Personal Vendetta

Personal Vendetta is a body-horror card game about defeating your rival clones — but avoiding inflicting too much damage to yourself in the process. It's sticky and intriguing, but suffers from attritional gameplay and a hefty dose of chance. I wish I liked it more.

Read my review here: https://spacebiff.com/2024/10/29/personal-vendetta/

This is a well designed game, unfortunately it's just not the game for me. Pros: Incredible art and unique theme. Refreshing take on the dueling card game genre. Nice interactive online rulebook Cons:

• Clunky reaction system. You react not to card effects, but to the opponent's action of playing cards. Most of the time it's still functionally negate/ counter a card with extra steps to go through in the rulebook.
• It doesn't feel rewarding enough for me, a huge fan of dueling card games. Cards in the base set is like spend your whole turn to do 3 dmg and take 1 dmg. Cards in other sets are more impactful, but you rarely feel clever playing them. There are big game winning combo, but then it feels like "oh if you happen to brainstorm to a reaction I don't know about then you win, otherwise I win". Either way, it doesn't feel satisfying.
• The personas don't make the game feels more fresh, instead they it feels more scripted. The interesting thing about this kind of shared-deck dueling game is to adapt to what's coming out, but personas incentivize you to focus on 1 certain type of dmg. Some personas feels much stronger with certain sets.
• Everything comes with a draw back, or damaged you when used, so you never feels powerful. I prefer more explosiveness in my dueling games Compared to Radlands, this game has more interesting decisions, but it just doesn't feel as fun. However, from a design perspective, this is a very solid design, and feels very much like a labour of love.

Clearly a labor of love. The themes, motifs, and art are tight and consistent throughout. The barrier of entry is more psychological than based on complexity; new players may be timid approaching mechanics that ask you to pay for actions with your physical and mental well-being.

Excited to see this at Gen Con

First things first, the art of this is top knotch. In a see of vibrant colorful games the black and white really sets its self apart. Each card is like mini poster I'd love to hang up on one of my walls. Next game play: the game is quick and fast pace. With everything being a resource games move fast when you use your own health and hands to deal out damage to your opponents. With so many cards each game is different from the last with lots of variations. The box says 30-45 min but once you know what you are doing games can go by in 15 to 20min if you play aggressive like most of my friends. This is a great game to pull out in between other larger games or waiting for everyone to show up. A few times now we'll meet for one game just to end up playing this game all night instead. Picked up two copies, one for the house and one in the car to take with for that spontaneous game. A must have for any game collection.