I’ve been keeping an eye on Gem Blenders for the last few years at this point, and my opinions have been a bit mixed at times. I thought it was interesting the first time I played. I was also a bit dismayed last year to learn that they had completely switched their card back, preventing their “alpha” versions of the cards from being played with the modern cards last year.
That said, this year they were offering some free tournaments at PAX with Booster Boxes as the prizes. I’m nothing if not a sucker for cards, so I purchased a starter deck, threw myself into the games, and finally Gem Blenders clicked for me.
Of course, before I talk about that moment where everything clicked, let’s talk about how the rest of the game works.
Starting the Match
Gem Blenders is an indie TCG played between two players. Each player starts with a 50 card deck and 4 heroes. After arranging the heroes, choosing a starting player, and drawing hands of 7 cards, the heroes get flipped up and gameplay starts.
Gameplay Systems
Heroes make up the first part of Gem Blenders’ primary mechanics. They have some abilities, a position on the board, attack and defense stats, and a level. More on levels in a bit.
Of course, those attack and defense stats for starting heroes are almost all zeros, which is why you’ll want to play Blends onto them as quickly as possible. Blends are probably easiest to compare to Pokemon’s evolutions. You place them on top of a hero, and they replace it’s stats and abilities with their vastly more powerful own.
Blends can’t just be played out though. Instead, they can only be played onto heroes with a high enough level, and the correct gems already attached.
Gems serve as the Gem Blenders resource system. They’re played onto heroes, and they’re required for playing blends and activating certain abilities. Only one can be played per turn, and so the choice of which color to play, and what to do is pretty important.
Finally, there are actions cards. Action cards sit in a weird sort of parallel to the rest of the game. You can play any number per turn, but you can’t play more than five per game. Note that I said game, and not match. It’s going to be relevant in a moment.
Winning the Game
A “full” match of Gem Blenders technically consists of 3 games. The first game starts when the match starts, with both players having 20 life. Each turn, a player can choose to attack with their gems, and inflict damage to their opponent equal to each of their front row heroes’ attack minus the defense of the hero that they’re facing. When one player knocks another player down to zero health, the game ends, but the match doesn’t.
Instead, the player whose turn it was immediately ends, both players reset to 20 life, and reset the number of actions they can play, but the board state remains. It’s an interesting twist with some neat implications.
The Moment Things Clicked
I haven’t done a write up on Gem Blenders before because, frankly, I felt underwhelmed the first few times I played. The game felt slow, and a bit grindy with a lot of “draw, go” happening.
It wasn’t until I was playing it for prizes over the weekend that I finally understood what I’d been missing: Gem Blenders is all about knowing your play lines, and being able to forecast what needs to happen so that you can win.
Unlike a lot of Magic or Pokemon, where just slamming cards out will eventually lead to a resolution, playing like that in Gem Blenders will just lead to the game stalling out. Instead, you need to be looking at your hand, figuring out what pieces you need to fetch in order to assemble your deck’s core engine.
Let me give an example.
The deck I played over the PAX East mini-holidays was called Joy Holiday. It contains some cheap two gem blends, and a few more expensive ones. It’s entirely possible to play it in such a way that it gets out a Guard or two, maybe a Frost Herald. But that’s probably not the right choice.
Instead, it’s better to build up a board of Heralds, and use them in combination with Bishops to find the Joy Ringer and Yule Puffer, and combine those two together to either thrash your opponent’s health, or ramp yourself into the stratosphere.
But in order to do that, I had to recognize that this was my plan at the start of the game, and play towards it, instead of just playing cards as they came up.
Overall
There’s a lot of little things about Gem Blenders that are a bit weird. The art style is a mixed bag for a lot of folks I’ve shown the game to, and others don’t really want to play another TCG.
But there are also a lot of fun moments. The game doesn’t lend itself to huge amount of targeted removal, so there’s more of an opportunity to build up an engine and let it rip. And it’s a really fun puzzle to try to build your way out of difficult scenarios, or to make the right calls to keep a game alive.
Gem Blenders isn’t perfect, but it’s a fun sort of imperfect, like a karate fight in slow motion. I don’t think anyone needs to rush out to buy a booster box, but if you see it at a convention, and find yourself a bit put off by the artwork, give it a try anyway.
You might be surprised.
