As you stare at the box cover for Arena of the Planeswalkers ( and Jace ’s leering , vacant face ) , one question spring to listen : why does the world postulate a board game found on a card secret plan ? Is it for multitude who care Magic but desire to play a plot that is n’t Magic but include some obscure themes and ideas from Magic ? Is it for mass who liked Heroscape but not quite Heroscape and using some cerebral attribute Hasbro already owns ? I sure do n’t know .
I do get laid , however , Arena of the Planeswalkers is a decent strategy plot , using most of the rule from the old Heroscape biz , and some of the minis are quite overnice . But finally this secret plan feels underwhelming and shallow . The rules are based on Heroscape , the mass market place miniature secret plan that let player build their own terrain out of plastic hexes . I do n’t know how well it sold , but Heroscape has a serious cult following even though Hasbro killed it a few year ago . So they took the Heroscape rules and tweaked them a small bit to allow for Magic ’s planeswalker characters to fight within it . The official word of honor from Hasbro Porto Rico is that the rules are not compatible with Heroscape , but 90 % of them are , and if you ’re at all cagey you’re able to easy use the planeswalkers with your old Heroscape stuff .
The game is moderately straightforward : you take off with a planeswalker , either Gideon , Jace , Chandra , Nissa , or Liliana . The planeswalkers move around the control board , and generally on the first turn will summon a duad of team of monsters tuned for use with that planeswalker ( Liliana boost zombi , for instance ) . The operative difference of opinion between this evocation and just localize the squads on the board during setup , the agency you would in Heroscape , is paltry . Then your planeswalker and your monster squads will take turns moving and attacking the opponent ’s unit . There ’s some strategical depth in pick out which team or planeswalker will play on a give turn . Your planeswalker is your most powerful unit by far , so you need to strike a balance between putting it on the front blood and keeping it good .
Planeswalkers have a pack of cards of spell cards which they can cast , hike their own creatures or weaken their opponents ’ creatures , or in some typesetter’s case move the opponent him or herself — making them cast away a spell bill of their own , for instance . This is the primary way Arena of the Planeswalkers is not compatible with Heroscape . I ’m not sure if the point value ( for balanced US Army construction ) of the planeswalkers accurately muse how brawny their spell deck make them compared to the heroes of original Heroscape , and many of the magical spell cards wo n’t run properly if both players are n’t using planeswalkers . But again , if you ’re cagey you may iron out out those issues .
How does this game equate to Magic ? It just really does n’t . It uses Magic characters , spell names and fine art , and the spells mistily do what their Magic counterpart do . It does not have the resource construction / employment of Magic — you could play two spell card per turn , no matter which 1 they are .
The components are interesting . The five planeswalker mini are very nice , and it ’s the first time we ’ve ever had planeswalkers comprise in this means . If you ’ve ever wanted your D&D party to struggle against Liliana and an army of zombies , now you’re able to , and that ’s jolly cool . As for the terrain , it only include a few of those plastic hexes , enough to build a tiny pitcher’s mound . However , the game comes with six interlocking cardboard map musical composition . This is interesting for Heroscape fans because you could use it as the al-Qaeda for a huge Heroscape terrain setup . Before , you often had to use a ton of your Heroscape tiles just laying out the base level of your map . Now you may build on top of these map tile , keep your moldable hex for the significant work of produce monolithic canyons and soaring mountains to struggle on top of .
In a vacuum I ’d say Arena of the Planeswalkers is a solid game that could get better through expansions . There are some defect — the turn counter for each scenario , which you place a token on to traverse the turns , is inside the convention rule book , so hopefully you never have to calculate up any rule while you ’re playing . There are some balance issue , too — I wiped out my opponent ’s intact team with Liliana ’s Killing Wave magical spell , and some spell cards end up not functioning against sealed opposer ( I did n’t have any flying creatures , so Nissa ’s anti - flying creature spells were useless against me ) . And while this comes in at a gloomy Mary Leontyne Price item than the Heroscape master set , most of the miniskirt are unpainted , which is a spot of a disappointment . At least the mini sculpts appear brand new . Those rhino warriors are pretty unique .
In the end we have a game tangled up in the other games it ’s drawn from , and that ’s a ignominy because it is n’t quite beneficial enough on its own merit to have got my interest .
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