How do you make a battle royale board game? The question gives me flashbacks to gigantic Warhammer 40,000 Apocalypse matches, with a dozen players leaning over a room-sized board littered with tiny miniatures. Whole swathes would be eliminated at a time, scooped up into the sorry hands of their owner and dropped into a giant case or tin ready for the journey home. Two-foot tall titans would devastate small armies in a single turn, before being focus-fired by hundreds of meltaguns and felled in return.
But that still wasn’t a battle royale. It was two teams, albeit obscenely large ones. But it wasn’t 60 players, each controlling one character, and all fighting each other to the death. There are a lot of problems with this, from the increased visibility of being able to see the whole board, to the fundamentals of needing to gather 59 friends in order to play a game. And yet, the Apex Legends board game is attempting to recreate Respawn’s virtual chaos in physical form.
First off, this is a four-player game, expandable to six players (in three teams), each of whom plays as a unique Legend from the original roster. Developer Glass Cannon Unplugged has simplified Apex’s flavour of battle royale to a skirmish system, with players picking from Bangalore, Bloodhound, Gibraltar, or Wraith to go about their boardy business. If you want to play with some other Legends or more than four players, however, you’ll need to buy them.
The base game, which has just launched on Kickstarter, costs around $88, but there are numerous upgrade options available. While this is common for board games, and doubly so for those that are crowdfunded, Apex fans may well be reminded of the microtransactions that plague the battle royale. Lifeline and Pathfinder cost an additional $39, but are also packaged with new board options, game modes, and of course that ability to play with up to six players rather than the base game’s maximum of four.
Two more Squad Packs add more Legends, and will set you back $33 each. The first includes Caustic, Mirage, and Octane, and the second Crypto, Revenant, and Wattson. Loba stans fear not, she’s available as a freebie for any backers over Core level. These packs also include all the cards and whatnots that you need to use these characters in the game. But wait, there’s more! A Supply Miniatures Expansion ($28) includes miniatures for Supply Bins, Supply Drops, and Respawn Beacons; a Card Sleeves Pack ($17) includes, you guessed it, enough sleeves for all the cards in the base game and expansions; and a Painting Set (around $28), which is so blindingly obvious I’m not even going to explain it.
$88 is not a bad price for a licensed game, especially considering how good the minis look, the little dioramas that come with them, and the terrain included. However, if you want the full experience, all the add-ons and extras add up to $266. That’s three times the original price, and what are you getting? Another eight characters, sure (nine if you include Loba, but she’s free), more game modes, and then just… Stuff. If it’s crucial to the game, then why isn’t it included in the box? If it’s extraneous, is it worth the money?
Of course, this is a Kickstarter thing. The developers want to appeal to as many fans as possible in order to reach their goal. Hardcore players might want all the bits and bobs, whereas a casual might be tempted by a cheaper option. But the price jump is shocking nonetheless.
More space in the press release is dedicated to explaining the pricing structure than the game itself. It has all the usual buzzwords, it’s “accessible” but has “a depth and scale aimed at satisfying core players.” It’s meaningless jargon, but one phrase did jump out to me as interesting: “modular construction of the game rules.” What does this mean? I have no idea, but I’d like to know more. How do you construct game rules in different ways in different matches? Is it based on a deck of cards you draw from? Surely the latter would be modular(ish) gameplay, not rules. There’s no further explanation, but consider me compelled to find out more.
The three game modes in one box is also a great idea. The best board games are those that you can whip out and replay all the time, excited for another attempt, and multiple game modes will help keep this fresh. The thing is, all we know about it at the moment is the prices. The Apex Legends Board Game will come with Training, Deathmatch, and Battle Royale modes, but we don’t know how they’ll work. They cost $88 though. Or $266.