What’s in the box…

22″ Arena Board
12 Champion & 2 Companion Boards
72 Item Cards & Battle Tokens
Loot Token

Dice

Scatter Die
Damage Die
3 Battle Dice
4 D6
14 D20

Following on from the recent success of ‘Per My Last Email’, Brain Sandwich Games second outing for Kickstarter is FRAY: Champions of the Every-verse which is a universe away from their previous campaign…

FRAY is an arena combat game that extracts characters across time and space through The Every-verse to act as Champions fighting for the pleasure of The Watchers (which is You The Player!)

Think Thor Ragnarok meets Mortal Kombat (the video game – not the iffy Christopher Lambert movie) as Samurai’s clash against Pirates, Vampires, Gladiators and even Steam Punk Engineers until one side survives to claim victory for their Watcher.

The format of FRAY is straight forward – you’ll draft from a lineup of Champions each with unique abilities and pitch them against your opponents; but the number of Champions per side (and therefore length of game) depends on the mode of play…

As you’d expect Team Mode allows a group of upto 3 Champions per side competing against potentially 4 Players simultaneously in longer bouts; compared to the much swifter Solo Mode that takes a head-to-head approach with 1 Champion per player.

These alternate modes are a great touch and will offer anything from a 15 minute session upto an hour of all out skirmishing – depending on how much time you have… to kill!

The Champions themselves are a diverse bunch and the backstory of The Every-verse is a nice aspect to justify the gamut of job titles across their collective CVs as Orks & Elves square up against Pirates & Cowboys.

With a lineup of 12 Characters and 2 Companions, each is represented by a detailed 32mm Mini and a Character Board which holds their unique abilities, stats and flavour text that really helps build a narrative to the Uni… whoops… Every-verse they live in.

The variety of Champions is sure to cater to every fandom possible and each has a well balanced array of stats and abilities to allow you to interchange and vary things without one OP player dominating the arena.

It has to be said, the character sculpts are really top notch and should you paint them to match their Artwork then they’ll really pop against the massive, yet muted tones of the dusty arena board.

A sight to behold!

Once your Champions are assembled they’ll enter the arena from opposing sides and combat will ensue across multiple rounds with turns determined by Initiative, which along with a D6 roll is combined to each characters Initiative Stats to setout the order of play.

Alongside their own abilities (and stats) you’ll be kitted out with an array of items that can be temporarily used to modify stats as a boon for yourself or a negative effect for your opponent.

Items are applied in 2 ways: either in advance in planning for your turn, or some items can be played instantly during combat to help turn the tide in your favour.

There’s a nice mix of effects here but as each item is referenced as belonging to a specific character (e.g. Brints Cloak) it would be nice if when applied to that exact character it had an additional effect (eg multiplier) – else it’s just an item so needs no personalisation… just an observation and not a critique by any means.

The Champions Phase is where your custom dice comes into play and represent Movement, Attack & Defense which will be added to your characters base stats to progress in the battle.

In early turns you’ll be wanting to traverse the arena swiftly so movement rolls are essential to make greater advances toward your opponents – which can be done othagonally and diagonally at any stage.

A great mechanic of FRAY is that bad rolls at this stage needn’t be wasted as you can save up to 2 dice for the next turn allowing for a long-game of saving dice to boost your strategy and combine them with that turns roll for some much larger effects.

So, the time has come to Attack and your opponent will roll a D6 against their Save stats to determine whether the attack was a hit or not…

If it’s a Successful Hit then the Damage Die is rolled to determine how many hit points are taken and if you land a Critical Roll this will cause a permanent loss on their Saving rolls moving forward – BRUTAL!

With a well aligned and hopefully boosted attack, Health Points are represented by a D20 which will turn and reduce down to 0. It’s a great little system which ultimately means on unboxing you’ll receive a lifetimes supply of D20s with 14 rolling on to the table!

Finally additional to your standard attack you have Unique Abilities based on your proximity to your opponent: Melee (1 square away), Short (3 squares) and Long Range (5 squares) and these are triggered based on combinations of current and stored rolls which are cashed in to call in that devastating attack.

You’ll progress through each of your Champions and then the next Player in the Initiative Order will take their turn until all players are resolved.

Any Champions still standing have the potential to earn new items if they are close enough to the Loot Chest which is positioned within the arena. So if you’re within 3 squares of the Chest you’ll receive an additional item for the next round and the chest will reposition based on a D6 and Directional Die throw.

The Loot Chest is a great touch for boosting your arsenal but can be hit or miss if you’re actually in the proximity to benefit from it; so it’s more happenstance unless you devote one of your Champions to head toward it which is unlikely to happen.

The sheer combination of characters, their abilities and items on offer is going to add great replayability for players and really opens up the Every-verse to further expansions similar to Roxley’s Dice Throne franchise.

While there may be similarities drawn against Dice Throne such as pitching characters of varying backgrounds against each other and activating unique skills based on combinations of dice rolls, these are very different systems and the movement and scale of FRAY brings a lot of energy to the table.