Kamigami Battles - Battle of the Nine Realms: Review

Kamigami Battles - Battle of the Nine Realms: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Deck Builder, Variable Player Powers, Hand Management
Player Age: 12+ 

Player Count: 2 - 6 Players

Time to Play: 45 Minutes 
Game Designer: Rich Gain
Game Artist: Cherry, Wang Junjian

Publisher: Japanime Games

Expandable: Another base game and expansions available

Year Published: 2018

BGG Weight: 2.0
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

Objective:

The gods of Greek and Norse mythology are in a heated war of supremacy. In the battles of nine realms they have enlisted the help of zodiac warriors to defeat the other gods, will you be the supreme god who is able to eliminate all the others in fierce combat?

Card Anatomy:

Each card has either one or two abilities. These abilities can be a ‘react’, which will be used as a reaction to an attack or to a player performing a specific action; or an ‘act’ ability, which can be used anytime during your turn for the God and temple cards but only during the play phase for the rest of the cards.

God Cards:

Each God has two abilities which will be a combination of react and act abilities.  These will only be used once per turn for each ability. God cards also features spheres of influence found above their abilities that determine which temple can be used with this God.

Disciple Cards:

In the top right corner there will be a cost and the disciple type (there are three types). Each disciple has abilities that will be used when played. Both disciple 1 and 2 of this set will be used to gain faith points to buy other disciples or warriors. Disciple 3 will be used to block oncoming attacks from enemy players.

Temple Cards:

The temple cards are the location from which your God is taking their fighting stance. All temples begin with 5 energy which can be attacked instead of the God. The temple can be paired with any god before the game begins as long as the influence spheres correspond (each sphere of influence only has one temple connected to it in this set). Every temple also has abilities that can be used to aid you in battle.

Warrior Cards:

Each warrior will have a cost found in the top left, as well as abilities found at the card bottom. The warriors have a unique play system to them named chaining colours, where the top left of the card will show one colour and symbol in a large sphere, accompanied by two smaller colour-symbol coded spheres. The larger sphere is that cards type whereas the two smaller spheres represent what kind of card you can play next in line and so forth. By using this limiting system, players now have to strategize and deck build effectively to have a good hand every turn.

Setup:

- Shuffle all God Cards and deal each player two, they will choose one God to be their character.
- Pick a temple that matches your God’s sphere of influence.
- Each God will have 15 energy and each temple will have 5 energy.

- Shuffle the warrior deck and deal out six warriors into a marketplace. If any warrior appears twice, stack the duplicates together into a pile and keep drawing until there are six unique warriors.
- Separate the disciples into three individual piles.
- Create a 10 card starting deck for each player by dealing 8 priestess disciples and 2 guardian disciples.
- Each player will draw a starting hand of 5 cards.

How to Play:

There are five phases during each players turn: starting, play, recruit, discard and end. Each player will take turns in alternating order until there is only one God remaining with energy.

Starting Phase:

The starting phase is only used for some act or react abilities that can be activated here. The ability will state whether to play it during this phase.

Play Phase:

This will be the phase that has you playing  out your hand of five cards. First off, the disciple cards can be played in any order and do not follow the chaining colour system. However, all warriors will follow this system where each card has to be able to continue the chain of the previous warrior card by matching one of the two chaining colours. When playing any card, whether it is a disciple or a warrior, if there are multiple abilities on the card only one ability can be used per turn, so choose wisely.

Recruit Phase:

All those faith points that have been gathered throughout the play phase will now be used to gain warriors and disciples from the marketplace. Any amount of cards can be recruited during this phase and a new warrior will be revealed from the warrior deck to replace an emptied stack from the 6, if this is the same warrior as any revealed warriors it will be placed on the stack matching this warrior. The biggest change from any other deck builder is that when you purchase a card it will be placed on top of your personal deck instead of your discard pile. This will help you to plan ahead for your next turn and trap your opponent with efficient combos.

Discard Phase:

This is as simple as what the name suggests, you will discard any leftover cards then continue on to the end phase.

End Phase:

In this phase you will redraw your hand of five cards.

Final Thoughts:

Pros:
- The way cards are recruited help players plan for future turns or prepare for strong attacks that enemies are planning.
-The chaining colour system makes the deckbuilding more of a challenge to maintain a strong and functional deck.
- There will always be six unique warriors that can be bought.
- Easily expandable.

Cons:
- The anime art can be too risque for some players, especially when playing with family. 

Let's first begin by stating the obvious; the art will be too suggestive for the younger audience and some players. Ignoring that, this is a great deck builder with multiple mechanisms that rejuvenates the deck building genre. The fact that EVERY card is added to the top of the deck when acquired helps players to plan devastating combos with their warriors or build a strong defensive hand if they believe they are going to suffer a strong attack. Once the game has begun gaining traction you will constantly have tough decisions on what order you want warriors to be played as it will often lead to not being able to play every card on your turn, so choose your colour chain effectively. This will be going into my collection and I will be keeping a close eye on future expansions. 'Kamigami Battles - Battle of the Nine Realms' has earnt a Go to Golden Game Seal.

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Kamigami Battles - Battle of the Nine Realms on BGG
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