Tag Team: Arthur’s Legacy

• Designers: Gricha German, Corentin Lebrat, Florian Sirieix, Benoit Turpin
• 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!

Tag Team is back with 6 new Fighters inspired by the legends of King Arthur!  Arthurian legends come to life in the Tag Team arena! Play as Morgan, Merlin, The Dragon, Perceval, The Green Knight… and even Excalibur! In Tag Team, we don’t sit around telling stories, though, we FIGHT!  Who will dominate the arena as these legendary characters engage in epic battles?

To start the game, each player chooses their Tag Team – there are now 18 possible characters (12 in the base  box and 6 in this expansion)  – 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.  A few cards now refer to “self”, and this means what you think it does – damage to self is inflicted upon the Fighter who played the card.

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
• Deflect – negate an attack AND redirect it back to the attacker.  If it is redirected back upon another Deflect, the Attack is considered Blocked and then it fizzles.  An deflected attack that targets both the Defender and their partner will hit the attacker twice.
• 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
• Temporary Power – this virtually increases the power of the attack for this turn, but no power cubes are added to the character

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 the base game back in April 2025 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 have been playing it ever since.  Jump ahead a full year, and I was introduced to the new characters at the 2026 Gathering.  As soon as we played it, I couldn’t wait to add these cards to my Tag Team box.

The game is played often as each game only takes 10-15 minutes.  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.

The new characters each have unique powers and strategies that are quite different from the base Fighters.  They definitely work well with other Arthurian characters, but we’ve also found some really fun combinations when you pair them with OG fighters.  I feel like these new characters (well except maybe Morgan) are a bit more complex and it may take a game or two to get a feel for how to best play them.  That being said, I love Morgan’s special ability which is that she gets to look at the card that her opponent has chosen to add (though not the location of the addition) before she chooses her own card.

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.  For me, the game is even better now with the additional variety and extra possible combinations of Tag Team partners.

Also… in just a few days, I think we’ll be hearing about another set of characters! So exciting!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y 
• I like it. 
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

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