Nerdly » ‘Doomlings: Deluxe Bundle’ Board Game Review

21st Aug2024

‘Doomlings: Deluxe Bundle’ Board Game Review

by Matthew Smail

Sometimes the most enjoyable games are some of the simplest – those with light rules and attractive components, and often a fast playtime. Where Doomlings is concerned, most of these things apply – this is a fast-paced, attractive game that kids love (thanks to its cute artwork) and that almost anyone can play. It’s not an overly serious game or one that requires deep thought – but there are strategies to ponder on as you begin to learn the cards and customise your game using the various expansions (five of which are included in the Deluxe Bundle.)

In short, Doomlings is a game about the end of the world. The titular Doomlings are a race of highly adaptable circular creatures who are struggling to survive – but they can’t. The game begins with a card named “The Birth of Life” and ends after three catastrophes are drawn from an era deck that will (by default) have twelve cards in it. This means that unless something changes the rules (as it often will) there will always be twelve turns per player – and that means twelve chances to play “Trait” cards.

Trait cards are effectively the meat of the Doomlings game system. Each one has a number of points printed on it, as well as several other features. All cards belong to at least one colour, with the “Multi-colour” expansion adding in – you guessed it – cards that are simultaneously two colours at once. Many cards have further effects on them, including activated abilities that trigger when the trait is played, or abilities that allow them to be played in response to an aggressive action by another player. In some of the other expansions – such as Techlings – other abilities are introduced such as the attach mechanism, which allows a trait card to be attached to another existing trait.

Normally, a player can play just one trait card per turn, and whilst the rules will very occasionally vary this, the main decision space comes from assessing your current hand (which is five cards at the start of the game) and deciding what you wish to play. I say that the default hand size is five at the start of the game because that will quickly and frequently change. Referred to as your “Gene Pool,” each player’s hand size is tracked on a card in front of them, and many trait cards will add to or reduce the size of the Gene Pool. In fact, at the end of each round of turns (one turn per player) a new Age card will be drawn, and these cards will also often vary the Gene Pool – especially if a catastrophe is drawn.

Age cards always vary the rules one way or another – perhaps preventing players from playing trait cards of a specific colour, or allowing them to play more than one trait card in the turn that follows. Catastrophes almost always do something worse – not least because most reduce the Gene Pool (and therefore your hand size) but also because they do things like force players to discard cards right away, or even to lose cards that were played into their trait pile on previous turns. Catastrophes can definitely frustrate, and on occasion, a specific rule might hurt one player more than the others, but in broad, general terms, they are pretty random and will affect all players equally.

After the third catastrophe is drawn (somewhere between turns nine and twelve) the game will end, with that catastrophe also triggering an “End of the World” event, which can often be even worse than the catastrophe itself – and might reduce end game score in one way or another. If Doomlings were a longer, more serious game, there would be the potential to frustrate here too – for example, if an End of the World effect reduces the value of a strategy that you’ve gone hard into – but because the game is so quick and generally light, it is never more than a fleeting annoyance.

In terms of what the Doomlings: Deluxe Bundle offers specifically, I’m really impressed. There’s the base game plus five expansions in a really nice, holofoil box – as well as three foil cards which I guess are randomised into each set. What really rounds out the package is the fantastic playmat, which is just the right size to house the trait pile, era deck and three age piles to help coordinate the game. The playmat isn’t needed once you understand the game, but as always with playmats in games that are built around cards, the playmat brings a fantastic cohesiveness that elevates the experience.

We also received the Imaginary Ends Variety Expansion and one copy of the Overlush Mystery Expansion, which contains four booster packs of randomised cards. The Imaginary Ends pack contains five new, complete expansions and definitely offers great value. Of these expansions, Glitterlings is very popular with my kids thanks to the new and apparently “insanely cute” creatures it adds, whilst I quite enjoyed the Moonlings – who give bonuses as the Gene Pool gets smaller. I have to say that no guidance is given as to how many of the expansions you should or could play with at once, but we’ve mixed all the cards we have together and the trait pile is now so large it’s almost unmanageable – but that kind of fits the Doomlings theme.

Coming to some slight negatives; I do think Doomlings is over a bit too quickly. Twelve turns at most is too few to really strategise, and if you do have cards in hand that lead to a longer term plan (for example Swarm, which accumulates points for each Swarm card played) you’re unlikely to be able to reliably capitalise on them because unless you have two or three more in hand by complete chance, you won’t have the time or agency over card draws to ensure that you can get more cards that will combo well (in this case – more Swarm cards.) But if that’s the kind of thing you’re worrying about, then you’ve already got Doomlings all wrong. Rather than overthinking it, I now just add one or two more cards per age (for a maximum of fifteen or eighteen turns) if I play with just one or two opponents.

Overall then, Doomlings is a really cool, highly expandable and probably quite collectable system. I don’t really get excited about foil cards and card rarity these days, but my kids sure do, and when we opened up the Overlush Mystery Expansion, they were very happy to see certain cards reappear, and there’s no doubt that they were especially excited to pull foil cards from any of the sources in which we found them. Whilst not too heavy or too serious, Doomlings does have some smart gameplay elements to it and it is, without doubt, a lot of fun – especially in my case when played with kids who don’t take any game too seriously.