Slay To Win Card Game Preview

This is a preview copy sent to us for our opinions, no money has changed hands and all art and components and rules are not necessarily final and may change. Check out the games website where you can order here.

Slay To Win is from first time designer Craig Campbell, and introduces an interesting, family weight game that fuses a card game with am RPG, more associated with games of Dungeons and Dragons. Let's get into it.

It is clear that Craig is a DnD fan, and has brought his love of role playing to this card game in an interesting and flexible way.

The game works by players choosing a character and and quality card. This will assign each player a starting weapon, attack and defence score; as well as their Sense and Interact strengths.

Players will then choose a Story card from one of the ten provided. This will set the goal of the game, as well as dictate the monsters you will face. You can play just one Story card for a one-shot, or piece a few together into a campaign. Decide up front how many Story cards you want to play, so all players know the plan and goal, which will be to get the most points for killing monsters! Although be aware, you only get the points if you strike the killing blow!

Players will then run through the three acts on their chosen story cards, moving through each of the six steps of each of the three acts. You can make a decision amongst your group on how you do this. It can be a simple skill check and move on in order to gain new weapons and action cards. Or you can run through a full role-playing experience based on the triggers in the story card. This is entirely up to you and can be different each time.

As players move through each part of the story, they will be checking against their Sense and Interact skills. This is done by flipping the top card from the action deck. Each action deck will also show a number from one to six. This serves essentially as a D6. You will add the score you get from this to your own personal Interact or Sense skill, then add any bonuses you gain from your other Action or Weapon cards, or those gained from the other players in the game. Players can help each other out.

You will then see if you beat the target score of the test, or in the case of an all-play check, see which player gets the highest score. You can then gain an additional weapon card or action card as you reward. You can only ever hold five action cards, but you will want to curate a hand that works for your impending monster fight. You can also use the action cards during this Drama phase to help you with various checks.

You can gain as many weapons as you like, but you can only equip one per fight. Having multiple options will help, but you must then make a choice at the end of the act when you face the monster as to which weapon will help you the most. Some weapons work better against certain monsters with certain skills, and vice-versa.

The story card will tell you how many monsters you are fighting, and if they escape at the end of each act, ready to fight again in the next act; or if you will defeat them, and then face a new one for the next part of the story. The monsters are made up of multiple cards to create a unique foe with multiple powers each time. Adding a Naga to an Arachnoid, for example, will give the Arachnoid the powers of the Naga, allowing it to gain Speed (meaning it always fights first and cannot be avoided with ranged weapons) and slipping poison, which increases the damage for all attacks after the first. But this will be very different next time as different Monster cards are paired each game.

Once you have finished the six stages of each act, you will then face the chosen monster. You will use your sense skills to check for initiative, check if the monster has speed power, which determines who will go first, and then run through various phases of attacks and defences to see if you can defeat the beast. You can use a range of powers from your action cards, your chosen weapon, and help other players out with various checks. Each monster will have a defence value that you will need to beat to inflict damage, much like in D&D. You will then add your damage and reduce the monster's health by the shown amount. It doesn't matter who hurts the monster; it is all about who can strike the fatal blow. Who can slay to win? Geddit!?

Each monster feels quite different. And each of the ten stories offers a varying and rich experience. Although, if you do not role-play this, it will feel largely mechanical and the same each time. As such, if you plan to play this as a simple card game, I would not suggest this for you. There are better games out there that offer more interesting card play and opportunities to fight monsters. But, if you want to embrace the RPG side of this game, then this game will really shine for you.

I can see why the designer of this game wanted to offer the chance to play both ways. This is encouraged on the game's website and crowdfunding site. Not everyone will want to get into the roleplay side of this, and so they offer the other simple way to play. Which is fine. And works fine. But it is nowhere near as fun!

I could even see this being used by people playing DND to design or use as additional material for full games of Dungeons and Dragons. It could add flavour to monsters and characters they create or meet. Be used to create more variety in weapons they find and powers they gain. It is a very useful deck of cards for multiple areas here.

And as a roll-playing card game, it is a lot of fun too! If you and your group like a bit of role-play fun along with your card play, this will be right up your street. Well worth having a look at to see if this could work for you.