WWE Topps Slam Attax (Rumble) Review

 
Hello.  My name is Josh, and I am an adult that enjoys watching professional wrestling.  Because of this, I buy wrestling games that I know will be awful.  At least I have a board game review site, so that I can at least pretend to have a reason for buying these games. Recently, this meant I bought WWE Topps Slam Attax (Rumble).

In the WWE Topps Slam Attax game, each player chooses nine wrestlers and sets them face-down in front of them.  Now, after determining who goes first, the active player will select one of their wrestlers and decide if they will attack or defend - and, optionally, can specify a sub-category of this (such as reverse or block for defense).  Their opponent must select one of their wrestlers and do the opposite - defend an attack or attack a defender.  Both players flip over their cards, and whichever one has the highest number wins.  The person who wins five of these matchups first wins the game.  (There is also a weapon card that you can use once per game to increase your number by the number of stars showing on the weapon - but as far as I know, you can both do this at the same time and cancel each other out.)

Some cool classic wrestlers are included

There's really one pro for this game - it has cool, collectible WWE cards.  And some of them are pretty and shiny.  And (at least where I bought them), they're cheaper than other collectible WWE cards.  Granted, I don't really buy a whole lot of WWE collectible cards, so this pro is only somewhat useful.  That's it - I'm done covering pros.  And, now that we've covered the pros, are you ready for the cons?

First of all, the rules are absolutely awful.  Awful!  There are supposedly three different ways to play - standard, Rumble, and Match play (if I remember the names correctly).  But, do you want to know the differences between the three?  Yeah - so do I!  I bought the standard starter pack, and it told me basic rules.  Then I searched online to see the different versions - nothing.  I searched harder - still nothing.  I have no idea how to play the versions that aren't explained on the back of the package.  Also, the different cards have various icons on the back of them - such as which part of WWE they are affiliated with (Raw, Smackdown, Divas, etc) and a star rating.  As far as I know, these don't mean anything.

Know what these do?  Nothing!

And, speaking of not meaning anything, my second con is that there are a lot of completely worthless cards in this game.  I don't mean that John Cena is stronger than some random guy you've not heard of, and so taht guy seems worthless.  I mean that there are a lot of cards that have absolutely no gameplay element whatsoever.  Such as the pay-per-view cards (Wrestlemania, No Way Out, etc) and the match cards (Ambulance Match, Steel Cage Match, etc).  You know what you do with these?  You set them off to the side and pretend that this is the setting of your game.  To the best of my knowledge, that is all you do.

But, I briefly mentioned that John Cena is better than a lot of the other people.  Do you know why this is important?  It's because the strategy in this game is to have all of the good wrestlers.  If my nine cards all consists of the major superstars such as John Cena and the Rock, then I don't have to have any strategy whatsoever to win - I'm going to flip a card better than yours.  Because you didn't obsessively collect the best ones.  (And, by the way, what were you thinking??)  I've played a lot of collectible card games where it's important to have all of the good cards.  But, in those, you have to use the cards in the right way.  In this game, if you have better cards than your opponent, you're going to win - it's like if you were playing the card game "war" and one person had Aces and the other had 2's, and you were playing to see who could win the first four matchups.  Doesn't that sound exciting?  (Short answer - no.)

Overall, I give WWE Topps Slam Attax (Rumble) a 2.0/10.  This game is awful.  You really shouldn't play it.  However - if you want to collect shiny WWE cards, it might be something to look into.

Whereas WWE Slam Attax isn't one of the better games I've played, I would recommend checking out Gloom, Dixit (which is a storytelling game), and Glory to Rome.