MOBA isn't for Video Games only

Hello everybody!

Today I want to talk about a game I bought at last Years ESSEN - the fair about boardgames.
It is called "Guards of Atlantis" and is a MOBA boardgame for 2-10 players. "What" some of you will ask, followed by either ", how should that be possible?" or maybe "is a MOBA?"

So, for the latter of you (these that don't know what a MOBA is or maybe do know but never heard/read the term).
MOBA is an abbreviation for "Multiplayer Online Battle Arena", a video game subgenre where two teams of players compete against each other with the goal, to be the first to destroy the other teams main building (the actual name differs from game to game). The first MOBA games where actually Custom maps for Starcraft (and later Warcraft III) where players controlled mighty heroes, which are aided by weaker minions, which are (endlessly) send by the AI to fight off the minions and heroes of the other side and to destroy the opponents defense fortifications and ultimatle the main base.
What began as some custom maps for real time strategy games became something bigger. Actual MOBA standalone games were made, the most known are probably League of Legens or Heroes of the Storm, and MOBA games became more and more popular as ESport games.

So, now you know what a MOBA game is. But how should you translate a game concept like this to a boardgame?

There were already a couple of tries to bring the concept of a MOBA to a boardgame, but so far, nobody has been as successful with this as publisher Wolf Designa with their title Guards of Atlantis. To be honest: Yes, it is still an abstract version of the video games, but it comes close enough to say, that this is a very good transportation of the main idea!
In Guards of Atlantis players are divided in two teams and every player controls a hero. Each hero is represented by an very good sculpted miniature and a deck of cards. While the miniatue represents the hero on the gameboard, the deck of cards represent this heroes abilities, skills and equipment. Every hero has five cards: A basic attack, a "Hold" card and three upgradeable cards. Every time a hero gains a level he can chose one of these three cards and exchange it with a card of the same color from the next Tier (of there are always two). The card that is not chosen is added as an item, which gives the hero a permanent bonus.
Also, each team has a number of Minions, which "spawn" at fixed positions on the board and don't move by themself. Minions also don't attack heroes, but minions of the same team give some defense bonus and minions of the opposing team give some defense malus while standing next to them.

Goal of the game is to push the battle on the board to the opposing Base. The battle gets pushed forward if at any time one team has destroyed all minions of the other team. As soon as this happens the gameflow will be interrupted and minions spawn one field further toward the opposing team. Then the game continues.



The heroes are controlled by the five cards each players has for their hero. Each round of the game, four of these five cards are played. At the beginning of each turn of the four turns during a round each player chooses one card and puts it face down in his play area. After everybody has chosen a card all players turn their card and each action will be resolved in Initative-order. This can lead to situations where the hero, you wanted to attack moves away before you can strike, or that the minions you wanted to kill are no longer there, because the lane was pushed. Also you can interfere with the plans of your opponents by blocking pathes or move minions (an ability only a few heroes have), because you decide which card to play at the beginning of the turn, but as each card can be used in more than one way you choose in which way you weant to use it when its your turn in the Initiative order.

Another plus for this game is the fact, that all the heroes play differently. Each have their unique skill set and because you have two cards to chose when you gain a level, each hero can be played in at least two different ways. This allows for a lot of customization, which is always a good thing for games like this one.

So, if you like MOBA video games and have at least a bit interest in boardgames give this one a try. And if you are a boardgamer, that is not interested in video games at all, but you like strategic board games I also would recommend to give this one a try.
But be warned: As there is no random element involved you are alone responsible for everything bad happen to you in this game. If you loose, you probably will loose because you made mistakes, or at least because the other team played better than yours. No blaming the dice or a bad card draw.
I like this a lot, but there are people, that aren't into this kind of game. So, you have been warned!

Enemies from the mist and out of space

Hello!

It's been some time since I last posted something but I'm quite busy at the moment.
And there is so much I wanna write about! Two weeks ago I met with some friends for a long weekend and of course we played a lot during those roundabout 2,5 days.
About two of these games I want to write about in this post.

The first one is Mistfall.
Mistfall is a cooperative adventure game for 1-4 players which is set in a fantasy world full of magic and mystery. In Mistfall each player represents a hero, each with their own skills and items and all players as group must defeat the special encounter at the end of a map. On their way to said boss battle (because so far it was always about a boss battle, but then again I only played three games so far) they must defeat multiple other encounters. Each encounter has a number of opponents the heroes face (or... encounter, because those enemies can (and will) get reinforcements!) and also some special rules which are in effect as long as the encounter lasts. Also, each encounter has it's own condition how it will end (besides killing all opponents, which is (so far) always a second condition).

The mist clears ...

By killing monsters heroes earn "Resolve" which acts as the currence in this game. For resolve players can learn new skills, gain items special to their hero or can scout the locations around them before they move.
Most of the game is played in encounters and therefore: combat! So the rules for combat need to be quite solid. In my opinion they are not groundbreaking, but serve their purpose.
 

... and enemies emerge from it!

Heroes act during the round and can do actions, with which they are using their weapons, cast spells or use other useful skills to either reach the special goal of the encounter or defeat all their opponents. By using actions they gain enemy focus. Usually the more powerful the action is, the more focus they get. At the start of each round (after reinforcements have arrived) the enemies engage heroes in X against one battles. And those buggers alwys choose the hero with the most enemy focus, halving the amount of focus in the process. Therefore the next enemy sees, that this hero is dealt with and chooses another hero. I think that this is quite a good way to distribute enemies to the heroes and also gives the heroes some sort of control about, who will get an enemy after the next reinforcement.


As I said, I only played three games so far, but after we played on that weekend (and got defeated by the boss) I realized that I should play this more often! There is also a campaign system, which you must buy, because it is not included in the base set, but at least it does have a camapign of some sort. I have to be honest: I own it, but never looked into the rules or cards for it, so unfortunatly I can't tell you right now if it is any good or not. But as I plan to play it sooner or later, I will keep you updated on that!

The other game I want to talk about today is Battlestar Galactica!
This is simply my most favourite semi-cooperative game! So far I haven't found another game, where one player (or more, depending on the number of players) is a traitor and tries to sabotage the attempts of the rest of the group to fulfill his own agenda. And I don't say that because I really liked the show! (which I did) But the game is so good and most of the times gives you so much tension, because you know there is a traitor (or two) but you don't know who it is, sometimes not even before it's too late!

The Mainboard

et's start at the beginning: Battlestar Galactica (short BSG) is a science fiction semi-cooperative board game which is based on the television series of the same name. In the game humanity treis to flee from their pursuers, the Cylons while finding a new home. The Cylons, robots originally created by man, on the other hand try to erase mankind from the galaxy. But not only are the ships of the human fleet are pursued by a robotic army. The cylons were able to create a species of their own, which look like humans. They walk, talk and bleed like humans do and sometimes, these "skin-jobs" (as humankind calls them) doesn't even know that they are Cylons until they are "activated".
Im the board game this is represented by so called loyalty cards. Each character gets two of these cards. One at the very beginning and a second roughly at the half of the game. These cards tell you, if you are a Cylon (and therefore a traitor to the human race) or not.

Ressource-Wheels

On their way through space humanity doesn't have to deal with the Cylons alone. There are all sorts of crisis to deal with and this is done mainly through hidden checks. For these all players may throw any number of their hand cards (which come in 5 different colors) in a common pool. Then those cards get shuffled and the stack is evaluated. This is one of the possibilities for the Cylon player/s to harass mankind. But they also have to be careful, as it is common knowledge which character draws how many of which coloured card! And even if two random cards gets shuffled into that stack too, they can give valuable clues to the human players about their true origin. That's what happened in our first game of BSG on that weekend: We had two Cylons from the very beginning, we made our first check and thwere were two cards in the stack which could only come from the two Cylon players.

For me BSG is more about the way to the goal than actually win the game. Sure, it's always nice to win but the tension, the (often false) accusations and the constant doubt, who the Cylons are is the meat of the game. But the rest is also very good! With it's three expansions BSG delivers a lot of different variants itself and most of them I haven't even played, because for the main game is already very good on its own. There are however a couple of extras I take from the expansions (besides the additional crew members players can choose from) which I don't wanna miss like ever again, because they really add to game.

So, if you like semi-cooperative board games and you haven't played BSG before I can strongly suggest to try it if you get the chance! It is also highly enjoyable if you never watched the series (as friends of mine show me again and again) and maybe you will watch the show after you played BSG once or twice. And I can just encourage this too! Even my wife watched BSG and she is definatly not the sci-fi type. Because BSG is not (only) about flying around in space and dogfight with some aliens, but it's the drama and the constant tension mankind experience on it's flight from the Cylons and towards a new home...