our review

Mages in the multiverse

Magic: The Gathering

Arena of the Planeswalkers

Planeswalkers are mages that have been born with the „spark“, and thus with the ability to travel across the multiverse to an endless variety of worlds and create for themselves spheres of power. Confrontations between Planeswalkers can shock, jolt and shatter entire worlds.

At the outset of the confrontation the arena is created in relation to the number of players. In a duel of two players the aim is the destroy your opposing Planeswalker or to obtain the highest score after thirty game turns. In a „Skirmish“ two teams of two Planeswalkers each confront each other and want either to destroy their opposing Planeswalkers or to have accrued the highest score after 60 turns of the game. In the confrontation mode “Every one on his own” you play by yourself and win after 36, 48 or 60 turns with the highest total cost of creatures on hexes of purple color.

The Arena is composed of terrain tiles in relation to the number of players, and you place Shandalar Ruins and Glyphs on them; there are also five miniatures for character pieces - Gideon Jura, Combat Mage - Jace Beleren, Mindmage - Liliana Vess – female Necromancer - Chandra Nalaa, female Pyromancer and Nissa Revane, female Animist, all of them with very different abilities, strengths and powers. You choose your Planeswalker and receive Spell Cards, Army cards and all creatures of your chosen color; creatures and Non-Planeswalker cards are laid out as your reserve. You draw three cards from the Spell card deck, called the Library.

Then y turn in the game mostly comprises five action in this order: 1) Draw a spell card; 2) Choose a Squad card; 3) Move one or more pieces according to the chosen Squad card; 4) optional – attack with one or more creatures of the chosen Squad card; and, finally, 5) move the turn marker.

At the start of phase 3 your Planeswalker can summon up to two squads and heroes from the reserve to empty hexes on the board, in direct line of sight for the Planeswalker and within a distance of five hexes to him. Movement is possible in any direction, you can pass friendly creatures that are not in skirmish mode; terrain characteristics change the range of creatures. Creatures taking up two hexes can be turned free of cost on those hexes. If a creature moves to a hex next to an opposing creature it goes into skirmish mode.

In Phase 4 all creatures from the Squad card that have opposing creatures in the range of action and with unimpaired line of sight on those creatures can attack. You can now touch and align your own creatures. All creatures selected for combat can now attack in any order, each creature can attack once and they can all attack the same opponent or different ones. For an attack you must also take into account advantages of height, abilities, spell cards and glyphs for modifications. When the number of damage markers on a creature equals the number of its life points, the creature is eliminated and goes to the creature cemetery of the winner; when all creatures from one squad card are eliminated, the squad card goes to the Squad cemetery of the winner.

The end of the game and winning conditions are, as already mentioned, determined by the chosen scenario; for a point scoring you sum up creature costs.

You can also combine several sets of the game or game and expansions and customize your squad; if you use only one core game the total costs of your squad cannot be higher than 500 points and the squad must feature exactly one Planeswalker.

Well, how much magic of the trading card game, which surely is the most successful game world-wide, has been put into the board game? The background story and the Planeswalker pieces feature the mana colors, as do the creatures, the game mechanisms themselves come from tabletop games and fantasy adventure games from Heroscape to Mage Wars. The pieces are nicely done, but getting them back into their insert works best if you remembered to take picture of the insert will all pieces before the first play.

A massive issue, however, for criticism is the idea, to print the turn counting tracks into the rules and, on top of it, provide a counter token of 5mm, that would be taken for waste from the die-cut sheet in any other game.

For newcomers to the genre and for players who do not mind the chance element introduced by using dice for combat decisions, Magic The Gathering Arena of the Planeswalkers can be recommended; it is the trading card game downgraded to its basic elements and can be played without any previous knowledge of it, you also do not have to know the cards from the board game for a first good play.

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 2-5

Age: 10+

Time: 60+

Designer: James D’Aloisio, Ethan Fleischer, Craig Van Ness

Artist: not named

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Hasbro 2015

Web: www.hasbro.at

Genre: Fantasy adventure

Users: With friends

Special: 2 players

Version: de

Rules: de en es

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Key mechanisms from the Trading Card Game

No knowledge of the Trading Card Game necessary

Nice components of varying quality

Chance-driven due to dice decision on skirmishes

Short playing time

Compares to:

Adventure board games from Heroscape to Mage Wars; Magic The Gathering Trading Card Game for topic and key features

Other editions:

English, Spanish

My rating: 4

Dagmar de Cassan:

Fantasy conflict based on the trading card game, albeit a lot less tactical and a lot more chance-driven, the mechanisms are taken from fantasy tabletop games. Best for newcomers to the genre.

Chance (pink): 3

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0