Millennium Blades

The next day, after cramming all of the week’s chores into one heroic montage—with the Flash soundtrack playing in my head, naturally—we gathered with friends for one of our rare, modest board-game tasting nights. I put Millennium Blades on the table first. I had not played it in a while, but mostly I could not resist the honest bit of mischief: I have known these people since we played competitive Magic in the 1990s. Its theme was not merely fitting, then; it felt like a personal invitation to travel back in time.

Millennium Blades builds its experience around collecting cards and making sets, with the feeling of a competitive card game constantly in the background. In our session, I also got to see many of the sets from the set rotation for the first time, which kept the table interesting even for me, returning to the game after a while away.

The interaction mainly comes from everyone pursuing things within the same competitive space and trying to make the best use of what they have in front of them. For a group with old competitive Magic in its shared history, that foundation worked as a lovely point of reference: familiar enough to spark immediate teasing, yet with enough of its own character that it did not feel like a mere reenactment of an old habit.

Overall, the game went well and, as almost traditionally happens when I bring it out, it appealed to about 80% of the table. It was not a universal success: one person in five did not get the point and did not particularly enjoy it. Still, for this group and this occasion, Millennium Blades was exactly the right choice—part game, part memory, and a very fair little prank.