Today, I look at another way to play Magic: a new cooperative format called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtle Team-Up. For 2-4 players, it takes 40 minutes or more.
Overview
Shredder, Krang, and other baddies are determined to take down the turtles and rule New York. Can you and your friends team up to stop them?
Turtle Team-Up is a cooperative form of Magic.
- Each of you (2-4 players) has a preconstructed deck of 60 cards, each of which is based on a different turtle. Your team starts with a shared pool of life (20 for 2 players, 30 for 3, 40 for 4).
- Your 'opponent' is a series of Boss and Event cards. There are three stages of Bosses to overcome.
- For each boss stage, your opponent starts with 20 life. Reduce them to zero to overcome that boss and move to the next. The first stage has one boss, the second two, and the third three.
- Bosses are like enchantments: they have some effect that is true so long as they are on the battlefield. Once you get a boss stage to zero life, all bosses in that stage are discarded.
Turns:
On your turn, like regular Magic, you will draw a card and follow normal turn structure—except that you are all playing your turns simultaneously. Your opponent has no creatures who can block, so any attacks you launch will help you reduce your opponent's life.
On your opponent's turn, they draw a series of event cards (1-3, depending on the number of players) and resolve their effects. Event cards can be creatures (that cannot block) or effects (like "destroy all creatures"). Creatures on your opponent's side must attack if they can (following normal rules). One player chooses who they attack. You can choose to block them or let them decrement your life total . . . but sometimes that has other bad effects (depending on the boss(es) in play at the time).
Other game contents:
Tokens and four booster packs. After playing a few games with the preconstructed decks, use the boosters to strengthen your decks and improve your odds.
See the official site for more information (decklists, contents, etc.).
Review
My boys and I enjoyed this format. Cooperative games are always fun, and I like the "one vs. many" concept. That said, this product feels like 'boom or bust': you either win handedly or get destroyed. The Event cards feature enough board wipes or similar effects to make victory difficult—if they come out late in the game. (They are not spells that can be countered.) But if you get them early, before you have good board presence, you may be able to weather the storm.
This is the first Magic product I've purchased where I found the rulebook lacking. Normally they do a good job of concisely explaining the rules, but this time, I had to fill in the gaps with my experience and hope I was interpreting things correctly.
Having the opponent's creatures unable to block diminishes some of the interaction, but is understandable for gameplay. In hindsight, I wonder if it wouldn't have been more fun to have one player control the bad guys and alter the card abilities to spice things up. Overall, though, this is fun.
Rating: B+
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