How To Play Tag Team

Tag Team is an autobattler game. What that means in this case is you flip cards and those cards do affects. Your goal is to knock out one of the other players fighters before they knock out one of yours. But let’s talk a little bit more about how that works.

The Fighters

Each player is going to get two fighters. These fighters offer different ways to play the game. Some are more support characters while others are damage dealers. You pick your fighters in a few different ways. One is to just randomly assign or assign “starting” difficulty characters.

The other ways are drafting. You may draft the simple or competitive way. In the simple draft you select one character from your hand of cards and then swap with your opponent and select another character there. The competitive way is to select like before and then discard a character. Then you swap hands and select a new character.

Combat

Combat is simple, you create your deck or two cards to start and you put them in an order you choose. You each flip your first card and do what that says. Then you flip the next card and do what that says. And that is how combat works.

Between Combat Rounds

The meat of the game is in the choice here between combat rounds. Between rounds you draw from your action deck. The action deck consists of the non-starting cards for your two characters. You draw three of those cards and you select one to add to your deck.

When you add a card to your deck it must slot into the deck as it already is. So when you pick your third card, after the first combat phase, you can put it on top, between the two cards, or the bottom of the deck. This is because the deck never gets shuffled, so the order is maintained between rounds. The only way to change up the order of your deck is where you slot the new card in, and that changes it in comparison to your opponents deck possibly.

What Doesn’t Work

The decision space is limited. I think that is going to be a negative for some people. Mainly because the decision space is also based off of imperfect information. I know what and where you cards are from the previous round. I don’t know where you might add something in. So if you play a strong attack, I might move to block it, but you can play a card above it to push it down further. So it feels like guess work, or it might to some.

What Works

Firstly, I want to talk about the characters. This is like Dice Throne in that each character is going to be different. And like Dice Throne there are going to be elements that might feel similar between characters. It’s about blocking and attacking at the right time. So yes, that is something that exists in all decks. But each character is going to have a little twist on it. I plan to do my ranking of all the characters in the future. I want to do that because the characters are different.

The ease to the table is also great for the game. Every card does a good job of explaining what is on the card. So while they give you a little booklet to learn about the characters, that is not needed when you play. All the information to play the characters is on the card as you flip it. And they do this with text and symbols. So I use the text as a learn a character and then symbols after that because it’s faster.

I like the decision space a lot as well in the game. It is a fun head game to try and figure out where you place a new card into your deck. I know that you know I know where you best attack is, so you move it one lower. But I know that you know so you are going to adjust it so I adjust where I place my defensive new card. Unless of course you try and trick me and don’t adjust it.

Finally the speed of the game is great. It is fast to get to the table and it is fast to play. I think it is one that I rarely will ever play one match-up in a sitting.

Who Is Tag Team For?

I think Tag Team is for people who like a good head to head game. When you play it, it’s easy to learn and easy to play, so it’s a good one to play with people who like lighter games. I also think that it’s a great game for people who often want to play a game but find they only have a short time. It has good moments in the game as you block a big attack or sneak one through, but it is also really fast, so you can play multiple times in a sitting.

Tag Team Grade and Final Thoughts

I really like this game. I think that Tag Team works as a fast battling game to the point where it is going to likely get played more than Dice Throne. Now I love Dice Throne because there are more decisions to make in the game. But I thought that an autobattler could maybe only kind of work. But it is a game that works really well.

I think the big reason that it works so well is the different characters. Each one feels different and you need to plan out how you add cards and how you plan in the game. And it is so fast of a game. I think we played two games in person last night and it was maybe 10-15 minutes tops for each battle. The second was faster than the first even with more complex characters. It is going to go high in my Top 100 next year if I keep on playing it a lot because it’s that good.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B-
Casual Grade: A
Strategy (out of 10): 4
Luck (out of 10): 5

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How To Play Turing Machine

Turing Machine is a game where players compete to complete a three digit code. There are specific scenarios that you can do in the rule book. Or there is an app that has a ton more including daily challenges you can do for yourself.

So how does this work? Well, each player in secret creates a three digit code. Then they compare that against three (or fewer) of the criteria. Based off of the results, whether is passes or fails the criteria, someone either guesses or you keep going and create new numbers. The person who can solve the puzzle in the fewest rounds and queries is the winner.

So How Does It Work?

When you create a number you take some tiles. These tiles correspond with the number and color. You start by layering your first number on the bottom and stack up from there. Then you take the criteria card and flip it over so that the back side is on on the back of your number. It will show you a single opening which is going to correspond to a true or false assertion.

Which now asks, what are those assertions? It might be something like, the purple number is even or odd. Or it could be, there is a pair or numbers in the number, true or false. Now those both are very binary in nature. Either it is true that there is a pair of matching numbers or not. But others might be more complex. Is the yellow number greater than purple and blue, or is purple greater than yellow or blue, or is blue greater than purple or yellow. That has three options. So when you check, you know if only one of those is true or false, the one you are testing for based on your number.

Deduction and Guessing

As you test things you start to eliminate numbers and options as you go. The order is always the same as to what color number is first. And the rules will always let you nail down a single option. One of the big learning elements of the game is about figuring out how to create numbers that maybe make a certain assertion irrelevant because you figure out that answer another way.

When you decide that you know it, you get a guess. If you make your guess you complete it. If multiple people guess on the same round of the game, you check and see who completed it in the fewest number of checks. And if it is the same, both people tie.

What Doesn’t Work

I got nothing for this section. But the possible negative for the game going to be talked about in who it is for. Because it’s not really a negative, it is just important information.

What Works

The quality of the system is great. Now I only have played it on BGA, so I don’t own it, yet. But it is one that I want to get. And I want to get it because it is slick how it sets up and how you can play. They do a good job of making everything clear for setting up a puzzle without giving anything away.

That leads into ease of play. Being able to grab a scenario from online at the difficulty that you want is great. And it can go from standard, to harder to extremely hard depending on what parameters you put it. But no matter the difficulty level they make it easy to set-up.

I appreciate the changing difficulty levels as well. It really let’s me puzzle through at the level I want for a given play of the game. And it definitely does ramp up the challenge. I know people who would quickly be up for the challenges at the higher level. I also know people who would probably never want to move up to a higher level. Or at least it would take a while. So I like that selecting the level.

Who is Turing Machine For?

This is a hard logic puzzle. This doesn’t mean that it’s hard, per se. What is means is that there is nothing more than logic in the game. If you don’t like just sitting down and puzzling out what is happening this game is not for you. And it is a brain burner. I think it is a game that some people will know they won’t like. I think it is a game that after playing once you know if you like it or not as well.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Turing Machine

I find that I enjoy this game a lot. Turing Machine is a lot of fun, in doses. Now, I think I want to own a copy of it. Mainly because I want to, when I have an office space, set it up and leave it set-up so I can play the daily puzzle every day. And once in a while I might take it down to play with others, but it’d be a good brain burner to start a day with.

That said, I also know that this is not a game for everyone. So as I think about adding it to my collection, it is more about adding it for myself versus adding it to play with others. It is a great puzzle and thinky game. The downside is that it is purely a game where you are doing logic and deduction. It is great for some people and horrible for others, it just depends on how your mind works. And for me, I can make it work.

My Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: A or F
Casual Grade: A or F
Strategy (out of 10) – think logic: 9
Luck (out of 10): 0

Obviously a note on that gamer and casual grade. This is not a game that distinguishes between gamers or non-gamers. You might be better off being a gamer to learn the rules. But if you love a good logic puzzle but aren’t a gamer, you might love this game. If you are a gamer but you hate logic puzzles you won’t like this game. It is hard to give a grade beyond how much I like it, which is quite a lot.

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