Duel for Cardia: A Great Two-Player Game that Deserves a Better Name

Those powers, however, can change the outcome of the current battle, future battles, or even past battles, and one even ends the round immediately. The 1 card in the basic deck just cancels the whole battle, discarding the 1 and the opposing card. The 5 forces your opponent to discard two cards from their deck, which can matter if the battle goes far enough until one player has no cards remaining to play. The 8 card gives the player the flag in all tied battles, past or future. And the 16 card makes its player the winner of the round, immediately—but only if that card loses the battle. (That’s possible because there are other cards that let you add tokens increasing or decreasing the value of other cards in the row, or of the next card you play.)

Play continues until one player gets five of those signet rings, someone runs out of cards, or one player wins via the 16 card, giving them a victory in that round. The players then play until one player wins two of three rounds to take the entire game.

The box for Duel for Cardia also comes with two different decks, still numbered one to 16 but with different powers on each card, to play a slightly tougher version; and location cards, which change some fundamental rule in the game, such as adding a victory condition where you win the round if you win three straight battles, requiring you to play different colors (factions) in consecutive rounds, or changing how/when you refresh your hand. They can make the game quite a bit more difficult, and all at least provide some variety, although I wouldn’t touch these until I’d played the base game several times. Duel for Cardia thus is highly customizable; you can use Deck 1 or Deck 2, with or without a location card, and if you’re bold enough you can customize decks by combining cards from the two—as long as both players have the same 16 cards to start each game. It seems tailor-made for an expansion, too.

This style of game has been around forever. I call them capture the flag, Boardgamegeek calls them “lane battlers,” but whatever the title, the format is probably one of the easiest for non-gamers to grasp. Battle Line, by the master designer Reiner Knizia, is still the exemplar of the form, and Hanamikoji, Riftforce, and Air, Land, & Sea are all standouts. Last year’s Dracula vs. Van Helsing is a similar game that’s asymmetrical (as the title implies), which I think is a trickier thing to pull off but that gives me more of a role-playing vibe when it’s done well. Duel for Cardia is pretty high up there in my (personal and highly subjective) rankings of this style of game; the worst thing about it is the silly name. “Uh, we’re fighting with cards … let’s call it Cardia!” A game this good deserves a better title.

Keith Law is the author of The Inside Game and Smart Baseball and a senior baseball writer for The Athletic. You can find his personal blog the dish, covering games, literature, and more, at meadowparty.com/blog.