Well, I have to say,
Apex the theropod deck building game has surprised me.
I had backed it on impulse after reading positive reviews of it as solo game. But after learning it took quite a bit of its mechanics from the Legendary deck builder franchise, I became a bit luke warm on it. I even intended to cancel my pledge at one point, but forgot to do so.
Cut to last night. After I organized it all, I set up a solo game with a velociraptor and some giant bird thing as the boss. Then I walked through the (mostly) serviceable manual that takes you through each step of the game (although I wish they'd integrated the card descriptions/instructions into the steps as I had to keep flipping around to figure out things that should have been associated with the step it supported). Takes a bit longer than most legendary games...but not much. You have to manually create 2 decks for yourself (an Apex deck and a draw deck) then about 5 decks for the main board (only the environment and hunt decks actually require much thought though).
I was well into my first turn when I realized the first two things that I really liked. The hatchery and the ambush mechanics. The former allows you to put special cards for your species into the "market" essentially. Which means each game will consist of a bit more customization than I usually see in a deck builder...something I really like. And the ambush mechanic allows you to stage up to 3 cards per turn for future hunts on your next turn(s)...with the caveat that if you pull an alert card during your draw phase, you're going to lose all of them.
Everything else is pretty much straight from Legendary. You have a hunt trail you can spend hunt points on to add the to your hoard, then an evolve market with evolution cards you can purchase with evolve points from cards in your hands and on hunted cards (after which, the hunted cards get sent to your den for scoring carnage points if you want to have a scoring system in addition to defeating the boss to win).
It all makes for a more thinky Legendary type game, in my opinion. Having to figure out ways to get cards into my hatchery that will help me when the boss appears (at which point you can run away and attempt it on a later turn, or fight to win), while also trying to get the right evolution cards to augment everything was a welcome addition to the deck building experience for me.
I've got 13 different dinos to play with, and each game only uses 20 of your dino's species cards, so I'm hoping this one has some real legs. But so far, I'm happy I stayed the course on this one.
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and fun again just sent my shipping notice.
