At first glance, Marvel Trading Card Game for the DS looks like the perfect package. It combines the deep strategy of a trading card game with the rich characters of the Marvel Universe and puts them on a portable system, thereby ensuring that an opponent is always available. All of these elements are present, however what publisher Konami and developers Vicious Cycle have forgotten, or chosen to ignore, is the notion of using the game as an entry point to the intricacies of the Marvel Trading Card Game for Marvel fans, or newcomers to the trading card genre.

If your notion of a card game is Saturday nights playing Hearts with Grandma and Uncle Leo, you’re in for a surprise. Upper Deck’s Marvel Trading Card Game is a robust and highly strategic affair utilizing character cards, plot twists, equipment and locations to deliver the Marvel themed beat down to both heroes and villains alike. Fortunes swing back and forth with every turn of a card, as players play cards to power up their heroes, destabilize their rivals, or simply counter the cards just shown by their opponents. Matches range from long, drawn out affairs, to blindingly fast Juggernaut style poundings, all based on the luck of the draw and the contents of your deck.

Players build their deck from a selection of character cards, equipment cards, location cards and plot twists. During play, cards are chosen as resources, to be used either right away or laid face down for later use. Based on how many resource cards are in play, character cards are recruited, provided that the recruitment costs are met. Characters that are in play can be used to attack opposing characters with the effectiveness of those attacks determined by their ratings. During play, plot twists and location cards can be used to help turn the tide of battle with new cards entering the players’ hands each round.

If it sounds complicated, it’s because it is. Newcomers to the genre will be completely stymied not only to the number of options available to them as the rounds progress, but to the seemingly random rules dictating when cards can be played and when they cannot. Tutorials are present to walk you through the ins and outs of the games; however they simply scratch the surface of play, and as they aren’t interactive, do nothing to really help you understand what is going on.

The lack of a “go back” button to help newcomers from making fatal mistakes, such playing a plot twist at an inopportune time, or equipping a character who won’t get a chance to attack in a round, makes for many defeats before you feel like you know what you’re doing. Add to this the random nature of drawing new cards from the deck and you have some matches where you feel like you’re possessed by Captain Universe, to others where you feel more down on your luck than Peter Parker in between freelance photo paychecks.

For those well versed in the Marvel Trading Card game, there are still obstacles to be met. While there is an option to customize your deck in between matches, the opportunity to purchase booster packs come so infrequently that in the early parts of the game, you’re stuck with the deck you start with, whereas the AI is able to change up decks to suit the current plot point.

Booster packs are purchased with points obtained through completing missions, or completing puzzles, however the available puzzles are tied to the current chapter. You can replay the same puzzles over and over to gain more points and subsequently buy more booster packs, however you shouldn’t have to grind puzzles just to put together a competitive deck. As you progress through the game, the makeup of your deck can be better suited to match your opponent, however even with these tweaks, more often than not, it seems that the AI can recruit characters far more quickly than you can, which puts you in a hole right out of the gate.

The paucity of real estate doesn’t help matters much. To play, the DS is held like a book a la Brain Age, with the play mat on the touch screen side and the other screen used to display the selected cards. The stylus is used to select and play cards as well as pass turns and make other on-screen selections. The D-pad is used to scroll down when reading selected cards, but otherwise, no buttons are used in game play.

The small size of the DS screen makes it difficult to take in at a glance everything taking place on the play mat. You can learn to recognize particular cards without going in for a closer look, however given that there’s no way to reverse actions, you end up selecting cards prior to playing them anyway, just to ensure you don’t play the wrong card. The playing cards themselves are well represented, however they still don’t hold a candle to their physical counterparts which, often times, are home to some truly stunning comic book art.