Armello

Armello is a multiplayer game that takes place on a small (about 12x12) grid of hexes. You play as one of four animal characters that have different RPG stats: Hit Points, Magic Points, Fight, Wit, Rot, Prestige, and Gold. Each character also has a couple of special abilities as well as a Ring and an Amulet to make them play differently in significant ways. Each player has a home base in one corner of the map where they start and where they return if they die. The goal of the game is to be the first to kill the King NPC that never moves from his castle in the center of the board. There is a time-limit to every game because the King will die anyway in 18 turns from having a non-zero Rot. If the King dies naturally the character with the most Prestige is declared winner of that game. A game takes an average of around an hour from start to finish.

At its core, Armello is a card game. You have a hand of cards and you play them in various ways to improve your character or take down the other players. Each turn you draw cards so that the number of cards in your hand matches your Wit. Then you move your character around the board and play cards to accomplish your goals. I am not going to describe all the gritty details here as you can read them elsewhere. The point is that this is a game that relies heavily on chance. It is more like playing bridge than like chess. There is also a significant dice rolling component when your character is in a fight or a trial. If you do not enjoy games like Risk or Texas Hold-em this game might not be for you. All you can really do is strive to maximize your chances of winning in any given situation. But even if you play perfectly the random numbers may not let you win.

There are always 4 players per game and each can be controlled by either an AI or a online human. The AI plays well enough that I find it enjoyable, although I win 4 out of 5 games. I could probably almost always win. But there are 4 different winning conditions and I like to mix it up. Playing against humans can be hit or miss. If you could play with real friends it would be great. The problem with playing randoms is that if 2 people team up they can most likely dominate and make your game miserable by helping each other.

Armello really is a tabletop game at heart, but you need a computer to manage all the stats and systems at play in an efficient manner. It took me about 20 games before I had seen most of the (about 130) cards and was fully into more strategic play. At the beginning you don't think of playing a negative effect card on yourself because it will probably give you an advantage in an upcoming situation that looks to be forming on the board. And against humans you need to be more sneaky since if it looks like you are about to win others will try to stop you.

In conclusion I think this is a really fun game if you are looking for a board game like experience on computer. It loses a point for the somewhat weak AI and for not having in place a way to deal with human griefers.