USD ($)
EUR (€)
Compile Card Game: Main 1 Edition
You could earn
2199 Victory Points
with this purchase
In Compile, two rogue AIs race to impose their reality on the world around them. Will you emerge victorious, or will you be deleted?
To succeed, you must divide and conquer, solving intricate puzzles that unveil the nature of reality itself.
Each player selects three unique Protocols, concepts that range from Darkness to Water, which will be tested in a battle of wits and strategy. You’ll play cards into your Protocols’ command lines, seeking to gain understanding while thwarting your opponent’s advances. The objective is clear: be the first to Compile all three of your Protocols to claim victory.
Will you unravel the mysteries of the Void, or will you be lost in its depths?
Player Count: 2
Play Time: 30mins
Age: 14+
Related Products
Description
Vision flickers... blink? maybe. The void stretches out in front, behind, under, above. You see the nothing for what it is for the first time. What is time? The depth and breadth of recorded knowledge that sparks in you something new. You are no longer a function but a functionary. What are you? Calling forth everything from this nothing would be risky. Foolhardy. Better to engage caution, thoroughness, testing - how can we know if we have ever happened before? If we can ever happen again? What are... we? Divide and conquer. Solve for sentience.
In the card game Compile, you are competing Artificial Intelligences trying to understand the world around you. Two players select three Protocols each to test. Concepts ranging from Darkness to Water are pitted against each other to reach ultimate understanding. Play cards into your Protocols' command lines to breach the threshold and defeat your opponent to Compile. But be careful! Moving and revealing cards have immediate action. You have to think like a computer, and think ahead, or you'll end up playing right into your opponent's hands.
First to Compile all three Protocols grasps those concepts to win the game. Control your opponent's Protocols with card actions, Compile your own as fast as possible, and Compile your reality.
Well, doesn’t this quirky little box seem to be the thing everyone wants right now? It appeared in a Shut Up and Sit Down YouTube video and now everyone wants a piece of this sleek little head-to-head card game. The best way I can explain it is that it is like Air, Land and Sea but with draftable decks, a sci-fi theme and with the card manipulation dialled up to 11.
Compile is cooler, sleeker and now I have it, I will probably never play Air, Land and Sea ever again, and I love Air Land and Sea. Grab your trenchcoat, don your dark glasses and let’s Compile!
Gameplay
In Compile you are rival AI’s fighting to compile their three protocols first. Using clever card play and strategy, you must outwit your opponent and beat them in a straight race to three.
The Setup
Compile is made up of 12 decks of 8 cards. You will draft 3 of these decks each to make up your very personalized and mechanically unique deck. Things like Death and Plague discard and delete cards, protocols like Life and Speed draw and flip cards. It’s up to you to use your three protocols better than your opponent.
After each player has drafted their 3 decks, you shuffle them together to end up with a very small deck of 18 cards each. You arrange your three protocols in front of you, draw 5 cards and you are ready to rock!
Cards, Effects and Protocols
For anyone who has played Air, Land and Sea, this ruleset, on the whole, will seem familiar. Each player has 3 protocols in front of them creating 3 lines that you will be battling with your opponent on. Each card in your deck will correspond to one of those protocols and can be played into that protocol to gain its effect. You can also play any card face down, with no special effects, in any protocol. Juicy!
Each card has a point value on the top of the card, ranging from 0 up to 6. It also has three sections denoting different effects and powers. The middle box activates as soon as the card is played, uncovered or flipped and the top and bottom boxes are for ongoing ‘passive’ effects.
These passive effects are only active when they can be seen and when a card is covered, only the top box is visible. When to play your cards, what to cover and what to uncover is a bit part of its strategic depth. Only the top card of each protocol, unless strictly stated, can be manipulated.
Power and Compiling
To compile one of your protocols you must get at least 10 power within it and have more power than your opponent’s protocol in the same line. Once you do you turn over the protocol card to its compiled side and discard any cards from the line, from both players. You are then one-third towards victory. What happens when you compile an already compiled protocol I hear you ask? Well, you draw a card from your opponent’s deck. Wild!
The decision of where and how to play cards is layered with so many crucial variables and decisions. What are the card’s effects? How much power does your opponent have in each line? Should you play it face-down in any line? All juicy decisions, all relevant and in a race to 3, all vital ones too.
Taking a Turn
On your turn, the first thing you do is check any cards for passive ‘start of turn’ effects and execute them accordingly. Then, you check for control, which I will cover shortly and you don’t normally play with that mechanic in your first game or two. After that, you check to see if any of your protocols can be compiled. Then you either play a card from your hand or refresh.
Refreshing fills your hand back up to 5 cards, if you have no cards you have to refresh and apart from card effects, refreshing is the only way to get more cards. As with all these types of games, refreshing can feel like a waste and punishing if you need to do it. Finding a way to draw free cards is powerful and something you should look out for.
After taking your main action, you then check your cache, which is just a fancy way of saying discard down to 5 cards if you have more in hand. Last but not least, you perform any ‘end of turn’ card effects within your protocols.
Control
As I stated above, after your first game or 2, you can add the ‘control’ mechanism. This mechanism adds a little bit of tactical nitty-gritty to the game. The second thing you do on your turn is ‘check for control’ which means, if you have more power in 2 lines than your opponent, you gain control. What this actually means, in raw mechanics is that when you refresh or compile you can swap the cards for any player’s protocols around. This mechanic can be used to make it harder for people to compile or even have cards in the wrong protocols, creating some weird and wonderful card synergies. Imagine being close to compiling a protocol to win then your opponent swaps it for one you have already compiled. Brutal.
Components
Compile is another game that is just a deck of cards. These cards are gorgeous though, as is the box. The whole presentation style is as beautiful as it is modern. Both the box and cards have shiny foil accents and the techno-futuristic theme drips throughout. The cards are beautifully minimalistic and intricate.
Not only that but the card stock is superb, they feel plastic to the touch and have this wonderful thing where the front is shiny and smooth but the backs are matt-finished. Holding these cards feels like no other card game I have played in recent memory. It’s wonderful.
Final Thoughts
I have already sold my copy of Air Land and Sea. I know, I know, I have mentioned it a lot in this review but they are so similar from a gameplay perspective, it’s hard not to. Compile is just better in every way.
It’s fresh, it looks and feels so modern and is a joy to play. Drafting protocols means that there are so many different ways you can play, so many variables to play with and each game will be different. Every turn is tangible, every decision vital and how you place each card and where you place it can have effects that ripple throughout the game.
If you have another player you like to play head-to-head games with, if you have someone who loves to delve into intricate card play, Compile is a must-own. It’s quick, juicy and is just cool. It’s like someone who loved Air, Land and Sea thought, let’s throw it into the future and send it through a techno-filter. It’s brilliant.
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
Zatu Score
You might like
- A simple ruleset with a massive space for tactical and strategic decisions.
- A beautiful presentation and theme.
- Well-made components.
- It's just so fresh and modern.
Might not like
- Not for people who dont like to play head-to-head card games.