In particular, I like the part where you build your deck from a set of themed sub-decks before the start, and then it’s up to you to find the synergies between those themes. Not sure if there’s an existing term for that mechanic. I think it may count as a form of a deckbuilder, but editing the deck’s contents isn’t part of the main game loop. Maybe a deck drafter?
I also like that it’s a compact card game that doesn’t take long to learn or play, and plays well with only 2 players. The only other drafting games I’ve found have a board, lots of pieces, and are aimed at 4+ players.
Trying to search for games like Compile is a bit difficult, because in the other threads I find, people like to focus on the lane battling aspect, which I could take or leave. I’m mostly interested in compact drafting games for 2p. Anyone know any?
Don’t know if you’ve given it a try yet, but magic the gathering cube is basically exactly this with the added facet of 32 years worth of cards to play with.
OP’s ask sounds similar to MtG’s Jumpstart decks… if you like MtG, that’s worth looking into. (To make it replayable, you’d need to separate out the themed card packs after each play session so you can choose / combine them again.)
So, I’ve been out of the scene for a while now and did not know about JumpStart. After looking into it, this sounds like an absolutely blast and I’m literally going to dredge out my cards too tinker with this later today.
It plays like Cube Lite. It’s great if you want to make a sort of box set that you can break out when friends are around that let you jump into a game in a few minutes, but with a much wider variety of decks than you’d otherwise have available without running a full draft.
This is what my read on it was and it’s actually got me so excited that I’ve broke out my cards for the first time since the golos ban in edh. I’ve been wanting to teach my spouse and child lately and this is shaping up to be a really easy way to make that happen.