When I downloaded the Disney Sorcerers Arena app a few years ago, I really enjoyed taking teams of Disney characters into battle against classic Disney villains. Unwilling to buy the paid model, my progress was slow and arduous, but the illustrations and fun combinations made for a great experience. The only thing better than the app… make it a board game!
Disney Sorcerers Arena: Epic Alliances from designer Sean Fletcher and publisher The Op, takes the art and theme of the smartphone app and expertly transfers it into a table experience for players of different ages and skill levels. Epic Alliances is a 2 or 4 player skirmish game in which teams of 3 or 4 Disney and Pixar characters compete against each other. The game is really built as a two-player game, but has a special set of rules for a 4-player battle royale. The game progresses over a series of rounds where players maneuver their allies around the board and attack their rivals’ pieces, all hoping to have the most victory points when one of the endgame conditions is met.
Right out of the gate, Epic Alliances helps players play the bigger game with a progressive rulebook divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 puts players together with teams of pre-selected characters and walks players through the basics of the rules. Chapter 2 introduces a concept for players to decide which characters to play with for the game. Chapter 3 introduces character cards with special abilities unique to each character. Chapter 4 adds an element for upgrading characters using the cards in their discard pile. While this review provides an overview of an entire Chapter 4 game, the game’s progressive introduction gives players examples of how the game can be scaled to different levels of complexity for players of all ages.
The game’s base set comes with eight characters from the Disney and Pixar universes to choose from and battle with:
- Aladdin – the stealthy thief
- Ariel – the healer of the Little Mermaid
- Wizard Mickey – equipped with his special hat and magic brooms from Fantasia
- Sully – the big blue man from Monsters Inc. who brings his brute force into the fight
- Gaston – the vain village beast from Beauty and the Beast
- Maleficent – the evil queen from Sleeping Beauty who has a dragon card
- dr. Facilier – brings his voodoo curses from Princess and the Frog
- Demona – the surprising addition from the 1990s animated series Gargoyles
To set up a game, players, known as summoners, will draft characters for their team of allies. In a two-player game, each summoner will assemble a team of three, with four-player games putting each player in control of two characters. Players collect the deck of cards and character sheets associated with their team. The cards are shuffled into one large pile. Players then decide in which order they want to secretly play their characters. Players reveal their first character and a special initiative value determines the starting order. Players will place hourglass tiles with special characters to indicate the turn order for each round. Throughout the game, characters gain statuses that are tracked by special tokens and tiles displayed on the side of their hourglass tile. Each player has a different hand size, depending on the characters they have chosen, and draws a hand of cards.
The cards in this game are where much of the flair comes in. Each character comes with a special set of movement and action cards tailored to their abilities and backstory from the Disney universe. Cards have a number of tags that can activate skills on character sheets and combos with other card skills played each round. Cards also come with unique gear icons that are used to upgrade characters throughout the game. As cards are discarded, players keep track of these gears to create sets. Players can then ban these cards from the game to upgrade characters and add even more special abilities.
A player’s turn consists of a number of phases related to the character they control. In the initial phase, players will remove one status token from each status token associated with their character. Statuses can be beneficial to characters, such as giving them extra attack power or avoiding attacks from other players, or harmful, such as restricting movement or causing damage every time a token is removed. Once all flags are removed from a status token, the status is removed.
The main phase is performed in random order, allowing players to tailor their actions to the strategy their cards offer them. During this phase, players can perform basic actions or play cards that match their character for special abilities and effects. The move phase allows players to reach their character’s move value, and they can discard any character’s move cards to increase their move by one. Players can also play a movement card from their character deck which usually contains a number of special actions. The action phase is the attack phase. Characters can attack adjacent rivals with their base attack value and increase the attack by one with a discarded action card from their hand. Similar to movement, players can perform character-specific actions with direct or indirect attacks, statuses, and other abilities that suit the character. Direct attacks allow players to choose their targets, while indirect attacks provide a condition for who to target. The last main action is the Skill phase. Each character has one or more special abilities described on their character card that can give them an edge over their rivals. This can help characters like Aladdin gain Stealthy status or characters like Sorcerer Mickey to get more magical brooms to use in battle.
The ultimate goal of the main stage is to maneuver your allied characters around the board to attack the rival team and score victory points. Eliminating one of the rival opponents will give you victory points based on the rival character sheet. KO’d characters lose all status tokens and return when their next turn is triggered. Another way to earn victory points is to have characters start their turn on one of the three special golden tiles.
After players have decided which actions, moves and skills they want to use during the main phase, they move on to the final phase. During this phase, players will either use up or discard to their hand limit and their character’s turn ends. Turns alternate between each player’s squad of characters until each character in the game has had a chance to activate, which means the end of the round. The game ends after the round in which a player has scored their 20th victory point or a player’s deck is exhausted and there are no more cards to draw.
The gameplay of Epic Alliances was much deeper than expected and very satisfying for a Disney game. As a fan of games like Unmatched, you can get a lot of gameplay with characters that are mostly universal (Demona of Gargoyles featured in the base set was not expected). Each character brings a special flavor to the game, and as players learn their skills, they can create teams that balance each other. Demona brings a ranged attack that helps support Gaston or Sully who prefer advance and brute force strategy. dr. Facilier really uses his status effects and special ability to slowly chip other characters. Ariel is a great ally with her healing abilities and Aladdin can use stealth to dodge attacks and maneuver into better positions. One of the funniest abilities was Maleficent’s dragon form which allows a character to heal up and deal damage to an opponent’s character in kind, a great card to play when she was on the brink of death (fill a maniacal laugh in). Another fun element is creating teams of traditionally “good” and “bad” characters that make interesting combos to beat the other team. This really stretched the fiancé who is generally not combative but loves all things Disney. The game is also ripe for expansions, with one already on the market adding Moana, Stitch, and Davy Jones to the cast of available characters. Having so many characters in the Disney/Pixar arsenal and keeping some of the heavy hitters out of the core makes for a long line of successful add-ons.
The components of the game are great for the most part. The game’s design is taken from the Sorcerer’s Arena smartphone app and is prominently displayed using plexiglass stands for the characters. The artwork on the cards is also fun and nicely tailored to each character. Health points for each character are tracked via plastic overlay discs and can be a bit clunky. A separate health counter for each character or a more solid base would be a big help. Another minus is the box insert. While an effort has been made to provide a storage solution, most of the recorded spaces are ambiguous about which pieces go where. I also see the need for some map covers if I’m going to play a lot of the game in the future… and there are!
Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: Epic Alliances is a great skirmish game that is scalable for players of different ages and skill levels. Put famous characters from the Disney and Pixar universes against each other in an epic, variable and thematic experience.
PROS
- A Disney game outside the typical family-friendly archetype
- Great variability and scalability
- Gameplay that will leave you wanting more expansions to build your arsenal of characters
CONS
- The health monitoring system can be improved
- The box organizer insert needs refinement and extensions will quickly outgrow the core box
- No request system for characters to include in future expansions
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