Each army feels very different to command. It’s also impressive just how faithfully the game adheres to the theme and flavour of the Magic universe. The dice-based combat system is simple and intuitive, and multiplayer games in particular are an anarchic, violent joy with players forging alliances and stabbing one another in the back with each passing turn.
It’s easy to learn, but packs genuine depth.
Like someone failed at using a 3D printer Knowing which crisis you have to deal with right now and which can wait one more turn can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Often you’ll find yourself with two or three situations on the board which all require your attention at the same time. But it also throws up some interesting tactical dilemmas. This means you’re never waiting long for your next turn to come around, even with four or five players at the table. The turn structure itself also keeps the game moving along quickly, with each player activating, moving and fighting with just a single one of their units on any given round, meaning that a complete turn rarely takes more than about a minute. The board quickly fills up with opposing units, and there is minimal preliminary manoeuvring, leaving you to get straight down to some thoroughly satisfying combat. Photograph: Owen Duffy/The GuardianĪll of this happens at a pretty blistering pace. You can conceive and execute a winning strategy, only for your opponent to play a masterful turn leaving your forces in tatters as you desperately try to improvise a plan B.Īrena of the Planeswalkers’ plastic miniatures are a disappointing aesthetic failure in an otherwise excellent game. In this respect, Arena of the Planeswalkers is much like its card-based older sibling. Individually, none of these spells are necessarily all that powerful, but play them at just the right moment, or in just the right combination, and they can completely change the course of the game. Some simply deal damage to opposing creatures, others beef up your own troops’ abilities, or disrupt your opponent’s plans by countering their spells or forcing them to discard cards from their hand. You’ll draw one of these at the start of every turn, and they can affect the battle in a number of potentially game-changing ways. Using these abilities to their best effect is a huge part of the game, but you’ll also have a collection of magical spells at your disposal, represented by a personal deck of cards. The black player’s zombies smell so bad that any enemies who come near them suffer a penalty to their defence rolls. The blue player’s phantoms can move through enemy figures as if they weren’t there. The red player’s “firecats” can move and attack as soon as they’re summoned on to the board, making them an immediate threat. But as well as these basic stats, each unit boasts special powers allowing it to do things that others can’t. As the game progresses, you’ll summon more creatures to join the fight, until the board becomes a glorious, swirling, chaotic melee.Įach unit you bring to the fray is accompanied by a card outlining its abilities – the number of spaces it can move, the amount of damage it can endure and its skill in attacking and defending in combat. Each player begins the game in command of just a single character – their planeswalker – represented on the battlefield by a miniature plastic figure. It’s all very dramatic, but Arena of the Planeswalkers actually starts out as quite a low-key affair. Over the course of about an hour, you’ll summon units to the modular hex-grid battlefield, engage in vicious combat and cast deadly spells in an effort to slay your rivals and emerge as the last man, woman or woodland elf standing. A fast-paced skirmish battle game, it sees you and your friends take command of armies of creatures led by “planeswalkers”, the powerful, dimension-hopping mages who serve as the central characters in Magic’s ongoing plot.
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