Krosmaster Arena - Thoughts?

Been eyeballing this for some time but curious if anyone here has played it? Thoughts and or impressions?

I can let you know on Monday - I got a bunch of Krosmaster stuff from Secret Satan and I'm buying the main game off someone on Sunday, which is my regular game day.

I played the demo an it was kind of flat. But we played 1 guy on 1 guy, and the guys we picked meant it was just a chase around the middle of the board. It's apparent that's not the way the game plays its best. More characters certainly would have been better.

The art isn't my thing either but that's pretty subjective.

Given the cost of the thing I'd get Heroscape instead, which appears to me to still be a much better game.

S.

The play is somewhat similar to heroscape in a lot of ways, though much less balanced than heroscape.

There is increased complexity in how it plays as well, despite having a similar feeling to heroscape.

I'm not much for the theme, despite its cuteness. This game is a major undertaking for me, because I decided to retheme it into a kaiju fighting game, at 1:1200 scale, using monpoc kaiju. With the destroyable terrain, the mechanisms just fir the kaiju theme better and is more plausible ( I never thought I would use kaiju and plausible in the same sentence.) Its been taking many months of graphic design work, as well as tweaking the characters to play a bit more varied than what you would finds in K:A.

Obviously I find enough merit in the broad game design to go through such trouble. I'm not convinced its better than heroscape, as the added complexity doesn't give the same reward for the investment of time made. But I did want a middle ground for a kaiju game between the complexity of heroscape and monpoc. This seems to fit that bill.

I plan on being up at PF this Sunday (unless something pops up) and I can bring my copy if you are interested.

The core game isn't complex, the complexity comes in the special rules and abilities that all characters have. There are some imbalances between characters and some gamey elements but those are intentional.

For example a "Pusher" build is pretty common which consists of a heavy hitter and a few smaller characters. The point is to attack your own heavy hitter (hopefully with an attack they have a resistance to) to push them a space or two and help make them a little more maneuverable. Since movement is limited to 3 or 4 squares and you can't move diagonally an extra space or two is really helpful.

There are also characters that are just common to a lot of lists which is one of the main complaints about the game. So the costing of characters is more what feels right under loose guidelines rather than something pretty rigid and heavily tested for balance.

There's also some Season 2 revisions that change a few rules from the base game. Nothing major but worth mentioning.

But all that said, some of those things are what appeals to me about the game. For example being able to attack and push your own characters, and other outside the box type synergies, makes for some interesting potential team building. The character imbalances really aren't that big of deal to me because it's only really prevalent in competitive/online play.

Which is something to mention as well. With each character (or pack of characters) it comes with an online code that unlocks whatever character you've bought in the online game. Which is the boardgame with a timer added in. That's a venue I've been wanting to venture into once I get more games under my belt.

Also the characters usually come with a little puzzle map that you play solo. You take a character and try to beat static enemies or achieve collection goals under a time limit. They're a fun way to test and see the abilities of characters without playing against someone.

The packaging of the product is a little wonky with exclusives, random boosters, window character packs...I can help you with any of that if you have questions.

I think that about covers it all...Oh, and one other thing, the goal isn't to kill your opponent. It's to drain your opponent of Gallions of Glory (GG) and those are usually obtained by killing opposing characters but they can also be bought and at the beginning of each turn dice are rolled and if the result is a double each person discards one. So that adds a gamey element where it isn't always charging forward and engaging in combat.

Pros - The anime it's based on, Wakfu, is really fun (if you like anime) and watching it adds a lot to the game. The art is great (if you like anime) and the figures are cute. The paint jobs are good, but flatter than minis you might paint yourself. Overall the components are good quality. The gameplay is fun, but not amazing. Much of the fun is in designing your own teams and seeing how they fare. Unlike Heroscape and Duel of Ages II (closest relations I can think of), it's not OOP.

Cons - Japanime Games's (USA distributor) customer service is lousy. It's expensive for what you get. Lots of the content (nicer components like larger/foil cards, custom dice, and alternate terrain, as well as gameplay stuff like characters) is promos that are only available on the secondary market. None of the characters from the anime come in the base game. The game is marketed more as a collectable than as a game, frankly, w/ lots of spendy expansions, some of which duplicate figures from the base game.

I'd say that if you like anime, it's worth watching Wakfu and buying the base. Otherwise I'd suggest trying before you buy. If you shop around, you can often pick up a collection for much cheaper than OLGS prices.

silverbowen wrote: Cons - Japanime Games's (USA distributor) customer service is lousy. It's expensive for what you get. Lots of the content (nicer components like larger/foil cards, custom dice, and alternate terrain, as well as gameplay stuff like characters) is promos that are only available on the secondary market. None of the characters from the anime come in the base game. The game is marketed more as a collectable than as a game, frankly, w/ lots of spendy expansions, some of which duplicate figures from the base game.

I've heard mixed things on the customer service. Expensive, I haven't had complaints, but most of the four packs I've bought for $18 or so from Miniature Market since they tend to have them up for clearance pretty often. So less than $5 for a what amounts to a fully painted mini is not too bad.

A lot of the promos are available. They are releasing a Brotherhood of the Tofu pack which contains six Season 1 promo characters. There is another four pack coming out with four of the Season 2 promo characters. There is an exclusive pack in France that contains four more of the promos (plus extra minion models) but Japanime Games doesn't have plans to distribute.

The alternate resin scenery can be bought direct, in fact the Frigost pack is on sale for $100 with free shipping (or at least it was, not sure the status at this point).

The duplicate figures are actually usable in the game (some characters are limited to one, others two, others unlimited). The Season 2 collectable packs are now released as window boxes with a set four characters per box. And that's how they're going to move forward, release as random packs for the first few months of a season and then later in window packs.

Also, at this point a large portion of the exclusive characters are now available.

So...That's why I mentioned in my first post that the packing is a little wonky.