Sometime in 2012, my sister-in-law introduced my wife and I to a new card game. Now, we had never been all that into card-based games before, but she insisted that this one was awesome. She brought it over one night and my wife and I tried it out...and it turns out that she was right. The game is Alderac's Smash Up, and I'd like to share its joys with my fellow Tyrants. I'm reposting my primer series from Game on Girl, but I'll happily answer any questions here. It's a lovely game, and I think some of you will really like it.
Smash Up is the brainchild of Paul Peterson, and utilizes three types of cards in the Core set: Minions, Actions, and Bases. Minions and Actions are the cards the player gets to utilize as they play, and Bases are the cards the player tries to win. The core game has 8 factions (with several expansions adding to the mix, but I'll discuss those in later posts). Each player gets to smash together two factions in order to win the game.
But first, let me break down each type of card in more detail:
MINIONS - Minions are essentially the soldiers in your army. They are the ones which get played on bases in order to score them. Minions have power rankings printed on each card; for example, the header image features three types of minions from three factions, and each has its own number of power. The higher the number, the stronger (and rarer in your deck) it is. Minions also have abilities that can be used when played, and these vary by faction. One minion is played per turn (unless you play a card that lets you play more than one!).
ACTIONS - Actions can also be played once per turn, barring cards that let you do more, and these are oftentimes cards that either boost your team's effectiveness or cripple an opponent's. These too vary by faction.
BASES - Base cards are shuffled and laid out on the table before play begins, and the goal of the game is to score these for Victory Points (VP). Each base has a breaking point, which the cumulative total of the minion cards played there must reach or exceed to score. Bases also have abilities that tend to favor the faction it is derived from. Bases have three tiers of VP that can be rewarded based on each player's total: first place typically gets the most VP, but there are exceptions. Three bases are in play for two players, with the addition of one base per extra player. (Personally, when we play with my sister-in-law, we keep it at three.)
So, the ultimate goal is to combine two factions together that will carry your team over the others, and earn VP scoring bases as effectively as possible. Once a player reaches or surpasses 15 VP, they are the winner!
SOME THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
Some partnerships are way worse than others.
For instance, pairing two decks that don't have much in the form of messing with rival players can make your game very difficult. In the Core set, zombies and wizards affect other players the least. This can benefit them far more than you, especially if they can destroy your cards with no consequence!
Sometimes a base ability is the best reason to play cards on it.
For example, the tricksters have one called "Cave of Shinies." On that base, any time a minion is destroyed there, its owner gains 1 VP instantly. If you have a deck that features cards that destroy your own minions (dinosaurs, robots, ninjas, pirates, wizards and tricksters can do this in the Core set), you can manipulate this in your favor by playing a low level minion, and then destroying it with an action or another minion. However, this strategy can backfire if you don't plan accordingly. The trickster's Leprechaun can destroy any minion from opposing players that has less power than him (he's a Power 5). If you play him on Cave of Shinies, all of your rivals will immediately benefit from this! Careful consideration of a base is crucial to getting the most out of your time in the game.
Pirates and ninjas are the two deceptive decks in the Core set. They have specials that can be played as a base is scoring, which can turn them into the winning team quite easily. However, if a rival has one of these two groups, keep in mind that they may be trying to trick you. Future expansions add more factions that are capable of doing this, too: spies, time travellers, giant ants, werewolves, vampires, and cyborg apes (I don't have the Cthulhu set, but I imagine that that expansion would likely have one or two groups that can use specials, too).
HOW TO PLAY (well, how we play)
The latest rulebook is here, as a reference.
First, determine who woke up first that day. Beginning with that player, each player will select two factions, rotating between each player as each one is selected. You must announce your faction as you select them. No combining two of the same faction! Once this is done, shuffle the two together to form your deck.
Next, shuffle the base deck and draw the top three (or more, depending on the total number of players) cards to serve as your bases. We read aloud the ability of each base to make sure we are aware of each one. The player who woke up first is the one who gets to go first here, too. Each player draws five cards from their own deck to serve as their hand.
Each player can choose to play one minion and one action per turn. They do not have to; sometimes it's strategic not to. If they play any cards that grant them extra minions or actions, they can play those, too. When their turn is over, they draw two more cards and play rotates to the next player.
Eventually, a player will have more than 10 cards in their hand. If this happens, that player must discard as many cards as it takes to reach 10 after they pick up their cards at the end of the turn. There are advantages to doing this with a few decks (zombies, steampunk, cyborg apes and time travellers utilize the discard pile quite heavily), and disadvantageous to ghosts, who thrive on having small hands.
When a base "breaks," or the total power on all of the minion cards in play matches or exceeds the number in the upper left corner of the base card, the base will be scored at the end of the current player's turn. During this period, special cards such as the ninja's Shinobi minion or the pirate's Full Sail action may be played to shift the winner (or loser) of a base. Once all specials are played, the player with the highest power takes the amount of VP on the far left of the row of large numbers in the middle of the card; second place is the middle; third place is the rightmost. Some base cards do not go in a hierarchical manner, and it may be better to be in second place than first!
The first player to reach or exceed 15 VP is the winner of the match. If there is a tie, the players in contention continue until the tie is broken.
HOW MUCH?
The core set costs $29.99, and the expansions run for $19.99 each. I've ordered all of our Smash Up sets through Miniature Market (which knocks the cost down per item by a decent amount but has a rather high shipping rate if you don't hit $95 or more per order).
THE CORE FACTIONS
There are eight unique groups to select from in the Core set, each with their own gifts and talents. The key to understanding Smash Up is considering what factions would work well together as a team, and I hope that this primer will help. Note that I am far from a tournament player, but I have put in several hours playing the game, so I am not necessarily inexperienced, either.
DINOSAURS (with lasers!)
Focus - Power Boosts, Destroying Minions
The 'Saurs are the Core set's heavy group, with a mighty Power 7 King Rex and a plethora of cards that focus on boosting your team's power or destroying your rivals' cards. There's not a ton of nuance to the Dinosaurs; they are pretty much all about dominance.
Key Cards
The 4 War Raptor minions start at a low Power 2, but can gain +1 power per War Raptor in play at one base, making them one of the better common minions in the Core set. Minion King Rex can really shake up your rival player's game plan thanks to its exceptionally high Power 7. Howl and Augmentation actions can quickly boost your overall Power status on a base until the end of a turn.
And lastly, Dinosaurs have two action cards that restrict your opponents from messing with you: Tooth and Claw...and Guns prevents a minion's ability from affecting a designated minion, while Wildlife Preserve grants you immunity from other players' actions on a base. These are useful due to the overwhelming focus on eliminating other player's minions and to boost up your power; you don't want a alien, pirate, or ninja player to mess up your plans!
PIRATES (arr!)
Focus - Destroying Minions, Moving Minions to Other Bases, Specials
Pirates are one of the more interesting decks in the Core set. Their identity is nestled in two of the ways of the buccaneer: sailing about freely and causing general mayhem to others.
In Smash Up, this translates to their ability to move their own minions (and, on occasion, rival minions!) around, and through destroying minions in play. They also have a few "Special" cards that can be played when a base is scoring, which allow them to potentially plunder a base for the maximum VP.
Key Cards
The Power 5 Pirate King minion and Full Sail action are the aforementioned "Special" cards; if the Pirate King is in play, he can be moved to a scoring base. Full Sail can be played as an Special action to move any number of minions to a particular base, which means you can raid a scoring base. Arr, now there be some piracy!
Other key cards include the 2 Power 4 Buccaneer minions, who cannot be destroyed (they move to another base if someone tries to destroy them), and the almighty Broadside and Powderkeg actions, which recreate the chaos of a seafaring battle with their destructive power. The former lets you destroy all Power 2 minions one player has in play on a base, while Powderkeg takes it a step further and allows you to destroy all minions with equal or less power than the minion you select to destroy as well. Combining the Buccaneer with Powderkeg does practically nothing to you (he will simply move to another base, which can be remedied easily enough with other Pirate cards on later turns), and your foe will lose nearly every card they have in play! Unsurprisingly, this can really shift the tide in your favor!
WIZARDS (cast a spell on you)
Focus - Action Boosts, Deck Manipulation, Extra Minions
Wizards are the least hostile deck in the Core set. They only have one card that can destroy any minion (Sacrifice), and it's one of their own! Wizards also have the weakest high Power minion in the entire franchise, the Power 4 Archmage. Despite these initial setbacks, wizards can make a great partnering deck thanks to their actions and abilities.
Wizards have a bevy of options in their minion abilities and actions: playing extra minions, playing extra actions, picking up extra cards from your deck, potentially stealing a rival action for your use, and searching your deck for a particular action for later. When wizards are in play, it could take quite a while for their turn to end!
Key Cards
The Power 4 Archmage permanently grants an extra action to its player while it's in play. The two Power 3 Chronomages grant an extra action when played. And then Time Loop lets you have two extra actions that turn! With the right combination of factions, these can really wreck havoc on other players. Portal is a fantastic action that allows a player to reveal the top 5 cards of their deck, and keep any minions revealed.
And if your hand isn't helping you much, you could play Winds of Change, which allows you to shuffle your hand back into your deck and get five new cards and a bonus action for your trouble.
ALIENS (beam me up)
Focus - Returning Minions, VP Gaining, Base Manipulation
Aliens are a particularly nasty faction, but not for the reasons you might expect. Aliens do not destroy minions; they instead force the player to return them to their hands or to the bottom of their deck. They can do this to their own minions as well, which can be a huge boon for cards with mighty abilities!
Aliens are also the only faction in the Core set to score VP outside of scoring a base or through a base's ability: the 2 Power 3 Invaders instantly net you one VP every time they are played. Lastly, aliens have three action that affect bases, and all of them are quite useful. A downside to aliens is the lack of a Power 4 minion; you have the two Power 3 Invaders and three Power 3 Scouts instead. However, scoring VP at will is a pretty nice perk. So, while aliens do not wreck havoc in the destructive sense, they still can generate plenty of panic for your rivals!
Key Cards
The aforementioned Invaders are the minions other players will dread seeing enter the fray. Aliens have so many ways to abuse this card on their own—Power 2 Collectors, Power 5 Supreme Overlord, the Beam Up actions, the Abduction action, the Crop Circles action, and in times their own deck is getting low, the Disintegrator actions—that any opponent must quickly remove them from play or face the consequences of a slow but steady trickle of VP.
Terraforming is probably the most disruptive action in the Alien arsenal: this allows the player to swap a base in play with any base in the base deck, shuffle it, and then play an extra minion on the new base. You can utilize this in a multitude of ways: make a base a lower or higher scoring one, or select one with an ability that is useful to you. You can even pick a base that will not allow any VP to the second or third place players, or swap in a ninja (or similar) base that awards the second player with more VP than the first!
Lastly, the action Crop Circles can absolutely ruin a bunch of players' well-laid plans. When played, the player forces all minions on a particular base to be returned to their owners' hands. If someone has played a slew of minions on that base, they will likely be discarding several cards on their next
turn due to the 10 card max allowed in your hand.
ZOMBIES (brains...)
Focus - Discard Resurrection (Minions and Cards), Extra Minions, Base Actions
Zombies, true to form, come back from the dead in Smash Up: their primary trait is to reuse cards from the discard pile for your rival's detriment. Through unleashing your "deceased" minions once more onto the bases in play and placing cards from the discard pile into the deck or into your hand, Zombies make an excellent support half to a potential deck. Two base actions that revolve around minions further their usefulness. However, they have no way of destroying rival minions, and only one card effects other players in a negative fashion (the action Overrun, which prevents other players from playing minions on one base for one turn). They also do not have a Power 3 minion; instead there's two types of Power 2 minions. The overwhelming swarm of corpses will have to make due!
Key Cards
The three Power 2 Tenacious Z minions are a major part of a Zombie offensive. These cards, while low power, can be pulled at any point in your turn from the discard pile to be played as an extra minion (however, only one can be played in this way per turn). This is quite a boon for long-term play, and if you need to fish them out of your deck quickly, you can play the action Mall Crawl, which allows the player to search their deck for a card with the same name and put them into the discard pile. Instant undead support! Another excellent minion is the Power 5 Zombie Lord, who, when played, allows its owner to play extra Power 2 minions of any type on any bases where that player lacks minions.
Zombies have many extra minion options: the actions Outbreak (play extras on a base without any of your minions) and the two They Keep Coming (play extras from your discard pile), as well as the aforementioned Zombie Lord minion. The action They're Coming to Get You plays on a base and allows its player to play minions from the Discard Pile instead of their hand—a potentially nasty action if one has played their heavy hitters early on!
NINJAS (I am the Night)
Focus - Specials, Destroying Minions, Action Disruption
Ninjas are probably the trickiest deck to come to terms with in the Core Set (sorry, tricksters). They are all about covert operations, assassination, and sabotage. They are the most Special-oriented deck in the Core, with two of the four minion types and one of their actions having a Special function.
The other two minion types and three of their ten actions destroy minions, and four actions mess with actions played by other players. That being said, Ninjas can be a pain to their owner, as so much of their usefulness is in the future, and sometimes their cards do not help much in the present. Keeping that in mind, know that if Ninjas are in play, you can expect some debauchery, and expect it often!
Key Cards
The Ninja player, to utilize them effectively, must be a strategist. Ninja are all about planning out devious schemes to ruin the dreams of its foes. The minions your competition will fear are the three Power 3 Shinobis and the Power 5 Ninja Master. The former are the slippiest minions in the entire game; you will rarely see them in play outside of their special function: being played when a base is being scored. While only one Shinobi can be played at one time, that extra 3 power can oftentimes be enough to break the base in your favor. Ninja bases also capitalize on this trait; second place always gives more VP than first. The Ninja Master can destroy ANY minion on the base it's played on (barring cards or abilities that prevent destruction). The Power 7 King Rex? Gone! The Power 5 Leprechaun? Sayonara!
Action-wise, Poison is a splendid game changer that renders a Power 4 or less minion worthless, sapping its power by 4 (to a minimum of 0) and stripping away any actions attached to it. Hidden Ninja works like a Shinobi, but can be used with any minion card and effectively doubles your potential to play minions on a scoring base. Assassination destroys any minion at the end of a turn at its player's discretion; nothing like slaughtering a rival's sole minion when it's on a scoring base right before it scores!
TRICKSTERS (Blimey!)
Focus - Destroying Minions, Base Actions, Discards (rival players)
Tricksters are very much an offensive faction. Not only do they have several methods of eliminating the minions of your foes, but they can control the bases and flit opponent's cards out of their hands into the discard pile. Most factions cannot react to such treachery! Add in what may be the best Power 5 minion in the entire Smash Up pantheon and you've got a very strong group. One downside is that their minions' abilities and many of their base actions rely on other players to trigger them; if a rival avoids playing cards that would activate the Trickster cards, then their talents are all for naught.
Key Cards
I can't begin this section without mentioning the mighty Power 5 Leprechaun. Playing this minion will instantly change the game. Why? Well, the Leprechaun will destroy ANY minion with less power than itself on that base from all opposing players (those players can resolve the minion's ability first, mind). This shuts down a base for most factions, as they can't compete with such a dominating card. Ninjas, Robots, Pirates, Cossacks, Mad Scientists and Werewolves do have the possibility of destroying him, but most of them rely on having a partnership with another faction with a higher level minion to work (Ninjas, Robots and Cossacks do not, but the latter two have only one way of coping; ninjas have two). Another useful minion are the two Power 4 Brownies. Their ability is to force rivals to discard two random cards if any cards are played that would affect them. Thus, most players will just work around them.
Tricksters have a bevy of solid actions to play. Most revolve around bases, but the best one that doesn't is Mark of Sleep, which removes the ability of playing actions on a selected player's upcoming turn. Also, the two Disenchants strip away a base or minion action from any player, which can be very helpful. The two base actions that I find are the greatest assets to a team are the two Enshrouding Mists, which enable that base to receive one extra minion per turn, and Block the Path, which restricts an entire faction from playing on that base. If you are playing with multiple copies of Smash Up, this card's worth increases exponentially.
ROBOTS (Resistance is Futile)
Focus - Minions, Minions, and did I say Minions?; Extra Minions, Deck Manipulation
Robots are the quirkiest deck in the Core, and beyond the Cthulhu expansion, the quirkiest in the entire game so far. Robots have two actions and eighteen minions; every other faction we've seen up to this point has had ten of each. Their sole action, the 2 Tech Center cards, allow you to pick up cards equal to the number of minions in play on one base. Otherwise, their numbers are all about their Robot army, and their rosters are full of all kinds of abilities and talents.
Overall, Robots summon more minions and mess around with their deck more often than other options, so that's why I prioritized them as their focus. The biggest weakness of Robots is their overzealous skew towards minions—since the game lets one play a minion and an action once per turn without cards adding to that tally, it requires some careful play to use this faction well (and pairing it with another faction that has great actions helps). Also, eight of these minions are a meekly Power 1; it doesn't take much to knock those out! However, some might say that the Robots are overpowered due to the constant flood of minions they can conjure up. Robots lack emotions or compassion, though, so they just do what they're told!
Key Cards
Robots have so many minions that it can be a bit tricky to figure out what is the best of the bunch. Here's some I recommend:
The Power 5 Nukebot will make Ninjas think twice about attacking it; its ability is to destroy every other minion (except their own) if it is destroyed. However, if you have Ninjas and Robots, well...
The three Power 3 Hoverbots, four Power 2 Zapbots, two Power 1 Microbot Fixers and two Power 1 Microbot Reclaimers are the essence of the robotic offense. Both of these cards allow its owner to play extra minions, although under different terms (Hoverbots let you look at the top card of your deck and play it as an extra mission if possible; Zapbots allow an extra Power 2 or less minion from your hand to be played, and the two Microbots, if played first, allow you to play any minion from your hand as an extra one). The Microbots have secondary talents to bolster their low Power, as well: Reclaimers let you shuffle any Microbots in your discard back into your deck, while Fixers gain all Microbots in play a +1 Power bonus.
The last minion I feel is a game changer is the Power 1 Microbot Alpha. This adds +1 power to all of your Microbots, and it considers ALL of your minions Microbots. The two Fixers can then spread their power boosts to all of your minions, too! Suddenly the Microbots can be Power 4, and it just goes up from there!
I'll cover the expansions in the future. Feel free to ask questions! I'll also take some photos of the game in action if anyone here would like to see that. :)