Back when I got into the hobby, there were those who spoke of a strange and mysterious asymmetric card game called Android: Netrunner. Eventually this game was discontinued by the publisher, but that didn’t stop people from homebrewing and keeping the system going strong. It was as if this particular game had a secret club sort of following, almost cult-like in nature, and some seemed religiously devoted to it, while others bemoaned its confusing terminology and complex asymmetry.

I didn’t think about these things when I agreed to review DC Forever. And while I browsed the designer’s credits and noted that he’d worked on a bunch of content for Android Netrunner, I shrugged and thought, “Looks like this could be a fun and snappy two player deck building game. I like deck building. Send it my way!”

Sweet, ignorant little me. Three therapy sessions and a migraine later, I’m here to talk about DC Forever. But fear not, dear reader, what doesn’t kill you, simply makes you… stranger.

DC Forever is an asymmetric deck building game for two players, or four playing on two teams. Listed playtime is 30 minutes, but I found that our plays took longer.

Gameplay Overview:

In DC Forever, one player (or team of two) will take on the role of the Heroes, and the other will play as the Rogues. The game includes iconic as well as slightly lesser-known characters from the DC universe. Players will select four (in the standard two player game) to create their team. Two of these characters will start in play, and the other two are placed in the reserve. Each player will create their starting decks using the starting cards from the two chosen characters, then draw a hand of six cards.

Each round is divided into three stages: The Plotting Stage, the Planning Stage, and the Confrontation Stage.

Characters can attack each other when at the same location.

During the plotting and planning stages, the Rogue player, followed by the Hero player, will be able to recruit new characters, buy cards, use abilities, and play cards. Most cards have a cost, and the cards themselves serve as currency, so players decide which cards will be used for their purchasing power and which they want to put into play. To recruit a new rogue/hero, the player will use cards they’ve put into their resource pool as currency to purchase the character in their reserve they want to recruit. Purchased characters are immediately put into play.

The player can also purchase new cards from the reserve for their in-play characters at this time by paying the cost (some cost nothing) and adding them to their discard pile. During this stage of the game, the Rogue player can also put Scheme cards into play, which are objectives they place at a location, hoping to complete later in order to fulfill their Masterplan.

Heroes have a unique option to empower a character. To do this, they slide a card with a currency (known as fame) value under the character’s card so that only the Fame value is shown. This card can later be spent to trigger a hero’s limited ability.

Some of the playable Rogues in the game.

The Confrontation stage is divided into several phases. The Rogue player acts first. They may activate a character, sending it to one of the three location cards in the center of the table; there, they may either threaten citizens—adding them to scheme cards there, or attack a character. During the attack phase, the players have the opportunity to play Attack Modifiers, which will add to the character’s base attack value.

The hero then takes a turn during which they can rescue citizens by moving tokens from a location card to their personal play area (Sanctuary), and attack enemies. This goes back and forth until both players pass. At the end of the round, players will draw cards and reset exhausted characters.

The game then loops back to the Plotting and Planning phase, followed by another Confrontation stage, until either all of a player’s active heroes are defeated and they lose, or the Roque player wins by completing 5 Schemes, or the Heroes win by rescuing 30 citizens.

The game has lots of potential for different team combos and strategies.

Game Experience:

Summing up gameplay in a few paragraphs was quite a challenge. This game is fraught with keywords and little rules anomalies. The rounds have stages, and the stages have phases, and those phases have different names depending on whether you are the heroes or the rogues. All of that lends to the flavor and theme of this game, but it also makes it confusing.

Added to these already confusing and particular rules is the messy rulebook itself. I don’t know if I have ever read and re-read, and re-read a rulebook so much within such a short span of time. Parsing this manual is like going on a treasure hunt without a map. The information you need is there somewhere, maybe, but you don’t really know where. On my first read-through the rules kept referencing the “Master Plan” and the “Refuge”, but never explained what that actually was, except that it was good for the Rogues to complete their “Masterplan” and the heroes put rescued citizens in the “Sanctuary”.

No OP superheroes here! Their victory is hard earned.

You have to go to the glossary to learn that both places are just a nondescript part of your play area where you put stuff. There were other questions, lots of them, actually, for which I just couldn’t find an answer and had to go to the forums to find. Thankfully, the designer is active on the BGG forums, and I was able to find the answers I needed. I also watched a how-to-play video because I was pretty sure I wasn’t playing it right after the first couple of forays, but really, we had only gotten one or two small things wrong, which we corrected in subsequent plays.

But let me veer away from my issues with the rules for a moment, and talk about the actual game. Honestly, I think there’s a really good game here, but it’s buried under a lot of overhead. Each character is unique, and the dynamic of different heroes versus different rogues will change the feel of the game. There is a lot of depth and replay value in just a box of cards and tokens, oh, and that reminds me, the game really could have used more tokens.

Cards are either played for abilities or added to a resource pool and used for payment.

Just know that getting to the meat of this game is going to take effort and commitment. This is not a game to be taken lightly or played casually. In our first couple of plays, the heroes got absolutely stomped because, on the surface, the rogues are just way stronger. They can complete objectives quickly, while heroes take a while to build up. It takes a few really rough beatings for the heroes to rally and come back stronger, which, I suppose, is thematic if you think about it.

The problem is, it’s just not fun being on the receiving end of that thrashing as the heroes, nor is it fun to completely wipe the floor with your opponent as the rogues. After those initial plays, we started to understand the game better and saw the strategies that worked best for each side, and it did get better, but it never became something I actually enjoyed all that much, and the game lasted much longer than I would have liked. Our plays took 1-2 hours, as opposed to the listed playtime of 30 minutes.

Final Thoughts:

I’m going to be honest, I don’t like this game. At first, I was exceptionally frustrated with the rulebook, which by some oversight, wasn’t even in the box, so I had to read it on PDF. It grew on me slightly over time, and I could at least see what was going on with it and why somebody would like it as we played more.

But I have a whole life to live that doesn’t involve board games, and if I want to commit a bunch of time to learning and playing something, I would at least like the bulk of that experience to be spent actually playing and enjoying the game, without having to reference the rules every three seconds.

But hidden beneath this, I think there is an actual good design, so it took me a while to settle on an opinion. How much will I factor in the issues I had with the rules and the confusing game terminology? To me, that’s all part of the game experience and will definitely be reflected in my final score.

Overall, DC Forever is for those who are ready to commit some time and energy to it and have an opponent who is willing to do the same. I also think it’s for those who have played and enjoyed Android: Netrunner, as the favorable comments I read online seemed mostly to be from such people. There is a lot of depth, and if this were the only game on your shelf, it would keep you occupied for a long time, especially if expansions are added to introduce new characters, which I think would be great for those who like it. Unfortunately, for me, the payout just wasn’t worth all the effort that goes into learning it, and the game felt too bogged down to be enjoyable.

Final Score: 2.5 Stars – Splitting it right down the middle for equal parts good and evil

Hits:
• Deep gameplay
• High replay value

Misses:
• Terrible rulebook
• Confusing terminology
• Lasts much longer than the listed playtime