Flash Duel - Review & Commentary | 064 | CulBlu and Cardboard

About Flash Duel: Revised Second Edition, from BoardGameGeek:

Flash Duel: Second Edition is a simple, fast card game that simulates sparring matches amongst Fantasy Strike characters. The fight takes place on an 18-space linear track, and it's all about striking from the right distance and getting to the right range. This edition contains 20 characters, each with their own special abilities, allowing for hundreds of different matchups. There are seven different modes of play: Simple mode, for first time players Full mode, using the character abilities Custom Clockwork: build your own character! 2v2 team battle Solo play, with 10 achievements to earn Raid on Deathstrike Dragon: 2, 3, or 4 players cooperate against a powerful 5th player controlling the Dragon Betrayal at Raid on Deathstrike Dragon: A more difficult raid where one player is secretly on the Dragon's side! Changes to the Revised Second Edition: --All game modes now use a 40 card deck, rather than different modes using 25, 40, and 50, and the game will come with 40 numbered cards rather than 50. In all modes other than the Dragon Raid, you start each round by shuffling the deck and setting aside 5 cards without looking at them. In 2v2, you reshuffle the discard pile twice when it runs out before reaching timout. In the Dragon Raid, you reshuffle it 1, 2, and 3 times for 2, 3, and 4 mortals, respectively. Overall, rounds last longer in all modes. --Last-hits is no longer a mechanic in the game. At timeout, you just check who advanced farthest. This is simpler and turns out to have better dynamics by forcing action to take place during the actual gameplay part of the game. --Whenever a round ends in a tie, now both sides get a win token. --A new rulebook makes the game less mathy and more about improv and bluffing. Players don't know the exact contents of the deck anymore, so they can't compute things so completely. Also, players now draw more cards each round, so they have more chance to win before timeout. Part of the Fantasy Strike universe.