Tag Team

• Designers: Gricha German, Corentin Lebrat 
• Publisher: Scorpion Masque
• Players: 2
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Inspired by classic arcade-fighting games, Tag Team is an auto battler combined with a deck-building game. Make your team of two fighters from the twelve available — each with their own techniques and special moves — and build an unbeatable synergy by combining their two unique decks!

In more detail, you start with a deck of only two cards, and the fight unfolds automatically: Flip your cards one at a time and apply their effects. At the end of each round, you get to turn up the heat on the opposing team by strategically adding new cards to program your deck — but without reordering the cards already present. Determine what makes your tag team tick, play devastating combos, and dominate your opponent by deftly blocking their attacks. Timing is everything if you want to emerge victorious and knock out your foe!

To start the game, each player chooses their Tag Team – there are 12 possible characters – you can simply choose who you want or use any method of drafting you like.  Each of the characters has their own 10 card deck and a fighter board.  The upper right corner of each fighter board tells you your starting power cube allotment as well as any other extras you may have.  Place a health marker at the top of the health meter.

Take the two character decks and pull out the starting card for each (marked with a star in the upper right).  Decide the order you want to play them in, and make a face down deck with these two cards.  Now, shuffle the remaining cards together (9 from each) to make a single 18 card draw deck. 

Now the game is played in rounds until one of the fighters is KO’d (out of health points).  That team loses!  Each round has only two simple steps: Fight and Build.

The Fight Step is played over a number of turns – in each turn, both players will flip up the top card of their deck and resolve them.  Note that you will never shuffle your deck, so once a card enters your deck, it remains in relatively the same place.   The two cards played in each round occur simultaneously (in game time, it might still be easier to resolve them one then the other).  

Each card is tied to one of your two fighters; the owner of the card is the “active” player.  The other hero on the team is the “partner”.  The active player on the other side is the Opponent, and the last hero is the Opponent’s Partner.  All of the effects will refer to the different combatants this way.  

There are fairly basic actions on most of the cards:

• Attack – deal damage to your Opponent equal to your power (at start of turn)
• Block – negate an attack; and if a block occurs, there is always a bonus action
• Direct Damage – an unblockable amount of damage to the opponent
• Power Gain/Loss – give or take cubes from the target character
• Heal – the target character gains the shown amount of HP.  Note that there are spaces on the health track that can give bonuses or sometimes stop movement on the HP track instantly

There are also some specialized actions specific to each character, and you should be sure to be familiar with the possible special actions of each of your characters before you play!

As a reminder – all actions on a turn are considered to be simultaneous.  So, if you take damage and get healed at the same turn, just apply the difference of the two forces to your HP track.  The one exception to this is that a few cards have special timing conditions written directly on the card.

Once the pair of cards is resolved fully, repeat with a new set of cards.  Continue thus until all the cards in the player decks have been flipped over and resolved. If, at any point, any of the fighters is reduced to 0 HP, the game ends!

In the Build Step, you will draw the top 3 cards from your Draw Deck and then choose one to add to your Fight Deck.  You cannot rearrange the existing cards in your Fight deck, you simply slide the new card anywhere in the existing order.  Some cards trigger actions when added to your Fight Deck; if this happens, simply tell your opponent what your bonus is and take said bonus.  Place your new deck face down on the table to ready for the next Fight Step.  Place the two unchosen cards at the bottom of your Draw Deck in the order of your choosing.

The game can end in a win (your opponent has a fighter who is KO’d) or a draw (simultaneous KO or players are unable to draw three cards in the build phase).

My thoughts on the game

I first had the opportunity to play this back in April at the Gathering of Friends.  We played two quick games in succession with the recommended starting pairs.  Since that moment, I’ve been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the game so I could play it some more.  That arrival time was Gen Con 2025, and I got my copy and packed it into my bag for my recent vacation.

The game was played nearly daily on that trip as each game only takes 10-15 minutes.  We started with the recommended starting duos, then moved onto drafting characters as well as even playing with random draws.  In all cases, the games were interesting and challenging.  I have found that there are decent ways to use just about any combination of characters, though some seem better or more obvious than others.

The game itself is really simple in structure.  Play out your deck, add a card, do it again.  That being said, there is really a fascinating interplay with your opponent’s mind – trying to figure out which card to add and in which slot.  

There are definitely times where the game feels on rails and your opponent just has a setup that you can’t break… (and they add their cards in just the right places so that your addition doesn’t disrupt the recurrent mis-matches).  But that’s the beauty of the strategy.  I know that you know that I want to play a card in the second slot to break up your plan, so do I actually play in the second slot? Or because I know that you know that, do I anticipate your play and move my card somewhere else instead to thwart your planned countermeasure?  Either way, it takes but a minute or two to run through the deck and then do it again.

For those that don’t care for auto-battlers (Challengers, etc) – or those that feel like you don’t get to make decisions – this game isn’t going to change your wrong opinion.  I have found this to be a fun challenge, both in playing my actual opponent as well as the challenge to get my two characters in each game to work together as best I can.  Games are lightning fast, and this works out great for those weird mismatches – the game ends quickly and you can choose new characters for the next one.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, Justin B
• I like it. Steph H
• Neutral.
• Not for me…