The brain is a powerful thing! In Ultimate Battle whatever you imagine can become an almost unstoppable force!
The following is a paid preview for a game on kickstarter.com. The art, components and rules may not be in their final form.
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Overview
Ultimate Battle is a game of one-on-one combat. Snore… that’s nothing new. But in this game, your arsenal is your imagination and quick wit. Players use a small hand of cards as inspiration. After playing several cards, the attacker must draw an instrument of battle to make their attack. It can be any crazy concoction you can think of. As long as it makes enough plausible sense to be able to cause irreparable harm to your adversary. Your opponent has one chance to play cards and also sketch a plausible defense against your onslaught. And so the game goes back and forth until one player succumbs to their wounds and the other tramples over their lifeless form in triumph.
Set up
Lay out the paper battlefield and grab a marker (or your drawing implement of choice) for each player. Shuffle the 108 Ultimate Battle (UB) cards and the 16 Disagreement cards and place them to one side. Next, on your side of the paper battlefield, draw your hero, villain or anything that you believe could pose an immeasurable threat to another combatant. (I like robots.) You can name it, color it in, make it your own. Each player draws five UB cards and keeps them secret. The first player is decided by drawing a disagreement card. YOU are ready to begin the ultimate battle!
Goal
This is a “one hit kill” game. So your goal simply is to create a deadly attack so indefensible, so incredibly outrageous (but plausible) that nothing in the wildest imaginings of your opponent could defend against it.
The Cards
The game has two key card types that players will need to get to know: Ultimate Battle Cards and Disagreement cards.
The UB cards basically have stuff on them. Ya, mostly common ordinary every-day stuff. These serve as inspiration to your twisted imagination.
Disagreement cards are simply tie breakers. At a point where a decision can’t be made, the Disagreement cards channel fate, lady luck and (all the other intangibles that we humans blame for not getting our way) and create a winner.
Attack!
Look at your UB cards, and imagine how your hero (that is drawn on the paper in front of you) with any number of these items can be combined into a mind numbing, body crushing, whirlwind of a crazy attack and draw this on the paper. While (or after) you illustrate the attack with your drawing implement, explain it to you opponent and lay down your cards that show your inspiration and sit back and await victory.
However, your opponent now has the chance to look at their cards and create from the bowels of their imagination a defense to counter your attack. They too will draw, explain and lay down their cards to stop your feeble attempt.
Who Wins?
Players mutually agree on whether the defense stopped the attack or not. If not, Boom! You’re a winner! If, however, both players agree that the defense was a good bulwark vs your twisted imaginings, both players draw up to five cards and the defender becomes the attacker!
If neither you nor your opponent can agree that the attack was stopped or went through, the battle (and maybe the game) is decided by drawing a Disagreement card. If the Attacker is favored in this blind stab at fate, then the game is won! If the Defender is favored by the Lucky 8 Ball – then the defense holds and the game continues with the players switching roles.
Learning Curve
Zero, Nada, Zilch. Anyone who can think can play. Very accessible to young and old alike. Although little Ralfie’s Cyber-attack vs grandpa’s B29 Superfortress defense may fall through a Generation gap. But what the hey it’s all in good fun!
Who would enjoy this game?
Family Gamer {yes}
Totally fun to draw and imagine these self made characters coming to life on the page.
Social Gamer {yes}
The game comes with a Multiplayer variant, but since the game employs a free thinking game mechanic, you can play with many people each taking their turns in order. You may need extra paper!
Strategy Gamer {no}
Not a good thing for the strategically minded. The combination of imagination and luck will probably send them to the funny farm.
Casual Gamer {yes}
Pretty sure you can play this anywhere you can stretch out a piece of paper (within reason… funerals are probably out). It’s fast, goofy and you’ll have a good time. If that’s what you’re into.
Avid Gamer {maybe}
The game is unique and employs combat system based on… well, whatever you can think of! That may be cool to some folks and not so cool to others.
Power Gamer {no}
It’s unlikely this will appeal to the hard core Power gamer. Unless they are very competitive, imaginative and excellent artists. But for the most part. It’s a light game meant for Casual players.
First Impressions
Being an artist, writer and right brain thinker, I felt immediately confident and inspired that I would love this game. It sounded like a lot of fun and I certainly had never heard of anything like it. In most drawing games (usually of the party variety) you have to draw something to allow someone else to guess it. Your accuracy counts and the amusing aspect is how bad of an artist you are. (Ha! That’s a Horse?) At the same time, if you can draw a horse to perfection – no one wants to play with you, or everyone wants to be on your team.
Here we have no judgments on how well you can draw, but how well you can imagine and then depict what you imagine on paper. And the UB cards are not things you must recreate but are items that when placed side by side will push your imagination to creating new and interesting things. (I trapped my opponent in a mountain of Radioactive ice. Unfortunately he had a Lava spewing Snail) You have free reign! And seriously, you laugh a lot at not only what your opponent comes up with but also what comes out of your mouth.
The disagreement cards can be a bit jarring after all this creative play. But there are times when you reach a point where you need to come to resolution. And they can be quite amusing too. All in all, it created a game experience that exceeded my expectations. Lots of fun packed into a very small package.
Almost Final Thoughts
Ultimate Battle is great fun, simple, and as entertaining as your fellow players’ imaginations. It will be a great game to play with children – although in doing so you will want to tailor the violence level to their age. As you draw this epic battle out, you find yourself weaving in and out of themes: high fantasy, sci-fi, cyberpunk, anime, fairy tales and any combination of these and more… They are all in play! So what you have here is a very pliable and expandable game experience. Playable by young and old, 2 or more players in 5-20 minutes, and at the end of which you will have an artistic recreation of a battle that can stagger the imagination. If games are meant to be fun then Ultimate Battle is meant to be a game.
Support this game on kickstarter.com!
{Backing ends July 31st, 10:59pm MST}
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I just watched this being played on Beer and Board Games. It’s once Upon a Time with drawing skills required. It looks like fun, but would definitely require the right group.