Compile: Main 1
Designed by: Michael Yang
Compile: Main 1 is a head-to-head game where players are competing artificial intelligences, struggling to make sense of the world around them. Each of you have three distinct Protocols to fulfil, and the first player to do so wins. But as you continue to explore reality, you find each of these concepts: life, death, spirit, and so on, begin to cross over and interfere with each other…
There are seven protocols in the box so before the game starts the players drafts three each and place them into three ‘lanes’ – so each lane has a protocol from both players in ut. Each protocol has a matching deck of cards: you take your three decks and shuffle them into one, before dealing yourself a hand of five.
Every card has a number value, and you complete a protocol when, at the start of your turn, it has cards with a collective value of ten or more assigned to it. How to reach that desired point is, in essence, simple: you can play a card to one of your protocols (they must match, although a card can be played to any protocol face-down for a value of 2), or you can refresh, drawing your hand back up to five cards. If you’re able to compile at the start of a turn, you must: flip the protocol card over to show it’s been compiled, and discard all cards assigned to it, from both players!
What makes the game far more interesting than a race to ten, however, is that almost every card has a special power that activates when played. These can shuffle cards around lanes, flip over revealed or hidden cards, change protocol positions, force opponents to discard and so on: essentially, mess with opponents plans and engineer constant change in the comparative strengths on the board. These actions are, more than the numbers, really where the juice is, as they give Compile a sense of constant flux. The fact you can recompile an already-compiled protocol is also an interesting twist: there’s nothing in it for you but it can be devastating for an opponent to have their cards wiped out at a pivotal moment. There’s also an optional ‘Control Card’ you can bring in after a couple of games that allows players to mess with each other even more by moving opponent protocols around.
Sister game Compile Main 2 brings in new protocols and can be mixed with Main 1 or played alone.
Sam says
There’s a number of games that take this ‘lane battling’ approach (most notably, to my mind, Battle Line) and while I can appreciate them from a design perspective, they’re not a go-to game experience for me. I always feel they’re a little attritional, a little back and forth. Some, however – Air Land and Sea for example – get around this by offering decent twists and a fast play. Compile can be much longer – our first game took over an hour – but I can’t deny there is both huge variety and a really cannily put-together collection of dastardly deeds on these cards. It hasn’t changed my mind or tastes about lane-battlers, but it’s an excellent example of its type.
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Take That!
Plenty
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Fidget Factor!
Reasonably low. Players will need time to compute now and again, but it doesn’t drag.
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Brain Burn!
Very situational and reactive, with the landscape constantly changing. The rules, however, shouldn’t bewilder anyone after you’ve played a couple of games.
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Again Again!
With seven protocols and over thirty ways to combine them, you have variety right out of the gate. Bring on the unique powers and, while this will always be a battle of special powers, regular play will offer insight on unique combinations as well.
