Godtear

Godtear’s actual system is smarter than the shelf space it’s going to demand from you suggests. Every champion card is two-sided, one face active during the plot phase where you position and buff, the other active during the clash phase where the actual fighting happens, so a single figure genuinely plays differently depending on which half of the round you’re in. That’s a neat trick and it keeps a one-on-one match moving in well under an hour once you know what you’re doing.

The dice are where my patience frayed. I ran a Lorsann against a Raith’Marid across several matches and watched a champion built to roll six dice against a four defense whiff entirely more than once, while the opposing figure’s mobility-and-boon kit cashed in reliably every time. The boon and blight system is supposed to smooth that swinginess out and mostly does, but “mostly” is doing a lot of work in a game this tactically tight, where one bad roll can undo three turns of careful positioning.

Here’s the part that actually determines whether I’d recommend this. A starter set gets you a single one-on-one matchup. The stated “full game” is three warbands per side, six armies total, and pricing that out lands close to two hundred dollars and four separate boxes on a shelf, for a game that also ships with zero terrain and no cover rules to speak of, which feels like an odd corner to cut given how much everything else is asking of your wallet. Compare that to something like Summoner Wars, which hands you six full armies in one starter box for a quarter of the price, and Godtear starts looking less like a game and more like a subscription.

The minis are gorgeous and paint beautifully if that’s part of your hobby, and the core system rewards real mastery once you’re invested. But I can’t in good conscience push this past a middle rating when the actual “complete” version of the game costs what it costs. Three stars for a great skirmish engine wearing an expansion-dependency price tag that never lets up.