Dinosaur King - Session

This weekend I played my first CCG (collectable card game) in many a year. The game is a relatively new one, Dinosaur King.

A bit of research on the web has shown that the game is supported by a cartoon series and is also an arcade video game. The arcade game apparently is still a card game... A card game in the arcade is pushing my understanding of video games, but then I haven't been in an arcade for many a year.

So the game itself. It was the first game for both me and my son.

We layed out the playmats and set a couple glass beads each onto the health and turn tracks and placed our decks there as well.

We drew our starting hands. My son opted to swap his entire hand, I just kept what I had as it was a reasonable mix.

He started off dropping a level one beasty in front of himself but opted to not attack straight off.

I didn't have any level one dinos, so basically just drew the extra cards.

On his next turn he laid down another dino.

I now had a low level dino so played that out. I also had a reasonable move card so decided to make an attack as well. He countered with a move card that won the fight for him and my only dino was consigned to the discard pile.

The turn track was climbing and so we played on being able to lay out bigger and bigger dinos, and making bigger and bigger attacks.

At one point I had two strong dinos in my hand and a couple of weak ones on the table but was reluctant to play them as each attack with them would cost me a life point!

Another interesting point was when my son had out a 2000 point dino that was totally unassailable by any card combo I could play. So I had to sit back waiting for good cards and watching him slaughter the dinos I had worked so hard to get into play.

I did come back from this and even took out his big 2000 pointer by playing a special move that combined a grass dino with a grass move for an additional 700 points. It was just as well I managed it as each attack he made with it gained him another health point back!

But alas, the game started as it was destined to go on. Each time I hit him he came back stronger and he finally took my last health point and I had only reduced him to 7.

For a first play it was pretty cool. Turns out that a couple of starter decks work perfectly and I dont see a big investment in extra cards here :D