My first miniatures game that wasn’t a huge investment of time or money to get into, and I say that as someone who’d always assumed that was the entry fee for this whole category. It’s a hex-based skirmish game, champions and their followers fighting over objectives rather than pure elimination, and the starter set is really built around a single person learning the ropes before bringing it to a full table.

Here’s the thing that surprised me most: this looks like a miniatures game and plays like an abstract. Every unit is effectively its own unique piece with its own movement and capability set, and while combat does resolve on dice, there’s dyed-in-the-wool miniatures element there, the dice outcomes become just another input into a calculation you’re already running rather than a coin flip deciding things for you. Tons of synergy across the three classes of warband, Slayers, Guardians, Maelstroms, and the point differential between similarly skilled players stays remarkably slight, which says a lot about the balance work that went in.

Two games in as a first impression, this holds up as an excellent two player experience without the rules overhead of something like Warhammer Underworlds, while still keeping real depth underneath. I’ve found it does have a bit more randomness than my family group prefers for a strategy game, though for people already comfortable with dice-based resolution that’s less of a knock and more just a fact about the genre.

The insert in the starter box is reasonable, not amazing, and I’ve seen collectors sink real money into painting these champions up to tournament quality, which tells you something about how much people end up caring about the individual pieces. For a low-commitment miniatures entry point with real strategic teeth, I don’t have many complaints.