Review of Strife: Legacy of the Eternals

Blurb from the publisher: 'Once more, conflict rages accross the world of Aerim. You are one of the Endless - a group of immortals forever waging war from the shadows. Call forth your champions to battle against those of your timeless foes. Harness the legacy of each champion's deeds as they echo across time to empower the next. For the Champions of Aerim, this cycle continues, as it always has and always will. For the Endless, there is only... Strife.'

What you get: Your EUR 15 or USD 19,99 will buy you Strife: Legacy of the Eternals, a 40-minute game for two players. The box contains the rulebook in English as well as 35 large-format cards (20 Champions, 10 Locations, 4 Score Tracker cards and one Reference Card at 80 x 120 mm each) and one ten-sided die.

Gameplay: The objective of the game is to win the most victory points by the end of three rounds. Each round is comprised of multiple turns, where players bring forth their champions to battle in exotic locales. The ten champions each player holds are, in ascending value, the following: the Monk (0), the Necromancer (1), the Assassin (2), the Wizard (3), the Paladin (4), the Ranger (5), the Druid (6), the Warrior (7), the Knight (8) and the Barbarian (9). Apart from their combat value, each Champion also has a Battle Ability and a Legacy Ability. As an example, the Barbarian can discard an adjacent battle location as his battle ability, while he can add three VPs on a locale as his legacy ability.

Each of the ten locales is worth victory points (three x 1, three x 2, three x 3 and one x 4). It also provides a fighting bonus to a particular champion, e.g., the Endless Green (1 VP) adds two power to any Druid fighting there, while the Temple of Shin Ti Lal adds three power to Monks.

In each turn the players will simultaneously pick one of their champions to fight on a designated locale. The locales of the two following battles will also be known. Before combat takes place, the Battle Ability of each champion activates. Once both abilities are executed (highest value champion goes first), the legacy ability of the champions that fought on the previous battle takes place (again, highest goes first). Then, the current champions fight by comparing their values along with any bonuses that might have been accumulated through the Battle and Legacy Abilities. The winner receives the VPs attributed for the place fought over along with any other bonuses. Each champion that just fought goes to the legacy pile, the land fought over is discarded, the two open locales advance and a new locale is drawn.

The d10 (called the Fatestone) is a tie-breaker. If a tie occurs at any point in the game (i.e. which battle or legacy ability goes first or which champion wins the battle), the player that holds it instantly loses the tie unless he decides to pass it to his opponent by increasing its value by 1. The Fatestone starts at 1, with the number indicating victory points which are added to the victory points of the player that holds it. Attention however; in case of a tie in victory points at the end of the game, and in line with the nature of the d10, its owner loses the game.

The game is scalable; it can also be played in either one round, two or five, depending on how the players feel like.

The strong points: Strife needs the better part of a minute to explain. No flipping through rules will ever by needed, seeing how the abilities are in the cards and the well-written rulebook is two pages long. Mastery of the game includes understanding what each card does and what is the best way to combine it with other cards. The game lessens the learning curve by suggesting that you play only with Legacy Abilities on the first game or two. We did exactly that; it facilitated us a lot before things got serious later on. Each card has a two-fold use: in this turn as a battle ability and a combat number, and in the next as a legacy ability. Combos can be devastating. The whole idea behind the game is to set up patterns that work and disrupt the patterns of your opponent. This is not the simpler approach to battling that BraveRats took, it really turns hard.

What greatly adds to Strife's appeal is that it is an open information game. You will know what was played and what is still available to your opponent. Before chosing your champion each round you will be aware of your opponent's legacy ability, and so will he about you. There will be hard choices to make, namely realising which battles are winnable and which will be lost, thus using them as a setup for the ones following. There are dozens of obvious combinations like the Necromancer's and the Barbarian's legacy abilities, which could mount you up to 6 extra VPs for two won battles. How easy is it to win these battles though, when your opponent has set up a Fighter or an Assassin on the previous round just to get to the sweet spot? If the game resembles something, that would be chess more than poker. As in chess, you will not win the game unscathed. Be prepared to lose battles on purpose (namely the ones that are worth less points), in order to win those that matter.

The half-dozen times I playtested Strife for this review I got the feeling that the cards are extremely well-balanced. Even if they are not, it does not matter. Both players hold the same cards and both will be obliged to play them.

There are some small nuances and details that add to the tactics of the game. When the game starts, for example, a Champion will go straight to the legacy pile without battling first. When a round ends, the last Champion that fights does not get to use his legacy power; the one that uses it instead on the first turn of the next round will be the single card that remained in a player's hand and which did not fight. Minor as they seem, these two elements added to the thinking needed on what champion to use and where.

The tie-breaker system is a great idea. By opting to win a battle you give free victory points to your opponent. The more the game reaches the end, and depending on the situation on the scoreboard, you might wish to cling on to that die and lose even more battles on purpose.

The production values are very high. The art is great, even thought it serves no practical purpose whatsoever.

The weak points: Even though the game tries hard to instill a theme, I personally failed to appreciate it as much. It didn't matter who fought whom or where; all I could see were abstracted powers and a maximal use of each location's points and bonuses.

Easy as Strife is to learn, experienced players will hold an advantage over new blood in the first game or two. This is mitigated by the game being played in three rounds, giving everybody some time to get accustomed to the champions' abilities. The modular system of playing (play the first game with the Legacy Abilities but without the Battle ones) also helps.

Perfect information and no surprises means exactly that. It might not be so easy to predict the first turns within a round, the last turns however might feel a bit scripted. Good players will be soon able to think two or three card plays ahead, killing the suspence by mathing (is that even a word?) their opponent out.

As stated, the cards feel balanced and the choices feel deep. I am wondering however how deep they trully are. Taking into account that no matter what some battles will be lost anyway even in the clearest of victories, does tactical depth trully reward better skill? It appears so. I have a feeling however that if somebody played the cards blindly, even though he would have rather limited chances of winning, he wouldn't lose with such drastic a margin.

For a game that uses so big cards and needs substantially more space than it ought to, the text is still of too small a size. Beautiful as the design is and as much as one wants to keep it visble during the game, upping the size of the font wouldn't have obstructed anything.

Conclusion: Strife: Legacy of the Eternals boasts about its intricate ability combinations, strategic deduction challenges, perfect information balance and its unique tie-breaking system. In all that, it succeeds. Isn't that reason enough to buy a two-player game?

To find out more about Strife: Legacy of the Eternals and Factory of Ideas, take a look at factorycube.pl.

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