Undrave
Legend
The recent thread of mythic figure Khutulun made me want to break out this ol' thing again...
Introducing, for those who never heard of it, the official History Channel non-collectible card game developped, designed and published by TriKings games!
Back in the early 00's, the success of Pokémon and Yu-gi-oh!, and the continued success of Magic The Gathering, lead to a GLUT of trading card games on the market. EVERYBODY had one!
Bandai tried to introduce a dumbed down version of their Digimon card game to the US, UpperDeck made one for Medabots, they introduced the VS System for DC and Marvel, they also had a 'Quick Strike' system they used for a Shaman King game, there was the UFS (Ultimate Fighting System) that allowed you to pit characters from Soul Calibur against characters from Street Fighters, there was one for Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Ring, Harry Potter... even friggin' SPONGEBOB had a trading card game at one point.
What a wild west. Most of them folded after 1 serie, or two if they were lucky.
Anachronism didn't rely on a specific franchise, instead it allowed you to pit the greatests warriors in History against one another in card based combat! Including Khutulun.
Anachronism was different: Rather than play with a deck, each player only needed 5 cards: 1 warrior, and 4 support cards. Rather than buy random boosters, you'd buy Warrior packs in clear blister that told you exactly what you bought: 1 specific warrior and 4 specific support cards. Warriors and their cards from various different cultures. I only own cards from first two series (they made 7).
Imgur
Japanese, Norse, Greek, Roman
Briton, Egyptian, Mongol and Chinese
They also produced French, Scottish, Soanish, Russian, Native American, American, Saracen, Germanic, Trojan, Persian, Maori, Aztec, Romanian (Vlad Tepes!), Turkish, Tribes of Israel, and Pirates... You'll notice that each culture has its own background AND the name of abilities are written in their native language! Or at least, as best they can be using our western alphabet.
Egyptian, for exemple, has no vowels...
Support cards, meanwhile, were categorized as weapons (1 handed or 2 handed):
Armors, specials (various kinds, including cavalry):
Items (which included shields) :
And Inspirations (Including Deities, but also Philosophies, places and people)
I really wish I had gotted the Sainte Jeane d'Arc VS William Wallace starter pack. The starter packs came with a play mat that had the rules on it, a pair of d6, and enough cards for a game (it was a two player game but rules floated online for 2 vs 2). Here is the battle mat from Achilles vs. Spartacus:
Each player would pick a warrior (in tournament play you come with 3 warriors and 12 support cards of your choice, with no regard for faction, and you play a best 2 out of 3) and place them face down in their starting row. Then comes the four support card, face down, in the order of your chosing
Like so.
At the start of the game, both players reveal their warrior and at the start of each of four round their reveal one of their support card (some cards have effect when revealed, some continuous effect, others require actions to be taken).
Here is a breakdown of a Warrior card from the mat:
They added the Aether element in series 2.
Each support card has its own initiative value in the top left corner
Whoever has the highest goes first and perform their actions. 1 Action can be spent to move 1 square on the battlefield, orthogonally only, to rotate, to use a card effects, or to make an attack.
To attack, the enemy must be, relative to your warrior card, on a square on your attack grid (either your warrior or your weapon). Here's an excemple of a warrior and weapon grid:
Then you roll two dice, adding the number from the grid and whatever bonus you might have, and the opponent does the same (if you are in their own grid I BELIEVE they also get their number as a bonus) and if you beat their defense roll you hit them and inflict whatever damage your attack normally does. Most basic warrior attack do 1 dmg and most weapon 2 dmg.
At the end of four rounds, if no one has been knocked out, you do a fifth round with Experience deciding who goes first. Whoever has the most life points at the end of the fifth round wins this battle.
Note that a player is only allowed to have 1 card of each Weapon, Armor, Inspiration and Special face up at once (a few weapons allow you to pair them with another) and if you reveal a second on you have to ditch one of them. Furthermore, you can only have 1 card that mentions each Head, Torso, Arm, Leg and Shield, and you obviously only have 2 hands to hold stuff (so you can't have both a Special/Item card that needs one hand and a 2-handed weapon). Agan, you need to discard if you break those rules.
This was a really interesting game that broke a lot of ground and anticipated the current 'Living Card Game' style of games that exist out there. I feel it came in too early in the board game world and a bigger boxset using the Smash Up model of sale would probably do better nowadays. It still lasted until 2007 and I probably would have played it more if more people in my area had been interested (and I hadn't been sinking all my money into Yu-gi-oh! back then). It also shows you don't need a big deck to make a card game work, even though this is a little closer to a miniature strategy game in style... just without the miniatures.
Here's another look at the cards compared to other games:
The cards were high quality with beautiful art and design and all of them had a foiled finish to the background. Furthermore, they were some THICCCCCCC cards. Here is the five cards of the Khutulun set compared to 5 Pokémon cards:
OH! And they also had mail-in promo if you sent them UPC code, pretty darn cool. I got the Chinese warrior Yu Fei and I think Blackbeard was one as well!
Anybody else played it? Any opinion on it? Anybody intrigued?
Introducing, for those who never heard of it, the official History Channel non-collectible card game developped, designed and published by TriKings games!
Back in the early 00's, the success of Pokémon and Yu-gi-oh!, and the continued success of Magic The Gathering, lead to a GLUT of trading card games on the market. EVERYBODY had one!
Bandai tried to introduce a dumbed down version of their Digimon card game to the US, UpperDeck made one for Medabots, they introduced the VS System for DC and Marvel, they also had a 'Quick Strike' system they used for a Shaman King game, there was the UFS (Ultimate Fighting System) that allowed you to pit characters from Soul Calibur against characters from Street Fighters, there was one for Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Ring, Harry Potter... even friggin' SPONGEBOB had a trading card game at one point.
What a wild west. Most of them folded after 1 serie, or two if they were lucky.
Anachronism didn't rely on a specific franchise, instead it allowed you to pit the greatests warriors in History against one another in card based combat! Including Khutulun.
Anachronism was different: Rather than play with a deck, each player only needed 5 cards: 1 warrior, and 4 support cards. Rather than buy random boosters, you'd buy Warrior packs in clear blister that told you exactly what you bought: 1 specific warrior and 4 specific support cards. Warriors and their cards from various different cultures. I only own cards from first two series (they made 7).
Imgur
Japanese, Norse, Greek, Roman
Briton, Egyptian, Mongol and Chinese
They also produced French, Scottish, Soanish, Russian, Native American, American, Saracen, Germanic, Trojan, Persian, Maori, Aztec, Romanian (Vlad Tepes!), Turkish, Tribes of Israel, and Pirates... You'll notice that each culture has its own background AND the name of abilities are written in their native language! Or at least, as best they can be using our western alphabet.
Egyptian, for exemple, has no vowels...
Support cards, meanwhile, were categorized as weapons (1 handed or 2 handed):
Armors, specials (various kinds, including cavalry):
Items (which included shields) :
And Inspirations (Including Deities, but also Philosophies, places and people)
I really wish I had gotted the Sainte Jeane d'Arc VS William Wallace starter pack. The starter packs came with a play mat that had the rules on it, a pair of d6, and enough cards for a game (it was a two player game but rules floated online for 2 vs 2). Here is the battle mat from Achilles vs. Spartacus:
Each player would pick a warrior (in tournament play you come with 3 warriors and 12 support cards of your choice, with no regard for faction, and you play a best 2 out of 3) and place them face down in their starting row. Then comes the four support card, face down, in the order of your chosing
Like so.
At the start of the game, both players reveal their warrior and at the start of each of four round their reveal one of their support card (some cards have effect when revealed, some continuous effect, others require actions to be taken).
Here is a breakdown of a Warrior card from the mat:
They added the Aether element in series 2.
Each support card has its own initiative value in the top left corner
Whoever has the highest goes first and perform their actions. 1 Action can be spent to move 1 square on the battlefield, orthogonally only, to rotate, to use a card effects, or to make an attack.
To attack, the enemy must be, relative to your warrior card, on a square on your attack grid (either your warrior or your weapon). Here's an excemple of a warrior and weapon grid:
Then you roll two dice, adding the number from the grid and whatever bonus you might have, and the opponent does the same (if you are in their own grid I BELIEVE they also get their number as a bonus) and if you beat their defense roll you hit them and inflict whatever damage your attack normally does. Most basic warrior attack do 1 dmg and most weapon 2 dmg.
At the end of four rounds, if no one has been knocked out, you do a fifth round with Experience deciding who goes first. Whoever has the most life points at the end of the fifth round wins this battle.
Note that a player is only allowed to have 1 card of each Weapon, Armor, Inspiration and Special face up at once (a few weapons allow you to pair them with another) and if you reveal a second on you have to ditch one of them. Furthermore, you can only have 1 card that mentions each Head, Torso, Arm, Leg and Shield, and you obviously only have 2 hands to hold stuff (so you can't have both a Special/Item card that needs one hand and a 2-handed weapon). Agan, you need to discard if you break those rules.
This was a really interesting game that broke a lot of ground and anticipated the current 'Living Card Game' style of games that exist out there. I feel it came in too early in the board game world and a bigger boxset using the Smash Up model of sale would probably do better nowadays. It still lasted until 2007 and I probably would have played it more if more people in my area had been interested (and I hadn't been sinking all my money into Yu-gi-oh! back then). It also shows you don't need a big deck to make a card game work, even though this is a little closer to a miniature strategy game in style... just without the miniatures.
Here's another look at the cards compared to other games:
The cards were high quality with beautiful art and design and all of them had a foiled finish to the background. Furthermore, they were some THICCCCCCC cards. Here is the five cards of the Khutulun set compared to 5 Pokémon cards:
OH! And they also had mail-in promo if you sent them UPC code, pretty darn cool. I got the Chinese warrior Yu Fei and I think Blackbeard was one as well!
Anybody else played it? Any opinion on it? Anybody intrigued?
