Congrats, movie trivia nerds. CineNerdle Battle feels like a real game now, and it rules

Last year, I became very taken with movie puzzle site Cine2Nerdle’s battle mode, which pits two opponents against each other in a movie trivia showdown. The bones of the original game were simple: After being given a starting movie, both players go back and forth finding connections to other movies through cast and crew members until someone runs out of connections and loses. It was fun, but pretty straightforward, with the only other rule being that each actor or crew member could be used as a connection a maximum of three times per game.

Recently, Cine2Nerdle completely overhauled the mode into “Battle 2.0,” building it into something that feels like an actual, factual game now. You build a “battle kit” — think decks in a trading card game — to bring into your showdown. Each includes a win condition, “lifelines,” and other key items, as well as the ability to ban specific movies or cast members from being used by your opponent. Every kit has 20 slots to fill, but each win condition, lifeline, or item takes up a different amount of slots.

Lifelines are like spell cards, one-time-use abilities that give you an edge over your opponent, like adding more time for yourself or reducing their available time. Key items are passive effects: One particularly powerful example is “The Notebook,” which reveals the two top-billed cast members of any movie played by your opponent that is not in the Top 1,000 most popular in the game’s database. That one’s been a lifesaver for me when trying to survive my opponents’ more obscure connections.

But the personalized win conditions are really what makes “Battle 2.0” the game I keep picking up each night. One of the main drawbacks of the previous version was that games could go on for an eternity if both players knew their stuff. I had marathon battles that lasted close to an hour, as we volleyed titles back and forth until someone just gave up. But with a win condition, battles usually take closer to five to 10 minutes, as each player is striving for a specific achievable objective.

The win conditions break down into three categories: genre, cast member, or “special” win conditions. For genres, all you need to do to win is reach a certain number of movies within that category, like nine romance movies or eight horror films. If you choose a cast member as a win condition, you’ll have to connect a certain number of films with a specific actor or director, but you can’t use them as a connector, so you have to find another way there. So if you have Jackie Chan as your win condition, you can’t connect Shanghai Knights to Rush Hour, because both have Jackie Chan. But you can connect Jackie Brown to Rush Hour through Chris Tucker, or Kraven the Hunter to Shanghai Knights through Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

The three special win conditions really spice things up: “Find Nemo” (aka four Pixar movies), “Assemble the Team” (five MCU movies), or “Go Commando” (one Arnold Schwarzenegger movie). There are special rules here, too — for example, if you choose the Pixar one, you can’t use John Ratzenberger as a link (he is in nearly every Pixar movie, so it prevents you from connecting all of them with each other). If you choose the Schwarzenegger one, you can’t use him as a connector, and you can’t bring any lifelines (which sounds rough, but is certainly thematically fitting given how many times he’s played a one-man army in his nearly 100-movie career).

I’ve bounced around between a few different win conditions myself: “Go Commando” as a challenge, Jackie Chan because I love his movies, or picking a random genre or cast member to spice things up. But, somewhat to my chagrin, I’ve had the most success with the “Assemble the Team” win condition — I wouldn’t call myself an MCU fan at this point, but I’ve seen all the movies, I have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of actors who have shown up in them (aka almost every modern famous person), and I like winning.

The rhythm of Cine2Nerdle’s battles feels like tennis to me, going back and forth with an opponent until someone hits a winner. Like tennis, sometimes you try for a winner on every shot, and sometimes you’re setting something up a few shots ahead of time, searching for the perfect moment to catch your opponent off balance. As someone who loves martial arts movies, I’m always looking out for when a Dave Bautista movie is played — so I can play Bushwick, then take things to my preferred area of expertise with either Master Z: Ip Man Legacy or Kickboxer: Vengeance. And now that there are win conditions to choose from, it’s a lot less likely you’ll be in an Isner-Mahut Cine2Nerdle marathon.

Avoiding those lengthy duels helps, but it’s the whole package that has made “Battle 2.0” feel like an actual game and not just a movie-oriented way to pass the time in your browser. Building various battle kits makes each Cine2Nerdle face-off feel like something you prepare for and design around, rather than simply being a test of stamina or chance. Have some big gaps in your movie knowledge? You probably want to bring some escapes, or a key item that tells you who is in that movie.

It’s a winner for movie trivia fans everywhere, and a strong enough game that it could mint some new movie trivia fans out there, too. And if you see a player named Ruckaboo out there, say hey. And, uh, play a Dave Bautista movie for me, would you?

CineNerdle’s “Battle 2.0” mode is available to play on Cine2Nerdle’s website.