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REVIEW: Brick Warriors Chains To Champions
Bribe, Bid, Buy, & Battle...
Brick Warriors is well known in the construction toy collector community for their awesome figures and accessories. For a recap of who they are and what they do, check out our C.J. Stunkard’s story on them HERE. But, figures, weapons, and cool parts aren’t all they do. A little while ago the Brick Warriors team forayed into the world of board games with their very own take on the gladiator genre with Chains to Champions. Created by Ryan Hauge and Amanda Taylor, “Chains” pits two to six players against each other in the arena as gladiator owners purchasing and outfitting their fighters. It’s a unique game of strategy, misdirection, bluffing, and mathematical probability that’s fun and different every time you play. Plus, it comes with some awesome BrickWarriors accessories and training dummy figures! Read on for a look at the game and how it plays.
Chains to Champions comes in a pretty sleek package, a small rectangular white box with a unique art style. The front cover features the game’s logo and Brick Warriors’ along with a 3D rendered image of two gladiators outfitted in the game’s weapons and armor doing battle in an ancient arena. The bottom-right corner adds industry standard icons for players (2-6), age recommendation (14 and up), and duration of gameplay (40 minutes). The info and graphics are repeated on the sides of the box, while the back panel has a description of the game, and a list of its contents along with graphics for some of them.
So what’s inside that swanky box? Open it and you’ll find a handy sheet of Quick-Start Rules, a full Rulebook, the four-panel heavy cardboard Arena game board, 96 cards of various types, 6 Training Dummies representing the gladiators, 22 Brick Warriors accessories (weapons and armor fully compatible with LEGO and other construction toys), dice, money tokens, and a pad of scoresheets. Honestly, the only thing missing is a pencil! Breaking out the components and getting ready for play is super easy and quick, necessitating only removing plastic wrap, opening baggies, and shuffling cards. Of course, reading and learning the rules takes a bit longer.
To play Chains to Champions you need 2-6 players, a small gaming space, and less than an hour. There’s very little in the way of set up, as noted above just shuffling the different cards into their respective decks, giving each player his or her monies, and putting out the pieces. As gladiator owners the players must purchase and outfit fighters for battle, which happens as the game takes you through three different phases. First is “Auction,” which confronts players with seven potential fighters (or five if you only have two players) made up of three stat cards: Health, Quickness, and Strength. The Bribing sub-phase lets you pay to get a sneak peek at two of the cards in any one stack so you can get a good, but not complete, sense of that gladiator’s natural abilities. Bribing has costs, though, both in money expenditure and the chance you could get caught which prevents you from buying that fighter. Once all the players are done with their bribing it’s time for Bidding. This is a really fun element as you take turns selecting a gladiator, then everyone secretly places their bids in their right hands and reveals them together. The winner of each bid purchases that fighter, so you could potentially buy up all of the good ones and leave your opponents with dregs or none at all (in which case they are forced to field weak Convicts in the arena).
Got your gladiators (or Convicts)? Good, now it’s time for the Market Phase. Replacing the stat piles are randomly chosen selections of Academy, Blacksmith, Commerce, and Special cards in six piles. Taking turns, players can choose a pile, look through its cards, and select one for purchase. This phase is really interesting and challenging, as there are dozens of combos in the game if you can find and buy the right cards. But, you don’t know if the special ability that goes with your weapon is in one of the piles, or if another player might snag it before you can find it or get back to it. This is further compounded by your dwindling coin hoard, though you can boost it by either selecting a Commerce card to gain money or eschewing a pile altogether to “Work for the Day” and rolling a die to determine income. There are eight weapon cards, seven helmets, three armors, and two special items, EACH with a corresponding Special ability card in the game, though not all cards are used in each game so you won’t be sure a combo is even available until you look through the stacks. Plus there’s an additional Blacksmith card to buff any weapon, four Training cards, and ten Academy Moves to give your gladiator special techniques on the battlefield. Collect cool items and pick the training you want to turn your fighter into a quick and nimble assassin, a slow but powerful skull crusher, or any other combination you can find and build in seven turns of Market purchases. Oh, one last thing; you have another option when looking through the stacks to pay to discard a card, thus robbing your opponents of getting its benefit!
After all the purchases have been made, it’s time to prepare for battle. If you bought more than one gladiator it’s time to choose who will fight; you have to pick one, and you can’t mix and match their cards to create your own super-gladiator. Then equip your would-be champion with cards from the Market, limited by the amount and type of equipment he can carry (one helmet only, please) and whether or not you have the matching Blacksmith/Specials, etc. Certain cards and equipment can be hidden from opponents for nasty surprises in the Arena later, so make sure to check if yours have that feature. All of the items in the game have Brick Warriors pieces to represent them, so equip your Training Dummy figure with the cool pieces. Lastly, each player will calculate his or her gladiator’s final stats taking into account his starting card values, equipment, training, and leftover coins to purchase additional health. Once everyone is ready players roll off to see who goes first, placing your gladiators in the starting squares on the Arena game board.
The drums are beating and the crowd is cheering which can mean only one thing: it’s finally time for the battle to begin! In the Battle Phase you “spend” Quickness points to move your gladiator, and to perform combos like moving and attacking or moving and using a Special or Academy card. Slow warriors will have to slog their way to their opponents and then wait to strike, but often these combatants will have the heaviest armor and weapons. Attacking in this game is complicated but straightforward, with each weapon describing how to resolve the attack roll with bonuses, penalties, and Strength score multipliers. Heavier weapons will naturally do more damage, while Special abilities and Training can give you a huge edge as well. Defense is also handled by a d6 die roll depending on your equipment and Training, with a 6 automatically succeeding in blocking an attack and the amount of damage done being the difference between a higher attack score and a lower defense score. A successful hit also pushes the combatants one square in the direction of the attack, which can be deadly since the Arena is ringed with spikes that instantly kill a gladiator forced into them!
While the above describes the basics of Chains to Champions, there really is a ton more to the game with strategy and replayability. First off, the number of players in your game will have a huge impact, especially when it comes to the Market Phase and equipping your gladiators. In smaller games you’ll have a bit more freedom to customize your fighter while in larger ones everyone will be scrambling to get the best cards and combos while preventing others from doing the same. Likewise the actual combat in the Arena is very different with two players and with six, from positioning to temporary alliances, and more. The randomness of which cards will be in your game combined with the Market phase rules means you may never get the same equipment and training twice, though in every successive game you’ll become more adept and recognizing which cards go best together and which you don’t want to fall into the hands of your opponents. In my player group it was decided after only a few games that it was preferable to save money in the Bribing and Bidding phases for use in the Market, and to focus on Quickness for mobility and move-and-attack options in the Arena. Your experience, of course, will vary.
Of course, as a Brick Warriors product Chains to Champions includes some great LEGO-compatible accessories in the form of weapons and armor! There are multiple helmets, body armor pieces, swords and other close combat weapons, a shield, and more in different colors. All of these parts are made from the same material as LEGOs themselves and go great with any construction toys for fantasy or warrior customization. In Chains these are equipped on Training Dummy pieces, simple torso shapes mounted on poles for displaying items; they also have a hole in the “back” into which you can shoot arrows from Brick Warriors.
Chains to Champions succeeds on several levels, both as a fun and easy to learn board game and as a collection of unique accessories for your minifigures. It’s notable for accepting up to six players (somewhat uncommon among board games), and its convenient size and game length. Another great feature of the game is that unlike so many others in the genre it’s very affordable at only $25! That’s a fantastic bargain considering most board games are $50 and up, and this one brings with it all of the cool pieces. I highly recommend checking out Chains to Champions if you enjoy fast-paced equip-and-fight games, and if you’re also a LEGO collector this one is tailor made for you and a must buy.
Get your copy of Chains to Champions at Brick Warriors.
Review and photos by Scott Rubin
Review sample courtesy of Brick Warriors
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