CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk franchise may have gotten off to a rocky start, but it has since become one of the best games in recent memory. And if you want to further immerse yourself in the technocratic filth of Night City, they even made an animated series over on Netflix. In case you want a Night City experience that’s a little more interactive, though, you might want to get your hands on the Cyberpunk TCG.
That’s right, Cyberpunk is getting its own trading card game, allowing you to revisit Night City with a fresh adventure in tabletop form. Whether you’re a fan of the game, the anime, or just new trading card games in general, this thing sounds like it has the potential to bring plenty of tabletop fun.
The Cyberpunk TCG is a card game that assigns you as the leader of your very own crew that’s competing against a rival crew on your way to becoming a Night City Legend. Each game starts with a deck of cards and a set of six dice (d4, d6, d8,. d10, d12, and d20). You use a dice roll to get a gig, with the resulting value of the roll representing the amount of street cred each job will get your crew. Each dice can only used once in a game, with the total value adding up to help build your legend in Night City. Not only can you do gigs from your own dice rolls, you can also steal gigs from your opponent and get the value of their dice roll in the process. First player to finish six gigs successfully wins the game.
There are four types of cards in the game: Legends, Units, Programs, and Gear. Legend cards represent the leaders of your crew and serve as the centerpiece of any deck, with their abilities, basically, defining your deck’s direction and playstyle. They start each game face down in random order. If you want to use a Legend card, you need to pay two Eddie (Eurodollars, to the unfamiliar). Units, on the other hand, are the members of the crew that attack rival crews.
The Cyberpunk TCG also comes with Program cards that, basically, work like hacks in the video game. You use it once to get a desired result and you discard it. Program cards can be played at any turn. Gear cards, on the other hand, equip your crew with special advantages. This can take the form of a weapon or a cyberware update, much like you’re able to take on in the video game. You need to pay to the cost of each gear in Eddies to use it. There are other detailed elements, such as timing triggers, keywords, and more that can also affect each turn but that’s, generally, how everything works.
Since each round of Cyberpunk TCG is all about executing a gig, it ends pretty fast, with the outfit saying each round only takes about seven turns. If game is tied by that, it goes into overtime, where the first player to get an extra gig dice wins. That fast-paced nature makes it easy to play, although it might also make it feel less immersive compared to other games like Magic Arena, which can take around 45 minutes to play out.
