Blitz Creed Card Game Preview

If you had asked me a week ago if talking about Blitz Creed was a good idea, then I would have looked at you with a strange sideways glance and asked you what you were doing. As of the day and time of writing, Israel and the US have decided through whatever intelligence they have that Iran needs to be ‘freed’ from its oppressive regime, and that for some reason includes saving the people of Iran by carpet bombing the shit out of them, committing war crimes in international waters by sinking ships that were part of a planned exercise and leaving their sailors to drown. This has all happened this week.

Unfortunately the bulk of this preview was written well before these events took place, and so if the tone feels slightly out of place, then understand the context in which it was written, mostly where time served Marines weren’t having their arms broken by serving politicians for speaking the truth. I’ve edited out most of the normal chat I would have in these previews as I’m sure it would be taken the wrong way, and to be honest, I wouldn’t blame you. So if everything seems a bit drier than expected then please accept my apologies.

Out of the gate Blitz Creed feels light and sharp and also slightly cleverer than it should be. I’ve sampled several crowdfunding card games over the last decade, and they seem to either try to be overly complicated for a card game and ultimately fall down with some kind of game breaking combination that brings everything crashing down. The alternative is that they are far too simple for their own good, and they stay so safe and too simple that once you’ve played a few games, you end up feeling like you seen everything the game has to offer and its really difficult to care enough about them to get them back to the table. There are those that hit the balance right and you hold on to them, and they end up being the games that are played as bookends to a lovely evening. Even if that evening includes a game that has a theme that wouldn’t be alien to be appearing on some kind of videogame.

There’s no mistaking that the name doesn’t make much sense, it’s more Blitzkrieg than Blitz Creed and that name change is understandable because that particular name sake gem still sits in my gaming cupboard, waiting for its spot at the table again. Blitz Creed is closer to a card game version of Risk, where your main goal is to try to secure three main territories in a world based post conflict in 2036, where countries are there for the taking by force and every country has a numerical value attached to it.  It’s a mixture of action and set collection and the use of bonus cards that offer manipulation of cards and powers.

You’ll be refilling your hand every round with an additional two cards from the overall draw deck which will contain a mixture of dispute moves, soldiers and countries, and so the curse of bad draw luck can occur, but there’s enough of each card in the deck so that even if you feel cheated at one round, its not necessarily going to ruin your entire game.  Blitz Creed is relatively simple to play with rounds based around a combination of ‘Dispute’ preparation cards, which normally affect the current round and are played against other players to prevent them from winning battle rounds or stealing soldiers from them, or in some cases forcing them to abandon their existing hand of cards.

The second part is where you play soldiers from your hand to your outpost, this is the only way to allow your soldiers to commit to some kind of battle movement as you can’t play directly from your hand, and so it allows your opponent to potentially see which country you are going to target next. Or add countries to your frontline, and this is where you are building them up to create sets of countries from the same territories around the world. With the ultimate aim being to collect and secure three territories. Each of the country regions is colour coded and each has a set collection value. Collect enough cards and you secure the set and therefore the region. Secured regions can’t be stolen by other players and you can only attack other countries from secured regions by using a matching colour soldier card, which is an interesting additional mechanic.  It doesn’t add a lot but it means that if a region is complete, it can still contribute to the overall effort.

Combat is straightforward. Play a soldier and nominate a country to fight as, and pick an unsecured country from an opponent. Compare the scores and if you’re higher, you take the country into your ownership. Now it is entirely possible at two players for you to quite happily be collecting regions and never really have to worry about other players as there are more than enough countries to go around, and I wonder if it would make sense to remove a couple so you’re encouraged to actively battle on a regular basis. I didn’t try that personally so I don’t know if it would have ended in some kind of stalemate instead.  Combat itself isn’t taxing, and there isn’t a huge amount  of strategy involved, but that is probably to Blitz Creed’s benefit. It is the kind of game that sits better when it doesn’t take all night to play through and doesn’t end up in a dull and unsatisfying war of attrition.

I admit I’m a fan of the clear abstract design of the countries, and while the main art for the soldiers is decent and completely acceptable, it ends up presenting the entire game as a little bit of a mish mash of art styles. There’s chance to change this as the game ends up on the other side of crowdfunding. Overall the rulebook probably would work better as a rulebook instead of a fold out sheet, just to make it easier to find things on the page. The reference cards included in the game are extremely handy and make learning the game a much more straightforward affair. Overall Blitz Creed is very competent at what it does and what is offers and doesn’t try to be too clever on game mechanics. There’s very few points after you’ve played a few rounds that you feel the need to go back to the rulebook. For those looking for a smaller card based strategy game, it might be something you want to take a Risk on?

You can learn more about the game by going to www.blitzcreedgame.com