Battle for Sularia: Review

Battle for Sularia: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Head to Head, Take That, Pre-Constructed Deck Builder
Player Age: 13+ 

Player Count: 2 Players

Time to Play: 30 Minutes 
Game Designer: Jesse Bergman, John Kimmel
Game Artist:  Various

Publisher: Punch-It Entertainment LLC

Year Published: 2016

BGG Weight: 3.25
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

Objective:

The aim of the game is to destroy your opponents sites and reduce there health from 25 to 0. This is achieved through tactics, conditions, combatants and careful planning.

Card Anatomy:

Sites:

These sites will cost influence to establish, and will generate sularium each turn (this solarium will be used to create combatants). Each site will also have an attack on the bottom left and health on the bottom right. Sometimes, there will also be abilities in the centre of the card.

Combatants:

Combatants are designed in the same manner as sites, except that the cost on the top left is in sularium. The top right is still the sularium generated by the card, but on some occurrences can be a negative value.

Tactics and Conditions:

These cards will be used to modify the battlefield. Tactics will only resolve once where conditions will stay permanently. Conditions can only be played from the influence row. Both of these cards have a threshold on the top left that requires the player to currently have that amount of influence in their influence row. The cool thing is that using these cards do not use this resource, it just has to be there. For further explanation, if you have three cards at 2, 4 and 5 threshold, and you have 4 influence, then you can play the 2 and the 4 this turn but you won't be able to play the 5.

Setup:

Before playing your first game, I recommend looking at the starting decks available to build at this site. Then shuffle each players deck, draw seven cards and set each player at 25 health.

How to Play:

The multiple phases of generation, establishing and attacking will be explained but first, the command window, as it is used a lot in multiple phases.

Command Window:

Starting with the active payer until both pass in succession, players can activate abilities on their sites and combatants by exhausting them, or play a tactic from their hand or a tactic/condition from their influence row. These will not resolve until both players have passed. Using the ‘stack’ rule as in ‘Magic The Gathering’, the last card played will resolve first followed by the others in reverse order of being played.

Reset and Draw Phase:

This phase is simple, you draw two cards and un-exhaust all your exhausted sites, influence and combatants. This, however, is not needed on the first turn for each player.

Influence and Site Phase:

First off, place one card from your hand into the influence row face-down, giving you one each turn influence (consider this as a second hand as you can play these cards from the influence row when they are valid). Then open a command window and calculate how much influence you have. This influence will be used to establish sites by exhausting and using up the influence for this turn and then establishing the site onto the field in two rows designated for sites only. The first site can be played in either row then the following sites have to connect to an edge of a previously played site (image below). When doing this, remember the opponent can only (usually) attack the sites that are exposed (in the front row or have no sites in front of them). Then another command window becomes available.

Sularium and Combatant Phase:

Calculate the sularium produced by the sites on the top right-hand side of the card. That is the sularium you are able to spend to enlist combatants. Each combatant will have a cost on the top left that will need to be spent on that turn. Before and after enlisting combatants a command window is open.

Attacking:

Now is the key part, using your combatants to demolish your opponent's sites. You choose which combatants you want to attack with (they exhaust to attack). Combatants cannot be attacked in this manner, only sites. Once this is done the opponent will choose which combatants they wish to defend with, if any. A command window opens before and after choosing defenders.

When fighting, the attacking and defending combatants/sites will do damage to each other simultaneously based on their attack (bottom left of card). If a combatant dies in this phase it is discarded. The sites will also be discarded in the same manner, however, two conditions happen now. First, the player with the site will lose health equal to the influence cost of the site (this occurs if the site is destroyed by an ability or a tactic), and secondly, if the site dies by a combatant any excess damage will hit the owning player.

End Phase:

Now that you have deployed sites, units and attacked, you will discard down to seven cards. Players will now have the last command window available for the turn and activate all the end of turn abilities, as well as reset any site or combatant health. The turn passes to the other player until one has been conquered.

Final Thoughts:

Pros:
- Unique duel mana system
- It's a CCG without any collectability
- The bulk amount of damage done to players is based on destroying sites instead of directly attacking the player

Cons:
- Need to buy expansions for enough range of cards to build different decks
- Can feel very similar to CCG's

'Battle for Sularia' is a great alternative to a collectable card game. The base game needs more variability available to help build decks or have new factions available, but this has already been addressed through expansions (review upcoming). The main selling point is that it holds the CCG gameplay without being collectable. Additionally the duel resource system. In this game the resource system for combatants is based on sites that will be attacked and destroyed throughout the game, which helps emulate a RTS feel where if you can limit the sites, you can limit the amount the other player can attack you with. If you are looking for a game with similar systems, but still unique to CCG's with no collectability then 'Battle for Sularia' is for you.

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