Robots. Everyone loves them, some have fears of the future with them, and when it comes down to it-we all love to see them fight. Big mechs wielding weapons of mass destruction and slamming into each other. Some boardgames give you a few different robots to control and fight with, but what about a game that lets you pilot a team of five robots that can combine into bigger champions? And what if your choices were many, many robots? Today we will look at a game that does just that and gives you a chance to be the ultimate team!
AEGIS is designed and illustrated by Breeze Grigas and published by Zephyr Workshop. It is designed for 2-4 players with an expansion board available to play up to 6 players.
AEGIS is a game designed to allow you to build a team of 5 robots to do combat with other teams. Each robot has a class that fills out the name of the game:
-Assault: powerful aggressive attackers using melee and guns to attack other robots.
-Evasive: these robots are swift, quick moving and can aid other robots on their team.
-Guard: powerful tanks, these robots can ram and destroy with heavy attacks.
-Intel: tricky and quick, these will allow you to use different attack styles in moving and trapping opponents.
-Support: these backline supporters have long-range attacks and allow you to bring high energy to the team.
Robots support each other, provide energy and can combine together to make even more powerful robots. They can range from level 1 to Level 5, combing each individual robots together.
Set-up
Each team starts with a Commander who will lead your team of five robots. The robots can also be joined by up to five combined robots that you can access during the skirmish. You may only have one Faction on your team and Neutral robots are ok. There can only be one Commander robot per team.
Grab your Energy Tracker and Max Energy Cap/Energy Token. There are 100 robots in the core set to pick from. You can start with the introduction teams designed and laid out to be balanced or you can You pick out the corresponding standees and put them on your board with the color of your team stands. The terrain board is set up with terrain pieces on the default spots set on the board.
Damage, drain and other reminder tokens are set to the side to be available as needed. Six-sided energy dice are set aside as well to use for attacking.
In a 2 player game, a player wins when all of their opponent’s robots are destroyed, the opponent cannot produce more than 5 total energy or perform any actions. In multi-player (up to 6 players) a team is eliminated when all of their robots are destroyed or they cannot take an action.
There are other formats you can play as well, such as Tag Team, Advanced AEGIS, Machine Chess, Point Control, Draft Mode and Combine Rondo. So there are lot of options outside of the main gameplay.
Taking A Turn
In AEGIS, your turn is separated into two distinct phases. The Rechange Phase and the Action Phase.
In the Recharge Phase, players will add all of the Energy Points available from their active robots to generate Energy Points into their Energy Pool. If you cannot generate at least 5 Energy you lose the game.
In the Action Phase, players activate their robots and use Energy Points to move or attack with them. Your turn is over when you run out of all your Energy or available actions.
Each robot activates one by one, and once per turn. Once it acts you cannot activate it until the next turn. The order of activation works like this:
1-Chose a robot
2-Move the robot
3-Take an action
4-Repeat as you can with other bots
First is Chose a bot.Each robot can be chosen once per turn.
To Move a robot, see its Movement Value to see how much around the battlefield you can move it. Robots with Jet and Flight can move with special abilities. Each hex moved is one point of Energy from your Energy Pool.
Next to take an action, each robot has one to three actions you may use that are attacks, abilities, etc. Each is performed by spending the appropriate amount of energy from the Energy Pool and rolling the dice required. Each robot may only use one action per turn. Attacks are played out by looking at the Range, paying the cost, rolling the dice for accuracy, determining the power from the action if it succeeds and resolving the action to the opponent. There are many action attributes that can change and modify the actions and attacks for the good or the bad. Keep in mind that damage can be dealt to your own robots as well so be aware of that when you use abilities!
Another important aspect of the gameplay is combining robots. This counts as one of your actions and Combing actions and abilities trigger automatically. Damage does not carry over to the new Combined bots. You must have a Combing robot that is capable of being made by the two robots. They much be within one hex of each other, you pay the Energy of the robot you are combing them into. The new robot has full health but cannot move or attack the turn it is created.
Impressions:
What could be better:
Player aids. This game could really use a quick reference for Actions, Passive abilities and Commander abilities. There is a lot to take in with the keywords and a quick sheet reference for each player would be helpful for sure especially with new players.
Standees. Honestly the art (which we will talk about more later) is solid but I would love to have some robot minis over the standees. I know it would way raise the price of a game like this and make it a much more expensive title but as well as this plays it would look so much cooler with 3-D figures on the board.
What I liked:
Art. The art director and illustrator is listed as the lead designer here. I love that you can see he poured effort and love into these designs. The robots aren’t just copies of ones already in the game with different colors. They are all unique and original and really add to the variety in this game. I really have to applaud the work done on the art here.
Skirmish. I love a good battle game and this is a pure mano y mano game where you try to take out your opponent(s) before they get to you. I really enjoy the combat aspects here where you can just go back and forth wailing on each other the whole time.
Strategy. Unlike a simple battle game there is a fair amount of strategy packed into this game in the large variety of actions and abilities. Each has a strength that is individual to the type of robot and Class that each has coming into the game.
Combining. I really enjoy this aspect of the game-taking some of your scout troops that may have take a little damage and combining them together to make a much bigger and more powerful force. Thematically I can just see these battle damaged robots creeping closer together to unite and combine into a brand-new force that is ready to go supercharged and stronger. This aspect is probably my favorite part of the game.
Overall:
AEGIS is quite a lot of game packed into the box. You get a variety of game types and styles along with the basic skirmish style. The over 100 robots each bring a unique action or two or three and combine to form even more amazing robots. This game will be a hit with anyone looking to bring some combat to their table in the form of mechs of all shapes and sizes. I really enjoyed this game and look forward to many more challenges on the Terrain board punching, shooting and dodging my way around all the other powerful challenges.