If you found yourself lurking around Kickstarter a few months back, or really the internet in general, you probably heard something about The Official Cyberpunk Trading Card Game.
Pulling in more than $28 million dollars and taking the top spot as the most-funded game on the crowdfunding platform, the TCG based on CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 RPG continues to evolve and change post-campaign.
Recently, the folks at WeirdCo have released big updates coming to the game that not only tweak terminology but also add in some massive game-design-shifting changes. Here is the full blog post, but here are the changes that are coming to the Cyberpunk TCG:
- The starting phase has gotten a name change, and its structure has been tweaked
- The “Play” and “Attack” phases have been combined into a single “Main” phase
- Opponents can react to a declared attack
- A new “Quick” keyword on cards has been created that can be played in response to an attack
- The cost to flip one of your legends has been reduced to 1 Eddie instead of 2
- You need 7 gig dice now to win instead of 6
So let’s break things down a bit. The changes that Weird Co. has shared range from minor adjustments for the sake of clarity to large new mechanics that, debatably, are some extensive game design adjustments. On the lighter end, the name change for the first phase of a turn and the creation of the “Main” phase, and the more malleable and flexible early turn structure are welcome and act more as just solidifying and adapting to how folks have naturally played the game. As someone who has played Magic: The Gathering for over 20 years, changes like these feel natural. Untap, draw, play. Familiar.
The new Main phase is also a pleasant change that focuses on giving players more flexibility in how they take their turns. The big update here is that you can take the available actions of selling a card for a resource, calling (flipping) one of your Legend cards, playing cards, activating effects on your cards, or making an attack in any order. Previously, the order was rigid, where you had to play your cards before making the attack, and once doing so, your turn was over. Now, being able to attack and play cards as you wish and giving you control over when you pass will go a long way in improving the general feel and flow, which I am 100% here for.
The two changes I would classify as mid-tier changes, ones that will impact the game but not in a drastic way. Previously, the game would end if you started your turn with six “gig” dice in front of you. Considering each player has six dice they will assign, this meant that the first player could simply turtle up and play completely defensively and win due to meeting that criteria first. This has been increased now to needing seven dice to win, requiring you to have stolen at least one die from your opponent. It makes sense, will help the game go on a bit longer, and force some interaction beyond simply hiding behind a wall of blockers.
The second of these tweaks is that flipping one of your Legend cards, calling them to action, now only costs a single Eddie resource instead of two. Honestly, the fact that you don’t know which Legend is which (unless you use another card to peek), I’m still not entirely sold on the mechanic in general, but this cost reduction does help things. With games playing out fast, spending two of your rather limited resources on your turn to flip one of your Legends rarely felt like a better proposition than playing a cheap unit to serve as a blocker or another attack to steal more dice.
A prospect that appears to be shared by many, as in the update announcement, the team specifically mentions “During Alpha testing, we discovered that it was possible to win games consistently without flipping multiple Legends. While we don’t necessarily want players to have to flip all three of their Legends every game, we do want flipping Legends to be an exciting and impactful highlight in the vast majority of Cyberpunk TCG games,” so fingers crossed.
By far the biggest change, well, more like an addition, is that the person being attacked can actually do something more than just blocking (if they have a Blocker that is)! Hallelujah! Now, when you are attacked, you can react by assigning a blocker as you could before, but now you can also flip one of your Legends (for the updated cost) or utilize cards with the new “Quick” keyword. This new mechanic, which allows cards either from your hand or that are already on the field, will allow players to pull off battlefield tricks and make attacking a bit more exciting, since you will never know what your opponent may have in their hands.
I love this, as tricks like counters and trap cards are some of the most exciting parts in card games, and their absence during the Alpha rules and cards was an uncomfortable void in the game. To be clear, this is a great addition, and what has me the most excited from the announcement, but it also is a pretty big change, and I find myself wondering – how many of the cards will have to be redesigned now around this new mechanic?
I am someone who is no stranger to backing games in crowdfunding and am well aware that “all rules are subject to change” is a pretty standard note on the campaign pages. Balancing and adjustments are common with games evolving all the time, but to me, this is a massive game design change. A far rarer occurrence, and one that I can’t recall seeing in other TCG crowdfunding scenarios. It makes me start to wonder if the Cyberpunk TCG may have come to Kickstarter a bit underdone, or had its focus devoted elsewhere. A concern that I have mentioned previously is that backers are a bit like ‘guinea pigs’ right now, with the folks at WeirdCo laying down the tracks while the train is going full steam ahead. A feeling only made a bit stronger that they are looking to fill a Senior Game Designer role currently.
It will be interesting if Cyberpunk 2077 TCG gets any more big changes leading up to launch. I am firmly in the camp that all of these updates are great for the game in the end. I am eager to see what sort of nifty effects are planned to use the Quick keyword and if the Legend cost reduction will actually change my mind on their value. Players still have a bit of a wait until they will be stealing gigs in their local game store, but with the success that the Kickstarter had, the team at WeirdCo has the funds to really massage the systems to knock the gameplay out of the park. Now, we just have to wait and see what the final product will look like.
Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.
