Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast Review
Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast is an easy to learn and well-balanced game that pits powerful warriors across the 40K universe who are trying to defeat the Dreaded Am bull and score the most victory points to win.
It was back in 2023 that I reviewed Combat Arena: Clash of Champions. This was a good gateway-level, battle royale game from Games Workshop. This was their second installment in this series, and it pitted 4 champions to be the last one standing: a Necron Warden, a Chaos Plague Marine Champion, a Space Marine Lieutenant, or a Space Marine Terminator. While the game lacked some variety in fighters, it was well balanced, easy to learn, and fast to the table.
Today’s review covers the third installment in the series of Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast from Games Workshop. This tactical game pits powerful warriors across the 40K universe who are trying to defeat the Dreaded Ambull while scoring more victory points than their opponents. it is designed for 2-4 players and plays in about 30 minutes.
Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast is very similar to the other Combat Arena versions. The game is played in rounds, and each has the following two stages:
Stage One: Prepare – the Action cards are shuffled and each player receives five per fighter. Cards are kept separate and secret from other player(s). Then each player puts as many Initiative cards per fighter forward as they have energy, to make the Initiative deck for that round. The Ambull will always have 4 Initiative cards but does not have a marker on the Energy Track.
Stage Two: Fight – the top card of the Initiative deck is drawn and the player of the depicted fighter can resolve an action. This continues until all Initiative cards are drawn with the round ending after the last fighter resolves its action.
Actions: Players can resolve an action in two ways. They can reveal an Action card from their hand and resolve one of the three actions listed (such as move, attack, or a special action). After the action
Read more on boardgamequest.com
