Doomtown: Reloaded – The Light Shineth

Doomtown: Reloaded is a collectable card game based on the old wild west where cowboys and magic exists. It is a game where 4 factions fight to control a town named “Gomorra”. After hands on playing this card game for several times, I would like to review some key gameplay elements of this game and also the good, the bad, and the worst about this game.
Before the review, if you are a new player to this game, please do not shuffle the pre-built card sets after opening the box! The game did a great job on introducing the game to new players by making a tutorial based on an example play through. The card set comes with factions and the tutorial is heavily based on the faction’s cards. I highly recommend all new players to follow along with the tutorial first. It is extremely crucial to learn the basic/core game mechanics that has been covered in this tutorial.

The whole idea of this game is to gain as much control points as you can to win the game. By doing so, players must play wisely and make each move counts. It’s pretty much like a fancy version of Chess where you create barriers for your opponent and try your best to make them out of move and defeat them. The good guys in this game are the “Law Dogs” faction. Bad guys are the “Sloane Gang” and a neutral faction called the “Morgan Cattle Company”. There is also a mystery faction called “The Forth Ring”. It is basically a strange circus with some strange people. Similar to poker, there is total fifty-two card for each faction. In one set of cards, there are four types of cards that represent four main elements of the game.
• “Spade” represents dudes. Dudes in this game are basically people that you can hire to work for you. I found it quite interesting that each dude has a unique ability that player can use depending on the gameplay. Dudes come with influence points, which is critical to the end result.
• “Diamond” represent deeds. Deeds are structures like store or casino that players can build to expand their homeland. Deeds also comes with special effects and also income for the player! (Speaking of income, the currency in Doomtown: Reloaded is a type mysterious ghost rock that exist in the town.) Deeds has control points which can determine if the opponent can control your deed or not.
• “Heart” represent items and attachments. It gives dudes a special enhancement if used on dudes. This type of cards can either be a weapon, a normal item, a mount, or even a spell.
• “Club” represent special events. These cards are “Instance” cards. In other words, it means that play once and must discard. Players can play these cards to take advantage of the game.

The gameplay length is one game day. The day has four phases. They are; Gambling, Upkeep, High noon, and sundown. It is quite interesting that the gambling phase actually let the lower hand player goes first. But beware, there is a mechanic, called “Cheating hands” that is pretty confusing to a new player at first but it seems to add a twist to the gameplay. After player draws 5 cards, if one player has 2 same suits in his hand, the opponent might take advantage of it. I personally tried to avoid cheating hands as much as possible just to let everything to be relatively under my control. The second phase is the upkeep phase. This phase is the phase where currency starts working. Players are able to gain income, spend ghost rocks on new deeds or dudes. The third phase is the High Noon phase. This phase is the climax of the game. Actions, shooting, death, victory all happens so quick in this phase. Sundown phase is the phase where players count their control points and influence points. If the game came to a draw situation, another day will start.

I personally think that the game design wise is really interesting. It nailed down the harsh old western culture really well. Abilities on each card are well designed and balanced to push the gameplay forward. However, during the gameplay, I found it extremely hard to keep track on what is going on with cards, stats, bounty amount, etc. This is probably the biggest problem I am having during the gameplay. I do recommend this card game to hard-core card game players. The down side of this game is probably hard for casual players to pick up due to the super steep learning curve that the game offers.