Dirge: The Rust Wars (2021)

Overview

Dirge: The Rust Wars is a card-based tabletop skirmish game in a forgotten future that plays in around 30 minutes and features area control, multiple scoring opportunities, and combo-driven actions, with pinch of deck-building.

Each game, players draft two different units, adding those units' cards to their starting deck. Throughout the game, these units are moved around the board — a 4x4 grid of locations, each with their own effects — to attack opposing units and score points, while cards are used to manipulate the game a variety of ways.

The three action cards correspond to the three different unit types — Infantry, Cavalry, and Engine — and along with the turn sequence card, they drive the game through round-based game play in which each player in a round receives three turns, but never the same three actions as the other player.

Players score points for destroying an opposing unit, playing two or more cards during their turn, having both units survive the round, and controlling the vast inland Sawgrass Sea. The game ends when a player has scored 12 or more points at the end of the round, with the player who scores the most points winning.

—description from the publisher