Gosu, it’s good to see you.

I wrote about Kim Satô’s goblin-filled GOSU a literal decade ago. I was a relative newcomer to the hobby then, and enjoyed its antics thoroughly, though time and the luck of the draw saw it falling out of favor. Gosu somehow managed to go on without me. This new edition, Gosu X, is less a game designed than a game developed. Its publisher, Sorry We Are French, has put it through the wringer with multiple years of playtests. The result strongly resembles the original, but with a few alterations that leave it feeling like an entirely new beast.

For one thing, it’s no longer about warring goblins.

There’s the X. Also the draft.

The much greater change between Gosu X and the original GOSU is one of format. Where the original saw players drawing from a single large deck filled with multiple goblin clans, the entire thing has been revamped to open with a draft. There are eight clans in all. Each has its own set of abilities. There’s the clan that raises the dead from its discard pile. Another is all about dealing damage. Some pull a lot of cards from their deck; others use targeted dives to ensure they possess exactly the right card at the right moment. When Gosu X opens, both players select three clans, hopefully with complementing skills, and shuffle them together to form a single deck.

Everything that follows stems from that opening draft, for better and for worse. First, the better. Like the original GOSU, cardplay is as much a wrestle against your own cards as it is a duel against your opponent. More so. The basic idea revolves around the various levels and clan alignments of your cards. Your first card can be any level-one offering. It’s only once you begin adding more cards that things get sticky. You can always add new cards of the same clan, but bringing new clans to the table requires a couple of discards. From there, you can add higher-level creatures, but only if the foundation beneath them already contains the same clan. It’s a bit like a multi-level marketing scheme, with beefy rule-breaking cards at the top level. But to prop them up, they’re going to need a whole lot of peons doing the legwork down below.

Erecting my pyramid of power.

There’s a lot going on here, and it’s easily the best part of Gosu X — although it defies what we’ve come to expect from dueling games. Interaction between players is limited. To be sure, there are plenty of ways to reach out and touch one another. It’s just that every point of interaction comes with some hefty caveats. Sometimes cards will be destroyed, removing them from a player’s army altogether. But only “open” cards can be destroyed, those that aren’t propping up anything above or to the right of them, preventing attacks from wreaking havoc too haphazardly. Some effects permit draws or force discards, but these are largely made at the discretion of the player they affect rather than being stolen at random from their hand. You also have access to special action tokens that can trigger your troops’ abilities, but again, these are options you deploy to your own tableau. Very nearly all of your attention is reserved for your own army. It isn’t multiplayer solitaire, but it’s closer than, say, Summoner Wars.

One place the original game faltered was the luck of the draw. Because both sides were pulling from the same deck, and because there were so many clans, it was entirely possible to never see the cards you needed to succeed. The same happens here, although to a much lesser extent. It’s easiest to think of your cards as building blocks, albeit blocks that occasionally reach out and slug each other. If you’re struggling to find a second-level card in the Galmi clan, you’re incapable of playing the juicy level-three monster that needs it as a prerequisite.

But the draft does mitigate that problem to some degree. Your deck is still thick enough that you likely won’t go through the entire thing in a single match, at least not with some significant discarding — there’s a clan that excels at that, too — but it’s limited enough that you’re likely to find something you can use. Powers are wet and wild in Gosu X, and only get more mind-bending as they climb the ranks. There are alternate win conditions, alterations to everybody’s maximum hand size, and cards that let you chase one of the game’s multiple win states. To play well, it’s essential to know the gist of each clan. For first-timers, it’s a lot to take in.

Every card has its own distinct abilities.

Crud, it can be a lot for fifth- and sixth-timers. To some degree, the actual gameplay functions as an extension of the opening draft. There’s an element of skill, but it often feels secondary to having picked the right trio of clans.

This wouldn’t be such a problem if the drafting didn’t feel like it was stuck on a certain heuristic. I don’t like to comment on balance, especially as “balance” is often the sticking point of people who can’t handle losing. That said, the factions don’t feel balanced, and one of them in particular tends to knock its opponent’s teeth out. There are ways to mitigate this, certain picks that strip that clan of its bravado. But now the draft is starting to feel a bit like picking through a logic tree. If you pick Goan-Sul, then I must pick Phoenix but not Xi’an, and I’d better cross my fingers that Justice is one of the two unpicked clans so that it can add its rule modifier to the ensuing match. But then if you pick Narashima, should I take Abhilasha?

Undoubtedly, my randomly picked clans offer a poor example. I suspect that there are plenty of opinions on how to draft well in Gosu X. There are so many combinations, with more on the way. To the game’s credit, I’m interested enough in the way these various combos function that I want to give it another try once those new clans arrive. For one thing, it does something that I adore in any game, which is that it deals me a crooked hand and then asks me to hammer it straight enough that it will turn the engine over. There are very few obviously optimal moves. Sacrifices are the order of the day. As it should be.

At the same time, I’m not sure I’ve had a satisfying play of Gosu X. Rather than capping out at my usual three plays before review, I stuck this one out with multiple play partners. Even so, our sessions tended to be one-sided. One person always ran away with the match. Not exactly the tight contest I was hoping for.

A winning ‘mid.

Gosu X inhabits a strange space, enacting motions that feel right without ever quite breaking away from the notion that I’m going through the motions. Its central card play is fascinating but not especially interactive, its drafting feels constrained by a need to overcome certain factions, and its matches have yet to excite. I intend to revisit this one again once there are more clans in rotation. For now, it leaves me cold.

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A complimentary copy was provided.