Granblue Fantasy – Japanime Tactics

If you love anime and war gaming, there is a chance that the expandable tactical tabletop game from Japanime Games, Granblue Fantasy, might be the game you are looking for. With a wide variety of characters to collect and play with, there is always something fresh to try in this expandable world. With 3D terrain included in the box, the core set has everything you need to play, and promises tons of additional content to purchase to expand your Grandblue Fantasy world. But is the game any good? Is it worth the investment? Let’s take a look!

Inside the starter set is a number of different playable characters, each with their own little box for storage. Inside you find really nice acrylic standees, along with cards specific to that character. Characters will be separated into two colored teams, with standees slotting into rubber colored bases, either red or blue. Once the game area is set up – something that can take a bit of time as most tabletop miniatures games do – you’ll be ready for your first battle in Granblue Fantasy!

Granblue Fantasy uses a lot of cardboard in the production, but it is all very good. It punches nicely, and goes together nicely when required. The VP dials are better than I was expecting – I find that when it comes to dials that players need to construct themselves, the quality is always hit and miss – it is a hit here! The 3D terrain is great, although I have questions about how well it will hold up long term. Over the many hours I’ve used it so far, things have been perfectly fine, but what about a few dozen hours!?

The highlight of course is the acrylic standees. I have to wave my hat to Japanime Games for this production decision – it would have been so easy, and cheaper, to put cardboard standees in the game, but I’m so glad to see the clear acrylic with rubber bases. They not only look great, but they are very sturdy as well. Arguably, to make this a bit of a collectible experience – you can get booster boxes of characters – there needed to be some kind of premium element, and this is it. I can see hardcore fans displaying their characters on shelves as they obtain them, and I think this was part of the designers plan all along.

The game is relatively solid as well. There is nothing crazy here – each team will have a deck of cards which they will shuffle again and again, drawing cards and playing them to take actions. You can move around the board with cards manipulating your available spaces, you’ll have attack cards, cards that let you interact, and so much more.

There are areas of the board you cannot move through, spaces that require more movement to move through than regular spaces, and so much more. Tactically setting up your units on the board to make a good attack or achieve an objective is a lot of fun, as you plan out each turn and strategically take up locations. The 3D terrain isn’t a game changer, but it does add a bit of table presence to what you are doing.

There are synergies to create as well – match the right colored symbol to your character symbol and gain additional bonuses you wouldn’t normally get. This makes a good strategic card play feel really good, especially if you are racking up points from the objectives as you do it.

I find that Granblue Fantasy is a relatively simple affair, but one that is packaged with a beautiful bow. While it’s not something my gaming group is likely to invest a lot of time into, my anime loving teenager will play this any day of the week with me. And that’s pretty good in my books.