Duelling card game from Magic: The Gathering’s creator gets a team-battle mode
Catch the Mindbug together.
A duelling card game from the creator of Magic: The Gathering, Mindbug, is getting a team-battle mode in its latest core sets.
Richard Garfield is the designer behind the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, as well as Android: Netrunner and board games like King of Tokyo. Mindbug is a card game created by Garfield and released in 2022 that has players summoning beasts in order to defeat their opponent.
The two-player game enables players to utilise cards from a pre-built deck against the opposing player, pitting strange hybrid creatures against each other: such as a snail hydra or compost dragon. Unlike many other card games, like Magic: The Gathering, Mindbug forces players to draw from the same deck, meaning that both players must make the best of the same collection of cards.
Whenever a creature is summoned, the opposing player has the opportunity to use one of their limited pool of mindbugs to take control of it. Once the player has control of the creature, they may freely use it against their opponent. Instead of the majority of decision-making revolving around deck-building, Mindbug is a game that challenges players to think about which creatures to play and how to best deploy their mindbugs.
Mindbug Battlefruits is a new set of decks set to be released for the card game, introducing a fresh collection of creatures based around various fruits. Whilst Battlefruits - Kingdom is themed around classic mediaeval and fantasy aesthetics, such as pineapple knights and dragon fruit, Battlefruits - Galaxy is centred around sci-fi iconography like boomberries.
Battlefruits introduces a selection of new gameplay mechanics - including the ability to attack on the same turn a card is played with Fast and spending resources to activate powerful abilities. Whilst the new Mindbug: Tag Team decks enable Mindbug to be played as a four-person game rather than just a two-person one. Utilising the new decks, four players can split into two teams of two and face-off against each other in a tag-team experience.
The crowdfunding campaign for Mindbug Battlefruits and Tag Team is live on Gamefound until May 4th, with backers able to get copies of Battlefruits - Kingdom and Battlefruits - Galaxy for €35 (£30/$37) and a Tag Team deck for an extra €12.50 (£10/$13) both of which are estimated to arrive in February 2025.