Inspired by the classic arcade fighting games, Scorpion Masqué has made a system combined with a deck builder mechanic to give you the best fighting feeling on your table top. Tag Team is a 2 player only card game where you choose 2 fighters to face off against your opponent’s tag team. Your goal is to knock out one of the other fighters. Scorpion Masqué is always on the lead of new ideas with their games, and Tag Team is no difference. It’s a special game that takes 10 minutes to play and will make you want to learn each and every fighter they promote. 

What’s in the Box?

• 120 Fight cards
• 12 Draft cards
• 12 Fighter boards
• 6 Health markers
• 4 Special markers
• 1 Sheriff token
• 1 Golem’s Presence token
• 1 Serpent token
• 2 Concentration tokens
• 5 Aflame! Tokens
• 11 Scheme tokens
• 1 Fighters’ Guide

How’s it Play?

In Tag Team, you choose 2 of the fighters out of the 12 available. Each has their own unique deck and plays differently. You then battle against one other person who also has 2 fighters. As you play cards from your deck, you move from round to round adding additional cards. The card you choose to add is strategically done to make your deck stronger and also to place cards in better positions. You win the game by knocking out one or more of the other fighters by reducing their health points until they are knocked out. 

Pick a Fighter – 

You can start drafting your fighters by taking all the draft cards and dealing 6 to each player. Each player chooses 1 fighter from those cards, pass the remaining to the other player, and then choose their second fighter from those cards. You then set up the boards and return all draft cards and unused fighter boards back to the box. 

Of course you can also choose whoever you want, have a more competitive draft, or go with the recommended starting fighters: Joan and Ching Shih versus Bodvar and Wong Fei-Hung.

To start, you take the starting card for both your fighters and decide which one goes on top of the other one to start forming your fighting deck. All other cards from both your fighters are then shuffled together. You continue playing the game by doing the fight! Step, followed by the Build! Step. 

The Fight Step –

In the fight step, you flip over your top card simultaneously with the other player and perform the action shown on that card. This can be attacking, blocking, gaining power, or a special affect. After those actions have been performed, you flip over the next card, placing it face up on the previously played card. You only start the game with 2 cards, but you slowly build your deck to do more. When you have gone through all your cards, you pick up these cards without shuffling them.

The card flipped out indicate which fighter each player is activating, and will be the default target of each other’s attack. Icons indicate your partner or your enemy’s partner with certain effects as well. 

The Build Step –

In the build step, you take the top 3 cards from the other cards, and choose one to add to your fight deck, placing the other 2 at the bottom of the other fight cards. You can add the card to your deck without changing the order of the cards already in your deck. This means you can add the card in-between cards, on on top or bottom of the deck, but you cannot move other cards around. So you play the same cards in the same order with the new card maybe changing up where it can add something valuable. 

If one of your opponent’s fighters has their health marker lowered to the KO spot at the end of a turn, you win the game. If at least 1 fighter on both teams are KOed, this ends in a tie. If you are not able to draw 3 cards, your fighters have become exhausted, and the game ends in a tie.

There are a lot more details within the game, but a lot of these are different according to your fighters. Overall, you need to figure out your fighters strengths, and try to use them in a way to best benefit you. 

The Verdict

Tag Team exceeds expectations overall. If you think only of the components and the idea of the game, you won’t see what the game fully offers. It’s very easy to learn and play. We found this out with my 8 and 10 year old being able to pick it up just as fast as I did. But the idea mixed with the mechanics in the game is comfortable for almost anyone to pick the game up and play it. Now, there is a little curve when moving from each fighter, as they each play differently.

But, the fact that you can have different experiences with different fighters just makes the game better. You get to have different experiences depending on who you pick to be on your team, and also who your opponent picks. 

Tag Team itself features a rock, paper, scissor guessing game that you adjust by adding in new cards to your own deck try to play better cards at the same time your opponent is also adjusting. You want to save your best attack for a good time, and the other player is wanting to block those attacks. On the other hand, you want to block their best attack and fill in the other cards with other cards you have that will setup options for you.

I really like that you get to tweak your deck each round and try to make it better. It stays relatively the same, but one card can set up your entire system in a better order, or also place it in a worse order, so watch out both ways. 

You have ways to focus your attacks on a certain fighter even though most cards activate the default fighter you will be attacking. But overall, you need to learn your fighter and how to use them in ways that will be beneficial. This WILL be different between each fighter, and it’s up to you to figure out each fighter’s play style, plus figure out the synergy between your fighters, and then how to use that against the 2 fighters your opponent has. 

The game is open to evolve with new characters and new special features for fighters. And I’m sure Scorpion Masqué will continue to grow this fighting system. So, if you like fighting games mixed with ways to combo and create a system that you can learn to master, this is definitely be a game you will want to try. The game captures the excitement of a real fighting game, and sets itself apart from other similar style games.

Images via Scorpion Masqué

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