DC Deck-Building Game (expansions and variants)

Last year, I reviewed the DC Deck-Building Game. That fun experience has produced many expansions and variants over the past few years; this post looks at a few of them.

At present, there are seven 'core' or stand-alone sets, meaning boxes that are the same basic game and include everything you need to play:

- DC Deck-Building Game

- DC Deck-Building Game: Heroes Unite

- DC Deck-Building Game: Forever Evil

- DC Deck-Building Game: Teen Titans

- DC Deck-Building Game: Injustice

- DC Deck-Building Game: Dark Nights: Metal

- DC Deck-Building Game: Justice League Dark

Any of them are great starting points for the game itself, though the first/original release is probably the most basic and best place to begin.

There are a series of Rivals (1v1) and Confrontations (2v2) releases. These take away the common nemesis stack and instead you attack your opponent's main hero (or villain) to win the game.

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rivals—The Flash vs. Reverse-Flash

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rivals—Batman vs. The Joker

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rivals—Green Lantern vs. Sinestro

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rivals—Shazam! vs. Black Adam

- DC Deck-Building Game: Confrontations

Another variant is Rebirth, where you have linked campaigns and characters can move around a 'board' (so position matters).

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rebirth

Finally, there are plenty of expansions. The main categories are crossover, crisis, and expansion packs. These mini-releases must be combined with a stand-alone game. Some of the crisis packs have stated ties to specific stand-alone releases. The crossover and crisis packs can be sold separately or bundled into 'collections' of two or three sets, making for many (confusing) options. I'll try to keep them separate below. I omit promo cards, and I list a few sets coming out in 2025.

- Crisis Pack 1 (intended for the original release)

- Crisis Pack 2 (intended for Heroes Unite)

- Crisis Pack 3 (intended for Forever Evil)

- Crisis Pack 4 (intended for Teen Titans)

- Crisis Pack 5 (intended for Dark Nights) (2025)

- Crossover Pack 1: Justice Society of America

- Crossover Pack 2: Arrow

- Crossover Pack 3: Legion of Superheroes

- Crossover Pack 4: Watchmen

- Crossover Pack 5: The Rogues (intended for Forever Evil)

- Crossover Pack 6: Birds of Prey (intended for Teen Titans)

- Crossover Pack 7: New Gods

- Crossover Pack 8: Batman Ninja

- Crossover Pack 9: DC Bombshells

- Crossover Pack 10: Flashpoint

- Crossover Pack 11: Dark Knights Rising (2025) (intended for Dark Nights)

- Crossover Pack 12: Hush (2025)

- Expansion Pack: Legion of Doom 

- Expansion Pack: Justice Leage Dark

- Expansion Pack: Super-friends (2025)

At this point, we own many of these versions (this game is a favorite of ours). While I won't go into every release above, at a high level, I say the following about them:

- the designers did a good job incorporating unique elements/rules (or focus areas) into each release. One sign of a good game is the ability to alter (or add) a few rules for a completely different experience; they do that well here.

- while it is possible to mix and match releases, doing so can lead to and overwhelmingly large card pool and/or clunky interactions between sets that don't pair well. Ultimately, this lengthens game times.

- as the titles may imply, some of these releases are quite dark. If you are considering this for children, stick to the original release and do your research on specific sets before purchasing.