I fought Queens and Knights, but somehow my hardest opponents in Stack Order, the next great deckbuilder, were 2 birds

What’s worse than fighting one human-sized bird with sunglasses? Fighting two human-sized birds with sunglasses. That wasn’t a usual problem in my everyday life until I started playing Stack Order’s demo, the hand-drawn deckbuilder that’s full of duels and fantastic combos.

The run began with my masked character locked away in a jail cell, not all that dissimilar to how I start most of my days. However, this time I was promptly freed by a stranger who wanted to help out. After handing me a deck of cards and talking me through how to use it, I was left to go on my merry way. The only problem was that I didn’t get very far before a knight called Robert, who was very unhappy to see me out of my cell, butted in.

I’ve played my fair share of deckbuilders so it wasn’t exactly a steep learning curve. But unlike some other games, Stack Order puts a very strong emphasis on stacking cards. You need to lose the bad habit of just playing one card at a time and instead start stacking cards at the first chance you get.

But, crucially, stacking cards doesn’t necessarily mean you have to use them, you could get everything ready and then forfeit your go or just use a throwaway attack. Most killing blows in Stack Order come down all at once after you’ve stacked several cards all with varying multipliers and unleash it all at once.

Certain cards, for example, deal extra damage if they come before or after cards, others add damage to specific cards if they’re stacked below them. You get a random assortment of cards on each turn, so you can’t always bet on a dream stack, but if you’re smart you can usually create one hell of a combo.

The only problem is that you’re not the only one who can pack a punch. Each enemy I came up against had their own set of skills which changed the fight. Knight Robert had a simple yet effective attack / block combo, the Queen slowly poisoned me, but the birds, those two damn birds really topped it all.

First off there were two of them, which meant extra attacks, but to make matters worse each bird had a special effect that would see them deal extra damage the more cards you left on the table and would steal either the top of bottom card of each stack and use it to buff themselves, including how much they were able to heal. This made things really tricky.

I quickly found out that if I didn’t kill them quickly we’d roll into a painfully long stalemate, as I would just barely hang on with shields and they were able to heal 11 damage every third turn. Damage them enough and you can break some of their attacks, they’ll still deal damage but won’t get the bonus perk.

Managing how you build stacks, when you can’t build multiple and also need to leave a sacrifice card for one of the birds to eat, is taxing to be sure. But that’s what makes winning fights in Stack Order all the more rewarding.

I managed to experience this euphoria after I bested the pair of birds, but that wasn’t the last I’d see of them as, after dying to the next boss, I had to restart my run. Soon I was fighting Robert, the Queen, and the dastardly bird duo all over again, and let me tell you it does not get easier the second time you fight them.