he Terminator Collectable Card Game takes place in the world of Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, two of the most popular SF movies ever (with rumors of another sequel in the works). Players take command of either Skynet, the robots who try to exterminate humanity, or the human resistance, which attempts to stop them. Like other collectable card games, Terminator is sold in both starter decks and booster packs.
Starters come in two varieties: Skynet and Resistance, containing all the cards needed to play that side. Boosters are more random, and one booster is included with each starter as well as being available separately.
The basic scenario is essentially the story of the first Terminator movie: Skynet has sent a human-looking killer robot into the past to kill the mother of a Resistance leader, and at the same time the Resistance has sent a team to stop that from happening. Either side can win by killing the other's time-traveling agents, or by fulfilling their mission: for Skynet, by terminating enough people to change the future; for the Resistance, by protecting enough people to save the future. Other scenarios revolve around fighting in the future itself, largely without the temporal complications but with more advanced weaponry.
Each player begins with cards representing his or her agents and another card for the starting location. On each turn each player plays a new location card, which is put next to an already-existing location. By this means a geography over which the various characters can travel slowly takes shape.
Each player's locations start out separate from their opponent's, but they soon intersect and overlap, allowing characters to pursue one another and their targets into each other's territory.
Each agent is rated for speed and strength, and these abilities are used to maneuver and fight. Local "minor" characters appear with the same abilities, plus a new one: historical importance, which ranges from one for a passing street punk to five for the pivotal Sarah Connor. It is by saving or terminating 10 historical importance point's worth of people that the time travelers can win the game.
A fun slugfest, but little more
Players who are big fans of the Terminator movies should get an instant kick when they open their first starter deck. The premise obviously goes with the spirit of Terminator, and the cards feature stills and lines from that movie that will have people digging through their closets to watch that old videotape one more time.
Once play begins, the fan will find a fun experience that gets a bit repetitive after a while. The combat system is interesting, allowing each side to surprise the other with dodges, lucky hits and massive damage, and each side starts out with its own flavor, the relentless Skynet terminator crushing all opposition while the Resistance scrambles around for weapons capable of damaging it. But once everyone is armed and combat is joined it is difficult for either side to stop fighting, and the game too easily turns into one long gunfight won by whichever side is lucky enough to score a big crippling hit. The minor characters and their importance points become a mere distraction, and the cards dealing with them get discarded in an attempt to draw more combat cards.
A player can buy booster packs in search of some variety, but the new cards don't make that much difference, and at $2.49 per nine-card booster it can take a substantial investment to get enough cards to really spice up the game. There is another source of cards, though: Terminator is completely compatible with Precedence's Aliens vs. Predator card game, and mixing up the cards of these three kings of 1980s SF cinema is bound to be interesting.
The rules that come with the game present a few problems. The "quick start" rules completely ignore some vital areas and will leave first-time players more confused than helped. The regular rules are more complete, but suffer from disorganization and the lack of an index.
So Terminator, like so many games based on popular licenses, will simultaneously please and frustrate fans. But if you've always wanted to be the Terminator--or to fight him--this is probably as close as you'll ever get.
