Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends

In Tash-Kalar, two to four players battle for the right to be hailed as the best Summoner, as they cast numerous spells in the arena to conjure beasts of battle – and try to defeat each other’s forces.

There are two modes of play: we will describe the standard mode here. The board represents the arena itself, and each player has a hand of cards from three different decks. Each turn you take two actions, which can be spent adding pieces to the board – anywhere you choose – or playing a card. Mostly you’ll be playing from the standard deck, but the catch with Tash Kalar is that each card demands your pieces be in certain patterns on the board, like a kind of arcane, magical dance. If I want to play the War Drummer, say, I need to have three pieces in an L-shape (-the orientation doesn’t matter: it can be upside-down, back to front et cetera) and if I meet that criteria, the card will do two things: first, I can add an Advanced piece to the board on a specific location, and then move some pieces around, potentially doing combat with my opponent: a standard move can only trigger combat if an advanced piece takes on a common piece, but a combat move allows same-ranked pieces to fight, with whoever is taking the action kicking their enemy off the board. Basically: shenanigans.

As well as a standard deck of creatures to summon, you also have an advanced deck of very-powerful (but tricky to summon) creatures as well, who can do catastrophic damage at the right time. You also have a Flare card, which can only be played if your opponent gets a certain amount of pieces or points ahead of you – basically, a catch-up mechanism if you find yourself in a pickle.

But how to get points in the first place, and what are all these shenanigans in aid of? Well, off to one side are three objective cards, which are where the points come from. To claim an objective card you simply need to have achieved its criteria during your turn – for example, controlling certain parts of the board or destroying x number of enemy pieces. The game can end in one of two ways: a player hits 9 or more points, or someone draws the last card from their standard summoning deck. You’ll score points for all your claimed objectives and a point for any Legendary pieces (a maximum of three) you have on the board at the end of the game.

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The other mode is Deathmatch, which can be played as a duel for two players, a team duel for four or a melee battle for three. The summoning cards operate in the same way, but points are scored for destroying each other’s pieces, making it more of a brawl! There are a few different factions in the box, so you can play with matching decks of summoner cards, or asymmetric ones.