Altered is poised to change the TCG landscape forever… or flop spectacularly

Altered is a new trading card game so full of interesting innovations that it could be the beginning of a new era for trading card games. Or it could flop spectacularly. At its core, Altered — which hit Kickstarter in February with a record-breaking $6.7 million campaign — arrives in stores in the United States on September 13. It evokes the same kind of fast-paced gameplay as Star Wars: Unlimitedwith the bright and cheerful vibes of Disney LorcanaIt also offers some unique improvements to the main play mode, giving players more time to think about each turn.

But what makes the TCG so enticing is how it introduces several potentially paradigm-shifting innovations in the way the cards are produced, printed, and distributed, all built around a free companion app with a direct-to-consumer print-on-demand system. The result is a game that stands out from a sea of ​​competitors all chasing a fraction of the popularity Magic: The Gathering or Pokémon Trading Card Game assignments, something truly new in an increasingly crowded field of high-profile intellectual property.

The main themes of Altered its exploration and innovation, which are the antithesis of similar games focused on conflict and conquest. Players take on the role of a hero from one of six factions, each representing a different facet of a post-apocalyptic society. After a magical storm known as the Confluence swept across the planet, the imaginary began to leak into the real world. Altered‘s factions, including Lawgivers, Artists, and Engineers, have rebuilt human society around the peninsula of Asgartha. Now, after 500 years of isolation, the six factions send expeditions into the wilderness to see what lies beyond the mysterious Tumult beyond their home.

The Tumult itself exists on the table between the players as a series of cards that are drawn at random to form a single row of five cards. Starting with one on each side of that row of cards, the goal of the game is to get your hero and his companion together on the same card before your opponent. Like the planeswalkers in Magic: The GatheringEach hero and companion pair has its own distinct style. Each hero and companion has a unique skill that syncs with their faction’s overall ethos, but also provides for individual strategy. Drone-maker Sierra and Oddball specialize in robot creation, while engineers Treyst and Rossum collect scrap to eventually gain additional abilities. Tactical Sigismar and his griffin Wingspan gather troops, while diplomat Waru and his companion Mack benefit from introducing Bureaucrats into the game. While each faction offers its own approach to exploration, each individual hero and companion also offers more variations of play and potential deck builds.

The characters and the world of Altered are bright and colorful, with some taken directly from the public domain. Amelia Earhart is a character in the Equinox faction, as are the Three Little Pigs and Dr. Frankenstein. The aesthetic is a deliberate choice, meant to remind players that they are explorers of the unknown rather than warriors. Think Star Trek: Strange New Worlds instead of the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. And while there are some warrior-style characters, they’re all focused on fighting the bigger threats in the uncharted wilderness, rather than each other.

Because the game is a race rather than a war of attrition like other trading card games, strategy comes down to whether you should focus your energy and resources on both expeditions—burning the candle at both ends—or trying to overwhelm an opponent on one specific side of the board. Normally, it’s not too difficult to advance at least one expedition during a round, but the key to victory seems to be knowing when to steal both sides of the board instead of just one.

The council is in Altered is generally volatile, as the characters that appear in an expedition are driven by the power of imagination, though cards do not necessarily disappear from play at the end of the round. Instead, players can choose to discard character cards into a reserve area when they are shuffled from an expedition, allowing them to be replayed a second time. Using the reserve adds an extra layer of strategy to the game, not only because players can redeploy characters they have already used, but also because some cards have abilities that are only activated when they are played or removed from the reserve.

Any modern trading card game must cater to the kind of viral collectibility that drives sales of ever-increasing sets of slightly different cards. Altered‘s solution to that need is that every pack you crack has the potential to contain a unique card, a one-of-one variant that only one person can ever own. To achieve this, Altered has three different rarities for each card. For example, Amelia Earhart’s common version has no abilities, but the rare version gets a slight numeric boost, making it more desirable. It also gets a slightly improved art treatment. Other, easier-to-find variants could flip Earhart’s faction, making her legal to play in other decks. But players will also find unique cards, one-of-a-kind variants with stats and abilities not found on any other version of that card. That means each set has the potential to contain not just one Ring of Power, but dozens. Will those cards be mechanically compelling? That’s up to the community to decide, but the potential for another Black Lotus to appear organically is already built in.

And when that unique collectible card goes up for sale, its provenance is irrefutable. That’s because players register their cards via a QR code when they open packs. They can then trade or sell the rights to those cards through the app. If you own the rights to a card (and remember, none of this is blockchain related), Equinox has a service where you can print the card on demand, and you can even use foilers from packs to give it a bit of that signature TCG bling. But each card is essentially a proxy. The cards are essentially meaningless, because everyone’s collection literally lives in the app and can be traded, bought, sold, or reprinted at any time. Also of note, the publisher gets a cut of every sale. It will be interesting to see how the community responds to that reality in practice, and how the technology itself holds up under stress.

Altered comes with a lot of buzz and largely delivers. The gameplay feels different enough from other trading card games that it doesn’t feel like a clone of a more popular game, the print-on-demand system could be a game-changing innovation, and I really like that your turn is never limited to drawing a single card from the top of your deck and playing it. While the health of the game seems a bit too app-dependent, the technology behind it seems miles better than other “official” apps for other games. If you’re a longtime TCG fan who’s bored with some of the old standbys or a card game novice who’s intimidated by the rigid metagames and expensive entry points of perennially popular games, Altered might be something for you.

Altered is available at local game stores and online via Asmodee. The game was reviewed using Equinox retail products. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.