GenCon 2023 Post Coverage – Borderlands®: Mister Torgue’s Arena of Badassery

One of my favourite booths to stop by at when I visited GenCon this year was the Monster Fight Club booth. Not only were they showing off some amazing terrain and large scale battlemaps, but they were also demoing a board game based on one of my favourite IPs – Borderlands.

Shockingly, as someone who visits Kickstarter rather frequently, I was amazed that somehow I missed seeing Borderlands: Mister Torgue’s Arena of Badassery (what a title). When given a demo of the game at the booth, I was instantly intrigued.

When companies take a franchise and try to recreate it in the board game space, it often doesn’t end well. Lately, a few video game adaptations have gone fairly well, however, including The Witcher: Old World, one of my favourite games of 2023 so far.

Borderlands as a video game is so wildly unique. It’s a major looter-shooter, with crazy characters, crazier dialogue, and so much. There are dozens of shooters available on the marketplace, but few capture it the way borderlands does.

Somehow, the design team behind this board game nailed that Borderlands experience. Kill crazed enemies, and pick up a crap ton of loot. The game comes with all kinds of loot tokens and cards, and you will be picking up an epic s&*# ton of stuff.

Equipment stored in a central mailbox can be carried forward from one mission to the next, so running around and storing loot is pretty important, as it is in the game.

The collection of enemies is faithful to the franchise as well, and each is associated with a very detailed miniature. Again, kudos to the team for recreating that unique Borderlands art style, not just in the miniatures but in the cards and tokens as well. With each map changing as you progress through the cooperative campaign, this is one game that you will be playing for a very long time.

We had a great little chat with the folks at Monster Fight Club over the weekend, and hope to feature some of their products in upcoming articles and reviews. Based on our experience, however, this is a game we think you shouldn’t miss out on, whether we got to play a full scenario or not.