A few weeks ago, I had the chance to play a (newish) sports game that was a bunch of fun.
I'm a fan of Eric M. Lang's games. They're not always great, but they're nearly always fun.
I'm also a sucker for sports-themed games. I own a ton of them - mostly football games, but I have a couple of soccer games and at least one baseball game. However, I especially like sports games that aren't designed to specifically emulate a real-world sport.
I own Dreadball and Elfball and Blood Bowl and now KaosBall. And they all scratch very different itches. The first three are almost gridded miniatures games, with detailed rules and a huge variety of available options for players. Kaosball is much more a board game than a minis game, despite the ton of included figures.
Like most sports-themed games, the goal of KaosBall is to score the most points before time runs out. In KaosBall, you score points by having certain players holding the ball and standing on scoring mounds at the start of your turn. There are four minor scoring mounds, which are scattered around the center of the field, which are worth small points (1-4, depending on which quarter of play you are in), and each player has one major scoring mound that is worth five points each.
If one player falls too far behind, they are eliminated.
Like most tabletop implementations of sports games, injuries (up to and including death) are a significant part of the game.
The rules are pretty simple on your turn, you can activate one player or you can play a card.
There are only two positions on each team, and each does things slightly differently.
The Runner is your ideal ball-carrier. They are the only players who can steal the ball from opponents and they are the only players who can score points for you.
The Bruiser is your team's hitter. They can tackle or attack opponents. They can carry the ball, but they can't score you any points.
Each team has three stats and one special ability. The stats are "Steal" "Tackle" and "Attack." And the special abilities are widely varied between the dozen or so teams that are available.
Each team's position players also have different numbers of life points.
The goal is to get the ball to your runner and then protect that runner until the start of your next turn. If you start your turn with a runner holding the ball in a scoring space, you score points. As long as your runner can stay there, you continue to score points. At the end of the quarter, runners don't even need the ball to be able to score points.
When you activate a player, you can take one of three actions:
- Sprint - move up to five spaces. If your sprinter is a Runner, you can attempt to steal the ball from an enemy at the end of your movement.
- Tackle - attempt to knock an opponent's figure down. Since you only have five pieces on the board at a time and your players can't stand up again until the end of the quarter, this is potentially huge.
- Attack - attempt to harm an opponent's player. Do enough damage to them, and they are killed.
The cards that you can play have a variety of effects. You can throw fire down on the field, set up additional scoring spaces, drop walls on the field, or move more figures (among other things). Most of these cards also allow you to activate a figure in addition to the card's effect.
There are actually three kinds of cards that you will play during the game. There are the cards I mentioned above (which are called tactics cards), there are cheat cards, and there are energy cards.
Energy cards are how you resolve contests. They are numbered from +1 to +5. If I decide to tackle you, we each play a card and add our team's stat to that card. High number wins. The same system works for steals and attacks. If you play a card that matches a card you've already played, its value is zero instead of its printed value.
In general, the game favors the active player. But not overwhelmingly so.
At the end of each quarter, bonus points are scored, figures which were knocked down are able to stand back up, board effects are cleared, the ball is returned to the center space, and play continues. Players can also suffer penalties for playing too many cheat cards (the player with the most actually loses points from their score). And you can get bonuses for having killed your opponent's players.
It's not a difficult game.
There are a few other wrinkles in there for advanced players - Upgrades and Ringers.
Upgrades are "always on" effects for your team. Some of them let you move faster or score points for successful attacks. Some of them are less-useful unless you're in league play. Like starting with more money, for example (don't get me wrong - it's good in one-off plays, too, but it's MUCH more useful in Leagues).
Ringers are star players. They all have different special abilities. You can only field one ringer at a time (unless you have the Upgrade that lets you field more). They count as both Runners and Bruisers, so they can tackle and steal and attack.
A random assortment of Upgrades and Ringers are available at the start of each game, and they are auctioned off at the start of play. So you can't build your strategy around having The Warrior on your team, because The Warrior might not even be there.
And you don't want to spend all of your money on those, either, because you can buy off your cheat cards in play so that you don't get stuck with the penalty for being the biggest cheater at the table.
The game plays two, three, or four players. It's best with two or four, however. I wouldn't recommend it with three. And the base game includes four teams, so you won't be instantly bored with the same matchup over and over and over and over.
It being a Cool Mini or Not game, each team has a set of sculpted figures to go with it. And some of them are quite awesome. But they're also the source of the only real problem I have with the game: Cheesecake. There are no female figures who are not overly sexualized in the game.
For some teams, it makes sense - the demon team, for example. But the Ninjas, for example, don't need to be cheesecake. The Amazons (who are included in the base game) are the least cheesecake team that includes female players. Honestly, the cheesecake is so bad on some of the teams (like the Felinia Hellcats) that I considered not getting the game.
Sadly, this is not uncommon with CMoN games, either. I know there are people there who are working on it, but they've still got a ways to go.
But if the cheesecake doesn't bug you, then this is very much a game worth looking into.
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