Ever since the base set of the pokemon trading card game was released in Australia I have been an avid player of card games at both the casual and competitive level. When it was announced that Enterplay was making a card game of one of my favourite franchises I was excited. Now that the game has released and its meta has had some time to sink in, and after playing many games including a prerelease tournament (which I came third in) I feel I can finally make a proper review of the game.
The My Little Pony CCG tries to remove itself from the standard formula of summoning creatures to attack your opponent and casting spells by having players use their ponies to meet the power requirements on problem cards to score points. Player confrontation occurs in face-offs, which involve counting up the power of characters at a problem, flipping over the top card of each deck and adding it to the total, the winner receives bonus points. In theory the game sounds unique and a breath of fresh air, but while I commend the designer for attempting something original (though this isn’t entirely true, it is based off one of the designer’s previous games – Star Trek 2nd edition) the game in its current release state is grossly imbalanced and has some problems with its core rules.
The first problem with the core rules arises from first turn player advantage. A lot of card games have this problem and try to balance it by forcing the first player to skip their draw phase. Unfortunately, skipping your draw phase is ineffectual at balance because the player can simply pay 1 action token to draw a card. The biggest problem with opening plays comes from double yellow parasprite openings, which typically will spell the end of the game before it even begins and make things very frustrating for the other player.
To analyse the game’s resource system, instead of lands or putting cards down as resources each turn like you do in other games, players are given a number of action tokens that starts at 2 per turn and increases up to 5 depending on the player with the highest score. That is fine, it requires players to carefully choose their cards and save resources over turns to play high cost cards and is a good way of balancing out high vs low cost cards. The problem arises with its Power Threshold system and the colour requirements on a player’s problem. Each deck is required to have at least 2 colours since your own problems can only be solved by having a combination of at least 2 colours (most are usually a certain amount of X colour and a certain amount of any other colour). If you try and run a single colour deck you are unable to confront your own problems. The power requirement on most event cards and on friend cards means that you must have that much power worth of characters on your field before you can play that card, it’s very common that players will find themselves unable to play cards in their hand simply because they are ‘power-screwed’. Fortunately your mane-character card contributes towards this so playing cards from your primary colour isn’t usually an issue, though given the terrible balance of mane characters (further explained below), players are restricted on what is viable for a primary colour. Being “Power Screwed” gives players a huge disadvantage since they will be unable to confront their own problem and will leave them with many unusable cards in their hand.
The next issue is how many points a player needs to win and how the game handles confronting problems, in most of the games I have played even though my opponent and I have a 10 card problem deck it was rare to see more than 2 problems from each problem deck played each game since problems will only change once players have a faceoff. This also becomes an issue with the imbalanced rules for double-face offs. When a player can solve both problems (even if their opponent has nothing at those problems or if they can’t because of a troublemaker) they get a double faceoff and count their entire board of power against their opponent, and when they win they gain points equal to the highest bonus of the two problems. This becomes a big issue against players using pegasi since cards like their Rainbow Dash (the mane character), Wild Fire, Holly Dash, and Winged Wonder allow them to move their characters to both problems and cause a double face off when the other player isn’t ready. This creates an especially abstract way of thinking because it punishes the player for having a faceoff in their turn because of the following scenario:
"I cause a faceoff in my turn for the problem card – Who is Gabby Gums? The faceoff resolves and our ponies are then sent home. A new problem comes out and the turn passes to my opponent. They then proceed to move their characters to the newly revealed problem and immediately score its bonus without me being able to respond. It’s oftentimes a good strategy to deliberately be unable to solve problems because of this. I honestly feel that (though it’s an unconventional approach a game like this) the game would have worked better if the score phase was moved to the start of the turn or if the bonus on a problem card was only given when you won a faceoff at that problem. One further gripe is that given the small number of points needed to win this game has a severe runaway leader problem and by the time it really starts picking up pace it’s already over. And this isn’t even addressing the game’s imbalance in its card pool.
First of all I should mention the horrible balance between the mane 6 characters and their flip conditions as well as their respective card pools.
Rainbow Dash: Blue is geared towards movement by making it cost fewer actions, but Rainbow Dash’s flip effect strangely enough requires you to have a Troublemaker face up at the Problem that she confronts. This forces decks using RD as a mane to have a large amount of troublemakers since she can be difficult to flip otherwise.
Applejack: Applejack isn’t difficult to flip but her effect is ultimately useless, because the game doesn’t involve combat between characters it is rare that you will use her effect except when you have to dismiss down to your home limit after solving a problem. Applejack blatantly has the weakest card pool and is not considered viable for tournament play outside of an obscure combo deck.
Fluttershy is strange, her cards are clearly geared towards running critters but they are exclusive to her colour and no other colour truly effectively supports this theme. She is fortunately one of the easiest to flip and has a good effect. Her card pool is powerful thanks to broken cards such as Fluttershy: Guidance Counsellor. Also Fluttershy’s mane character card is difficult to find since the two player starter packs are quite rare.
Twilight’s mane character card is considered unusable because it is the most difficult to flip, it requires winning a faceoff which generally will happen after your opponent has already flipped their mane character. Her ability once flipped is also situational and for the most part not useful. She is not considered worthwhile using as a mane character. Her card pool is powerful thanks to broken cards such as Spring Forward and Twilight Ursa Vanquisher.
Pinkie Pie’s mane character flip effect is situational and can be easily played against, she requires you to confront a problem when your opponent has no characters at the problem and this gets harder the longer the game goes on. You will often find that you can only reliably do this after a faceoff in your opponent’s turn or at the start of the game assuming your opponent doesn’t drop a character on both problems during the opening turns. Her flip effect is weak and has the same effect as many of the cards in her card pool which are underwhelming to begin with. Strangely, Pinkie Pie is the only character with removal cards such as Downright Dangerous and Pinkie Responsibility Pie, which are the only things that make her playable.
Finally we come to Rarity, the consensus is that she has the most powerful card pool while also being the easiest mane character to flip. All she requires is for you to score 2 points at a problem during a score phase which can be done by confronting it first or winning a faceoff. Her mane character effect is powerful and has both inspired (a keyword ability that allows you to look at the top card of your opponent’s deck and put it on the top or bottom, allow you to rig your opponent’s deck for faceoffs), and movement denial by increasing the cost of an opponent's ponies moving to the same problem with Rarity. Her card pool includes a number of powerful mechanics such as discard pile recursion (Eff Stop can bring back events each turn, Rarity nest weaver can bring back any card, and so on), Inspired (which allows you to rig your opponent’s deck for faceoffs), power increases thanks to cards like savoir fare and action shot, and movement denial thanks to the mane character card and Octavia, which can be effective against Pegasus decks if you don’t face off in your turn. She is considered to be the most broken thanks to the card Rarity Truly Outrageous which can single handedly break the game by itself.
As a result you will usually only see Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy among the six mane characters in the premiere set.
In a game where players aren’t directly confronting one another with their characters it isn’t possible in the core mechanics of the game (referring to the ruleset itself, not character abilities) to remove your opponent’s cards and ponies. Pink appears to be the exclusive colour for character removal while Yellow has some removal for Resources (which are attachments). This makes cards such as Rarity – Truly Outrageous, Fluttershy Guidance Counsellor, Spring Forward, and various other cards dominant in the tournament scene and will more often than not break the game when played. The game has a serious problem where Rarity = power (pun not intended) and cards are blatantly better than others because of their rarity. Some colours are also blatantly better than others.
Ultra Rare cards in the game from white, blue, and purple command high prices on the secondary market and are usually undercosted with powerful effects that can be activated every turn. The following cards are the ones that are dominating the tournament scene:
Rarity Truly Outrageous is the game’s most clearly overpowered card because it only costs 3, and can be moved home after confronting a problem to score points equal to that problem’s bonus. It will almost always give your opponent 3 bonus points on the turn it’s played and can then be used every turn for no cost unless your opponent has specific movement denial or removal cards that are exclusive to white and pink.
Twilight Ursa Vanquisher is undercosted for its power and can be returned to your hand to send any 2 of your opponent’s ponies at its problem home. This can create a lockout that will prevent your opponent from being able to defeat troublemakers that you’ve put at that problem, usually guaranteeing a win.
Rainbow Dash Winged Wonder while not as poorly balanced as the other UR cards is undercosted and allows you to move up to 3 ponies for free when played. It can easily set up double face offs and score the bonus on a problem the turn it’s played.
Spring Forward is used in almost all purple decks and starts with 2 power but gets +2 power for every opponent’s pony at its problem. Because players usually have at least 2 characters at a problem to solve it, it is grossly undercosted and is usually at 6 power for a cost of 3.
Yellow Parasprite is the only common on this list and is considered the most powerful troublemaker in the game. Because players can run 3 of each card it is very common for players to open with 1 or 2 yellow parasprites and they will always put their owner way ahead in card advantage. Double Yellow Parasprite is especially broken because your opponent will often lose their hand before they can even play their cards. The biggest issue with this card (aside from being able to use three of it) is that it’s random so your opponent will potentially discard any card that helps them get out of the situation.
Ahuizotl is a staple in most decks and slows games down to a crawl when played. The game is especially infuriating when an Ahuizotl is on each problem and players have to pass turns to collect enough actions so they can move their characters to face off against Ahuizotl successfully without being sent home.
Fluttershy Guidance Counsellor is the strongest yellow card and can outright deny a player from getting actions. It is a common yellow/purple tactic to play one on the second turn and ultimately prevent your opponent from playing cards. A number of times yellow/purple players have played 2 of these, kept them at home, and exhausted them each turn to stop me from gaining action tokens.
It may seem strange to judge a game based on a small pool of cards from its large premiere set but unfortunately these are the cards that have defined the metagame and are the most commonly seen and complained about.
Overall this premiere set feels like a beta, an unfinished product that is still in testing and needed to be held back at least another month or two in order to fix the blatant balance issues. Many tournament organizers have been waiting on a Comprehensive Rules list that was promised at the end of January but Enterplay has not delivered, leaving some rulings up to personal interpretation, this coupled with the fact that they had so many playtesters on this game when players are able to pick up on these issues almost instantly in their first few games has me worried about the competence of the team. Perhaps the balance will change dramatically in the second set called Canterlot Nights, maybe they’ll make everything broken so it becomes balanced. Until then, there is only the hope that they will instate a banned/limited list or errata the problematic cards to make them more manageable, but judging by their comments and attitude towards game balance this doesn’t seem likely. Until they change their minds and start taking their own product seriously by giving it the playtesting and support it deserves, it is impossible to take this game as seriously as other better known card games such as Magic the Gathering.