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Tag Team is a two-player competitive game that mixes ideas from auto battlers and deckbuilding, but does it in a way that feels a bit different once you actually sit down and play. Each player controls two fighters. Every fighter has their own board, their own health track, and their own small deck of cards.
At first glance, it looks like a pretty standard head-to-head card game. Let’s face it, nothing here screams “wildly experimental.” But once you get going, the game starts asking different questions than most deckbuilders. It’s less about reacting to what just happened and more about committing to choices and seeing how badly, or brilliantly, they come back to haunt you a few turns later.
The theme is clearly inspired by classic arcade fighting games. Actions resolve at the same time, fighters have named moves, and knockouts are final. You’re not interrupting each other or playing tricks at the last second. You both lock in your move, flip the card, and deal with the result.
The fighters themselves are fictional characters, loosely inspired by people and figures from history, literature, and myth. Some are straightforward, others bend the rules a bit, and a few introduce mechanics that really change how the game feels. You don’t just pick fighters for their cards. You pick them for the problems they create for your opponent.
👥 2 players, ages 10+
⌛ Playing time: 15 minutes
📝 Designers: Gricha German & Corentin Lebrat
🎨 Artwork: Xavier Gueniffey Durin
🏢 Publisher: Scorpion Masqué (review copy provided)
Gameplay overview
At the start of the game, each player puts together a team of two fighters. You can draft them or just pick the ones you want, depending on how serious you’re feeling. The fighter boards go in front of you, health markers are placed at the start of each health track, and you take power cubes equal to each fighter’s base power. Some fighters also come with extra tracks or tokens, which you set up individually using the fighter guide.
Each fighter has a deck of ten fight cards. One starting card from each fighter is set aside to create your initial fight deck. You choose the order of these two cards, place them face down, and that’s what you’ll be playing from at the start. All remaining cards from both fighters are shuffled together to form a separate build deck.
The game is played over a series of rounds. Each round starts with the fight step.
During the fight step, both players repeatedly reveal the top card of their fight deck at the same time. The revealed card decides which fighter is active for that turn, while the other becomes the partner. All actions on both cards resolve at the same time. Sometimes an effect only triggers if something succeeds, like a block or a cancel, but the important thing is that nobody reacts after seeing the other card.
Actions can include attacks, blocks, healing, gaining or transferring power, canceling the opponent’s card, or triggering fighter-specific effects. There’s no turn order advantage here. You commit first and then watch things unfold. Sometimes that feels fair. Sometimes it feels cruel. Usually it’s both.
Power determines how strong a fighter’s attacks are. It’s a value that sticks around and can go up or down over the course of the game. When a fighter attacks, they use the power they had at the start of that turn. Anything that changes power during the turn doesn’t affect that attack.
When a fighter takes damage, their health marker moves down the health track. Healing moves it back up. Health tracks aren’t just life totals. Icons can trigger extra effects, and stop spaces can interrupt movement in either direction. A fighter is only knocked out if their health marker is on the ko space at the end of the turn, after everything has resolved.
Players keep revealing cards until their fight deck runs out. If nobody has been knocked out by then, the fight step ends and you move to the build step.
During the build step, each player draws three cards from their build deck. You secretly choose one and add it to your fight deck. You can place it on top, on the bottom, or between any two cards already there. The other two cards go to the bottom of the build deck. You’re never allowed to reorder cards already in your fight deck. Not now, not later. Some cards give an immediate bonus when added, which you resolve right away.
Once both players are done, the round ends and a new one begins.
Fighter-specific rules can add extra tracks, tokens, transformations, or even alternate loss conditions. Since you’re always playing with two fighters, effects often involve partners as well as opponents, which changes how you think about each turn.
The game ends as soon as one fighter is knocked out at the end of a turn, and that team loses. If fighters on both teams are knocked out during the same turn, the game ends in a draw. In the very rare case that a player can’t draw three cards during the build step, that’s also a draw.
Artwork, components, and visual design
Let’s be honest, the components are very basic. Cubes, cards, boards. Nothing fancy, nothing luxurious. If you’re looking for premium bits, this isn’t that kind of game.
Where Tag Team really works visually is the artwork. The fighters are bold, expressive, and full of character. Each fighter board shows a big, dynamic illustration that immediately tells you what kind of fighter you’re dealing with. It’s colourful, a bit exaggerated, and clearly inspired by fighting games without copying any single one.
The health tracks are built directly into the fighter boards instead of being separate and clinical. They’re easy to read, but they still feel like part of the character. Some fighters add extra tracks or areas for special rules, which can make the board look busy, but it rarely feels confusing once you know what that fighter does.
The fight cards follow the same style. Bright art, clear icons, and named moves that feel intentional rather than abstract. Everything is readable, even when the table starts filling up with boards, cards, and tokens.
Our experience
The first few games were mostly about understanding what the fight deck really means. Not shuffling your deck sounds simple, but it changes everything. Early on, we kept making choices that felt clever, only to realise a few turns later that we had completely messed up our own timing.
Once that clicked, the game started to make more sense. The fight step became tense, especially when both players knew something unpleasant was coming but couldn’t stop it anymore. The build step felt like a short pause to breathe, rethink, and occasionally regret your last decision.
Some games were over very quickly. A strong opening or a fighter with an alternative loss condition can end things before you feel like you’ve really built anything. Other games lasted longer and turned into careful back-and-forth around health track icons, stops, and power swings.
Team selection mattered a lot. Some fighter combinations felt natural and smooth. Others felt awkward or overly complicated. Trying out different pairings was easily one of the most enjoyable parts of playing multiple games.
Our thoughts
Tag Team surprised me more than I expected. On paper, it looks like a fairly normal card game. In practice, a couple of smart ideas do a lot of heavy lifting. The no-shuffle deck and the single card you add each round turn deckbuilding into something very deliberate. You’re not improving your odds. You’re deciding when future problems will happen.
That works well with the auto battler structure. Once cards are revealed, that’s it. No reactions, no saves, no timing tricks. Sometimes that feels rough, especially when a bad decision from earlier comes back to hit you. But it also makes the game feel fair in a very direct way.
The fighter asymmetry adds depth, but it can also be a hurdle. Some fighters are easy to understand. Others introduce rules that demand attention. If both players pick complex fighters, the game can feel a bit heavy for how fast it plays.
That said, Tag Team works best as a focused duel. It rewards planning, memory, and learning how your opponent thinks. It’s quick, sharp, and easy to replay, often because you immediately want another shot at doing things better.
And yes, sometimes you lose because of a card you placed several turns ago. That moment where you realise exactly when it all went wrong is painful, but also kind of the point.
📝 We received a copy of Tag Team from Scorpion Masqué.
