My Little Pony: Adventures in Equestria Deck-Building Game is a cooperative deck builder game where players take turns trying to build up their deck while facing down increasing challenges before the time runs out. Players have to manage a limited number of actions, trying to accumulate resources to spend beating the challenges, while balancing trying to get better cards. Featuring the ‘My Little Pony’ IP, the cards are filled with bright and cute art; however don’t be fooled, this game is surprisingly hard, and its complexities are not for children.
Deck builder games run a wide gamut from having players try to optimize a deck so that by the end of the game, the entire deck is being drawn each turn, to minor sideshows in a larger game. Here, this game holds a unique spot where the deck is a main focus of the game, yet there ultimately is not much ‘building’ that happens by the end. Players are on a very tight time crunch to accumulate resources called Sugar Cubes in specific colors to beat four increasing challenges. Ultimately, the time is so tight, and the starter deck is sufficient enough that there is little difference between the ending and starting hands.
Gameplay revolves around players drawing five of their cards that provide various resources that the game centers around: horseshoes, knowledge and movement. Horseshoes and knowledge are typically used to buy new cards, or to activate locations the player might be at, and movement is used to move to the various random locations set up for the game. An example turn might look like a player using some movement to move to a new card, then spending a few knowledge resources to gain a sugar cube.
The challenges are what form the driving force in the game. They are required to be resolved quickly, as each player’s turn a cloud is added to it, and typically after only 5-8 clouds/turns the challenge fails. The pace is very quick, and here is where both the strength and flaws of the game come out. The challenges are not insurmountable, but they are very specific. One example being that each player needs two blue sugar cubes, which can be achieved typically, but at the cost of almost everything else. The balance of this is actually very impressive once you see how tightly it’s wound together. There is just barely enough time to do this, then something new pops up, now barely enough time to do that. It’s actually pretty good feeling the pressure and not being able to get your feet under you without feeling like one misstep equals a loss.
Problems arise two fold – one, the game is just pretty hard, along with a lot to keep track of. Experienced, adult gamers will be able to start winning after a few games, but given the MLP theme, kids are going to be absolutely blown away by the challenge, if they could handle the token management to begin with. Secondly, the game is a ‘deck builder’ as it claims on the box, the problem though is the new cards are typically fairly expensive, they aren’t that much better, but the biggest is there simply is not enough time. Of course by the end of the game players will still have around 5-10 new cards in their deck, but that flashy new card is going to see action about one time, and this is where it’s a little disappointing. There were several games where expensive 7,8,9 cost cards simply could not be bought, or when they could, it was too close to the end to be worth buying.
Overall, the core of the game has a nice pitch to it. It is unfortunate though for anyone looking at the cover, as it is very much aimed at kids, especially given the theme. There are simply too many tokens, and stuff to track for anyone under 10 to realistically handle, or want to handle. As a consequence, this game sits in a weird location. As an adult, the game has a fun pitch trying to grab the sugar cubes any way you can before time is up; and here it hits all targets. For those looking for a kid game, as written it would fall flat, but could be modified to add more time, or modified so kids might enjoy it.
The flow of the game has a surprisingly nice pitch as players are pushed towards the end as pressure mounts. When it’s firing on all cylinders, the tight feeling of being limited on time without feeling like every move has to be perfectly planned is a nice balance. Negatively, there is a lot to keep track of, along with the general difficulty to win will unfortunately eject kids out of the pool. The core loop of a time-based co-op game works surprisingly well, but its meager deck building aspects and general difficulty puts the game in a weird spot of who it’s recommended for.
PROS
- Bright, fun art
- Good pressure without having to play perfect
- Fun trying to come up with big moves
CONS
- Complexity detracts from potential player pool
- Never really get to build a good deck
- Lots of tokens to keep track of
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