Tabletop: Archenemy: Nicol Bolas, A Fresh Take On Magic The Gathering

Magic The Gathering players are probably familiar with the Archenemy format. The first Archenemy set was released in 2010 and gave players a new fun format to play 1 vs many in a casual format, made to play with your friends and playgroup.

With the new set of cards (Hour of Devastation) officially releasing this weekend, comes the return of one of the baddest enemies in Magic history, Nicol Bolas.

The most powerful elder dragon is back with a vengeance, and with his return comes an all new Archenemy set. In the new Archenemy: Nicol Bolas, you and your friends will be thrown into an intense battle, in which one will take the role of the evil beast, and the rest will act as the Gatewatch (Nissa, Gideon, and Chandra).

Archenemy is one of the most unique ways to play Magic, in which three players team up to take down an overwhelmingly powerful final boss. The boss, in this case Nicol Bolas, starts with 40 life, and has special oversized cards (called schemes) which come into play automatically every turn. These schemes can be powerful, and give the player game changing bonuses and effects.

The three players play as the Gatewatch, legendary planeswalkers Chandra, Gideon, and Nissa, and they must work together to fight Nicol Bolas. Each player starts with 20 life, take their turn together, attack together, and now may declare blockers for each other.

After playing the new Archenemy extensively with a full playgroup, it is easily one of the most frustrating yet satisfying experiences in magic. It has the true feeling of terror when Nicol Bolas slaughters your entire team, and had us out of seats cheering and screaming when the villain was finally slain (4 games later).

One thing that really stood out is the synergy of the team working together. First you have Gideon, the powerful warrior, who has a creature heavy deck. His goal is to overload the board with creatures and start swinging, this is the aggressor of the three. Next, there is Chandra, whose fiery temper comes into play, of course being full of burn and creatures who have abilities that can ping for extra damage. It seems that her job is to keep pinging Bolas and try to keep his creatures injured or out of the way. Last but not least is Nissa, who plays the role of support, ramping her land, boosting teammates creatures, preventing damage, and eventually becoming a late game powerhouse.

The trio is forced to work together, with all decks complementing each other, and it being impossible to take down Nicol Bolas alone.

Overall Archenemy: Nicol Bolas is a lot of fun to play, especially if you dive head first into the story (I recommend even role-playing your characters). It is exciting taking turns playing as the allies and enemy, and trying to figure out how to stop inevitable doom. The decks feel balanced right out of the box, however, it was made to be difficult for the Gatewatch, and takes many games to get used to each role and how they play together. However, when you do finally manage to take down the evil dragon, it is a true feeling of accomplishment.

Check out the full decklists, schemes, and packaging in the gallery below.