There a lot of games vying for your attention here at the end of the year, new games on the shelf and projects all over crowdfunding. But let me tell you about a project that you can’t miss and why you should take a trip for two into the Lairs!
Lairs is a new two player game coming from Kids Table Board Games designed by Christopher Westmaas with art by Josh Nelson, Claire Lin and Jean Walter. It plays two players in 35 mins.
Overview:
Lairs is a dungeon dive for two players where you win by having more victory points than your rival at the end. Each of you plops down into a dark lair designed by your rival and you need to explore it and escape. You can gain victory points by finding treasures, defeating monsters and exiting your lair before your opponent leaves theirs.
Gameplay:
In Lairs players will explore different aspects of the game, starting with an intro game where you learn the basics and then adding more and more each time you play. One of my favorite parts of this are the boxes and envelopes you open adding new parts to the game and new rules you have to navigate.
Players each get a Lair board and player mat along with a screen and map sheet. Each player hides their maps behind their screen and gathers all the parts of their lair: walls, trap tiles, blobs, chests, start and exit tiles and an explorer that represents your opponent.
You place a player mat to the outside of your screen so your opponent can see it and create a stack of treasures in a row of three. Add the Blob card and trap card where players can see it as well in the play area.
To begin players construct their lair on the board behind their screen and follow the rules of placement for walls and features. Features are either hazards or goals that your opponent will run into. Everything you build with must be used and must be reachable on the board.
The gameplay works where one player explores and draws out the map of their discoveries as they blindly traverse the map while the other one tells you what you see and run into on the map. Spending cubes will allow you to perform actions a you move around and creep, peer, backtrack, hustle and check for hazards.
As you explore your goals are to avoid traps, fight monsters and gain chests to add treasures to your collection. the game ends when one player exits and the other player gets one more turn. Add up your points in treasure, defeated monsters and exiting and see who wins! There are more scoring aspects that will be added as you play the game more and ways to explore the game!
Impressions:
Lairs is a ton of fun and while I don’t want to spoil any of the details I can tell you that the envelopes and additions are a great way to add replay value to this game. The preview we did had a few tuckboxes and envelopes and even that added new concepts and elements to the game that felt fresh. I can’t wait to see what all is added in the future as we explore it!
It’s important to note that while there are extras for the game this isn’t a “legacy” game, it does add secret boxes and envelopes but you can reset from stage to stage and remove the parts to give you a new experience each time.
There is an expansion you can grab on the campaign as well that adds Deeper Dungeons with even more bosses, monsters, characters and dungeons. I love that you can go as deep into the game as you would like, there’s a lot of fun packed into that box!
The Kickstarter campaign has ended but you can still get this game as a late pledge preorder! Follow the link below and secure your copy today so you and a rival can be some of the first to explore the dungeons!
https://lairs.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
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