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| Some figures on a quarter of the board |
Krosmaster Arena is based on a French anime series, and the game was imported into the US market by Japanime, first through this Kickstarter. You can find an electronic version of the game here.
It's a light wargame, best with 2 or 4 players. Each turn, your 4 or 2 figures spend their movement points to get around the board, and their action points to power spells and attacks on the figure's card. While technically you win by the opponent not having any Golden Galleons (GG), this is primarily done by knocking out your opponent's figures.
Component Quality
The figures are really great. Well painted, interesting, dynamic. A couple of them will probably need to be touched up with some super glue. The game comes with a double-sided map, Demonic Reward tokens, some summoned creature tokens, cardboard trees/bushes/boxes, and custom six-sided dice. There are an assortment of chits to track wounds, lost/gained actions and movement points, as well as the coins (kamas).
Rulebook
The rulebook takes the approach of teaching the game using mini-tutorials. After 6 or so tutorials, you reach the main rulebook - it's good, but I wish the structure was a little more clear. GG didn't seem that important until we played the electronic version.
Gameplay
Overall, it's pretty fast. You can break up your movement between actions, making it very flexible. The six-sided dice drive the random elements - how much bonus damage did you get? how much did you block? Did you roll enough boots to escape the magnets that they rolled to stop you?
Tension
Your turn starts off rolling 2 dice for 'tension'. If you get matching dice, each player loses a GG. (If a team has no GG left, they lose.) Then, assign the dice to the same or different characters that you control - a starburst lets you roll two dice when rolling damage with that character. Likewise, the other 3 options are powering up your ability to block damage, escape, or lock.
Actions
You move your characters around, spending action points to pick up the coins scattered around the board, spending action points to buy Demonic Rewards at shops, and hopefully attacking the other figures.
Battles
Very straightforward - your average attack value is 1-2, with a specific range. You roll an extra 1 or 2 dice to add damage, they roll 1 or 2 dice to get shields, their figure takes some damage. A 1 point attack is probably going to eat up about half of the attacking figure's action points. If you knock out an opposing figure, you get GG from that player equal to the figure's level...usually about 3.
Duration
The game takes about 45-60 minutes to play, depending how players go. Defensive, ducking around, stealing health...it can take another half hour. I've played the electronic game in about 20-30 minutes.
Replay Value
The base game comes with 8 figures, exactly enough to play 4 players (or the 2-player game with 4 figures each)...meaning you'll see the same characters every game. Maybe some different pairings, different tactics, almost certainly some different Demonic Rewards...but...the characters drive the game. Getting a booster of 4 figures expands the choices and game play a lot.
Online Component
When you buy a booster/base game or win a promo figure, it comes with a code to play it online. It might even be faster to learn the game on the computer, and then play in real life.
Deal Breakers
The price point and availability is probably the biggest killer for this game. $28 for a booster of 4 figures seems pretty crazy. $80 for the base game is probably fair, as long as you have a lesser need for a strong replay value out of the box.
Overall
The game itself is fun. Players get to move their cool figures around the board, beating up other figures...rolling dice, taking cover - a light wargame. We'll probably have this in regular rotation, as well as fitting in some electronic battles with each other.
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