Compile has quietly become one of the sharpest two-player card games around, and its next set hands those duelling AIs a wickedly good theme: the seven deadly sins. Compile: Main 3, from publisher Synapses Games and designer Michael Yang, debuts at Gen Con 2026 and reaches shops later in the year.
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Start organising for freeIf you have not met it, Compile is a tense 20-to-30-minute duel in which two artificial intelligences flicker into being and try to grasp big concepts. Each player drafts three protocols, shuffles them into a deck, then plays cards into three lanes and races to compile each one before their opponent does. It squeezes a surprising amount of decision-making out of a handful of cards, which is why reviewers keep naming it a desert-island two-player pick.
Main 3 trades the earlier sets' cosmic ideas for pride, envy, wrath, gluttony, lust, greed and sloth, spread across 12 new protocols. As with the previous boxes it stands alone, so a newcomer can start right here, and it shuffles happily into Compile: Main 1 and Main 2 if you want a deeper pool to draft from.
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Set up your group for freeThe headline addition is a proper solo mode. You build a deck and go up against the BOT, an opponent you can bluff, command and exploit across 12 escalating scenarios in Regular and Advanced difficulty. Compile has always been strictly two-player, so a solo campaign opens it up to a lot more people.
It is a small box with a big reputation, and if the sins protocols are as finely balanced as the last set, the argument over which lane to breach next is about to get a lot more heated. Fancy a duel? Round up your two-player regular and clear an evening.
Sources: Synapses Games | ICv2 | Meeple Mountain
