You might expect that Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly would blend together about as well as oil and water, but these two influences combine for surprisingly fun and addictive results in Culdcept, the second North American release this year from long-dormant game publisher NEC. Culdcept actually isn't the first game in the series, which started out in Japan years ago, but it's the first that's been translated into English. The game's clean and attractive presentation certainly isn't flashy, and the hybrid card battle/board game matches that make up the gameplay can be both a bit complicated to learn and extremely time-consuming. However, the well-designed mechanics, combined with its sheer amount of content, make Culdcept easily recommendable to fans of strategy games and even to fans of role-playing games.

Culdcept is a cross between a board game and a collectible card game, and the results are fun and addictive.

Culdcept is essentially a board game in which you use custom decks of 50 cards, which contain fantastical creatures and powerful items and spells, to compete against up to three other opponents. You move across each map by taking a random number of steps at a time--much like you would while playing Monopoly or any other board game--and you lay claim to the points on each map by summoning your creatures in them. As more of your creatures cover the land, you gain more magic power. The winner of a match is declared when a player reaches a certain overall magic power point total and makes it back to the starting point of the map. Placing creatures on the map is equivalent to placing hotels on real estate in Monopoly. So, if an opposing player lands on one of your spaces, he or she will pay a fine in magic points. However, he or she may try to defeat the creature that's guarding the space to avoid the fine and to try and claim the territory. This is a relatively simple explanation for a game that has plenty of strategic appeal, though there's a very real element of luck that keeps Culdcept from being a pure strategy game and keeps even the most experienced players on their toes and thus prepared for things to not go according to plan. An informative manual and plenty of in-game documentation, as well as some reasonably helpful lessons at the beginning of the story mode, will help get you up to speed pretty quickly.

There are nearly 500 different cards in Culdcept, which, in practice, feels like a whole lot. Most of these are beautifully illustrated and quite imaginative. They include just about every fantastical and mythological creature you can think of--and a bunch you can't. Undoubtedly, the luck-based matches will cause you some frustration from time to time. However, just because you land squarely on your opponent's strongest creatures several turns in a row or you keep drawing item and spell cards from your deck when you desperately need a creature, doesn't mean you're a lousy Culdcept player. You're just having bad luck. Since matches in Culdcept can easily wear on for more than an hour, though, bad luck can lead to disappointment. Fortunately, you earn new cards at the end of each match whether you win or lose. You do get more cards for winning, but there's still a reward for losing, which is nice. By giving you more cards at the end of each match, the game encourages you to stick through to the bitter end rather than give up if things aren't going your way. Besides, the balance of power tends to shift over the course of a Culdcept match, so, with luck and planning, you can overcome a significant deficit in magic power and still come out on top.

A huge and imaginative variety of cards can be found and effectively used against the game's challenging AI or against up to three other human players.

If you've played or heard of collectible card games before, then you can imagine that much of the inherent strategy in Culdcept comes from building a good deck. You can have multiple decks on file, which can be customized to be best-suited to particular maps or against particular opponents. Basically, a well-balanced Culdcept deck is one that includes creature cards from all five elemental affinities (neutral, fire, water, wind, and earth), as well as some good supporting item cards and spell cards. Creature cards should comprise the majority of your deck. Battles between creature cards literally consist of the respective cards smacking each other, and victory is simply calculated based on the creatures' striking powers and health powers, though most creatures have a few unique properties that are described on the cards. Even the weakest creature in the game can be useful in the right circumstances, whereas stronger creatures are relatively costlier to summon, so a balanced assortment of creature cards is key. Item cards are used to bolster your creatures when they're attacking or defending against other creatures, and they can easily offset any inherent weaknesses in those creatures. Spell cards can be used as you move about the map and can do such things as increase the number of steps you can move in a turn, decrease the enemy's movement, damage opposing creatures, and so on.