How to play Challengers! Board Game & Review

Challengers! sees you play capture the flag vs everyone else at the table.

How will your Rubber Duck stack up against their Werewolf?

Challengers! is an interactive deck-management game for 1-8 players that plays in about 45 minutes independent of player count. With the tournament gameplay style, you meet another opponent every round.

How to play Challengers!

Learn how to play Challengers! including the bot for games with an odd number of players, 2 players and the solo game!

Challengers! Game Overview

Quick Game Summary

Each round, players will draw cards to add to their deck and use that deck to play in a Capture the Flag mini-game against each player.

A player will reveal a card from their deck, let’s say its value is “4”. They get the flag. The next player reveals cards from their deck until their combined power is 4 or more then they get the flag.

Then the other player repeats this again always just trying to beat the last card the player played. When a player runs out of cards the flag holder wins the round.

The winners of these mini-games will gain a number of points, known as ‘Fans’.

How do you win?

After 8 games playing each player once or multiple times depending on the player count, the two players with the most fans go into a grand final.

The winner of this game wins the game overall.

Main Mechanisms

You draft (draw) cards from a deck which is technically drafting but not in the sense it’s usually used in the hobby. You then do a bit of deck construction which is technically a mechanism.

This is all about deck management. You don’t ‘play’ the deck so much as it plays itself so you need to make sure the cards you pick each round not only have power but a synergy with your other cards.

USP

The tournament-style approach to the game is its main attraction for me and what made me want to play it. I enjoyed losing a game but playing that same opponent several rounds later with my improved deck and beating them.

Theme

No idea!

The decks are themed within themselves but the world and the characters in it have no cohesive theme that I’m aware of.

Components & Artwork

The mats are nice, the tokens are OK and the cards are on really nice stock. The insert is both convenient and useful.

I like the cartoony art and the minimalist cards, especially the Jester and Rubber Duck. The graphic design seems to be OK too.

Ease of Teaching

So, this is very easy to teach… to a point.

If you play 8 players, 6 other people are going to be playing away from you so if you’re the only one that knows the game… It could be an issue.

But the game itself is easy to play with only niggles from the more complicated cards causing issues.

Similar Games

Any 1-on-1 card game like Magic the Gathering or Keyforge can and is played in a tournament form. But there are not many games that have it built into the game system itself.

Challengers! Review

Positives

The tournament-style gameplay is really fun.

The components and artwork are really nice.

The capture the flag mini-game is actually really good fun…

Negatives

…but it might be too random and simple for serious gamers.

People literally judge this game by its cover and player count and turn it down.

I’m not sure I can get people to play this, especially for a second time.

Summary

A really fun game that I really want to own but I don’t think it will appeal to enough players for me to add it to my collection.

Jesta ThaRogue