Anne Frank sits in the attic, scribbling in her diary. Outside Frankenstein's Monster sought a way in, aided in his battle by Supergirl and Hercules. Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes continued in his quest to stop the Scientific Revolution… which he succeeded in quelling, and winning the whole day for his side.
No, I’m not describing a lucid nightmare, this is Triptych, and you will soon learn its name. The card game is currently on Kickstarter from new designers Talking Cartoon Rabbits and is hoping to make its way into your homes (and hopefully, phones) before the end of the year.
Triptych bills itself as a game of ‘Anything Vs Everything’, the ultimate nerd mashup, and it certainly feels like that. The game boasts an absurd number of cards from pretty much any property you can think of. Like superheroes or villains? There are analogues of characters like Flash Gordon, Professor X, Yoda, and Batman. History buff? Play with the deck that features cards like Marie Curie, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mao. Prefer fantasy? How about a deck full of Chupacabras, Magic Beans and Loch Ness Monsters?
Or maybe you just want to mix it all up together? Yup, this is a collectible card game, so deck-building is encouraged once you have enough cards. You can fashion a deck of your own design, putting Pinnochio to work alongside Helen of Troy and the Military Industrial Complex if you so choose. The game really does allow you to play with nearly anything you can think of, and half of the fun is imagining these insane match-ups and creating a story as you play them.
We were lucky enough to meet the creator of the game Luke Harms, who sat down with us at The Uncommons in NYC to run us through a game, and we ended up playing far later than any of us had expected.
One of our best games saw Cthulhu and Loki sitting together in a bar where everyone knew their name, drinking the night away. While they were busy Henry Ford started up a franchise with Christopher Columbus, who started earning tons of money through it. Meanwhile, Santa Claus and Wombat (a clawed superhero-type) geared up for a fight and the Revenger, who looked like a certain caped crusader, hid in the shadows. All the while we laughed at the sheer insanity of it all.
Triptych, being a game of threes, seems to work best with three players. Each round starts with a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, which will set things up. You shake your fists and yell "All! Hail! Triptych!" on each beat before displaying your gesture, each of which correlates to one of the three suits of Triptych- Body, Mind, and Spirit, respecitvely. They’re color-coded (red, green, blue) to keep things simple and whoever wins the Rock, Papers, Scissors sets up which actions on each card can be used that round. Each card has multiple actions it can use. Black actions can be used with any suit but colored actions only can be used while the corresponding suit is in play. Of course, some actions can change the suit of the round up entirely, and there’s always the chance that at the start of the round you’ll each use one of each Rock, Papers, Scissor gesture, in which case you yell "Triptych!" and any suit can be used that round. Those are generally the craziest ones.
Each player has 30 cards in their deck which also counts as their life bar- lose a round and you’ll have to discard the different between your scores. Each turn you play one card and perform one action, and it will take a little while to figure out your strategy because there are so many different actions. Some cards can attack and destroy other cards, while some are good for protection, and others can beef up other cards.
It's certainly not a casual game- there are a lot of rules to go over and due to its nature there are a bunch that can be a little vague at points. But for a game like this (as in others like Munchkin), arguing over things can be part of the game itself. The first few games will involve you going over all the rules and getting the hang of things before you finally start to see the strategy and be able to focus on the fun of all these characters and items clashing. Some cards are so ridiculously overpowered that there's no way to stop them (the riff on Galactus will just eat everything) but that's part of the fun- rounds like that make you change your strategy to control the damage, rather than to go on the attack.
The game really starts to fly once you get into it, with some rounds lasting only a few minutes. All the while you'll appreciate the fantastic art. For historical figures they used public domain pictures whenever possible but for all of the many, many characters from literature and pop culture they amassed a huge team of accomplished artists to work on the game, 28 in all. There are many famous artists among the bunch too, including John Kovalic (Munchkin), J. K. Wodward (Fallen Angel), Gene Yang (American Born Chinese) and more.
One of the funniest cards however is the Unimaginable Horror which, true to name, features no art at all.
But all of these superheroes and licensed trademarks is why they list lawyer fees on their Kickstarter page. They had to clear everything and change up a lot of names before they felt comfortable trying to release this, but they've done it. Their Kickstarter offers lots of different options to help them get this game made, including pledges that will get you starter sets and expansions to the game. The three starter decks the game will start with are Heroes, Forces of Evil, and Church & State. The expansions include Sci-Fantasy, History, and Literature.
The physical game is great but what the creators really want is for this to become a mobile game. Triptych would be perfect for the format and they have some pretty clever ideas for expansion in the future. Think about how great it would be to be able to download a Guardians of the Galaxy card pack for a couple of bucks that gives you cards for all the characters. With licensing agreements they could keep adding on to the app, indefinitely, forever.
But hey, why take our word for it? You can download both the Starter set and Expansion sets on their official site here at anythingvseverything.com and check out their Facebook and Kickstarter pages for more info.
All hail Triptych!
