My Little Pony: Collectable Card Game - Absolute Discord

My Little Pony: Collectible Card Game
Absolute Discord
First Impressions​

(I warn you, this is gonna get very technical, despite my best efforts to explain what I mean for new players so, bare with me. I know probably waaaaay to much about this game. If you have any questions, please pop them in the comments below and I'll endeavour to answer them. Otherwise, a quick Google search might help.)

Because I am a hugely selfless and thorough reviewer, I went ahead and signed up to spend an entire day getting to know the new card releases of probably my favourite card game. I spent the whole day playing a draft tournament, getting excited with all the rare and ultra rare pulls my group experienced over the course of the day and got to know all about the new mechanics and cards on display.

And then, because I'm just that selfless, I did it all again the next day. Only with chocolate milkshakes topped with candy floss. If there's anyone here who's well equipped to talk about this stuff, it would be me.

OK, Vulpine Script (a.k.a Foxytail) was there too but you don't see her with a review blog about pretty much anything relevant so, it's down to me.

And Dilly Star is currently on Magic so, it's still me!

Look, pull up a chocolate rain and I'll let you all know about how I found this new release.

BEHOLD THE SUGARY ABSURDITY THAT IS THE CHOCOLATE RAIN!​

MLP:CCG, for those not in the know or simply enjoy having this stuff explained to you like a cult mantra (like me), is a card game rather unlike other card games of it's type, something a lot of Pony Inspired games seem to share. Instead of the intent of the game to defeat your opponent in combat (like Magic: The Gathering, The Pokemon Trading Card Game, WieB Schwarz, Yu-Gi-Oh and Vanguard (as far as I can figure out of that game, anyway)) in systems that simulate different forms of battle, the Pony games I've played have been very different.

The MLP: CCG is a race to be the first to score 15 points. You start off with your Mane Character which is able to be 'Boosted', often to become more powerful or gain an ability, and a problem deck with one card flipped to face up. In order to score points, players must use their Main Character and friends to confront problems or defeat troublemakers or win faceoffs. The first to 15 Points wins, the other guy get's to mutter death threats under his breath.

The game becomes more complicated when you consider not only how to get those 15 points but also, how to prevent or slow down your opponent's characters attempts to score as well. Up till now, there's generally been a few accepted characteristics unique to each colour to indicate how they play.

Purple Characters are excellent at control, being able to move opponent characters around or apply special effects to Problem cards.

Yellow has generally been seen as having plenty of cards that are easy to play to the field as well as gel well together. Yellow is also able to dismiss opponent resources.

White cards are able to impose taxations to character movement, edit the opponent's deck using the ability Inspired or utilise resources to either grant more abilities to a character or score extra points unexpectedly.

Blue cards are usually able to move around the field cheaply with the ability Swift as well as be able to 'frighten' characters which incapacitates them until a penalty is paid.

Orange cards are able to generate great amounts of power to be used to complete problems. Orange resources can both power up cards as well as heavily de-power an opponent's characters.

Lastly, Pink cards specialise in disruption, usually through being able to dismiss opponents cards to the discard pile but they are also excellent at recovering from a bad flip in a face off with the ability Random.

Yes, I know! It does sound kinda familiar.​

Notice any patterns there? Well, guess what? One of the key aspects of any successful deck is not just the consideration of how to score points but also, how to screw over your opponent's characters as hard, and as efficiently, and as powerfully as possible. There are honestly entire decks I have seen, and built, designed entirely around the idea of smacking your opponent's chances of winning down with as much force as possible.

For a game based on a show about friendship, there's plenty of pure deception and cruelty encouraged in this game. And it just makes me love it more.

For example, Foxytail once built a deck that I like to think of as 'The Friend Machine Gun'. Foxy's usual play style is dismissal and she decided to take advantage of the ability of one of the Pinkie Pie Mane Characters. The Canterlot Night's Pinkie, when boosted by fulfilling the requirements on the start side, allow her to dismiss a friend at the cost of one of her own friends at a problem if she is able to confront said problem. So, Foxy filled the deck with as many cheap, easy to play friends as possible with the sole purpose of sniping the opponent's forces one by one every time she scored a point.

I've managed to build a deck I like to call 'The Miner Beat' deck because of it's unique ability to gain power from both drawing cards to my hand and dismissing them to the Discard pile. It's Mane Character is DJ Pon-3 because of her useful ability to draw an extra card at the cost of exhausting her (which means she cannot move or solve problems while in this state) as well as cards that allows me to six cards at the cost of shuffling my current hand into my deck. The secret here is Twist, who gains +1 power for every time you draw a card. Using various cards to continuously draw cards from my deck into my hand, it is then possible to inflate little, geeky-looking Twist to somewhere around 20 or 30 power on her own for the duration of that turn.

Truly hilarious.

So,Who looked at this character and said to themselves "Yes! Almighty Powerful in the right hands! Perfect!"?​

And that's only two possible examples I could give without going on forever about this stuff. There's Princess Decks, Crystal Decks, Fashion Decks that can get hideous amounts of power just by attaching resources to them, Villain Farming Decks that spend the entire game trying to defeat monsters to gain the points attached to them, Inspired Heavy Decks that sit around picking out all the cards in the opponent's deck they don't like, Hyper Aggressive Decks that can confront two problems without breaking a sweat, Frighten Decks that can chain the action of frightening to potentially render entire groups of character's useless, Troublemaker Decks dedicated to using Troublemaker cards that function as roadblocks against the opponent that prevent them from solving a problem until they're gone, Teamwork Decks that spread abilities across characters that share traits in order to make that ability even more powerful, and so on and so on and on and on and on and on and ruddy, bloody on.

Wow...I swear there's a 'The Elements Song' parody in there somewhere just waiting to be made...

"There may be many others but they haven't been discovered,
But you better pray to Celestia that my Villain stays uncovered!
Dun-da-da-dun-dun! Da-daaah!​

The 'Meta', which is to say the deck themes and potential strategies that are valued as popular, powerful or simply 'viable' by the collective of players with play a particular game, is pretty wide and varied. You can try and speed straight for points, maximising every action or you can smack your opponent down with as big a strategic hammer as possible, laying out every, conceivable trap or required hurdle in your opponents way to get the match down to your pace.

Some decks are built entirely around cutting the opponent almost entirely out of the equation, looking for other ways of scoring points. Villain farming and the infamous 'Rarity, Truly Outrageous' (colloquially known as an 'RTO') is able to continually score extra points every time a problem is confronted, speeding towards victory. It's a much sort after card as a result.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I wanted to give you a flavour of how the face of the game looked like before Absolute Discord because afterwards, in comes the Master of Chaos. And he turns up, looks at all those strategies you held so dear then slaps them to the ground!

He stomps on them, pulls you in by the scruff of the neck and says: "You're playing by my rules now!" because as far as I can see, the Meta has taken a pretty hefty blow as Enterplay came in and decided to mix things up even more than any pack that came before it.

So, let's examine a few of these new bits and pieces, shall we?

The first and most prominent characteristic I found while playing with these cards is that many of the abilities allow a player to mess with the board in a variety of ways. Some did it even when the opponent had managed to lockdown the board, thoroughly preventing me from scoring any points at all. New Event cards can now end Faceoffs before anything happens, cancelling any chance of winning points from them. New resources can change characters into Critters or remove the ability of a Mane Character, effectively destroying many deck strategies. And new friends can do anything from acting as a trap within a deck when flipped to stealing opponent's characters to use for themselves.

First, let's discuss one of the bigger additions: Colourless Characters.

A Colourless character is usually on a black card and seems to be mainly for playable bad guy characters. The advantage of a colourless character is that they generally seem quite powerful. They will still lend power towards a problem, although, they only count towards either a 'Not Power' total or a 'Wild Power' total.

This is a Problem Card. This is where you score points. The thing at the top with the upside-down 5 is a wild power, meaning that 5 of any power is needed to confront the problem. Along the bottom, is a symbol meaning 2 Pink and 2 'Not Pink' are needed to confront the problem and gain points. Makes sense? Good.​

These Colourless Characters have one issue: they don't count towards any colour requirements. Some cards need a certain amount of power from characters of a particular colour on the field in order to be played. Colourless doesn't help you out there but does still allow the player some options. Plus, some of the abilities of these things are quite brutal.

Holey Moley! Dive! Run! Fleeeee! They're not only invading, but they've teamed up! Save the Children! Help the Aged! Water Aid it all up in there!​

Ol' Cheese Legs and Flamey-Eyes are now playable characters! And they're damn powerful too! They also happen to be very cost efficient, as your getting at least three power for your three action tokens spent! Sombra over there even has the possibility to become hideously powerful, permanently. That is horrifying to contemplate playing against, the only comfort being that these are just two of the ultra rares released.

Although, there was another few ultra rares that shows that Enterplay are starting to have a bit more fun with what they're putting in decks now. Behold!

Proof that Enterplay is beginning to take the mickey a little bit.​

While nowhere near as bad as some of the bizarre Magic: The Gathering Joke cards, here's a couple of rare cards that show that there's something of a sense of humour driving some of the decisions in this game. First, we have Gummy, getting it all real'd up (?). It's certainly a powerful card. While it's relatively expensive and probably designed to be played very late in most games, this Gummy is able to negate a card that's clearly more powerful than anything else there. That just makes it hilarious as some strategies rely on overpowering some cards till they can just steamroll problems.

Need I mention my 'Miner Beat' deck? This would cause it problems.

The other one there is, oh yes! It's Slendermane, taken right from what I imagine to be an easter egg within the show somewhere.

And yes! The card can cause you to loose your game right there and then! It's a wonderfully cheep card that grants three power for one action token but I've heard of no one that wants to use this card because it can pretty much end you automatically.

How? Welcome to the new Keyword Mechanic being introduced: Chaos.

Chaos only enters play when a card is flipped for a faceoff. If a card that has been flipped for a faceoff bares the Chaos Keyword, then the instructions following the keyword are followed. This can mean granting extra power to a character to exhausting, dismissing or even frightening a character involved in the faceoff automatically. Now, on one hand, they're pretty interesting. The ability to load your deck with traps that could be set of, devastating the face of the game with a lucky break could become a highly valuable strategy. With cards with abilities that allow a player to meddle with their own decks, they could plan ahead then gain the advantage when that flip comes about. It could be an ace up the sleeve.

What else, what else? Well, we got new Mane Characters to play with. While I'm not totally versed in all of them yet, I did get to see at least two in action.

"Look! Look at all the ****s I give, right here in my hand! Ho-hoo!"​

Guess who got to be a Mane Character? Yes, the Discord Mane is surprisingly powerful, even thought it doesn't look like it. However, it's able to start the game with 3 power, pretty much solving all requirement problems any player would have in Pink right off the bat. Very good, very nice. The issue is that Discord will flip over at the end of a turn if the opponent played two or more cards to the field. This makes Discord a little...awkward to use. When flipped, Discord's power is reduced to 1 and can't flip back over until the player controlling him plays two more cards. While it's not entirely a deal breaker, it does require attention as a low powered Discord could effect scoring points or winning a faceoff, simply by being weaker.

But, the flippant nature of this card is given some reward for using him. Discord has the ability to look at the top, unrevealed card of any problem deck. Because of Discord's design, he appears suited perfectly for Aggression Decks, as he can allow some very powerful Pink cards onto the field almost immediately. But, Aggro is useful if you know what problem is going to flip next.

Firstly, you'll know where the biggest amount of points lay. Problem Cards have a number of Bonus Points that's awarded to the first person to confront it. Planning accordingly so that Discord's forces can get there first in order to snatch up those points when that problem is revealed can be crucial.

However, Problem Cards also have abilities of their own. Some do simple things like boost certain cards, allow players to draw from the bottom of their decks or gain action tokens. But some will force players to dismiss characters or require that at least four characters are present before a problem can be solved. A Discord Deck can see that coming and use it to it's advantage. One deck managed to force a problem to dismiss my cards when I wasn't expecting it then move in to solve the new problem that had just been revealed.

Sneaky...Very Sneaky.

Despite what the show might tell you, every MLP:CCG player can tell you that Fluttershy is a menace in this game. Every single Fluttershy Mane is potentially devastating.​

Now, I am a guy that loves specialising in Troublemakers when I play this game. For many reasons. One is because being able to plonk powerful roadblocks in front of my opponent, stopping them scoring is a wonderful idea. My best deck is not only chock full of troublemakers to play but also, cards that can make them all the more powerful. On top of that, it has a very strong draw chance that while not perfect, does allow my troublemakers to become very powerful little monsters.

This Fluttershy Mane has been causing a bit of a stir. For starters, it's a Fluttershy Mane that focuses on Troublemakers, not Critters like the others tend to do. This one, as you can clearly read, nullifies Troublemaker Abilities when boosted.

"Neat! Something to fight against Troublemakers my opponent puts down. Handy." No! Well, yes but there's more to it! For you see, this Fluttershy can now do far more than just disable most Troublemakers. This ability is far more versatile than it looks. For that, we need to show off a few of the new Troublemakers. Because, hoooooo boy! These guy's do not mess around!

It looks like she's one step away from picking up the Limp Bizkit CD.​

Da-naaaahhh! The Discorded Mane Six are now Troublemakers. Twilight here being a pretty strong one to play in the right circumstances. Perhaps against a Crystal Deck that gains power from how many colours are present across the field. Still, the best part of this is how guilt free this card is. One Bonus Point for a 6 Power Troublemaker? Sure, it might be all the opponent needs but effectively sticking a single, measly point on a Troublemaker that powerful is a little needless. Still, it could be because of just how situational her ability is.

But if you want no worries, all out horror Troublemakers, then how about this:

I kinda want to see a cop show with these two now. 'The Hoarder and the Grump', on at 7, only on HBO.​

Yeeeap! The one on the left is a Troublemaker without a Bonus on it. Meaning that you can throw it out regardless of anything and, you shall be fine. You don't risk any points, you get to draw a card. Thanks to this Rarity, this could be an entire turn, at least, where your opponent is stymied. All for a single action token.

Oh! And that Pinkie on the left? One of the most powerful Troublemakers in the game now. I am dead serious. There were players using that card which had managed to get that Pinkie to around 10 power in three turns. Some ended up with power 30 troublemakers and it just kept getting more and more powerful. Some decks are even built around the idea of card draw, so powering up little little madam just became that much easier. Shocking.

But, I bring things back to Fluttershy. Remember her new, shiny ability concerning Troublemakers? Well, please look at these two cards.

The best part of playing Troublemakers, seeing the opponent wet themselves a little. In their soul.​

Both of these cards, in normal play, likely wouldn't be around for long. Applejack there even seems kinda useless as she would just depart immediately but, it can be very useful for messing with the opponent, making a move that much more impressive when you put down two Troublemakers, looking to royally screw over that opponent's day. However, Applejack, The Liar is actually quite a strong card. Same goes for Spike over there which, in normal circumstances, would be able to extort two Action Tokens from an opponent, or it sits in their way. Most likely, the cost would be paid.

Enter Fluttershy. If it's there when the Troublemaker is revealed, it looses those two abilities. This means that both cards, as long as Fluttershy was there, would remain in place. Applejack wouldn't depart and give you back the Action Token, Spike would not give the opponent an ultimatum. Both would just turn up and stay there.

Even better, both have no Point Bonus to win! So fighting them is fruitless other than to gain progress. That is pretty sweet. Just being able to go 'Aaaand, I'll just leave this here!" is priceless. Completely priceless.

But, there's another string to her bow. It concerns Villains.

"I ORDERED THE SIDE OF GARLIC BREAD AND I HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED IT! GET ME THE MANAGER!"​

Lord Tirek is one of the new villains we have. It's quite powerful. It can gobble up cards, growing stronger and stronger. The Villain Keyword, means that it frightens all characters at it's problem when it flips over.

The new Fluttershy is the only card that negates that. It even negates the whole 'Eating Ponies to Become Stronger' thing. It's hideous otherwise but kindly Fluttershy can totally disarm it. This counts for all villains. Fluttershy simply does not get fazed when fighting these things, making her an excellent Villain farmer. Because no cards are being frightened whenever she tries an attack because she negates that Villain's ability, she's then able to defeat them far easier.

Ordinarily, Maud Pie would be used as she can be boosted up to a mighty 7 power by discarding cards. For each card type in the discard pile, she'd grow stronger. This brute strength is now somewhat rivaled by the technical prowess of Fluttershy. It's quite interesting.

Still, I'm continuing to learn what exactly is possible with the new release of cards. There's meant to be other new Manes, like the Nightmare Moon Mane that can frighten opponents, joined by cards which gain power for each frightened player on the field. Very interesting, very powerful.

I might be back when I've tinkered around more. But for now, I think I need to write that parody song.

"I hope you've been taking notes. The essays on 'Why RTO Decks can go to Hell' is due in 15 minutes."​