Review of Tash-Kalar: Arena Of Legends

Blurb from the publisher: 'Mages clash in a spectacular battle, summoning phantasmagorical beings. But underneath the clamor of struggling monsters lies a duel of subtle intricacy. Here you will find the mystical intrigues of the Sylvan, the brutal fury of the Highlanders, and the incisive tactics of the Imperials. Lay your plans, strengthen your position, then unleash your full power by summoning a tremendous creature of legend to dominate the arena of Tash-Kalar.

Challenge a single opponent to a refined contest of skill or a straightforward death match. Fight multiple foes in a free-for-all melee. Or team up with a friend to outmaneuver the opposing team. Join the masters of Tash-Kalar!'

What you get: Your EUR 40 or equivalent will buy you a copy of Tash-Kalar: Arena Of Legends, the 60-minute pattern-building game for two to four players that won the Golden Geek Best Abstract Board Game Winner in 2013.

In addition to the Rulebook and the Guidebook that can also be found on the publisher's website free of charge in eight official translations and an unofficial one, the box contains the following: 84 Being cards, 24 Task cards, 12 Flare cards, one double-sided game Arena, 68 double-sided cardboard pieces, 12 Legendary cardboard pieces and 4 double-sided score boards.

Gameplay: Tash-Kalar accommodates four types of games: High Form (earning points for tasks and legendary pieces on the board), Duel (earning points for summoning legendary pieces and destroying enemy pieces), Melee (destroy enemy pieces and summon particular legendary pieces) and Team, which can be played either a High Form or a Duel game, but with the players sharing the components of their side. The end of game is triggered by different parameters in each type of game, the objective however remains broadly the same: earn the most points by crushing the pieces that your opponents field!

The game is played in a 9 x 9 square arena minus a few squares at the corners for decoration. Four seemingly random squares are red while five others are green. There are four Schools (factions, if you prefer) in the basic game: the Highland, the Sylvan, the Southern Imperial and the Northern Imperial, each with its own techniques. Players hold a deck each. Each card shows the prerequisites for using it, as well as the result that it brings on the board. Prerequisites relate to the placement of existing pieces on the map. Each player has a number of such pieces. Some are common (one sword), others are heroic (two swords) while others still are legendary (swords plus helmet), and the more powerful one is, the more easily it will dislodge other pieces when needed. Three tasks are revealed by the side of the arena. These fall under non-advanced and advanced, and relate to what a school should achieve during a game: you might need to eliminate four pieces in a round, or create a pattern out of five pieces in the middle of the arena, etc.

Players alternate by playing two actions each. An action relates to either placing a piece on the board, or summoning a being through card play. It all looks friendly up to now, however summoning a being is often accompanied by placing pieces on the board which eliminate existing opponents' pieces, and all that before they activate their ability to eliminate even more opponents' pieces. Pieces may also be moved into the spot of other adjacent, weaker pieces, be them yours or your opponent's, or even leap in non-adjacent squares with the same effect.

Flares are cards with a balancing effect for those times that the arena heavily favours one side. If one of the two prerequisites on the card are satisfied (e.g. your opponent has that many more pieces on the board than you do), the effect that corresponds to that prerequisite can take place. The good news is that a flare is not an action, so further balancing can immediately take place.

The strong points: There aren't that many games which pin down the 'moderate difficulty' qualifier as masterfully as Tash-Kalar. It is an extremely easy game to learn and teach rules-wise, and immediately allows the players to access its deep tactical and strategic background. Yet, one is not going to achieve mastery after game one, or ten for that matter.

The basic premise is that the pieces on the board correspond to... nothing. You read that right; they are an abstraction, a gaming term. I enjoy how magic is weaved into this through the use of patterns. When summoning a being, a player will have to comply to the patterns of the pieces on the board, in order to bring more pieces on the board; there is no actual Dryad or Wild Eagle appearing in the arena. This, however, is no simplistic Othello where you get to change your opponent's colour. The same pattern here or there might have different results. The coloured squares in the arena are not there for your aesthetic pleasure; they actively add to the gameplay.

I like the asymmetry between the factions, or at least some of them; the Northern and Southern Imperial schools are identical. That's actually a very clever way to help a player learn the ropes with a more standard School before going for more impressive stuff like the Highland's Blood Shamans, the dominating Mountain Trolls or the agile Werewolves. Some of these beings require particular set ups, but then again, that's exactly your job: to create a meaning out of seeming chaos.

Depending on the type of game you have chosen, points will be won through achieving different things. Idem for the game's end, which might come because your deck just run out, or because you reached a certain number of points first. This clearly adds to Tash-Kalar's replayability as well as its customizability. Nothing forbids you from agreeing the rules of the fight with your opponent in advance.

Casual gamers might find the game kind of random. It is not, or at least not to the extent one believes. It is no coincidence that at least one Tash-Kalar world cup has already taken place up to now, if not more. The game requires quite the skill, the question however is whether one wishes to invest so much in such a type of game in order to acquire it.

Tash-Kalar is very well supported. Three expansions have already come out, each of them tackling a new school. We will visit them shortly.

The weak points: You can't plan in Tash-Kalar... unless you know the cards. Knowing your side's cards is already a big boost. Knowing the opponent's as well still won't allow you to plan, yet it will allow you to deduce. That, alone, can be enough in order to give you victory. Yet, all this involvement still doesn't make the game as complex and brain-burning as Tigirs & Euphrates, one of the most famous abstracts of them all. This is still a moderate game demanding serious effort to master. Such a concept will not sit down that well for some.

The game is as abstract as they get, Reiner Knizia magnitude abstract and then some. That is not a bad thing in itself; yet, if you believe that you will be fielding units that will somehow follow military of brawling-like tactics, you are utterly wrong. You will be placing markers on a board, and through their placement, try to use your card to your best effects.

People with poor pattern recognition will suck at Tash-Kalar. An L is not just an L. It is also a Γ, their mirror images and everything in between. If you fall in this category, tough luck. I know people who love Roborally, but their sense of direction is so dreadful they can't keep their robot within the board.

There is a certain simplicity in the aesthetics that some might not find to their liking. I am ok with it, even though I acknowledge that the art on the box is tilting towards goofy and that some of the images on the cards look underwhelming. I am more happy about the empty space in the box. Should you decide to go the path of the expansions, you can have everything nicely tucked in the same box without wasting space in your library.

The designer does not lie when he states that Tash-Kalar is primarily a 2-player affair. It drags a lot with four players on the table, for rather obvious reasons. There is no analysis of the board that you can do until your turn begins, due to the game's fluidity. You can be cooking, taking a dump and playing a computer game at the same time, for all the others care. Needless to say, this doesn't help when it comes to immersion. Indecisive gamers with analysis/paralysis problems might drive their opponents insane, even though the options on any given turn are not that many. Thankfully, there's an easy fix for that: a timer!

Conclusion: Tash-Kalar: Arena Of Legends is a thoroughly entertaining game when seen for what it is: an engaging exercise in abstraction, a merge of multiple actions, card play and creative use of space. I like it; it immediately found a place in my top-5 of two-player, under-an-hour boardgames. The question however remains: how long will it take me to play at a level I feel happy with, against opponents who know what they are doing?

To find out more about Tash-Kalar: Arena Of Legends and Czech Games Edition take a look at http://czechgames.com/.

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