Here to Slay

Today Kage, Hector, Eddie and I broke out our kickstarter edition of Here to Slay, by the same people who made Unstable Unicorns. Firstly, obviously the art is great. The placemats are super cute, and I love that each creature had its own class (squirrels were bards, unicorns were guardians and so on). The components were well designed and put together.

There are two ways to win the game, either killing three monsters first, or get one of each of the 6 different classes (wizard, bard, rogue, druid, guardian, fighter). The first game we played went super quickly and the dice were not with me, and I kept accidentally killing my heroes (one of the “if you roll x destroy one of your heroes” stipulations on a monster card, where you didn’t defeat it). The second time, I managed to get six heroes out, but it was killing three monsters that won me the game.

I believe the game would be a bit different and scale probably better with more people (much like all take that games, and most other Unstable Games). I quite enjoyed it and found it a fun game that would still be considered filler level, but it is heavier than other Unstable Games. I definitely recommend.

Kage’s Notes: Here to Slay is a step up from unstable unicorns in terms of complexity, but only one step. It’s also possibly even more swingy as far as luck goes. It’s very possible to win the game in 2-3 turns, as happened in our first playthrough. It seems Unstable games are fairly successfully locking down the mass market on cute yet violent family weight games and to be honest, they’re doing a pretty decent job of it. The game is easy to teach, fast to play, has great components overall and is quite affordable.

With all that being said, their games are all very similar and there is often very little point to owning more than one or two, and so while one of their games is likely to make it into the home of many gamers, I don’t suspect people will look to them as a brand to purchase from repeatedly. I should also note that while the placemat/mousepad game mats are excellent, they are a kickstarter add on and do not come with the base game. If you want them you need to order them separately from their website.

Overall a fine choice for a light, fun filler based game, or just for something to play with the kids, assuming you don’t already own an Unstable game or two, in which case, I’d probably pass.

The Teal Deer

Designer: Ramy Badie
Price: $25
Players: 2-6
2 player Scaling: Ok, but it suffers from the usual 2 player problems with “take that” type games.
Playtime: 10-20 minutes
Estimated Lifespan: 5+ games
Estimated Average Play Frequency: Quarterly
Complexity: 1.5
Components: 5
Bang for Buck: 5
Value for Time: 5
Fun Factor: 3.5
Overall: 4