Guilty Gear: Strive – The Board Game Preview

boardgamequest.com:

Note: This preview uses pre-release components and rules. What you see here may be different from the final, published game. 

It’s been quite a while since I’ve played one of those side-scrolling fighting games. I grew up in the arcades playing Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, Soul Caliber, Injustice, and Street Fighter. Since then, I’ve lost my twitchy finger skills and have kind of fallen out of the genre.

So when a demo deck of Guilty Gear: Strive – The Board Game landed on my doorstep, I immediately called up fellow review Brian to see if he knew anything about this anime show. He quickly corrected me that it’s a video game franchise (although much less politely, thanks Brian) in the same vein as those battling games. Today I Learned…

Theme aside, Guilty Gear: Strive – The Board Game is actually the newest game in Level 99’s Exceed Fighting system. I’ve lost track of how many Exceed games have been released, but I think it should be fully compatible with all previous Exceed games.

Guilty Gear is a 1v1 fighting game, much like its video game counterpart. The goal is to be the first player to reduce their opponent’s hit points to zero. The demo deck of Guilty Gear featured two characters: Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske.

Each player starts with a hand of seven cards, and on their turn, they can take 1 action. There are some minor things you can do with your actions, such as drawing a card, moving along the board, or flipping to your Ex side. However, the main thing you’ll be using cards for is to either Strike or Boost power.

To Strike, you play a card face down and your opponent does the same. Cards are revealed and the player with the higher speed gets to strike first. Each attack has a range and a power. Damage is