Background: Fight City is a non-CCG card game from champion of the common man Cheapass Games. Cheapass Games' mission statement is that board games come with a lot of useless shit (eg, tokens, money, dice) which every self-respecting gamer will have dozens of already. Also, board games recycle the same ideas over and over, and often are little fun in and of themselves. Therefore, their games are packaged cheaply (hence their company's name), are sold cheaply, and radiate brilliance. To my surprise, upon opening the package, the cards were wrapped in magazine clippings ...
The game is similar to many Collectible Card Games, though it differs in many respects, particularly how interesting it is and how fluidly it plays. For once, strategy is based on how you play the game, not how much money you spend or how you create your deck. The cards are constant.
Ironically, my copy of Fight City smells like fresh lemon soap ...
Well, two decks are only $10. One "starter deck" of Magic: The Gathering costs $12 last time I checked. I could write a few pages on why this game is better than Magic, but I'll stop here.
The Realism: It is easy to create a card game based in fantasy; one can create a system of logic which supports any game mechanics you like (ie, it makes sense that mana might come from the land in Magic: The Gathering). To create a card game which simulates the actual way life works is quite difficult. Fight City pulls it off quite well. There are cards which represent leaders, but its not explicitly stated, and there is no difficult to keep track of rules like "+1 to all creatures with Morale less than that of hero/leader" that can easily kill a game.
Chaos vs. Planning There are three types of turns (a player declares the turn type at the beginning of her turn): draw, build, and fight. The draw turn is used to get more resources. The build turn is all about planning and creating a strong infrastructure among your fighters, weapons, and buildings. These first two turn types are largely about planning; who should get the Sniper Rifle? is my hand sufficient, or should I try to get a better combination? However, when a fight turn is declared, all hell breaks loose. When a fight turn is declared, all fighters can make strikes on anyone they like (the player who declared the fight gets a slight advantage; but that could easily be nullified). There is no blocking, only attacking. The only way to stop a fighter from attacking is to kill her before she can strike. Often, after a battle, one can almost see smoke rising from the table.
Money = resource & life Each player starts with relatively little "life", or dollars. Not only that, but one must use those dollars to support cards. So, one is torn from putting more "locations" or "fighters" into play or saving one's own ass. Very interesting balance.
Note: I usually play Deck B: Fear.
Deck A: Power. Power is about cultivation and defense. It sometimes takes a while to get cards out, and they can cost a pretty penny. Then you have cards like Benson Cleaners, which can very easily get you back your life. Also very powerful is Hail of Bullets, which can be quite devastating. Finally, there's the Sherman Tank, the biggest and baddest weapon of them all.
Deck B: Fear. From what I can tell, Fear is all about speed and getting out a good number of cards relatively quickly. The deck lacks the power of cards like Benson Cleaners, but there are some good strategies to make those cards mean little to nothing. The most important stat is speed, by far. If you have good fast fighters, it doesn't matter if they're dead at the round's end; use cards like Sniper Rifle, Hurtz Donut, Poison Darts, and Hot Cup of Joe to dominate. Also, even though Power can get money back quite quickly, Fear has the benefit of Fight City Hall and Mr. Ho's Chop Shop, which allow fight turns to be almost like draw turns. And there's nothing like Opportunity Creep and Grenade to get rid of that pesky Benson Cleaner's.
Favorite Fear combos: Hurtz Donut with Birthday Clown and Sniper Rifle (and a Survival Knife helps). Wily Beggar with Laptop Computer. Altruism Sedan Reed with Grenade. Juliet Pierce or Absinthe Devlin Pierce with the Sniper Rifle, supporting the likes of Black Crabs, Car Tel, Larry Parks, and Loose Cannon.
Pick this game up, it's amazingly fun and much more interactive than Magic.