Designed by: Johannes Krenner,Markus Slawitscheck
Challengers is a tabletop version of Capture the Flag, the classic kid-and-adult undertaking that’s usually played out in parks and streets. Here, the battle takes place via card battles on the table, and unlike the team-based inspiration, only one player can win. Challengers is played as a tournament of sorts: multiple small, short games of player v player until the most successful pair face off to determine who’ll be champion.
Everyone begins with an identical starting deck of cards, but before each battle, you’ll add one or two new ones to your deck (from a choice of five) and then shuffle your cards into a pile. The game itself couldn’t be much simpler: the starting player flips over their top card and takes possession of the flag. The opposing player then starts flipping cards and continues to do so until they match or beat the number value of the card currently holding the flag. Do that, and you take possession of the flag: the previous holder must discard their cards into their ‘bench’ and win the flag back in the same fashion.
The bench however only has room for six types of cards. If you’re forced to bench cards and you’ve no room for them, you lose the battle. If you’re asked to play cards and you’ve run out, you lose the battle. The battle winner is the one in possession of the flag when this happens. You move on to your next battle!
So the game has a lot of luck: you’re not choosing which card to play, but hoping for the best. The control you have over your choices is limited, but it does exist: in what cards you add to your deck before each battle, and what – if any – you dump entirely: you can lose as many cards as you like, and will probably want to if you’re not to lose by running out of bench space. Duplicates are handy, as they can share the same space on the bench. But as well as their number value, some cards have special powers that come into play when attacking (trying to get the flag) defending (holding the flag) or even from the bench: empowering team-mates after it’s been defeated. Some cards will win you fans during a battle too: the only other way to get fans is winning the battle itself, and after a number of rounds the two players with the most fans face-off for ultimate victory!
Plenty, although the card-flipping is random and silly enough that nobody should feel singled out.
Very low. The only pauses are when players are choosing which cards to add to their decks.
Once the battle starts, it's out of your hands! The brain-burning, if one can call it that, is about building your deck. You don't want it too cluttered, but neither do you want it too sparse.
If you like the silly, chaos-adjacent vibe of it, then there are tonnes of cards to choose from
1-8
Players
8+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
A game that works almost despite itself. On my first play of Challengers I felt a bit like the whole thing was simply happening to me: my special-power cards came out at the wrong time, I kept my deck trim but ran out of cards; I embellished it and ran out of bench space. That was frustrating. But the slightly manic aspect of the multiple games being played at the same time, and everyone swapping chairs as cries of triumph/anguish rang out around the room: that was fun. And to enjoy Challengers, you need to be okay with the occasional bad-beat story where nothing went right - the game isn't so long as to suffer, and you can still root for someone in the final when you're knocked out. It's a weird curio, but with a bunch of friends - it's definitely best with a crowd - I'm always happy to play it.