Disclaimer: the designer gave me a copy of the base game and the 3 expansions, however, the opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.
Overview:
Caladium: Honour in Blood is a 2-6 player turn based PVP combat game. In the bowels of a gladiatorial arena you fight in fast paced and chaotic combat in an attempt to be the last person or team standing.
The races are those you would find in D&D or similar world settings rather than Roman gladiators, but the feeling you get is exactly the same as other games of this genre.
Rules & Setup:
The rulebook is around 20 pages but well laid out with plenty of information and descriptions to make learning the game fast and easy.
You first choose your ‘character’ and then they can be equipped with one or more of the multitude of accessories to assist them in the arena, some of which can only be used by certain races.
This part of set up was sorted out for us when we played at a gaming convention, but I am assured that it is not a long process to do this, and once this is done the only other things to do as part of set up is to unfold the arena board and decide where and how many terrain hexes to place onto the board as these both block line of sight and movement.
There are 6 gated entrances shown on the edges of the board and it is from one of these that each character will enter the arena, and of course only one character may enter from each gate.
Once you have done this, your game is pretty much ready to begin.
Theme:
As previously mentioned, the theme is similar to the old Roman gladiatorial combat arenas except with fantasy-based character races and monsters.
This worked perfectly, and you could just imagine the characters in an ongoing D&D campaign being drawn into this as part of their adventure, in a way to generate money or gather information from someone or an organisation they are having to deal with.
The 3 expansions added monsters, the human alliance and non-human characters, giving you many more options to play these as your main character, or devise your own scenarios where perhaps you not only have to beat the other characters but the odd monster or two before being hailed as the new champion.
Gameplay:
Before doing anything when it comes to your turn, each player takes and resolves as necessary an event card, most of which are NOT going to be helpful, with some being downright nasty… one card deals 2D6 damage to you before you do anything on your turn.
Your turn consists of 2 actions, and the only thing you can’t do twice is move your full movement as shown on your character card, you can move one extra hex as your second action but that is the most, other actions include combat if in hex to hex contact with another character or you may be able to fire range weapons if the distance is ok, and you can trace a line from the centre of your base to theirs.
Damage is marked on your character card by tokens, and once you reach your Hit Point total you are removed from the game as a casualty.
Turns keep going round, with all players rolling for initiative at the start of each round, and you keep fighting until only one character is left standing, declaring them the new Arena Champion.
Artwork and Components:
The artwork is old school fantasy / D&D in my opinion and is perfect for this game, and the standees you get are colour printed and have the same picture as your character card.
There are a LOT of cards, especially if you add all those from the expansions into the mix, but for me this just expands on the possibilities you can do within the game itself. Again, these cards are done very well and look really good when placed next to your character board.
The Good:
This is a game that for me can be taught to non gamers as easily as to more seasoned ones, and both will get immense fun and enjoyment from it, and as it is fantasy based rather than say Roman Gladiators the fact you are killing off / removing characters such as Orcs, Elves, Zombies etc is a bit easier to explain to maybe younger gamers.
The components as a whole are really nice and they have all been well thought out.
The Other:
I would have liked to see the standees printed on both sides with the back showing the back of the character, just so you can easily see from behind which ones are which, and the clear plastic stands would have been better as hexes rather than circular, but these are minor gripes and certainly don’t or won’t get in the way of you having a fun time playing Caladium.
Final Thoughts:
If you’re looking for a game that has plenty of scope and replayability with the amount of different characters and equipment available, then Caladium might just be the one you need to try out.
You could even purchase a second copy to use the extra board side by side with the other one, and have characters running between the 2 arenas fighting other battles other than those they first had to deal with.
For me Caladium was a fun game, and the 2 games we played went quite quickly and we really got immersed into our characters and ensuring their survival, and picking and choosing their fights. It deserves to be picked up and stocked by game outlets and stores.
