Godtear

Picked this up secondhand from someone clearing out their minis collection, mostly on the strength of how little table space and setup time it needs compared to the bigger skirmish games I’d looked at. That part delivers exactly as promised. It comes ready to play out of the box, no assembly required, rules easy to master within about twenty minutes, and a tug-of-war scoring system across three objective points that’s a genuinely interesting alternative to straight elimination.

Where it lost me a little is the dice. I like the subtle maneuvering and low piece count that let you really focus on a few complex units, careful positioning and ability sequencing over a big model count. But the dice are random enough that the subtlety gets lost, undoing several turns of careful setup in a way that felt disproportionate more than once. I wanted the unit interactions to be the deciding factor and too often it was the dice instead, which is a frustrating mismatch between what the design is asking of you and what it actually rewards.

The splitting of the game into a “plot” phase and a “clash” phase also never stopped feeling a little awkward to me, like two different games bolted together rather than one continuous flow. I can see what it’s going for, separating positioning decisions from combat resolution, but in practice it just adds a seam where I keep losing track of what phase we’re actually in.

The champion miniatures are genuinely exceptional, better than most minis games at this price point, but the follower miniatures are just okay in comparison. It also requires three starter sets to get all six champions the full three-versus-three game is designed for, since a single starter set only comes with two heroes, which isn’t obvious from the box and caught me off guard on cost.

Three stars. Interesting bones, but the dice keep undercutting exactly the kind of game it’s trying to be.