Penguin Brawl: Heroes of Pentarctica First Impressions

In Penguin Brawl, you equip Penguins and send them into battle!

This game will not fly.

Penguin Brawl: Heroes of Antarctica is a fast-paced action card game about penguins, deception and the thrill of glorious battle!

Penguin Brawl Game Play

Each player starts with 3 Penguin cards, 3 Action cards and 5 points. Players are going to use Penguins to try and reduce their opponent’s points to 0.

On a turn, you draw 2 cards from either deck or 1 of each. Then you play as many cards as you like in any order. You can play Penguins into your play area and attach a Weapon and Armour to each.

Weapons and Armour can give a bonus to the Penguin if it matches the Penguin it’s equipped to.

Penguins can’t attack the turn they’re played but you can attack at any time while playing cards. Simply choose a Penguin, choose a defender and they deal damage to each other.

A Weapon or Armour card can be discarded to stop a Penguin from being defeated if the attack exceeds their defence.

If a player has no Penguins, you can attack the player directly and they lose 1 point.

There are other cards available:

A player can have 1 active Trinket and it can be replaced if it hasn’t been activated this turn. Some have a bonus you can use if you have the relevant Penguin in play.

Curse cards are played when Drawn, Spells are played on your own turn and Instants are played at any time.

Play goes clockwise

You play until only 1 player has points remaining.

If a player is eliminated they discard their hand and trinkets and become a Rogue Penguin. The player draws 2 from the Penguin deck, plays and equips Penguins and can attack the other players, causing mischief.

Theme

It’s a really fun theme. Why Penguins? Who cares. The Penguins themselves are a lot of fun and the puns of the names are great.

Setup & Rulebook

Setup is easy, shuffle 2 decks of cards and deal a few out.

The rulebook is fine but the layout is a bit off. It takes a while to find something if you need to look it up. I would have liked to have seen clearer subheadings and a more structured layout.

It appears to assume a bit as I had no idea how curses worked. Those that were Instants are fine: Read, Resolve, Discard, Done. For those that were Penguins, I didn’t understand how they worked and the rulebook didn’t say.

Components & Artwork

The cards are decent quality and the box is really sturdy. It won’t hold sleeved cards though. There is also an app available that is basic but does a job of keeping track of players’ points.

I really like the art style, it’s a lot of fun.

Ease of Teach & Accessibility

Teaching the basics is easy but there are a few niggly rules.

It’s fairly accessible. Hidden information of course but the rules are mostly on the cards. It may take new players some time to get used to the card types and how combat works.

Penguin Brawl Summary

PvP combat card games are plentiful. Magic the Gathering is the obvious one but that is far more complex. Closer to this is Hero Realms which is similar in size, cost and complexity.

It is interesting to play Penguins and get equipment on them. The equipment matching is kinda random as you have no idea what you’re going to draw. There are cards that manipulate the deck and discard pile to get around it but I never got them to work.

We found it quite frustrating, to be honest. Penguins were almost invincible and some armour was so strong the Penguins would never die.

It was taking ages to break down an opponent enough to get damage through. This made the game last AGES. Maybe more than 2 players are needed?

Jesta ThaRogue

A copy of Penguin Brawl game was provided by Team Custard Kracken, a big thank you to them for this game.