Summary

The Austin Powers Collectible Card Game was a card game based on the Austin Powers films (really just The Spy Who Shagged Me), pitting good against evil. In the game, you control agents who target other agents for either shagging or assassinating. The game was available in a 60-card 2-player starter deck and 11-card booster packs.

Unlike many games (and like some other Decipher games), the game is divided into two completely distinct factions with different card backs: good (red, Austin Powers-backed cards) and evil (blue, Dr. Evil-backed cards).

Card Types

• Character - Different characters in the films. Each has an alignment (good or evil, based on its card back), a gender (male or female), as well as a type (shagger or assassin), vibes, and a number of points (mojo or billions of dollars, depending on good or evil).
• Frickin' Bone - Cards that are used during a battle. Each has a vibe requirement and a number of points (mojo or billions of dollars).
• Swinger - Cards that can be used one of two ways, with one of the two effects requiring vibes.
• Happening - "Interactive" cards that target all players. The player who reacts (peace sign or evil pinky smirk) the slowest suffers some detremental effect. Also has a number of points (mojo or billions of dollars).

Sets and Decks

The game only had one set: The Spy Who Shagged Me. The starter deck rulebooks tease an expansion set (International Man of Mystery), but this set was never released.

The set includes common, uncommon, rare, and starter-only cards.

Deck Composition and Contents

Starter Decks

The starter deck comes with two 30-card decks, one good deck themed around Austin Powers, and one evil deck themed around Dr. Evil. As the game only uses 30-card decks, these are both full legal decks.

All starter decks contain the same 60 cards. There are 8 (good) or 9 (evil) starter-only rarity cards, and every other card in the deck is common. The deck does not include any foil cards.

Deck Rarity Analysis

Rarity-wise, this is as good as it gets. You get a reasonable mix of starter-only cards (5 different cards in each of the good and evil decks), and everything else is common, making boosters full of new rare (and uncommon!) pulls.

Unfortunately, like Young Jedi starters, the cards in the starter are duplicated like heck. You get 5 copies of two different Frickin' Bones per side, and 5 of the same Happening card per side, making a full 50% of your deck consist of only three distinct cards. They did vary the characters and swinger cards, so it's baffling to me why they duplicated the other cards so much. Fortunately, there's no reason here to ever buy more than one starter deck, so this isn't a big a deal as it could be.

One other weird thing here: the selection of cards in the starters is rather odd. There's a card that works better with cards that are not included in the starter deck (I guess encouragement to buy boosters...?), but each side also has a Swinger where one of the options is to open a sealed booster pack and play a character for free (adding the other compatible cards to your hand). This is such a weird thing to include in a starter deck, especially for a game like Austin Powers, which (as we'll discuss below) feels much more like a casual party game than a serious deckbuilding strategy game. Who's going to buy boosters and have them on hand for a game? Who's going to bring this game to a party along with a box of boosters? Cutting out one of the two options on the Swinger just doesn't feel great.

Alan's Thoughts On The Game

Okay, so. This is very much not my kind of game. But I have to say it is a very well-designed game.

Decipher did an amazing job capturing the feel of the movie, turning it (appropriately) into what seems like a party game. This is very much not a game you play with two people... rather, it'd work well with 4 or more people, as many of the core mechanics -- such as throwing other players Frickin' Bones (great theming there) or playing a Happening card -- really only make sense with more than two players. The jokes you expect are all there, including a game mechanic specifically around the phallic spaceship, where the characters in that sequence can be played (for free) around the table whenever one is played. Gameplay actually works well, even if it's not for me.

The cards are also gorgeous and well-designed, bright and colorful to match the movie, and with images that are not stuck in a static image frame. This is noteworthy only because of how much it really fits the vibe of the game, making everything seem really well-thought through.

I do somewhat question the need to split characters into good and evil... I understand that makes sense with the movie (and particularly you don't really want to assassinate a good agent if you're good), but it adds complexity that doesn't seem necessary to deck building, especially given that most cards are essentially copied (almost word for word) between the two sides. Still, that doesn't detract from the game, especially if you're just grabbing a few starter decks and throwing a group at the game.

However, I struggle to understand who the audience is for this game. The game has mechanics that make it unsuited for a group of drunken friends at a party (you have to read lots of text and effects, track vibes, be able to add up numbers from multiple cards, and understand assassination versus shagging), but it is also far too silly for a more serious gaming group. Perhaps if you had a casual group who enjoyed Cards Against Humanity as a regular game, this would work as a more in-depth game. But I can't see anyone seriously wanting to purchase this game as anything more than a throwaway bit of casual fun, much less collecting the cards and building decks.

And maybe that's why it only had one set, and cards for it have been liquidated for about as long as I can remember.

Resources

• Starter Deck Card List (AlanvDotOrg Randomjunk)