Z-Man Games, Challengers, Board Game, Ages 10+, 1-8 Players, 45+ Minutes Playing Time

Challengers has quickly become a favourite game in our house! It’s simple enough for the kids to join in but still has enough strategy to keep it interesting for the adults. We love how quick it is to set up and how every game feels a little different with the card drafting.

Attempted to play at a board game cafe. Tedious overcomplicated setup that took over 20 minutes. This might be fine if you regularly play with the same people but as a party game we wouldn't have the patience to re explain the rules and stop every single time. Just bizarrely overcomplicated for a simple game.

An absolutely FANTASTIC game. Exactly what you would expect from an award winning game. Each turn you add 2 new cards to your deck (or in rare circumstances more). You also get to take out any number of cards. Then, you turn each deck loose on the others, tournament style. Seating takes some getting used to, even for seasoned gamers, but after one game, you have it down. Immediately after playing, I wanted to play it again, and again, and again, and again. My 10 and 11 year old were able to play with us with no issue. With multiple paths to victory, and a short play time, your strategy can be anything from maximum control to sit back and watch the cards fly. Just one caveat. If you're absolutely adverse to chaos in your games, probably not for you. If however, you love the idea of a rollicking good time with friends who don't take themselves too seriously, look no further.

Llegó en perfecto estado y antes de tiempo

This board/card game is very simple as it's gameplay is similar to the classic card game War where you don't really have too much interaction and the game just plays itself. However, it is a deck building game! So you can decide what cards go into your deck to some extent as after each round you add some new cards to your deck and can remove as many as you want. This allows you to customize the types of cards and synergies that you could make. While this isn't as complicated as something like Magic the Gathering or any other TCG type of game, it is a really fast and fun game to play with a group of people.

Es un poco difícil de aprender, pero una vez jugando es fácil de seguirle. Se juega como por matches de dos en dos, si es número impar de jugadores, uno de ellos juega contra un jugador "artificial" cada turno.

At first I was a bit skeptical about Challengers winning the "Spiel des Jahres" award but after playing it I see why it did. Think of a trading card game tournament and building and improving your deck of cards between the games - but in a light and fun way and more leaning towards party game. Played over 7 quick rounds you face a different opponent each round in an auto battle inspired duel. Between the rounds you get to modify your deck and here's where important decisions are made. Different sets of cards have different ways of interactions between them - these are drawn randomly from a shared pool with the ability the redraw to make it a little bit more likely to get the cards you want. This randomness adds to the fun though. You always have to adjust your playstyle a little bit. It never feels like you're being punished. There is always something good to choose from and the mechanisms are not as deep as in real trading card games. For won games you receive trophies and points and the two highest scoring player face off at the end to determine the overall winner. Lots of strategies to go after and important but not overwhelming decisions to make between the games. I like that it's playable with up to 8 players and always takes the same play time since it's a set round number. No downtime since everyone plays at the same time. Theoretically you can add more base games and play it with even more players (up to 16 with 2 games/up to 24 with 3 games/etc) and the play time still stays roughly the same. You might want to add more finalist rounds to determine the tournament winner or just go by points. Highly recommend checking this game out!