Altered

The Game

Altered is a CCG (collectible card game) released in 2024. It is a two player head-to-head game. In typical CCG’s you fight to the death. Not so in Altered. Each player has two characters, a hero and a companion. They start at opposite ends of a track. Your goal is to help them advance until they meet. Your opponent is doing the same, and whoever makes hero and companion meet first wins. 

During a round of play, you take turns playing cards until both players pass. Playing cards usually requires spending mana. At the start of the game you must pick two of your hand cards to become mana generators. Such cards generate mana every round. At the start of every round you have the option of setting aside one more card to be a mana generator. You will be permanently increasing your mana pool. This is important because you want to be able to play more cards and also play more powerful cards.

Cards played give you strength in three different elements. The location of a character tells you which elements they need to be strong in to allow them to advance. For that element, they need to be stronger than the opponent’s equivalent character in order to advance. A location may have two or even three elements. You only need to be stronger in one of these elements to advance. Your character and your opponent’s might not be at the same location, so they might might need different elements to advance. When they are at the same location, if the location has two or more elements, they might both advance due to each being stronger in a different element. 

Since you have a hero and a companion, when you play a card, you have to decide who to play it for. At the end of a round, cards played leave the play area and go to a reserve area. Hero and companion strengths are reset. Cards in your reserve area are open information. You can play them again, but after that they will leave the game instead of going to the reserve. The cost to play a card from reserve can be different. You can see what cards are in your opponent’s reserve, and this is something you need to defend against. 

Your deck has a hero card, and it defines a special ability for the whole game. When you customise your deck you’d want to utilise well this special ability. 

The Play

This is a race game. If you play perfectly and both your characters advance every round, they will meet in Round 4. Although the premise is less gruesome than typical CCG’s, it doesn’t mean this is a “nicer” game. You are not only trying to advance, you should also be trying to stop your opponent from advancing. 

Strengths are reset every round. It is important to manage your resources for long term success. You need to manage your mana pool. In the early game you will likely be adding a card as mana every round, and then at some point you’ll feel it’s enough. However there are no hard and fast rules. Depending on the situation you might choose to do something out of normal. The cards you have is also a resource to manage. You need to know when and where to play them, and when to conserve them. 

I played against Han on BoardGameArena.com. This seems to be a popular thing to do now - make a game available for free on BoardGameArena to get it lots of exposure and to get people excited to buy it. Gameplay is smooth and straightforward. I did not really inspect my deck before I played, nor was I familiar with Han’s deck, so I have not actually explored the meta game, which should be the most interesting aspect of a CCG. I only tried the core mechanism. The game felt less directly confrontational, but it is still pretty competitive. You have two characters to advance. Resources feel limited and you have to make hard decisions. One dilemma you will sometimes have is whether to do something that helps your character advance, to do something to stop your opponent’s character from advancing. That’s choosing between rushing and stalling while building up strength. 

The Thoughts

I am not a CCG person so I am probably not doing this game justice. Altered introduces a few novel ideas. At the moment it feels more or less like other CCG’s. There is the growing mana pool which creates that feeling of escalation. I imagine a big part of the fun is in the deck building and the meta game. You will enjoy this more if you have a group of opponents to play with regularly. 

The good news is you can try the game for free on BoardGameArena.com and you can experience several starter decks.