Adversaries are threatening the kingdom, and it is up to you to recruit the best team of heroes to take them down. It may not be easy, but with proper preparation, your team will be able to complete missions, take down baddies, and save the kingdom! You’d better get started.

What Is It?

Drafting + Tableau Building – Each round players will draft 4 hero cards to add to their line-up. As they draft cards, players will have 2 main focuses. 1) They want to match up the energy icons on the sides of the cards as much as they can so that they have a variety and good number of spaces for damage during their adventures. 2) They also want to pay attention to the actions on the cards they draft so they can attempt missions, fight adversaries, heal, gain prestige, and collect constellation tokens (which may let them change actions on their own or an opponent’s hero card, or immediately hurt an opponent). They will discard 3 hero cards at the end of each round, so making sure to keep their most useful cards is key.

Dice Rolling – Fighting adversaries and completing missions are dome, primarily, through dice rolls (some missions also have direct damage). Hero cards for fighting adversaries will tell a player up to how many dice they can roll (1-3), while missions will tell players exactly which dice to roll. As long as the player can take all the damage from their roll, they will earn rewards – adversary cards or prestige, respectively.

Set Collection – Some adversary cards will earn players bonus points if they collect sets (i.e. certain colors, most of a color, 7+ cards, etc).

Take-That – Some constellation tokens can be played on opponents to give them immediate damage, force them to roll, or replace one of their hero card actions.

Who Is It For?

A worthy opponent!
  • 2 to 4 Players – It works fine at any count, but I think it is actually best at 4 because it allows missions to rotate more consistently
  • Ages 12 & Up / Light Gamers – The game is fairly simple overall, but there is light strategy in which cards you add to your team and whether you might try to focus on fights or missions
  • Players who like dice rolling / don’t mind luck
  • Fans of the Fairy Tail theme

PROS

  • Aesthetics – The art is very cute; graphic design is clean
  • Components – Most components are nice quality
  • Rules – Well-written, easy to learn and teach from; quick read
  • Variability – You can build a different team of heroes each game and try different strategies (mission actions vs fight actions vs getting points as an action)
  • Plays quickly
  • Smooth gameplay
  • I like that when doing a fight action you can roll up to the number of dice the card shows. Since players know the possibilities on the dice, they can choose to play it safe or go risky to try and get more rewards
  • When drafting, it is interesting to try and balance getting energy match-ups and getting the actions you actually want to do during the round

CONS

  • Components – The damage and objective tokens are way too small and fiddly for my liking
  • The ice and fire energy symbols on the dice are very similar
  • The take-that element from constellation tokens is small, but also feels a bit unnecessary to the gameplay

Final Thoughts

I came in about middle of the road on this game.

I thought it had some interesting things going on – building your team, and balancing going for adversaries versus trying missions. However, I also thought a few things fell a bit flat. It was disappointing to see most of your team tossed out in between rounds, though I do think that helps to mitigate the luck of the draw for the hero cards a bit. I also thought that it was disappointing to not have missions rotate very often. Even in 4 player games it didn’t always happen a ton, but in lower player counts it was even less, and maybe that is just because the game is so short.

Overall, it’s a quick, light experience, and if you’re a fan of Fairy Tail already, it might be worth giving a try for you!

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 5/10

Publishers – Japanime Games, Don’t Panic Games
MSRP – $34.95
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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