Back to Video Game Fighting – Tag Team Review

There have been a few “auto-battler” card games out in the last few years, most notably Challengers (which is a huge multiplayer tournament romp if you do it right).

What is an auto-battler?

It’s when you have a deck of cards shuffled, and you play the top card of your deck against the top card of your opponent’s deck.

The most classic one with a basic set of cards is War, of course, but there’s no skill in that one at all.

What happens when you have two unique characters, with their own cards and their own abilities, facing off head to head in the same kind of conflict?

That’s when you get Tag Team, an auto battler where you start with a very small deck and keep adding to it until you’ve eliminated one of your opponent’s characters.

Tag Team was designed by Gricha German and Corentin Lebrat, with artwork by Xavier Gueniffey Durin.

It was published by Scorpion Masqué in 2025, and it already has an expansion out!

The game comes with twelve different fighters, of which you will be using four (two each).

It’s short, punchy (sorry), and ready to make you want to play again after you’ve faced crushing defeat.

It also has a bunch of different ways of crushing you.

Some of the characters are more complicated than others, but the basics of them are all the same.

You each start with two characters and your deck consists of both of their starting cards, shuffled up.

Yes, that’s right.

Your deck has two cards in it.

What’s most interesting about this game, however, is that as the battle goes on, your deck gets bigger and bigger, and you have a bit of a say in its makeup.

Not a huge say, but some say.

That’s because each character also comes with a deck of 10 cards, so you’ll shuffle those decks together too.

After each round, you will draw three cards from that deck, choose one, and place it into your deck wherever you want.

Yes, that’s right, wherever you want!

Your deck is never shuffled after you shuffle the two initial cards.

Instead, you choose where to put the card that you chose.

Maybe you took a heavy attack last round on the 2nd card, so you want to place a shield in the 2nd slot of your deck to block it?

Have at it!

Except if your opponent also placed their new card in the 2nd slot, then their big attack got bumped down to 3rd and you’re still screwed.

That’s the beauty of this game: you are playing both a physical game of card-flipping as well as a mind game with your opponent.

The basics of the rounds, though, are that you just flip the top card of your deck and do the results of both your opponent’s and your own card.

You see the above result after a card flip, where Terror of the Seas did an attack.

The right player’s shield negates all the damage. Since it was successful, they gain a power cube, making that fighter that much stronger.

That’s all you do is flip the cards and see what happens.

What are these characters?

There is a nice diversity in play types and really cool special rules for each one.

Milady’s big thing is hatching schemes that, when they’re executed, could be devastating.

Or there’s Mephisto, who flips over a snake token and her cards depend on which side is up.

There are the cards for her like Twin Serpents.

If the dark side of her snake token is up, she attacks. If the light side is up, she gets a power token. Either way, after executing the action, the token flips.

Each character card also comes with the hit point track which tracks their health, and will determine when they’re knocked out.

The power cubes you accumulate will be how much damage you do when you attack.

It’s all quite intricate in a way, and some fighters will do better paired with other fighters. Some combinations will clash, though.

It’s very simple in concept (though the Fey Folk are a bit tough to get my head around so far) and it’s neat to see play out on the table.

When one of either player’s characters reaches zero health, they are knocked out and the game is over.

Thus, the game really doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Our games have taken 10-20 minutes, tops (and that’s with trying to figure out how a character works as we were all still new).

The artwork is really amazing as well.

In fact, the game is quick enough that you could almost run a tournament if you wanted. It’s not Challengers quick, but with twelve characters in the box, the worst that might happen is you run out of power cubes.

The game also comes with a Fighter Guide which explains all of the special rules for each character, which is a nice touch.

There’s not a whole lot more to say about Tag Team, but I can definitely say it’s one of the best quick-playing 2-player games that I’ve seen, and I haven’t even explored all of the possible character combinations yet.

Some might find it a bit too “on the rails,” or not want to keep that close track of what order the other player’s cards came out in.

But that’s definitely a personal preference.

For me, I would love to keep exploring this one.

(This review was written after 4 plays)