I previewed Michael Yang's card game Compile: Main 1 ahead of its debut from Greater Than Games at Gen Con 2024 and loved the complex interactions created when you shuffled three six-card mini-decks together to try to outwit an opposing AI, that is, a human player who is pretending to be an AI, the same as you.
Compile: Main 2 debuted at Gen Con 2025 — now from Synapses Games following the dashed distribution dreams of Greater Than Games owner Flat River Group — and in Q3 2026 Yang and Synapses Games will release Compile: Main 3, with this game being a similar format to the previous two. If you're not familiar with Compile, here's an overview:
The premise is that you are artificial intelligences pitting your digital brains against one another to determine the top bot. To set up, choose six of the twelve protocols included in the game. Each protocol consists of a deck of six cards and an identifier card — Light, Plague, Gravity, etc. — that mentions the playstyle of that protocol; Spirit, for example, is "flip, shift, draw". One player chooses a protocol, then the next player chooses two, then the first player chooses two of the remaining three, giving each player three protocols. To win, you must compile your protocols first. Let's learn how...
Lay out your three protocol cards in a row facing your opponent's protocols, then shuffle your cards to form a deck, drawing five cards as a starting hand. Each card lists its related protocol and a numerical strength that's zero or higher; additionally, it has three fields that might feature, from top to bottom, an ongoing ability, a comes-into-play effect, and another type of ability.
On a turn, either you ditch as many cards as you wish from your hand, then refill your hand to five cards, or you play a card into its matching protocol area. When you do this, you stack this card on any others in this protocol so that only the top ongoing ability field is visible, then carry out the comes-into-play effect, if any.
If the total strength of the protocol you played on is at least 10, you announce that you're compiling this protocol next turn. If the opponent doesn't drop your strength below 10 or exceed your strength in this lane, on your next turn you discard all cards in this protocol as well as all of the opponent's cards in the facing protocol, then flip the protocol to the "compiled" side. You can continue to play cards to this protocol on future turns, but you can't compile it again, so you're only getting the effects of those cards...which might still be enough of a reason to play them.
Card effects do all the things you might expect — draw cards, move cards from one row to another, force the opponent to discard, force you to discard (when you play something really good) — along with other things that might surprise you, like swapping protocols, which might trigger a "compile check" that your opponent could not anticipate, or flipping cards face down or face up again. You can see a face-down card at the middle left of the image above; it has a strength of 2 and no effects, but if you flip it face up, its comes-into-play effect triggers again, and as in other games of this type, you want to abuse card powers as much as possible.
Each Compile: Main # is a standalone game with twelve protocols, and these protocols can be mixed from one game to another. Two supplemental packs — Compile: Aux 1 and Compile: Aux 2 — have been released, with each pack containing three protocols, and as one might expect Compile: Aux 3 will also be released in Q3 2026.
Compile: Main 3 features protocols based on the "seven deadly sins" — Envy, Pride, Wrath, Gluttony, Lust, Greed, and Sloth — as well as five non-sin-themed protocols: Ambush, Fulcrum, Momentum, Nova, and Overwhelm. The protocols in Compile: Aux 3 are Flexible, Inert, and Rigid. (Designer Michael Yang has previewed a few cards from Main 3 in this BoardGameGeek thread.)
Compile: Main 3 also features a solo mode, which hasn't previously appeared in a Compile: Main game. In solo mode, you face the BOT (Basic Oppositional Terminal). In a press release announcing Compile: Main 3, Synapses Games publisher Carl Briere writes, "Solo mode is something we have wanted to bring to Compile for a long time, and Michael Yang has delivered it in the most uncompromising way possible. The BOT is not a watered-down experience. It is an opponent with its own logic, and the twelve escalating scenarios give solo players a real progression to work through and conquer."
