Altered is a new trading card game so jam-packed with interesting innovations that it could lead to the beginning of a new era for trading card games. Or it could bomb spectacularly. At its core, Altered — which hit Kickstarter in February with a record-shattering $6.7 million campaign — arrives at retail here in the United States on Sept. 13. It evokes the same kind of fast-paced gameplay as Star Wars: Unlimited, with the bright and cheerful vibes of Disney Lorcana. It also offers several unique wrinkles in its primary mode of play that give players more to think about each turn.
But what makes the TCG so tempting is how it introduces several potentially paradigm-changing innovations in how its cards are manufactured, printed, and distributed, all built around a free companion app with a direct-to-consumer print-on-demand system. The result is a game that stands apart from a sea of competitors all chasing a fraction of the popularity Magic: The Gathering or Pokémon Trading Card Game commands, something truly novel in an increasingly crowded field bloated by high-profile intellectual properties.
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The main themes of Altered are exploration and innovation, which stand in direct opposition to similar games that are focused on conflict and conquest. Players take on the role of a hero from one of six factions, each representing a different facet of a post-apocalyptic society. After a magical storm known as the Confluence raged across the planet, the imaginary began to leak into the real world. Altered’s factions, which include lawmakers, artists, and engineers, among others, have rebuilt human society around the peninsula of Asgartha. Now, after 500 years of isolation, the six factions are sending expeditions into the wild to see what lies in the mysterious Tumult outside their home.
The Tumult itself exists on the table between the players as a series of cards randomly pulled to form a single line of five cards. Starting with one on either side of that line of cards, the goal of the game is to bring your hero and their companion together on the same card before your opponent. Just like the planeswalkers in Magic: The Gathering, every hero and companion pair has its own particular style. Each hero and companion has a unique ability that syncs up with their faction’s general ethos, but also provides for individual strategy. The drone-maker Sierra and Oddball specializes in robot creation, while the engineers Treyst and Rossum gathers scrap to eventually gain additional abilities. The tactical Sigismar and his griffon Wingspan rallies troops, while the diplomat Waru and his companion Mack benefits from bringing Bureaucrats into play. Each faction provides its own approach to exploration, but also each individual hero and companion offers more variations of play and potential deck builds.
The characters and world of Altered are bright and colorful, with some pulled straight out of the public domain. Amelia Earhart is a character in the Equinox faction, as are the Three Little Pigs and Dr. Frankenstein. The aesthetics are a deliberate choice, meant to remind the players that they are explorers of the unknown as opposed to warriors. Think Star Trek: Strange New Worlds instead of the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. And while there are some warrior-style characters, they’re all focused on fighting the big threats in the unknown wilds instead of each other.
The game is a race as opposed to a war of attrition.
Because the game is a race as opposed to a war of attrition like in other trading card games, strategy focuses on whether to try to focus energy and resources on both expeditions — effectively burning the candle at both ends — or trying to overwhelm an opponent on one specific side of the board. Typically, it’s not too hard to advance at least one expedition during a round, but the key to victory seems to be knowing when to steal both sides of the board instead of one.
The board state in Altered is generally fleeting, as the characters that appear in an expedition are powered by the power of imagination, although cards don’t necessarily disappear from the game at the end of the round. Instead, players can choose to put character cards into a reserve area as they are shuffled out of an expedition, so they can be replayed a second time. The use of the reserve adds another strategy layer to the game, not only because players can redeploy characters they’ve already used, but also because some cards have abilities that only activate when played or discarded from the reserve.
Any modern trading card game needs to factor in the kind of viral collectibility that will help it sell set after set of slightly different cards. Altered’s solution to that need is that every pack you crack has the potential to contain a singularly unique card, a one-of-one variant that only one person can ever own. To achieve this, Altered has three different grades of rarity for every card. Amelia Earhart’s common version has no abilities, for instance, but its rare version gains a slight numerical boost, making it more desirable. It also gets a slightly upgraded art treatment. Other, more easy-to-find variants might flip Earhart’s faction, making her legal to play in other decks. But players will also find unique cards, one-of-a-kind variants that have stats and abilities that can’t be found on any other version of that card. That means every set has the potential to include not just one Ring of Power, but dozens. Will those cards be mechanically compelling as well? That’s up to the community to decide, but the potential for another Black Lotus to organically appear is baked right in.
And when that one-of-one collectible card goes up for sale, its provenance will be irrefutable. That’s because players register their cards via a QR code as they crack open packs. Then, they can trade or sell the rights to those cards on the app. If you have the rights to a card (and keep in mind, none of this is blockchain-related), Equinox has a service that allows you to print the card on demand, and you can even use foilers from packs to give it a bit of that quintessential TCG bling. But every card is, in effect, a proxy. The cards are effectively meaningless, since everyone’s collection literally lives inside that app and can be traded, bought, sold, or reprinted at will at any time. Also of note is that the publisher gets a cut of every single sale. It will be interesting to see how the community responds to that reality in practice, and how the tech itself holds up under load.
Altered comes with a lot of buzz and lives up to it for the most part. The gameplay feels different enough from other trading card games so that it doesn’t feel like a clone of a more popular game, the print-on-demand system could be a game-changing innovation, and I very much enjoy that your turn will never be limited to pulling one card from the top of your deck and playing it. While the health of the game seems a bit too dependent on the app, the technology behind it seems leagues better than other “official” apps for other games. If you’re a longtime TCG fan bored with some old standbys or are a card game novice who feels intimidated by the rigid metagames and high-cost entry points of the perennial popular games, Altered might be right up your alley.
Altered is available at local game shops and online via Asmodee. The game was reviewed using retail product provided by Equinox. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
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