Vs. System 2PCG: AEW

It was a sinful night when I dug VS. System back out and pushed another victim into spending money. Two recent purchases, AEW with its wrestlers and The Boys, were the excuse, and the result was ten games across the lot. AEW’s wrestling theme still gets a laugh out of me, but the box primarily works as the gentlest introductory door into the system.

AEW is standalone, and its average deck has roughly one third of the rules and icons found in the other versions. That makes the explanation a five-minute job: set up the game, show the basics, and within half an hour the person across from me is already playing competitively. It is exactly the sort of box I can use to warm someone up before throwing them into the deep end of VS.

That simplicity has a price, though. In AEW, games are fairly brutal and snowballing shows up more easily, so the experience ends up feeling a little bland and plain. The Boys is more polished: it offers somewhat deeper deckbuilding and produces better games, with more to consider as I build and play my deck.

Still, once my opponent was warmed up, I took them to The Marvel Battles—and that is where the proper mayhem happens. It admittedly helps that I own around 2,000 different cards and some fifteen “tournament-style” decks, but it also helps that the Marvel theme is the one that created this game. AEW and The Boys offer very good value for money, as I have come to expect from the line; I only wish there were more people, and more time, to play them more often.