So, Aidalee has been pushing me to watch “My Little Pony” ever since she moved in eight years ago. She even tried to hook me by telling me that John de Lancie voiced Discord, a omnipotent semi-villain that took its inspirations from “Q” in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In exchange for watching Lord of the Rings I agreed to watch a few episodes. It was…tolerable…and charming in its own way. Needless to say Aidalee squealed when she heard that I was being sent a copy of this title, courtesy of the kind folks over at Renegade Games.
1-4 Players, Ages 14+, Average Play Time = 45 Minutes
Overview
“My Little Pony: Adventures in Equestria Deck-Building Game”, henceforth known as “MLP: AiE” to ease my tendonitis, is a cooperative deck-builder that tasks players with completing three hurdles and a final challenge in order to win the game. Players lose collectively if they take too long to complete these, represented by “cloud cover tokens” that build up on these events.
Players can play as their favorite Ponies, including Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie. I’m semi-ashamed to admit that I didn’t know who to pick so I took an oh-so-reliable online quiz. Apparently I’m Fluttershy followed closely by Applejack, though I picked Twilight Sparkle because she’s the leader and has brains (so I’m told). Besides, it’s like playing Star Trek without picking Captain Kirk / Picard…there had to be some leadership representation, right? Each Pony has their own ability that they can activate / exhaust, then later pay resources to refresh / make ready for a future turn.
Like a typical deck-builder, players will be playing cards from their hands to generate temporary resources. Unlike a typical deck-builder, these resources (move, info, help, and various sugar cube colors) can be spent to not only buy cards from a purchase row to add to your ever-growing deck, but to move your Pony to different locations and activating tasks there. Acquired cards go into that player’s discard pile to be shuffled into a new player deck later, ensuring that they come up in the future.
Ultimately it’s about working together to conquer three hurdles and one final challenge before the final challenge reaches its cloud cover limit. These cards have resource requirements on them, mainly sugar cubes of particular colors, so you partially know what you’ll need when you attempt to beat a hurdle or the final challenge. However, when attempting one, you have to draw one or two more hurdle cards and look at their “chaos” text to see what other resources you’ll need. Luckily, other players can help in the event you’re coming up short.
Review
“MLP: AiE” isn’t your typical deck builder, and I’ve come to expect that from games published by Renegade Games. The “Power Rangers Deck Building Game” was incredibly complex for a deck-builder, for example. With that title, I appreciated it’s depth even though it tired me out. “MLP: AiE” is less complex, thankfully, and fully cooperative. There’s even an easy to follow solo variant, though the game is fairly customizable if you’re the type of person to introduce your own home-brewed rules.
While most deck-builders award temporary resources that you can spend on your turn only, you’ll sometimes be able to get resource tokens (move, help, info) that can be saved for future turns. Sugar cubes (knowledge, work, friendship) are also saved from turn to turn, giving me more to think about when acquiring cards for their inherent “when played” abilities.
It’s hard for me to compare this game’s theme to the show…I had to take Aidalee’s word for it. She gleefully looked through the cards, calling them cute, and even called out characters and situations that I didn’t recognize. I know her well enough to say that the fan service is present here and this is not just another copy/paste. Putting Star Trek pictures on an existing card game without changing the original card text is sheer laziness, for example. The game oozes theme and Aidalee is most pleased with all of it.
I appreciate that you can customize the three card hurdle deck and the difficulty of the Final Challenge. Hurdles come in three difficulties (1,2,3) and while you’re supposed to use one from each, you can make the game easier or harder by using cards from the same difficulty deck. There are also optional “situation” cards that you can add to the deck of purchase cards that add cloud cover when revealed and left unresolved. You can add all of them, choose to include a few, or leave them out of your game entirely. Or…you can have more or less than three hurdles if you so desire.
My biggest concern is the price tag…$45.00 on the Renegade website…is a bit much for my liking. I get that prices are going up everywhere in today’s economy, but I own several games around the same price that contain a lot more content. I’m sure the licensing cost had something to do with it. My other complaint stems from the likeness of the blue and green sugar cubes…they just look too identical to distinguish. This goes for both the cards they appear on as well as the actual cubes themselves.
Aidalee had a bit of trouble on our first game, feeling inadequate almost all the way through. By the time she got going, the game was nearly over as I had to address most of the hurdles and the Final Challenge myself due to the ticking clock. While not in the rules, I plan to incorporate a way to slow down the buildup of cloud cover so that she has more time to build her deck how she likes and feel satisfied playing a bunch of powerful cards all at once.
While we don’t own them, there are several expansions should you need to add more content to the base game. The base game is full of friendship, cuteness, and cooperation so I can’t imagine the expansions being any different. While playing a game with a “My Little Pony” theme would not be my first choice, the fact that it’s cooperative and easy to get into makes me suspect it’ll be on the table again in the future.
Buy: https://renegadegamestudios.com/my-little-pony-adventures-in-equestria-deck-building-game/
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Score: 8/10 (Great)
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