Six Sided Summoner

Lovely art, and even fun to play solo, which is nice flexibility in a game!

I was a kickstarter backer, and I’m so glad that I was!

The art for the game is simply gorgeous, but the gameplay is really fun too. Co-op strategy games are pretty much my favorite genre of tabletop game, and this one does not disappoint!

Tower defense in a board game. Lends itself to multiple strategy styles. Amazing art.

Simple game; depending on the round, shadows will spawn with a random buff given based on the card drawn. Each guardian can move, attack, or support. Shadows then march forward and attacking a guardian if in melee range. Rinse and repeat. Definitely has a MOBA feel because of the unique guardians, shadows just trying to crash into main objective, while the map has the common 3-lane map found in a MOBA game.

The good: -Has a MOBA tower defense feel to it so its one of the more unique games out there -All 6 guardians are unique with nice artwork -Some of the components are very nice, including a pretty board. -Some of the cards add a random buff to shadows so it adds some twists and turns to every spawning. -It's not a very lengthy game which fits for the 2.0 weight

The bad: -Rulebook is bad for a simpler game like this with no finicky clarifications for guardian abilities; it needed a FAQ which they supplied. Simply put, playing this straight from the rulebook requires making assumptions or making up the rule as you see fit. It was strange that some obvious situations that would pop up during playtesting never made it into the rulebook. -Map is gorgeous but spawn points were soooo hard to read. -Why on earth did they not make more tokens for guardian abilities considering there were already blank components??? The FAQ conceded that one may have to improvise to accommodate the issue.

The mechanics/style (it really depends on your taste): -As the name suggests, you will use dice, and it relies on it. All attacks depend on a die roll; shadow (and summoned creatures from guardians) damage depends on the die pip value which can create swingy results while guardians have a safer base damage based on die roll (e.g. one guardian can hit for 5 damage as long as it rolls a 4-6). Even using your abilities require tokens and acquiring what kind of ability token depends on a die roll.

*The game has a skirmish "capture the 3 control points" 1v1 mode but never tried it yet.

If you're a euro gamer, you're better of playing Pandemic style games. If you're an ameritrasher, the theme is there and random die rolls and shadow buffs can create some dramatic situations. If you're hybrid, it a bit of a toss-up. Also, I am still unsure about the extent of cooperation; helping each lanes and having a lane priority is important but 4 guardians will always be split up into 3 lanes so 2 solo laners will end up probably doing their own thing at certain points of the game.

Overall, I think this game does slightly worse than other cooperative games due to the fact that the rulebook is bad and that not everyone can immediately help each other out due to the 3-lane map but this also feels more unique than many co-op games which can make it stand out better.

Random side note: Only 3 of the 6 of the ratings are active BGG users while the other half are throwaway accounts. It doesnt mean the other 3 are fake but these "leave a rating if you like the game" accounts typically seem more lax in giving a good rating of a game.

Skinner Gift Oct 2019