Fight your way through the Bloodstone as the heroes that you are either competitively or cooperatively in this arena style game by Druid City Games.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/druidcitygames/bloodstone?ref=discovery_category_newest

Pros

• Quality of pieces
• Aesthetic and Art
• Theme
• Two Game Modes
• Player Count
• Play Time

Cons

• Arena Style Game
• Play Time
• Price

The Page

This is a gorgeous page, Druid City Games has done other Kickstarter games, Wonderlands War for example, and they know how to create a great page. The artwork is so vibrant it’s hard not to get sucked into the page. Add in the amazing mini renders on that page, and this is a game that should do well on Kickstarter.

I, as almost always, wish that there was more in the terms of game play higher up on the page. But they do a solid job of explaining what game play is going to be. I’ll get back to that later.

I should talk about price. It is in the cons, but it’s less of a con than it might seem. The price for this game is very fair because there is a ton in the game. Not only that but with other games that they have done, Wonderlands War and Tidal Blades, the components are always amazing. I like that the game already feels like a deluxe Kickstarter pledge even at the base level. However, with that comes a naturally higher price point for the game and higher shipping because it’s more expensive to ship these nicer pieces.

The Game

This game is definitely an interesting one. I have a card based arena style game with Super Fantasy Brawl. Bloodstone appears to be focused more on dice. Which, I mean, I like dice and think they work pretty well as combat.

I also really like how the characters are different. An area style game, one of the most important things is that you need it to feel like you’re playing different characters. Even something like Dice Throne that is just pure dice chucking fun, the characters feel like they are different. I hope that this is more like that than like Sword & Sorcery where the dice and what you do are pretty much just straight forward and it’s obvious what to do. I want there to feel like it’s more choices with the characters.

I am curious about the negative dice. That is actually one thing that I don’t love about the game, I wish it explained more how those work. What I don’t want is for those dice to be a sort of take that, but I’m guessing it’s more likely that you’ll place effect on a character, like giving them bleed, and then they get the negative die. But I need to check that out more.

The time, however, is a bigger concern for them. It says 1 to 8 players, and 20 minutes per player. So an 8 player game would take two hours and forty minutes. That’s way to long for an arena style game, in my opinion. So while you might be able to play this with 8 people, my guess is that most people will want to play it at that 1 to 4 range and even at 4, that is fairly long.

Back or Brick

Right now I’m right at the edge for this one. I think for me, I might end up saying this is a Brick, but it really looks like a good game. This is one where I need to watch through a playthrough of it, because the page gives me some teases as how the game works, but I feel like I don’t get the whole picture. The minis are amazing looking and I’m really curious about the game play, but I also am asking myself what this game would add to my collection. I don’t think anyone who backs this one will be disappointed with it though, it looks like an extremely solid game, might just not quite be for me.

How about for you, is this game a Back or a Brick?

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