Fantasy Tavern Brawl

• Designers: Adrao
• Publisher: Amuri Studio
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 14+
• Time: 10-15 minutes
  Played with prototype copy provided by publisher

Summary:

Your group of adventures encounter a tavern in the midst of a bar brawl.  Guide your eleven, dwarven, orc adventurers/patrons and more to try to keep them all inside the tavern during the brawl.  You’ll need to place, flick, throw the cards and adventurers to try to have them land inside the tavern.  

Fantasy Tavern Brawl is a high energy dexterity game with an element of strategy inspired by fantasy roleplaying games.  Designed by indie designer Adrao the owner of Amuri Studios an indie studio in Japan. This portable game is for 2-5 players.  The game comes with 7 fantasy character races that all have their own characteristics, and includes various scenarios.  But it’s flexible enough for players to make their own scenarios.  It also comes with 75 meeples of 5 colors, and handy player reference guides.

Setup:

Each player selects a color and takes that set of meeples.  Select a scenario for the game.  Each scenario lists which combination of cards of fantasy races are given to each player to be kept as their hand.  For example Scenario 1: each player gets 2 dwarves, 2 halflings, 2 orc cards.    Place the Tavern Floor card in the middle of the table, and place 1 of each player’s meeple on the Tavern Floor card.
Play proceeds clockwise.  

The Tavern:

Any cards that touch the Tavern Floor card or are on top of meeples that have cards connected to the Tavern Floor become part of the tavern.  Any cards or meeples that have been slid/flung off and are not touching the tavern floor any more are not part of the tavern.

Gameplay:

On a player’s turn, they choose 1 card from their hand and follow the instructions of that fantasy race’s ability and perform that action.  Actions may include placing a card, sliding a card, flicking a card, dropping a card, placing / flicking / removing adventuring meeples.   E.g. For the Halfling ability – place the Halfling card so it touches the tavern, then stack 4 meeples on top of each other.  Attempt to flick those 4 adventuring meeples to try get them inside the tavern.  

If the card touches the tavern it becomes part of the tavern.  Adventurer meeples that land in the tavern can stay in the tavern.  Any meeples that missed or were pushed out of the tavern during the player’s actions are returned to their respective players.  Any cards that missed or were pushed out of the tavern are out of the game.  

Card abilities may have some conditions that occur if a card successfully becomes part of the tavern.  For example the Minotaur card.  Fling the Minotaur towards the tavern, if it successfully lands in the tavern THEN you can place 1 of your own meeples on the Minotaur card that is now in the tavern, AND move 3 other meeples from anywhere in the tavern to another location in the tavern.  

Once the player has finished with that card, the turn goes to the player on the left.

Once everyone has played all their cards, the game ends.

All adventuring meeples that are in the tavern score.  The higher the adventuring meeple is in the tavern the more they will score.  Meeples on the first floor score 1 point, meeples on the 2nd floor score 2 points, meeples on the 3rd floor score 3 points and so on.  Players tally up the total of their meeples and whomever has the highest score wins.  When scoring, I found the best way is to calculate backwards. 

Impressions: 

This is a fun dexterity game that is great for partying adventurers.  Since this game plays quickly it is a good game day starting game, filler game, gateway game, or a fun game to end the night with.  I thought it was great that it can also take up to 5 players.

Even though it’s a dexterity game where you are flicking/throwing/placing cards and meeples, you still need to employ some strategy to try to maneuver your meeples to an optimal position to avoid being knocked out, or to score more points at the end of the game.  There are some cards where you need to think about whether to move your meeples higher up on a more precarious floor, or more towards the center of the tavern so there’s less chance it’ll get knocked out, or moving another player’s meeples.  

The game has many icons, but it is great in introducing only a few at a time.  For example, the beginning scenarios only have 3 different cards, so you only need to refer to those icons.  And if your group is adventurous, you can draft cards or use your own imagination to choose which cards to play with.

The rulebook text is quite small, so I missed a couple of rules on my first playthroughs.  But this game really lends itself to imagination so we house-ruled a little and used our imaginations.  The rules even mention that house rules are permitted.  The game is in a portable sized box and is jam packed full of colorful meeples.  I usually sleeve most of my card games, but for this game I think I’ll be leaving the cards unsleeved.  

I played the game many times with various groups of gamers, and it shone especially well with those who may like dice games, and players who like RPG games.  Also those who like light-hearted games, and games that make you laugh, this one works well in those groups.   I think this game would be really fun to add in a RPG campaign as well.  I would love for a DM to bring this mechanic in as the adventuring group visits a tavern.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Mandy
• I like it.
• Neutral. 
• Not for me…