some take on the role of the Superheroes from the Duel of Superheroes, and others as the Super Villains from Eternal Evil . Each group has its own stack of five enemies to defeat. When one of them eliminates them, the game is over. We can help defend people from our team and only attack players from the opposite team.
A big limitation here is the fact that Good players cannot take Rogues or Super Villains into the deck, and Bad players – Heroes (poor Lex Luthor, whose specialty is based on capturing them) or Superheroes. These Super Character cards in particular were especially helpful in defeating even stronger enemies, so now you have to get by somehow without them.

Even so, the team play form is much more fun than the regular one, so I highly recommend this mode!

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Eternal evil cannot be compared to the previous game Superhero Duelfrom the same creators (engine developed by Matt Hyra and Ben Stoll). The games are almost identical. The main difference is that this time we play as villains, not heroes, to defeat Superheroes instead of Super Villains. The idea itself is therefore not very original. Even looking at the box – I know I’ve seen it somewhere. The game is exactly the same: we build up our decks to get as many victory points as possible. We start with quite weak Hit cards, then we buy Kicks and stronger and stronger Equipment, Superpowers and other goodies. In the meantime, we break the pile of our biggest opponents, in this case Superheroes. The game ends when we defeat them all or the main deck is exhausted. The surprise here are the extra victory points in the form of tokens and of course the new themes taken from the seriesEternal Evil Geoff Johnes and illustrators Richard Friend and David Finch.

Inspired by the Eternal Evil comic book series

Among the Location cards we will find “Earth-three”, where the main action of the comics takes place, where the mysterious newcomers, deceptively resembling members of the Justice League, smashed its original composition, killing most of the Superheroes and taking their place; and “Happy Harbor” with an overturned superhero tower, which has now become the seat of the villains gathered by the visitors, the so-called Crime Syndicate. In the main deck of cards, of course, we will find the new “evil counterparts” of the Justice League, i.e. Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman, Power Ring, Johnny Quick and the Atomic, and a lot of other themes related to this world.

We play the well-known characters from DC Comics, such as Lex Luthor, Harley Quinn, Deathstroke or Sinestro. Each of them has its own individual property that we can constantly use. Interestingly, some of them combine perfectly with thematically linked cards, e.g. when playing Bizarro, we will not hesitate to take Bizarro’s Power into our hand, which other players definitely avoid.

In the game, the Justice League is still alive and our task is to destroy it (we have to kill Flash, Batman, Superman, Aquaman or Green Arrow) and defeat a few other Superheroes such as Constantine, Martian Hunter, Cyborg, Shazam! or the Swamp Monster.

The graphics of the basic cards of Blows, Helplessness, Kicks and Weakness have also changed to suit the new atmosphere. This is, of course, only a cosmetic change.

What’s new since the Superhero Duel ?

In addition to the changes in the graphic design, the aforementioned victory point tokens and freezing tokens appeared from the novelties. In addition, we perform actions of destroying cards much more often and their pile began to play an important role in the game. Victory points in the form of tokens differ from those on cards in that it is much easier to lose them (e.g. when Constantine attacks us, he takes three such points from each player), but you can also steal them from your opponents using Catwoman’s attack. The Rogues expansion significantly expands their use, which you will read more about later in this text.

Freezing tokens are, for me, a definite excess of form over content. They are used only by the Freezing Pistol, which allows us to reserve the card in the bank for the next turn. I haven’t used this action very often and I think that we could mark frozen cards in some other way, e.g. by placing them sideways.

As befits evil, we have plenty of destruction in Eternal Evil ! Starting with removing disposable cards such as Steve Trevor, Word of Power and Emperor Penguin, eliminating positions from the bank, which the Justice League bad doubles allow, or getting rid of those on your own or your discard pile, for example via Messenger, Transfiguration or Superintellect, even ending with weakening the deck of opponents with the use of Broadsword.

These activities make player turns much longer, especially later in the game, when the decks are already very large and it takes a lot of time to browse through the cards. So why are we doing this?

Of course, it is important to undermine the power of the opponents and to get rid of cards with negative points and poor positions from your own deck, which would weaken your hand. Additionally, while in possession of Deathstroke, we will get as much as ten points at the end of the game, if we limit the size of our deck to only twenty positions. The same is true for the Spectral Visitor, for whom we remove all zero cost cards.

When playing Superwoman, Power Ring, Owlman or Ultraman, we not only rob the bank out of pure malice (although this would also fit the plot of the game), our goal is to have as many elements of a specific type as possible in the pile of destroyed cards (e.g. Inventories, Superpowers, Heroes) which will then give us more power points. We also use selected types, for example, with Superman or Batman.

In practice, it is more convenient to immediately spread the destroyed cards into several separate piles, which takes up more space on the table, but gives more transparency.