I gave collectible card games a good try. Several years ago some friends and I put together a small league of Magic: the Gathering, and we had a really fun time. But it fizzled out after less than a year. I also invested (then divested) myself of at least two or three of Fantasy Flight’s Living Card Games. I got a fair bit of mileage out of the Star Wars one in particular. But once again when I lost interest I ran far in the other direction. In both cases the problem wasn’t so much the cost, since I was managing that about as well as could be expected. It was more an issue that I didn’t want to deal with the game when I wasn’t actually playing it. I didn’t like having to think in the abstract about what impact cards would have on my decks. I just don’t function that way; I do far better with playing and seeing game effects in person.
Yet I find the idea of CCG gameplay compelling. The combo-heavy, in-your-face flow of most CCGs is intoxicating to me. The way individual cards can destabilize the whole game is really fun. A lot of people feel this way, so it’s small wonder that a lot of two-player card games have tried to recreate this feeling in a single box. Some have done better than others, but none I’ve played have succeeded in quit the same way as Omen: A Reign of War. It’s not a CCG at all, but it checks a lot of the same boxes for me.
Designed by John Clowdus and originally published in 2011 by Small Box Games, Omen is a two-player card game where players vie for influence over three cities. On your turn you can send out units to give your side more strength, and if a certain threshold is hit between the two sides the city gives a reward to the stronger player. There are five kinds of units: Warriors, which trigger an ability when they come into play; Oracles, which trigger every round in a specific phase; Beasts, stronger units that can be discarded for a strong effect; Spirits, who provide one of two effects when played, or both if you spend the money; and Heroes, who can swing a specific battle but are worth points if they go unplayed in your hand. The big tension of the game is managing your hand while also making sure you can generate enough coin to put cards in play effectively. There’s also a subsystem of what amount to achievements, and bonuses generated by rewards taken from cities.
Omen comes in a lot of forms and playstyles (probably too many, as we’ll see in a moment), but in broad strokes the game always comes down to the tug of war for the three cities, and the race to make those achievements. Either system can trigger the end of the game, so there are a few options for how players can rush to the end. The cards are all various levels of overpowered, able to unbalance any situation in just about any turn. There’s very little keeping a player from exploring a “broken” combo here, because there is almost certainly another combo the other player can pull off that will send the game off the rails in the opposite direction.
This ties into the two things I love about Omen the most. First of all, this is a game that allows flexibility. You might be behind in one way or another, but it feels like you’re always one good card away from jumping back in the game. That flexibility leads into my other favorite thing about Omen, it’s propensity to create “bomb” moves. By “bombs” I mean those turns where you chain together numerous cards to create a knock-out punch that can leave your opponent reeling. There’s a lot of drama packed into a game of Omen, making it a highly addictive experience. I almost always want to shuffle the cards and go again after finishing a game.
The setting of the game is broadly one of Greek mythology, though it’s not reflected that well in the actual design. The players theoretically are sons of Zeus vying for rulership of Greek cities, but it’s largely an excuse to pit two largely similar sides against each other. There are a lot of creatures from Greek mythology that make an appearance, and even though they all have unique powers a lot of them seem to be named somewhat arbitrarily. This can make it a little hard to learn the game, because although the cards all have very different effects they aren’t always very distinct from each other thematically. In your first few games you might have a hard time telling apart the Keeper of the Tides from the Shadow Sculptor. One place where that Greek setting is expressed really well is in the illustrations, which all share a sort of ethereal darkness. Through all the different iterations of Omen, the artwork has been uniformly great. Rather than making everything look polished and heroic, the figures look weird and a little grotesque, particularly the beasts. It lends the game a more otherworldly vibe that a straight Greek mythology theme might otherwise lack.
For a game published about eight years ago, Omen has seen a staggering number of editions and spin-offs. Early versions of the game had much larger decks, because every card had multiple copies. This made for a much more volatile experience. The whole thing was a bit longer and a bit more swingy. Beginning around 2014, newer editions reduced this to a single copy of each card, adding in Spirits and Heroes, which were originally expansion content. This made a somewhat more stable setting, and one that I think is generally positive. If you find the game today odds are good this is what you’ll get. These versions can be hard to track with, given the spotty availability of many of John Clowdus’s games. The newest edition is thankfully in mainstream distribution channels, since it is now published by Kolossal Games. In addition to the edition confusion, there are a couple of spin-off games as well. The only one of these I’ve played is the much-condensed (and excellent) Edge of the Aegean, but there is also Fires in the East, and Heir to the Dunes on its way next year.
All of this can be very confusing, and if I have any serious criticism of Omen as a product it’s that this endless churn of editions and versions has made the game much harder to get into than is necessary. But even if there were only one edition, Omen (at least Reign of War) sets itself apart through its sheer versatility. Every version has some form of draft or deckbuilding play in the rules, and this is a great way to play for people who want to pull the game a little closer to the constructed play of classic collectible card games. This is a great test of skill for those who want to do it, because it rewards knowledge of the deck and of the way cards interact. I tend to prefer playing from a common deck, but both ways are outstanding.
If the last two paragraphs made your head spin a little, don’t worry. Just know that Omen: Reign of War is a great game, one that is generally available and worth your time. Those who might be weaning themselves off of the CCG addiction might not find quite the scope of that genre, but they will find something that is dynamic and versatile, with great illustrations and a great sense of unbalanced balance.
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