Dinos and Pirates and Zombies, Oh my! - Smash Up ReviewNovember 26, 2012 by

When you think of some of your favorite themes in video games, which ones come to mind?

Maybe you enjoy the fantastical elements of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Perhaps you enjoy the stealth gameplay and silent violence of the Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi franchises. Your current obsession could be the thrilling gameplay of XCOM because you enjoy the different breeds of aliens and how to approach them. Zombies are all the rage right now, so your fix could be the Call of Duty mode, Dead Island, or Left 4 Dead. The robots in Portal 2 sure are lovable, or maybe you are old school and lean more toward Sid Meier's Pirates! Personally, I have a soft-spot for the Turok franchise and played Turok:Evolution to death (no I am not kidding, me and my high school buddies would play the multiplayer mode for hours on end). The beautiful thing about video games is that whatever theme you are into you can sure find a game or two (or 56) in that particular genre.

But what would happen if you wanted a game that combined zombies, pirates, aliens, ninjas, robots, dinosaurs, leprechauns, and wizards all into one massive sandbox and pitted them against each other for control of certain landmarks? Well then, you would have to get Smash Up, the new "shufflebuilding game of total awesomeness" from Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG).

The premise of Smash Up is basically what I just wrote above - take all of the pop culture mainstays you can think of and have them attack different bases to score victory points and eventually win the game. What takes Smash Up to another level and elevates it to "not just another card game" status is the "shufflebuilding" mechanic. It works like this - At the beginning of the game players will choose 2 factions each for their team. So you can choose ninjas and pirates, pirates and dinosaurs, ninjas and zombies, etc. Each faction is represented by their own deck of 20 cards. Once everyone has chosen their two factions (I usually roll with zombie dinosaurs), you take both decks and shuffle them together, hence "shufflebuidling". This is super convenient for starting a game, because unlike many other card games like Magic or Pokemon, you don't have to go through the work of building your own deck beforehand, you just pick two piles of cards, shuffle them together, and you are ready to smash stuff up!

Remember when we used to buy video games based on box art? Smash Up would have sold well in the NES days.

What are we smashing exactly though? I am glad you asked. In the center of the play area you will place a certain number of bases from the base card deck. The number of bases in play is determined by the number of players playing the game, it is the number of players plus one. So in a three player game there are four bases on the table to smash at any given time. Each of these bases have three numbers on them, and a special ability. The three numbers represent the victory points awarded to the players that have the greatest majority of their cards at that base, and the abilities can influence the flow of the game one way or another. Once a base is smashed, it is replaced by a new base. This is continued until one player has reached the end game score of 15 points.

How are we smashing these bases? Well, it is actually quite simple. The basic gameplay rules is that each player has a starting hand of 5 cards and on their turn they can play one minion card and one action card in any order. After playing a minion and action (and resolving their abilities), you draw a card to end your turn. Minion cards have a power value in the top left hand corner. When a minion is played to a base, the power value on their card is applied to that base. Each base has a breakpoint in its top left hand corner. When the power of all of the minions at that base meet or exceed that breakpoint, the base "breaks" and the victory points are awarded to the players that have the most, second most, and third most total power value there. The action cards take several forms. They may allow you to block another player from adding minions to a base, they could let you move your minions from base to base, return a minion to another players hand, let you play extra actions and minions, and countless other things. By using action cards choosing the order of cards played, you can chain together awesome combos and really cause havoc across the play area.

A game in progress. The Wizard Tricksters are battling Pirate Dinosaurs for the Homeworld base.

The charm of Smash Up reveals itself in the faction decks and how they interact with eachother. Each faction acts and plays the way you think it would. Dinosaurs are raw power, ninjas are sneaky, leprechauns (tricksters) make it tough on other players, pirates commandeer multiple bases, zombies keep coming back from the dead (your discard pile), aliens teleport cards back to players hands, wizards use magic and can play multiple actions, the robots are self-aware and keep churning themselves off of the assembly line. The fact that you get to mix two of these factions together to form your base smashing team, further reveals the subtle interactions between different play types. The combination of the powerful dinosaurs and nimble tricksters is an interesting match against a team of robot ninjas. Figuring out how to counteract your opponents team with the factions you have is a thrill, and you learn something new about the factions each game you play. With 28 possible combinations of factions to play with, you will rarely get a game that feels the same, and the replayability is off of the charts. Add in the fact that AEG has announced that they will support Smash Up with expansions (the base game box has room for 19 decks), and you will have plenty of things to smash going into the new year. I have a feeling the base game is just scratching the surface of what Smash Up can be. The price point of this game is also very palatable with a MSRP of $30. You can find Smash Up at your friendly local game store or Alderac's online store .

Plenty of room in that box for expansion decks and more smashing goodness.

I have a ton of praise for Smash Up, but there are a few minor complaints that hold back my review score from being super high. FIrst, it can be a little mathy. You need to keep track of the power level at each base on the table, and it may fluctuate based on certain abilities during certain peoples turns, so it can be a lot to handle in certain circumstances and can slow down the game a tad while you are doing the arithmetic to see if a base is broken. My second quibble is that there was no scoring track included with the game.  The entire production was very well done with stellar card art and layout, but there is nothing in the base game that lets you keep track of the score of the game. For the time being you have to use pen and paper or another form of counters to know who is in the lead. This is probably something AEG will address in the first expansion, or at least I hope they will.

Overall, Smash Up is a fun and light romp of a card game. It is best experienced if you don't take it too seriously (dinosaur ninjas are fighting with pirate zombies for goodness sake!). Smash Up provides a very high fun quotient and a lot of laughs with friends. The art and theme are remarkable and the gameplay is very solid with a ton of replayability bolstered by the promise of expansions (cardboard DLC, wink wink). If you can't decide if you want to play Ninja Gaiden or XCOM, just put the controller down and play some Smash Up.

Smash Up gets an 8 out of 10 on the IGN scale.

+Production Quality

+Simple Game Rules

+Incredible Theme

-No Scoring Track

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