Resident Evil: Alliance works as a standalone game box or as an addition to the Resident Evil: DBG basic box. I’ve played Alliance as both its own game and as a addition, and I have to say, it offers some pretty amazing cards to amp up your Basic box.  12 new character cards (some revisions of existing cards, and some totally-new characters) await, as well as some awesome new game mechanics.

New Rules: Partners

The Alliance box brings with it a totally new envisioning of the Resident Evil game–playing with two characters instead of one. You get two Character cards, usually at random, at the beginning of the game, and you choose one to be your Main and one to be your Partner, playing both characters together. Your Partner is basically another character to use when you Explore, and another pair of hands to hold a Weapon or two; whenever your Partner character takes lethal damage, however, he or she is removed from the game completely, and you continue on with just your Main character, who respawns one turn after death as usual.

Who Leads When Exploring the Mansion? You Decide!

Whenever you Explore, you declare one character to be the leader, but both characters help Explore with their weapons. The only time this matters is if one of your characters has a special effect that specifies that it happens when he or she explores. For instance, Ada Wong’s Level 1 “peek” ability specifies that it can only happen when she is the one to lead an exploration; thus, you must declare her the leader if you want to use that ability. Your leading character does not have to be your Main character.

Attaching Weapons and Other Cards to Your Partner

You can attach up to 2 weapons or action cards to your Partner unless otherwise indicated. This is a wonderful asset–the act of attaching a card to your Partner gets it out of your deck, and it can be a constant weapon that you don’t need to Reload onto every turn. Best of all, any cards attached to your Partner character cannot be removed, except by your choosing to replace it, or a small number of specific game effects. For instance, there’s a Zombie that removes the highest-costing card from your Partner if you didn’t kill it with exactly 35 damage, and there’s an Action that makes everyone else discard down to 1 card or less on their Partners.

New Cards

There are several new weapons and actions, lots of them able to be abused, such as Gathering Forces and the Flamethrower. My personal favorites so far, however, are as follows:

	Quirk of Fate: like Ominous Battle in that it allows you to Trash a card from your hand, plus you get an Action back and get to draw a card. Drawback: you can’t Trash Quirk of Fate out of your deck once you buy it (unlike Shattered Memories), making it a dead card late-game.
	Russian Assault Rifle & Signature Special: X Ammo required, X damage cost. The RARs can only be filled with a max of 20 ammo for 20 damage, and the Signature Special has a max of 60 damage. But these are both awesome, since you fill them with just as much ammo as you have available and that’s exactly how much damage you deal.
	Star-Crossed Duo: attached to your Partner, this gives them +10 damage if they are the ones leading the Explore. Helps out more than you might think! You also get +2 cards and +1 Buy when you first play this on your Partner.
	Fierce Battle: Have somebody else in the game draw 1 card, and you draw 4 cards. Absolutely awesome with a deck full of Russian Assault Rifles and the Signature Special, and/or with the new Jack Krauser–you have the possibility of drawing tons of ammo and rifles to feed said ammo into!

For More Information

Images courtesy of: BoardGameGeek.com’s Resident Evil DBG: Alliance page.