REVIEW

Armello Review

by Sam Foxall, September 9th, 2015

It’s rare to see woodland critters stabbing each other to death, trying to commit regicide or setting up a kingdom spanning spy network. So, if you are looking for a game where you can see Cottontail pick up a great maul and smash it over the head of the lion from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Armello just might be the game for you.

Besides the whole woodland animal brutally murdering each other, what is Armello about? Well, Armello is the work of the Australian based indie developer League of Geeks who after having a successful Kickstarter back in 2014, have brought their hex based role playing board game to tablets, PC, Mac, Linux and certain consoles. The premise of this dark fairy tale is that the king of Armello has been infected by a blight known as the Rot, which has tainted his mind and body and caused him to throw the land into chaos. You must then choose a member of one of the 4 clans of Armello, to rise up against the king and bring order back to the land.

This is all explained in the game’s effective prologue, where you are not only taken through the main mechanics of the game, but shown how the king descended into madness and how each leader of each clan reacted to the kingdom’s downfall. Armello does a great job in establishing a consistent tone throughout your time through the game, helped in no small part by the fantastic art direction. It’s seen most notably in the animated cards that you play during a campaign, which all are carefully designed and bring a real sense of character to this dark fantasy setting.

The Armello game board is hex based, with each player starting at their clan ground placed at one of the cardinal directions. At the centre of the board is the King’s Palace, which houses the corrupted king and is the source of the King’s Guard who patrol the board and dish out the King’s justice. All the other hexes on the board are randomly generated each game, as to make each Armello campaign that little bit different. Hex tiles include your typical forests, plains and mountains as well as settlements which can be captured to produce gold, stone circles which can heal players and spawn Spell Stones which are a key component to a certain victory type as well as dungeons, which players can explore to gain either more magic points, gold or even followers. The basic aim of Armello is to get rid of the King, by either killing him, banishing him away or being the next in line for the throne when he eventually snuffs it. Like Civilization, these different victory types involve players fulfilling certain criteria in order to achieve victory.

The Kingslayer Victory is very simple, just infiltrate the palace and kill the King. The banish or Spell Stone victory requires you to collect 4 Spell Stones from questing or picking them up in the game world, breaking into the castle and then using the cleansing magic of the stones to cure the King of his affliction and then banish him. The Prestige Victory just requires you to have the most Prestige points when the King either dies from the Rot or is killed during a player duel wherein both the King and the player die. Prestige points can be gained from killing other players, defeating Rot monsters called Banes or fulfilling bounties and is honestly the easiest way to win. There is also a special Rot victory where you yourself are claimed by the Rot and you use its power to overthrow the King and cement yourself as ruler. Unfortunately, this Rot victory is so difficult to pull off that you might as well not bother.

Getting in the King’s good books with high Prestige is pretty essential.

This is where my first big complaint with Armello lies, in the fact that the Prestige victory is the easiest and most effective way to win a game. All the other paths to victory are so dangerous or inefficient, that you resign yourself to losing a match should you dedicate yourself to collecting all the Spell Stones or trying to kill the King. It stems from the difficulty of trying to get into the Palace without taking significant damage and being able to take on the King.

Right now would be a good time to explain how combat, levelling and questing works in Armello before I say why going for any other victory besides Prestige is not the best decision. When you start an Armello campaign, you must pick your character, ring and amulet. Each character has a specific niche to fill and starting stats to compliment that so Thane the Winter Wolf, is a combat focused character so he has a high Fight stat. Sana the Forest Sister is a shaman attuned to Nature, so she has a high Spirit stat in order to cast spells and does well fighting the Rot monsters which plague the land. You can then augment your character with your ring and amulet choice, to give them stealth on certain titles or increase their Wit score by one for example. Choosing the wrong character and build or more likely losing the race to pick your wanted character in an online match can lead you to start at a great disadvantage, as you have to deal with the fact that your character just isn’t attuned the way you would wish.

Once in game, you get the ability to go on quests to level up certain skills. If you’re playing a glass cannon character like Zosha, you will want to go on quests which requires a Body challenge in order to level up your health. If you are a character who needs more attack dice as you keep losing in fights, you will go on a Fight challenge quest and so on. Quests require you to travel across the game board to specific hexes and once there, you can choose to either undergo a skill check to level up and possibly gain a new item or follower, or you can take the easy route and just go for the level up but no extra reward. This risk system does add incentivise you to take the dangerous route should you be down in a match but more often than not, Lady Luck will not be on your side and you’ll take a gold penalty or lose 2 health in the process.

Navigating to these quests is a task in itself, as you have to avoid Peril tiles and enemy players while managing your Action Points. You can only move based on the number of Action Points you have in stock, so bolstering your point well is crucial for rushing a quest location. Perils are traps placed by either the computer or the player that can do a whole host of bad things to your character. They can be as innocuous as taking some gold off you or as damaging as teleporting you to the other side of the game board just as you are about to reach your quest marker. You can bypass the Perils by rolling dice and match symbols with the Peril’s score but if your Wit score is low and it is a Wit check, you are going to eat the lightning bolt or lose that sword you are carrying. This is where your cards come in.

In Armello, cards are broken up into Spells, Items and Trickeries. Spells are as you expect and can only be cast if you have enough Magic. Magic refills every turn based on your Spirit score and you can gain more magic by drinking potions or getting a magic buff from a dungeon. Items are either weapons or armour you can equip to your character or potions to heal you or refill your magic. Trickeries are the cards which determine what Perils you can play on certain tiles. You can also burn cards in battle and on Peril rolls to ensure a specific dice rolls a certain symbol, based off a symbol seen on the top of each card. It is a great little way of not only making sure you will roll a Sun on a tricky Peril but it is useful for getting rid of cards you don’t want but still finding a use for them besides leaving them in your hand. It also means you will draw more cards on your next turn so you aren’t constantly saddled with a hand full of useless cards.

So, making sure you’ve cast a specific spell before combat or equipped a certain item to your character is vital if you want to win in combat. Battling works the same way as rolling for Perils does, with each combatant rolling a certain amount of dice based on their Fight score. Items can give you certain dice so having a sword equipped may automatically give you one Sword dice to start or you may have a halberd which takes one dice off the enemy player. You also need to factor in what time of day you are fighting, as certain characters are more powerful during the day instead of night so you need to be careful when to launch that skirmish. Moon rolls only work at night, Sun rolls only work in the day, Rot rolls are only counted if you are corrupted and Wyld rolls do one damage and give you an extra dice to roll, so getting loads of Wyld rolls is the aim. In battle, you just want to have more attack dice than your enemy’s defence dice in order to do damage. So, if you rolled 3 attack dice and the enemy only had 2 defence, you’d do 1 damage to their health. Once you have played a few battles, the system is easy to understand but the main problem with combat is that it will more often than not end up with both players dying.

Go! Dice roll! Wait, wrong game.

Seeing as there is no tangible speed stat, both players will launch their attacks even if one player has dealt enough damage to kill the other. If I land the killing blow on an enemy and even overkill them (which you do by dealing damage past the enemy’s existing life), they should not be able to act, let alone kill me after I have overkilled them by 5 health. I understand there should be some leeway but if I absolutely blitz another player with damage, completely wiping their health out twice over yet they do a single point of damage which is enough to kill me, I feel cheated more than anything. I have clearly bested that person in combat yet I’m kicked back to my clan ground.

This is where we finally link back up with my major problem with Armello. Most fights with the King end up in a double knockout, meaning that the player with the most Prestige takes the win. I know it makes sense logically as you are next in line to the throne but it makes attempts on the King’s life pretty much entirely based on luck. There is the added problem in that once you are in the Palace and have past the difficult Peril to get in, everyone is going to try and gank you so you don’t kill the King. All the King’s Guard will attack, other players will try to snipe you out and take the Prestige (as you are wanted and thus give 2 Prestige points instead of one), making the risk of you trying to kill the King not worth it and more rewarding for those who sit out. You have to sit through about 4 rounds of possible damage, meaning that you’ll either enter the fight with the King on little health or be killed before you get a chance to attack. The other victory methods are just simply not worth it at the moment and Armello needs some proper balancing in order to make going for other victories besides Prestige, actually viable. Having high Prestige means you are the King’s advisor, meaning you get to make declarations which affect other players and more often than not, keep you ahead. Seeing as Armello matches can last up to an hour, losing all of your efforts to someone who has just been camping other players and farming Banes all match is quite frustrating.

Presentation-wise, Armello is dripping with personality and charm, right down to the animated card art and character design. The in game text is quite small and difficult to read, even when playing on a large television so there does need to be a patch to fix that in the near future. The music is a bit of a let-down, not matching the grand scale of the action happening on screen but the overall sound design matches Armello’s aesthetic very well. To note as well, I played Armello on PS4 and was pleasantly surprised on how well the interface was adapted for controller. Menus were easy to navigate through, moving characters around was no problem so do not be afraid to buy the console version if your PC isn’t up to it.

Armello is a great little strategy board game for those who wish Civilization was a bit more RPG based and had badgers and moles replacing Gandhi and Caesar. Besides some balancing issues and slight presentation hiccups, Armello is definitely one to buy if you are looking for a new strategy title to sink your teeth into. There is also a local mode supposedly on the way so this could be coming to a game night near you very soon.