DC Comics Deck Building Game: Heroes Unite, by Erik V Larsen

Here's another guest review from Raoul Mowatt, original Nerd Nighter! 

The first expansion to the DC Comics DC Deck-Building Game does a lot of what an expansion should do: bring a bunch of twists to the base game so that the experience of playing it is just familiar enough to remind you of what you loved about the original and just new enough so as to deepen the play experience.

If you’re unfamiliar with the original DC Comic Deck-Building Game, check out my review of it here.

Heroes Unite, despite its name, is not a cooperative game. It introduces seven new DC superheroes to play as: Shazam, Hawkman, Red Tornado, Black Canary, Batgirl, Nightwing and Booster Gold. (Some copies of the game include a promo Starfire.) For supervillains, it features such New 52 characters as K’El, Graves and Helspont. So some of the deeper cuts of the DC Universe. For some, playing less iconic characters might detract a little.

Though the characters are less famous than those in the original, they tend to be more powerful. I’ve found it’s easier to have broken turns and decks in Heroes United.

Star Realms, by Rob Dougherty

Star Realms places you in the command of a fleet of ships preparing to do battle on a galactic scale. In this deck-building game, players compete head to head to eliminate their opponent(s) and be the last man (or woman!) standing. This is a departure from the victory-point-based scoring system in most deck-building games like Dominion, DC Deckbuilder, and Ascension, and introduces a few mostly-new wrinkles to a genre I greatly enjoy.

From the co-founder of Ascension (and a successful professional Magic player, at that) this game is well-designed, easy to teach, and easy to play. I submit Star Realms as a game that should be in your fleet - so read on, space captain!