Firefly: Misbehavin’

We love a deckbuilding game in our house, and the recent trend many of our favourite games (such as Lost Ruins of Arnak or Dune: Imperium) incorporate deckbuilding elements – so when we got our hands on the GF9’s Firefly deckbuilder, well, ain’t no power in the ‘verse could stop us. Love the show, love the movie, love deckbuilders… Could the game possibly meet our expectations?

This game is… Shiny. No other word for it. Whether you’re a fan of the franchise or not, if you like strategic card and/or tableau builders, this is really going to make your brain itch. For 2-4 players, what makes Misbehavin’ stand apart from other deckbuilders is the way it creates asymmetry: each starting deck is different, depending on your faction, and even though the path to victory is typically the same, how you achieve this is radically different.

Take My Love, Take My Land, Take Me Where I Cannot Stand

There’s some clear conventions of deckbuilders – common pools of cards that are useful in early game but gradually sub-optimal; the SHINY and INTO THE BLACK cards are always in the common pool, but the other types (Fight, Deal and Manoeuvre and All 3) vary by Episode, though there is a default setup of Crazy Ivan, Palaver, Misbehave and Full Burn – all classic elements of the show which are pleasingly intuitive, assuming you’re a fan. Yes, you can play through the TV show, with the individual episodes each providing different game setup and victory conditions. As if the very fact it’s a deckbuilder doesn’t provide enough variety, this means there is massive replayability along with a sense of overarching narrative. It’s very on-theme, as are the factions themselves: Niska is brutal, favouring combat allies whilst working behind the scenes (more often than not, if you draw the man himself you’ll actually be discarding him rather than playing him); Eavesdown is all about barter and making Deals (it’s Badger, and he DOES have a very fine hat); the Alliance tries to lock down the opposition through issuing warrants (they’re the gorram law, after all); and the Serenity is all about building an engine based on getting a crew and keeping flying (a boatload of terribly strange folk).

Burn The Land And Boil The Sea, You Can’t Take The Sky From Me

You purchase cards from market – from Core, Outer and Rim worlds – and aim to complete your tableau to win. The tableaus are double-sided, with an “easy” side that is the same for all factions (and with more spaces) or a regular side that’s more restrictive and faction specific. Cards are purchased based on the value of your cards in hand, discarding to pay – again, a familiar mechanic, but that’s not a negative. You do have limited but varied choices each turn, with most turns consisting of a single purchase and a single card play. However, some cards will trigger when played, or can be triggered once on tableau instead of a card play – usually, for a potent effect, but at the cost of one fewer card in hand on your next turn. Manoeuvre cards are another twist, as they can often be triggered more than once (like a Leaf on the wind) by using your ‘Verse tokens, but require you to have a ship in play – another reason to play Serenity, as it STARTS on their tableau. ‘Verse tokens, incidentally, are bonus actions, earned by doing faction-thematic tasks and spendable for bonuses: so, for example, Niska gains a faction point token when you discard a card with a printed 3 cost on it (such as the man himself), and can spend them to make his mercenaries even more brutally aggressive.

Take Me Out, To the Black, Tell ’em I ain’t comin’ Back

Now a common criticism of Deckbuilders is a lack of true interaction; often, it’s simply stemming from the common pool of cards (or interfering with it). Even co-operative deckbuilders can suffer from this, though granted Cryptozoic’s Injustice tries to offset this with a Versus beat-em-up element… but it’s not great. However, in Misbehavin’, you CANNOT win without interacting with one another in this game. There’s a couple of reasons why: sometimes, you need to cut a Deal, where you rather than using your card Influence, you’ll want to just straight out buy a card with credits… but you can interfere with another player’s Deal (especially if you’re Badger). And of course, there’s times victory can only come at the barrel of a gun, so you’re going to get into a scrap and Fight your opponent, to discard characters out of their tableau and prevent them from winning. And then there’s the Reavers. You don’t HAVE to include a Reaver card (or more than one) in one of the Market decks, but I always think it doesn’t pay to be complacent, and it means that you’re sometimes wary of clearing the market for fear of them appearing. Reavers come in various difficulties, high Fight enemies that all players have to band together to defeat or risk losing cards off every bit of the table. Once you’ve learned the basics of the game, having the possibility of them tearing through and the necessity of setting aside your differences is a major strength of the game.

There’s No Place I Can Be, Since I Found Serenity

As mentioned, we love deckbuilders; DC deckbuilding is our reliable fallback option, and has been for many years. Now not all deckbuilders are born equal – Star Wars feels really derivative, for example – but this is something very special. Although we did find the rulebook a little clunky – there’s a QuickStart playthrough, but it’s for 4 players only – once we’d got the hang of it, we were absolutely smitten. And I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, you will be too.