Daniel (@dungeondive) takes a combined look at Gate and its expansion Gates — Jason Glover’s solo deck-building tower-defence game in the Tin series. The pitch: corrupted Zogar approaches your city. Recruit citizens into your deck, defend the gate, the farm, the tavern, and the tower across three waves of enemies, then face Zogar himself.
Mechanically, it pairs micro deck-building with a Fear pyramid that ratchets up as enemies attack and triggers heroes into your discard at threshold points. Each location has a power (purchase boost, calm, repair, attack-plus-one) and hit points; let it reach zero and you lose the power for the rest of the game. Gates adds barricades, two new locations (mill, tavern), more citizens with sharper combos, harder enemies, extra heroes, two new Tin Helm classes, and two new starting items — meaningfully expanding deck variety and slowing the curve so deck-building has time to matter.
Daniel argues that Glover is undersold as a designer: tight economies, micro-form deck builders, small thematic packages with abundant difficult decisions every turn. He recommends buying Gate and Gates together to save on shipping and folding the Tin Helm promos in to expand that game too. Two plays in, one win and one loss — luck mitigation feels sufficient that defeats land as decisions, not draws.
Micro deck-builders are a peculiar niche. Does compressing the format make every card matter more, or does it just make the genre’s weaknesses harder to hide?