Going into the third period, the Barbarians are trailing by 3. They'll need to work fast if they want to catch up with the Ninjas. Here they go with a hard drive up center, OH! A fire trap! That's gotta hurt. The kung-fu panda takes the ball and-
Wait, what?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kaosball. Cool Mini or Not created this game, which is apparently an attempt to answer the question, "how ridiculous can soccer be?" Half war game, half board game, yet another half being fantasy sport, Kaosball isn't quite like anything I've seen before. The object of the game is simple: Get the ball, take it to your goal, and score points. Along the way, you can do things like create walls, start fires, kill the other team (which is also worth points), and blatantly break the rules of the game.
You know, the usual stuff.
Kaosball is a board game that draws heavily from the war-gaming that you usually see revolving around miniatures. You choose a faction, based on play-style and aesthetic, put miniatures down on the table, then go to town. Here, you still choose a faction, but from there, you get into the game fast: a game to win points by carrying the game ball across the field, supposedly. Of course, when you have a game that lets you just outright attack other players, things can get...confused, rather quickly.
The Ogres are one of my favorite team's aesthetic: monsterous and an homage to to older decades of sports.
This is a game that takes you by surprise: it looks simple, and a bit off the normal path for a lot of gamers. However, it's fun, and becomes more fun and in-depth the more you play. It's intense as well; with so many ways to win points, either throw ball control or outright combat, it makes you prioritize your targets and your choices like any good miniatures game should. The team at Sprites and Dice has played several handfuls of games between us all, and each time we sit down to play, one of us remarks how in-depth and detailed things can get, even though the board and the basic rules are set up in an easy and accessible way.
The Amazons definitely prefer the killing option, to be sure: the starting box comes with four groups: The Amazons, the Ogres, the Demons, and the Vampires. There's a playstyle for everyone out the gate.
Much like Malifaux, Kaosball offers a wide variety of themes and play styles, enabling just about anyone to find something that works for them. However, while Malifaux is a carefully crafted world that blends all of its clashing genres into a functional whole, Kaosball prefers to take the approach of smashing them all together and seeing what happens. The 'world' however, is narrowed to the playing field, meaning that as much explanation isn't necessary. Instead, the developers of the game were able to grab where they liked for influences to make teams. The art design of this game is what really makes it plausible: cartoonish and comical, the various groups seem like they can inhabit the same location, and that it almost makes rational sense why they would be duking it out in a sports' arena rather than in actual combat.
Adding to the absurdity are the Ringers, special units that you can hire using Cash to play to your chosen team's strengths or to round out its weaknesses. So, if you think that your warlocks could really use a two-headed giant as backup, or that your Amazons would benefit from a wall-building minotaur, you might have the chance to try just that.
There are EIGHTEEN different teams to choose from, giving this game an 'army' for everyone.
The Ringers let your bizarre line up get crazier, both in rules and in appearance. It also brings up the drafting portion of the game: the ringers are models in a pool that all players can buy from. Like in real sports, you have to take turns bidding for these special characters...as well as extra benefits, such as better run stats for your team, or more dangerous combat rolls. It adds a whole new element to the game, that helps make sure it's different every time, even if you only have the first four teams from the base box. Don't get too greedy though, because you might need some of that Cash later to bribe the referee into ignoring some of your more flagrant cheating.
While the mash up of characters is hilariously jarring, the game's asthetic blends together incredibly well, with a simple game board grounding the game again
As war-games tend to do, Kaosball runs on a system of contests. Each player has a hand that they can pick cards from. Combined with their character's stats, that card will determine their power (i.e. effectiveness) in a given contest, be it an attack, a tackle, or what have you. Here's the tricky part: once a certain number has been played, it is considered "dead" for that player until the end of the period. If I have three +4 cards in my hand, well that's just great for me, because only one of them will work. Once one player has used up 9 cards in a period, it goes once more around the table and then that period ends.
There's obviously some luck involved here, but also a fair amount of strategy. Do you push hard early on and try to take control, or would you rather wait and hope that your opponents burn out their good cards before making your big play? It's like Cool Mini or Not stepped back, looked at their insane mishmash of a soccer-themed war-game, and said, "You know what would make this better? Poker." They were right.
My favorite team has to be the Barbarians, who get better at sports when they get hurt. What's not to love?
As if that weren't enough, there are also Tactic cards that can be used to change up the game even further. Effects can range from the fairly standard, such as moving a bunch of your models at once, to the downright weird, like spawning fire traps underneath your opponents. Since that still wasn't enough, there are also special Tactic cards called Cheating cards. As you might expect, these are cards that allow you to... well... cheat. They tend to have exceptionally powerful abilities, but they force you to roll and see if the referees catch you using your dirty tricks.
Performance-enhancing drugs? In Kaosball? For shame...
At the end of a period, you can use any remaining Cash to bribe the referees to ignore your little indiscretions. Then, any remaining penalties are rolled for, and you risk increasing your Foul count. A high Foul count can lead to severe penalties to your score at halftime and the end of the game.
So there you have it, in a rather ludicrous nutshell. Kaosball is a war-game for sports fans; or is it a fantasy sport for minis fans? Whatever it is, it's a great time.
Oh, and because it wasn't insane enough yet, they made it so up to four teams can play at once.
On the subject of fantasy sports: If you'd like to draft some fantasy football, you may do so far, FAR away from my Twitter @Eric_P_Henn. As always, Sprites and Dice's Patreon is looking for any help it can get. After that last period, it could really use the Cash to pay off some referees...
