Compile Main: 1 Review

Compile Main: 1, a gorgeous two-player lane dueller by first-time designer Michael Yang combines features of earlier games in a fascinating way.

How To Play

Lay out the twelve Protocol cards and three each (first player takes one, second player two, then two, then one). Line them up across the table so that you have a two parallel lines of three cards each, your selections towards you. Then take the six cards corresponding to each of your protocols, and shuffle them all together to make your 18-card deck. (The rest of the cards won’t be used, so you could in theory run two games side by side with one set.) Draw an initial five-card hand, then alternate turns until someone wins. (There is in theory a theme—you’re AIs deciding on the parameters of the universe—but this really serves only to add flavour to an essentially abstract game.)

On your turn, check for Control (you out-point the opponent in two of three lanes) and take the Control marker if so; then check to see whether you can Compile (you out-point the opponent in one lane and have at least ten points there, in which case send both lanes to their respective discard piles and flip your Protocol card. Flip all three on your side, and you’ve won. (If you recompile a card you’ve previously compiled, you draw the top card of the opponent’s deck—which isn’t nothing, but isn’t a third of the way to victory either.)

Otherwise take an action, which is either playing a card or filling a hand to five. Cards can go face up or face down, face down having a fixed value of 2, face up usually varying from 0 to 5.

Having the control marker when you compile or refresh your hand lets you rearrange the Protocol cards, as do several other card effects. Opponent building up a lot of strength behind Light? As they get close to claiming it, swap it with Fire, which they’ve already compiled.

So far there’s a lot of Air, Land & Sea here, but where it blends with the excellent Riftforce is that each Protocol’s card set has unique powers: for example, Death cards tend to delete cards from the play area, while Psychic makes an opponent predictable by forcing them to discard cards and show you their hand, and Fire requires you to discard other cards from your hand to gain powerful effects.. (Generally, the higher the power value of the card, the less useful its text is, so discarding cards is never an easy decision.)

The element that isn’t in either of those games is that each card has three text boxes: the top one is visible and in effect as long as the card is face up and has an ongoing effect, the middle one happens when the card is played face up (or uncovered, or flipped face up), and the bottom one is an ongoing effect that applies only when the card is at the top of a lane, i.e. the one most recently played. So you need to stay aware of all the face-up cards and their effects in both sides of the play area.

This produces a great deal of emergent complexity: your Metal 2 means I can only play cards face-down into that line, but when my Fire 0 would be covered I first draw a card and flip another—so I can still work my higher-value cards into the Metal line. Face-down cards have no special powers, but they may be harder to remove than face-up ones. This can be a bit of a head-cracker at times, particularly in early learning games, but it shouldn’t be beyond most players with a bit of practice.

Components

Sadly, this is a package designed for shelf presence: there’s a plastic clamshell case with glossy paper insert that’ll go straight in the bin, and one of the two decks of cards is shrink-wrapped.

Once you’ve discarded the waste, though, it’s still gorgeous, with a purple foil stripe across the black box, and foil highlights on the fronts of the cards. Art is essentially abstract in the theme of whichever Protocol the card belongs to, though it’s pleasing, and most of each card face is text.

The rules are just a single large piece of paper, which seems promising, but this has already been supplemented by an extensive errata and clarification list.

Summary

Lane duellers never seem to reach the heights of success that deck construction games can achieve, but they can offer solid and rewarding gameplay. There’s plenty to discover in Compile Main: 1 even with just the base box, an expansion is already available, and another core box is promised for the summer.

Tell us your thoughts on Compile Main: 1 by heading over to our Instagram!

Scores

Overall Score 90%

Artwork ★★★

Complexity ★★★★

Replayability ★★★★

Player Interaction ★★★★

Component Quality ★★★

You might like

· Lane dueller, unique player powers, and multiple card effects, all in one package.

· Attention-getting box and cards.

· Quick but satisfying gameplay.

You might not like

· Can get fiddly; this is an intense game, not a relaxing one.

· Lots of text to keep track of throughout the play field.

· Errata and balance corrections can only grow from here

Also try: Air Land & Sea, Riftforce, Ashes Reborn: Rise of the Phoenixborn