This is a fantastic little game and the quality of the cards and player mats is extremely high.
It is a very similar game to
Kung Fu FightingPlayers have a hand of 7 cards, they can lay down an attack on another play, play an item on their playmat or replenish their Poise. Poise is used to pay for playing certain cards and is reduced when you take damage from attacks. Your hand is only replenished at the start of your turn, where you can also discard cards before you bring your hand size back up to 7.
Item cards provide benefits to defence and sometines attack. Various cards in the game can be used to force people to lose items, also some items allow you to discard them to remove attacks against you.
When you are attacked you can lay down a parry card or a fancy move to rebuff the attack, sometimes even attacking back. Once all the cards have been played you resolve them any attacks that make it through do their damage. If a player is reduced to zero or negative poise there marked is place on No Poise. At this point they are vulnerable, if they get attacked again successfully they are out of the game, but any cards they play whilst on No Poise they can ignore the poise cost.
The combats are played out quite fast and this proves to be a quick little game. It plays a faster than Kung-fu and the battles are a little more even.
I think this is a very good game and slugfest seem to be producing some real gems.
