Madcala Board Game Review
Two player games in our household get a lot of attention as my wife and I love to play games in the evenings, but aren’t always up for a whole group of people to come over. Yes, most games play 2 – ? but the 2 player experience always seems to be lacking in most situations. When we got Madcala in for review from Druid City Games, I was instantly excited about it. Not only did it look great, but the gameplay seemed simple enough to learn, but packed a ton of great decision making opportunities.
In Madcala, players will be moving gems around a circular board, picking up and dropping them off at subsequent locations, and taking the action of the location where they placed the final gem. The goal of the game is to reduce your opponents health down to 0 (typically from 25). Actions on the board allow you to draw one-use cards, add extra gems to the board, heal damage dealt to you, deal damage to your opponent, and more. Each player also gets one large gem, which when placed on a location allows you to trigger it twice! The trick here is that the board is split in half, and you can only pick up and move gems on your side of the board – both yours and your opponents – so once those gems end up on your opponents side, you can’t touch them until they return them to you.
And that matters a whole lot more than you would think. Each player gets a few Plus One cards with a variety of benefits, and you’ll need to spend gems to utilize those benefits. Thankfully, you can spend your gems from anywhere on the board, even your opponents side, but that also means you need to keep replenishing your gems using actions. What I quickly realized is how well this game came together. Everything seemed to connect and flow really well, and each and every turn felt memorable and meaningful. Where you picked gems up from, and where you dropped them off too really factored in to how close your game was going to be. Thing yourself out too much, and you can’t get to the actions you want. That happened way to many times to me.
This game is a balancing act between moving gems and spending gems, and is an experience that definitely benefits from dozens of plays. Thankfully, the game comes with a ton of characters to choose from, and there is a character expansion that adds even more. Each character feels just a bit different from the last, so each game will feel unique as well, at least for a while. The unique player powers will definitely change how you approach each game, and while I prefer some over others, I haven’t found a character yet I didn’t enjoy playing. Even after you have played all the characters once, you’ll want to do it again and again to really learn these characters and master their abilities.
If you’ve been looking for an easy to play, hard to master two player game, look no further than Madcala. The only thing I would say negatively is that there may be a lot of questions about how certain cards might work, and the rulebook could definitely use an appendix to explain them fully!
Article By Adam
