Josh Wastes More of My Time

When I was up in New York this weekend, Josh took some time to show me Urban Rivals, an internet-based card game. You join for free getting options for one of three different group types: the attack people (who are military and police folk), the cool people (who are beach bums and DJs), and the evil people (who are nightmares and monsters, I guess). I tried out the cool folks.



The idea is that you get a set of characters to build a deck of at least 8 people with. During a game, you'll randomly be dealt four of your people and your opponent will randomly be dealt four of his. Then you go back and forth for four rounds choosing someone to attack with and then choosing someone to defend against his person with.

Each person has a Power and a Damage score (so the weird-looking woman who's slightly forward on the lower group has 5 Power and 6 Damage). When he chooses someone to defend with, we have a fight. If my total Attack (my Power times multipliers plus any bonuses) is greater than his, I do my damage (plus bonuses) to his life total. If he beat me, he does his damage to me. Each person has 12 life. The game goes to KO or to the end of round four. If nobody won by round 4, the person who has the most life left wins.

The most important twist to the game is the Pillz (or some other weird spelling of it). Each person starts with 12 of them too. When you attack or defend with a character, you can devote a number of pillz to the character too. Each one is a multiplier to the person's power. So if I sent that woman forward with three pillz, she would have 20 Attack (5 to begin with, plus 3 more pillz times 5 makes 20). If my opponent blocked with the guy who has the 6 Power and 6 Damage and only added two more pillz, he'd lose, 18 to 20, and I'd do damage to him.

Finally, the last piece to consider in game are the abilities and bonuses. Each faction (denoted by the blue waves or yellow t-shirts in the lower left corner of my cards) has a bonus that stretches across everyone in that faction so long as at least two characters from that group are in play on your side. So for my t-shirt guys, they each gain +8 Attack, and my blue wave guys each gain +2 Power. The abilities are similar to the bonuses, except they're always active, regardless of how many characters from your faction they have.

The games go fast (about 5 minutes or so) and you can start to wrack up experience for your characters. Some characters get better the more you play them, boosting their power, damage, or unlocking abilities. At the end of each game, you tally up points for different missions you're on. You'll usually have dozens going at once. They can be "Do 400 damage" and "Win 25 games" and "Win 15 games with two people from X faction," etc. As you complete these missions, you'll gain new characters or points to use to buy characters for your faction from the auctions.

There's a way to spend real money on the game too to get more characters, but it seems like a waste to me when you can do a lot for free.

Overall, a very addictive game. It's fast so you can get a lot of them in, and the combination of math and bluffing suits me well. Give it a try!