For a description of what the 2MR is and to see other reviews, please see:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/31672

So this seems to be a game that’s catching on. I saw it was nominated for an award at this year’s Origins. People are talking it up.
Yeah, congrats for them, too bad I can’t join in the fun. This game didn’t work for me and my game group unfortunately.

Wow, your first review of a game you don’t like. You sure you’re ready?
Yeah, let’s do this.

Alright, so what’s up with this game? I thought you were gonna love this game.
So did I. I’m very, very surprised that I don’t like it. What’s more, my game group gave this a unanimous “thumbs down”. None of us liked it. I couldn’t get them to play this for a fourth time if I paid them… Well, I bet I could pay them, they’re like that. That’s how I usually get them to spend time with me in the first place.

What’s up with that? What kind of games does your game group normally like?
Well, that’s a good question. Let me tell you where I’m coming from. Me and my group tend to prefer more heavy strategy games, but having said that, we love Scripts & Scribes – a nice, light game but with some good strategy – we play it all the time. I think we’d have liked this game if it worked better.

So what didn’t work about it?
OK, as I said, I thought I was going to love this game, but it didn’t come together for me and my group, and I’m not even sure why. I’ve been sitting on this review for a few days trying to put my feelings into words and I’m not even sure I can. If I had to sum up my feelings, I’d say the whole is less than the sum of the parts with this game.

Let’s start there and see if I can help you sort this out then. First, what is this game about?
OK, it’s a card game where you’re a group of adventurers working together to face monsters/encounters and at the same time choosing when to undercut each other. The game has an absolutely great tag line: Without teamwork, you’ll never survive. Without betrayal, you’ll never win.

Wow, that does sound great. You like those fun, social, back-stabby games. They can create some really fun moments.
Yes, I usually do. I’m a longtime Diplomacy fan, I have Mall of Horror and Bootleggers -- other games that involve backstabbing.

Anyway, you each have a character and you face 9 encounters in a series of rounds. Most of the encounters are creatures to be battled but there are some non-creature encounters too to mix things up, e.g., Trap Room. The heart of the game is the combat though. Each round of combat, you play an attack card and/or an action card.

Now, the thing here is that each turn, the order of battle changes and each monster wounds players differently, e.g., a monster may wound player 2 this turn, so if you’re not player 2 this turn, you may not want to kill the monster and let him live so he wounds player 2. The player who finishes the monster with the coup de grace collects the prestige (victory) points.

So you try to get other players killed as soon as possible?
No. You can’t hurt each other too much or else you’ll all die (remember the tag line?), so you kinda want to wound each other but keep each other around till the later rounds where the bonus points are. Then you want to try to manipulate the action so that other players take damage while you kill the monsters.

Well, that sounds fun. Sounds like you have a lot to consider when you choose your attacks. And then are there potions you can use too?
Yeah, yeah, I forgot to mention them. There are Attack, Action, and Potion cards.

So what’s not to like?
Well, the characters are pretty much indistinguishable from the others, i.e., no special powers. So you’re not really linked to your character other than to mark down your health points.

I hear they’re addressing that in an expansion.
Yeah, well, that doesn’t do me any good now, does it?

Ouch. OK, What else?
Well, a few things now that you got me going. First, I simply disagree with anyone who says this has RPG elements. In fact, I bought the game partly because I have some RPGers in my group and I though this would appeal to them. They scoffed at this idea. In truth, the theme is pretty tacked on. We could be Samurai warriors or WWF wrestlers just as easily as traditional fantasy characters.

Sitting here, I can’t even remember what characters there are and I’m not going to get up to see, but I think there’s a dwarf and he’s just the same as the red-headed swordswoman. To make it more RPGish, you’d need specific character abilities, although I’m not sure that’s a good idea because that leads me to my next complaint.

Each of the three games I played was a stop/start affair of figuring out what the cards mean and in what order they’re resolved. Futhermore, some action cards are played before or after attack cards and sometimes a player revealed his attack card before another player had a fair chance to play his card, so we had to stop and adjudicate that. I held some cards back because I didn't want deal with figuring it all out. Having special character abilities to further muddy the waters would slow things down even more it seems to me.

So you're saying this game is too complex? C'mon, man.
No, it's not complex, it's fiddly. I’m quite sure after repeated plays, all this business would get all worked out, but me and my group simply aren’t interested in making the effort. The game really wants to be a light, fast, fun card game where you get to have some crazy backstabbing fun but it takes way too much investment to get there. As one friend said: "If I wanted to spend an inordinate amount of my valuable time reading small cards and trying to decipher their meaning, I'd be working for the Florida recount committee". There’s too much time spent figuring cards out for a game that is so chaotic and random.

Having said that, I could be interested in putting the effort in to learn the cards and get the flow of the game going, but there seems little point because in the end, there really isn’t room for much strategy. You may choose not to attack a creature so that it wounds player 2 like I said – that much you can control this round – but if you choose to wound the creature greatly, you don’t know who’s going first in the next round, so you may be helping your opponent. Or you may be player 2 next round and it’d be better for you to help kill the creature now. It’s completely random and there’s no point in planning anything.

It might better if the Initiative cards lasted for 2 rounds so that you could plan your attacks with some purpose. As it is now, you don’t know if you’re helping or hurting. The game I “won”, I felt like I had done nothing to win. I was just in the right place at the right time. Someone in my group suggested we just roll dice to see who rolls the highest and declare a winner.

Finally, there’s the whole end game issue that has been discussed at length in other threads. All I’m going to say is that we did experience the same issue of one player (uh, me) winning the majority of encounters but losing the last encounter and losing the game because the last encounter was worth so much.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with a game being open to anyone winning on the last turn because the last turn is so heavily weighted, but that kind of game should be half the length then. Maybe it’s a good idea to house rule the game to 5 encounters instead of 9 so you can play a bunch of quick games rather than a longer one that purports to have a strategy to it when it's just a series of random achievements followed by the final random achievement that trumps the previous ones.

Well, I’m glad I could help you get all that out. Feel better? Wanna sum it all up?
Yeah, thanks for that. Feels better to put my feelings into words, but I’m disappointed. Nobody ever wants a game to “fail” for them.

To sum up, I’d say that the game is simply too random and doesn’t offer enough purpose to one’s actions to make it worth the investment in card adjudication and time required.

I will say that out of the 8 other people I played this with, the three who did like it were a father and his two teenage sons. The kids loved beating up on dad. I think this is a good game for the younger market and would not rule it out for them.

Components and Value?
Components are great. Nice cards, nices beads, love the artwork. Got the game for around $20 (plus shipping). Fair price.

Bottom Line?
I have to say pass on this one. This reminds me of Killer Bunnies – a long ride for such a short journey.

PS I have it for trade in the following link:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/32503

Edited for a word tweak.