/pic6936350.jpg)
In the far future a new sport has swept the world: giant mech battles! Mile-high giants fight across entire city blocks. Rabid fans wear their favorite team's colors and gather in virtua-bars to watch the battles. It's the perfect time for a savvy gambler to get filthy rich...even if you have to cheat just a little bit.
In Atlantic Robot League, players place bets on the outcome of a massive mech battle the size of a dozen city blocks. After bets are placed, they get the chance to influence the battle by sliding the mechs across the arena, knocking out rivals, and buying scheme cards from the insider to bend the rules. Particularly devious gamblers might even pay the fixer to change their bets during the battle.
Occasionally your opponents will be helping a shared bet; occasionally they'll be knocking out mechs you need to survive. Since all bets are hidden, you won't know until the end and might even be able to bluff an opponent into accidentally doing exactly what you want.
Five mech teams face off, each with three robots, and in each of three rounds, you bet on which team will have the most surviving mechs, which will KO the most mechs, which team will be eliminated first, and which five robots will be standing at round's end. The fewer the players who bet correctly, the bigger the payout for those who do. After three rounds, whoever has bet best wins.
Atlantic Robot League - Learn While Playing!
- vibrant color scheme typical of WizKids games
- mechanics/theme around betting on mech battles
- mech battles and betting
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
References (from this video)
- Real-time betting adds tension and quick decision-making.
- Insider and Fixer add strategic depth and rule-modification options.
- Scheme cards can drastically alter the game state and can end rounds early.
- Multiple rounds and pentafecta scoring create multiple ways to score.
- Robot arena battles with betting and strategic manipulation
- Set in the future where one of the most popular sports is watching and betting on gigantic robot battles
- Tutorial explanation of rules during play
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Bets on teams and pentafecta — Team bets predict which team will survive most, be eliminated first, or destroy most robots; pentafecta bets select five robots.
- Destruction on adjacency — If the moved robot ends adjacent to a rival robot, it destroys that rival if a legal target exists.
- Elimination and end-of-round — A round ends when five robots remain; a team is eliminated when all its robots are removed.
- End-of-round scoring and tiebreakers — Scores are calculated based on bets and pentafecta results; ties broken by money.
- Fixer action — Fixer lets players modify bets (pentafecta) mid-round, at cost of money.
- Insider and scheme cards — Spending money grants access to insider scheme cards that alter standard actions.
- Money tokens and coins — Money tokens on robots allow players to gain money when destroying those robots.
- Movement (orthogonal, one space) — On your turn you move one robot one space orthogonally into an empty location.
- Multi-Use Cards — Spending money grants access to insider scheme cards that alter standard actions.
- Player Elimination — A round ends when five robots remain; a team is eliminated when all its robots are removed.
- Round setup and real-time betting around three rounds — Three rounds per game; each round consists of betting, action, scoring phases; board resets between rounds.
- Scheme cards variety — Different scheme cards provide special abilities like Juice the Thrusters, Hit and Run, Unleash the Molten Vortex, Collude with the Enemy.
- Simultaneous betting phase — All players place bets at the same time during a real-time betting phase with a 90-second timer.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- set in the future where one of the most popular sports is watching and betting on gigantic robot battles
- it's also a real time phase because you set a timer for 90 seconds
- we're all going to simultaneously figure out what is going to be happening
- on your turn you simply move one robot into an empty spot orthogonal to where it was
- if that moved robot is now adjacent to one of its rival robots it will destroy that robot