Alan How:  First Impressions of Robot Quest Arena

• Designers:  Robert Dougherty, CJ Moynihan, Paul Waite
• Artists:  Andreas Resch, Piotr Sokolowski, Zbigniew Umbelter
•  Publisher:  Perfect Day Games,
  Wise Wizard Games
• Developers:  Brittanie “Bebo” Boe
• Players:  2-4
• Duration:  20 minutes
• Times Played:  5

The short:

Two to four robots move over a 7×7 grid shooting each other. It’s a deck builder and cards are used to move, shoot and upgrade your deck. Upon losing all their health robots re-spawn and the game ends when a number of re-spawning have taken place.

The game features four plastic robots in distinctive colours and poses. Each robot has a fixed number of red and one blue gems representing health points the depletion of which causes the robot to re-spawn on their next turn.

Every player has the same starting deck of 10 cards – 4 batteries, 4 movement cards and one each of two kinds of damage cards. As in many deckbuilders, 5 are drawn at random each turn.

The batteries can be used to buy cards from a six card display or used to move robots orthogonally on the grid. The damage cards feature the amount of damage (to begin with only one point) and the range or melee for adjacent. Damage from these cards reduces the health of the robot that is injured and provides one victory point for the shooter. The last damage on a robot is the blue gem worth 2 points.

Spending battery points on the tableau of cards will improve your deck of course and the question is always whether to go small amounts of damage or spend your batteries on better cards. There are some fixed cards to buy, but also a wide breadth of other cards that include better movement, more powerful batteries and damage cards, with the most costly cards – payable in battery points – having incredible extra benefits. 

You can also get one victory point if you start your turn in the central 3×3 grid, but this is a more exposed area so easier to be shot at.

The game recommends a starting set of terrain tiles, symetrically positioned on the grid. These include pillars, which block line of sights, the re-spawning points, as well as special tiles that allow healing, an additional battery point, better movement or deck deconstruction. The use of these allows a robot to gain a temporary benefit which can be useful, but certainly not game changing.

The game ends when a number of respawning has taken place depending on player count.

My thoughts: 

I have played all player counts including team play (two versus two) and enjoyed every game. Turns are incredibly quick and you may need prompting as you study potential buys while waiting for your turn. At the moment I like the team game best and I have played with asymmetric placement of the terrain tiles. This is also my preferred way to play as you can hide behind pillars, pop out, do some damage and (ideally) get out of the way of enemy robots. There are a few extra terrains left over each game, so some limited variations exist.

The re-spawning sites are interesting as your robot can come in on any free site, which means that you can hide or get in the action quickly. Knowing this, opponents may cover some of these sites to reduce options.

There’s also a fair amount of banter going on as you encourage robots to give you a miss. But there’s little downside in being hit all the time other than you won’t be in a position to attack as quickly. 

The variety of cards is very good. Some cards cost only one battery power while the most expensive ones cost six or more batteries. Of course the bigger your deck, the less frequent will be these mega cards, and thinning your deck is not easy, but as the game plays so quickly this doesn’t matter.

The game is a blast – literally! It’s really quick as it finishes in 20 minutes or so, it’s speedy to set up and learn and the robots look great. They’re chunky and all have a special power that provides some minor assistance. 

If they haven’t done so already, the game could easily accommodate more robots, more cards and more terrain options and a larger grid. It’s an ideal game to play if you’re waiting for someone to arrive or as an end of evening filler.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dale Y: (3 plays, with copy provided by publisher): So, I am a huge fan of deckbuilders, so I was inherently interested in this one as soon as I saw it.  The game is a rapid fire game filled with excitement and unexpected card plays.  You can definitely try to tailor a strategy based on the the cards you add to your deck, but card luck and your opponent’s plays will likely derail your best laid plans.  The card market forces you to be tactical in your purchases, and there are definitely times when you might actually prefer to pass on adding a card rather than bloating your deck.  This is definitely a game not to take too seriously and enjoy the ride.  

Mark Jackson (1 play): It’s essentially Star Realms with cute robots & board play… and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. (And to answer Alan’s question, yes, they’ve already created more robots & a KS-exclusive tile/card pack AND they’ve announced an expansion with even more robots & a larger arena.)

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it:
• I like it:  Alan How, Dale Y, Mark Jackson
• Neutral:   
• Not for me: