Avatar: The Last Airbender Fire Nation Rising is a cooperative card and dice game for 1-5 players who take command of Avatar Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, and Zuko as they fight back against the Fire Nation to restore balance to the world.
During the first part of the game players will recruit Heroes from the four nations and battle a variety of Villains leading up to the Day of Black Sun, all while advancing their position on the Balance Track, while the Villains advance on the matching Ruin track. When either side reaches the top of their track, the Day of Black Sun event is triggered, giving a significant advantage to the side that reached the top.
In the second phase, players continue as before, but must also now fight the Final Battles at Wulong Forest, the Fire Nation Palace, and Ba Sing Se in an attempt to end the Hundred Year War. Players that stay ahead of the Fire Nation and succeed in all three battles will win the game. If any one team is completely defeated, or if 10 or more total Heroes are defeated, the players cannot stop the Fire Nation and have lost the game.
At the start of each turn, the active player will choose one of three locations to visit. The Fire Nation will then attack, activating villain abilities in one location, and damaging Heroes in play.
After resolving the attack the active player will assemble a pool of dice based on their starting set-up and additional Hero card abilities. Players will roll and assign these dice in order to match symbols on Hero and Team abilities, Hero cards they wish to recruit, Villain cards they want to attack, and in Phase 2 Final Battles they must complete. Players match all of the symbols shown on a card to complete the related task.
The difficulty level can be adjusted based on players’ familiarity with the game and the degree of challenge desired.
—description from the publisher
1000+ Board Game Collection Tour
- Fighting back against the Fire Nation to restore balance, recruiting heroes, battling villains
- World of Avatar The Last Airbender
- Cooperative character-driven
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control — Players have different factions controlling for area control.
- Card game — A cooperative character-driven card and dice game.
- Dice game — A cooperative character-driven card and dice game.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- It's this really big puzzle that only gets more complicated as it goes so it just looks so cool
- I am all in on the gardening themed rolling right genre and and this um I mean pencil first games has got a series of games are kind of in this gardening and I would say almost like relaxing and pleasant kind of theming of their games
- The artwork is delicious looks like it's a gardener who's been sketching their Garden of whilst they've been sat in it you know and it's just it's very nice in it
- If this game weren't so purple it is so purple really you are underestimating how purple it is it's profoundly purple.
- So much of the scoring is hidden like you're having a certain amount of points out on the board but the rest of the points like half the points in the game is all in your hands right and you never know who's gonna win and that sounds really exciting to me.
- This thing is still going as in its original Incarnation the original designer ever this is still happening it's still crazy popular it has true staying power power.
References (from this video)
- The Rising games are low-key very, very good.
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Our board game collection has surpassed the 1,000 board game mark.
- It feels like it's time to do another collection tour.
- This is Tiny Epic Galaxies. It's a really fun dice rolling, resource management, engine building kind of game.
- Terraforming Mars. This is a classic.
- The feeling of terraforming Mars is just epic.
- Too Many Bones. This game has some of the coolest dice I've ever seen.
- It's a cooperative adventure game with really satisfying combat.