Introducing Here Be Monsters—Free Demo Decks Ahoy
Well, we've finally arrived. Carson and Phil, the wild talents behind Super Pirate Industries, have created a once-a-year TCG that also has full playsets of every new release. The TCG model and LCG model have, for the first time, been unified.
And there happens to be an outstanding game system driving it all.
Here Be Monsters demo decks are now available on our website ahead of the upcoming Kickstarter campaign, and you only need one deck to support two players via their shared deck format (you can, of course, go head to head with a friend if they also get a deck!). I'll gush about the game a lot more, but if you just want to try it for yourself, you can get right to it.
Get your free Here Be Monsters demo deck, only cost is shipping ->
TCG players, LCG players, board gamers, and everyone in between should absolutely take a look at this game. It's without a doubt the most approachable and most shareable TCG that we carry—and maybe of all time? You can even get non-gamers to willingly play this with you (I know that one first hand).
You start the game with three pirate ships on the table and a hand of cards, and then you trade three-action turns back and forth with your opponent. With these actions you can draw, play pirates onto your ships, or play shanty cards that have wild effects. Each pirate you play adds firepower to your crew, and once your firepower exceeds your opponent's, you can spend an entire turn going after the treasure. If your firepower remains higher by the time you get there, you succeed. Do this twice and you win the game.
That's how easy it is to explain. That's why it's so approachable. It's the kind of game that doesn't cause your friends' eyes to glaze over when you're explaining "just one more rule". It's the kind of game your kids can actually understand (and it's awesome for practicing math). No resources, no keywords, no tapping to attack. Play pirates, get bigger numbers, go get the treasure.
Five minutes later you're stacking modifiers, moving around the firepower tracker, tucking hidden shanties, stringing together absurd synergies...and it dawns on you that you're somehow in this rather intense back and forth fencing match that has you fretting about when it would be best to fire your cannons and blow up one of your opponent's stacked ships.
So yeah, approachable and inviting for sure, but remarkably satisfying and complex even for this crusty old TCG veteran.
The aesthetic of the game layers perfectly on top of the easy-to-grasp mechanics, and I should start by letting you know that Carson does all of the art, and he does it all in Apple Keynote. Yes, Apple Keynote. That doesn't necessarily matter, but it really does give you some insight into the minds taking us on this journey.
I'm not sure what Keynote magic happened here, but the characters are iconic and thematic, the colors are stunning and vibrant, and the universe feels alive and outrageous. They said it best in one of their brand documents we reviewed at the beginning of this process: "If Sorcery reminds you of reading the Hobbit as a kid, we want Here Be Monsters to remind you of watching Saturday Morning Cartoons." -- and they absolutely nailed it. Biker Mice From Mars, anyone? Street Sharks? Pokemon?
The card borders are yellow. And it works. It really, really works.
And then you get to the product design. First of all, you can skip the boosters entirely and just buy a full playset. Or you can buy a few booster boxes and get your playset the classic TCG way, with plenty of alt-arts, foils, and treasure cards along the way.
But the collectibility here—the collectibility is actually revolutionary. They've prioritized effort, fun, and theme over "spend more money". Each pack contains mostly normal cards for your playset, and then three alt-arts and a foil. The number of alt-arts and foils in the set is small enough that you can realistically collect them all without buying a million boxes or holding your nose while checking out on TCGPlayer, and all are flat rarity, which means that there's an equal shot of any appearing in a pack.
That's the setup. The real spice here is that sometimes that foil card is replaced with a Buried Treasure card. A Buried Treasure card has three circles on it, and each contains art from another card in the set. Find the three cards that match the art, package them together with your Buried Treasure card, mail them to Super Pirate Industries, and get one of eight possible special collector cards mailed back to you.
Ridiculous.
Additionally, you'll get other types of Treasure cards through organized play, and apparently those access a whole different slice of special cards that you can receive in the mail.
Oh and there's also secret stuff in the set that will get revealed every few months. Apparently it has to do with the commons.
So yeah, it's a different take on collectibility. If you want the rare cards, you'll need to go on treasure hunts—and that's as much about spending the time to track things down and mail them in is as it is about forking over wads of cash to get the shiny thing. Flat rarity and a reasonable spread of special treatments makes collecting each set actually attainable, and if you want to skip literally all of that and just play the game, you can. This stuff is supposed to be fun, not forced, right?
I haven't even gotten into how good limited play is yet. Their primary unit of sale is the Stowaway Chest which contains six packs. You can take those six packs and build a sealed deck (of course) or you can shuffle them together and play a 2-person, shared deck format that absolutely slaps. How easy it becomes to split a Stowaway Chest with a friend and then jam out entirely unique games—week, after week, after week. It definitely feels like Keyforge Sealed in that way.
Here Be Monsters is bringing a lot of innovation to the table and it's absolutely what is needed right now. They've pushed accessibility to the max, created an entirely fresh and non-derivative game system that is a blast to play, established a charming, over-the-top pirate aesthetic (with Keynote?!), and brought both collectors and non-collectors to the table without exploiting either.
Give it a try with one of their demo decks, and/or check out their Kickstarter to be notified when it goes live! Everyone here at Covenant has played this one a lot, and we're certain it's worth your time.
-Steven