Base price: $37.
2 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A review copy of Leaders was provided by Hachette Boardgames and Studio H.
Okay, that’s another OrcaCon in the books and now I’m just getting to checking out what all I played this weekend and what’s going to be hitting the review cycle shortly. A lot of it was Greek Mythology-themed, which is kind of fun and a happy consequence of Bitewing and WizKids both releasing Greek myth games recently, so look forward to those. Also a bunch of kids’ games (Splendor Kids and The Sandcastles of Burgundy), so a pretty diverse set of games. This next one I’m going to talk about is pretty interesting though: Leaders, from Studio H!
In Leaders, players take on the roles of competing forces vying for the throne of the land. Instead of blood and armies and whatever this world’s equivalent of Sherman’s March to the Sea was, a challenge for the throne is a Leader and four Champions versus their opponent’s Leader and four Champions. Capture the Leader or surround them completely and you win. Will you be able to take the throne?
Contents
Setup
Pretty much none. Set out the board:
Shuffle up the cards:
You can place the characters corresponding to your cards nearby:
Give each player a Leader:
You should be ready to start!
Gameplay
Leaders is an abstract strategy game of tactics and execution! You win one of two ways:
- Surround your opponent’s leader completely: All adjacent spaces to their leader are occupied by your or your opponent’s forces.
- Capture their leader. You can capture them with two adjacent units of your type.
On your turn, you can move any of your units to an adjacent space or activate their special ability, if they have one. Once you do, if you have fewer than four units, draw a new one from the three face-up unit options and place their standee in any open space on the side of the board nearest you. Then, it’s your opponent’s turn.
Play until someone wins!
For an additional challenge, play with every card face-up. After the first turn, you may Banish any one of them from the game. You can do so again after the third turn. It’s trickier!
Player Count Differences
None! This game is for two players only.
Strategy
- Watch out for units that can capture from multiple spaces away. This is the big one, in my opinion; there are a few that can surprise you (like the Archer) and can essentially cost you the game.
- Similarly, watch out for units with big movement abilities. Some let you move much farther than normal, for instance, or they let you move other characters out of the way or let you jump to a character or swap with another character. The larger context here is really just that you should pay close attention to all character abilities, lest they clown you, but, you know, that’s the game and all.
- Protecting your Leader is a nice idea, but surrounding them will lose you the game. There’s a solid temptation to pull your Leader behind all of your characters so that nobody can get close to them, but if every space surrounding your Leader is occupied, you lose. Incidentally, that also means watch out for keeping your Leader in corners since there are fewer adjacent spaces to them.
- Playing keep-away with your Leader is usually unsustainable. The board isn’t that big and there are a lot of units. Some defense is critical to not losing, but you can’t run a prevent defense and try to get anywhere useful with it. Play to win; don’t just play to not lose.
- Think about synergies while you’re pulling units. Some units work pretty well with other units! They provide additional coverage or they let you try certain attack combinations (or they let you push your opponent’s Leader into the grasp of the Assassin which is how I just won the game I was playing, so that was cool).
- There are plenty of defensive options! Like I said, avoid a prevent defense, but there are units that will block your opponent swapping with you or moving you, or, honestly, that unit that can push units is also a great way to get people away from your Leader. There’s a lot of flexibility, so figure out how you want to play!
- If you’re playing the advanced difficulty, knowing what your opponent usually goes for, unit-wise, isn’t a bad idea. Hate-…not drafting? It’s always an interesting strategy. So, for me, if you’re Banishing a card, you should Banish the claw guy. I love him and always grab him and the Archer and the Assassin. Not always all at once, but getting rid of those forces me to rethink my approach.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The actual standee implementation is pretty elegant. They’re all white on one side and black on the other, making this game very specifically Your Last Battlefield. If you don’t get or appreciate that joke, it’s fine, because the joke sucks. But more specifically, you and your opponent always see the same color standees because the other color is always facing your opponent. I like it; it’s simple and well done.
- I like that everything can be stored in the drawer inside the box; it’s great box design. You don’t always see a lot of board game boxes with drawers inside of them, and it works super well. Every standee can be laid mostly flat and then grabbed for new games. Perfect box design.
- The card art is pretty fantastic. I love the style they chose! It’s great and colorful from the cover to the board to the components. Big fan.
- The cards themselves are also really nice? They’re embossed. You can actually feel the texture on the cards itself. Very classy.
- Seems pretty straightforward to expand, as well. I’m genuinely interested in seeing more units. I’d like to see more!
- Very quick to play and reset, which is always great in my book. I love a game where you can lose, shuffle, reset, and go again, and I’ve played a lot of games like that. Obviously, my all-time favorite is Santorini, but I do like Leaders a lot.
Mehs
- There’s some level of three-move checkmate-style moves that can be frustrating for some players if they don’t recognize them. It’s a whole thing with games like this, but players who aren’t as familiar with some of the abilities run a real chance at getting surprised. Just be nice to new players!
Cons
- A surprising amount of rulebook inconsistencies and typos. At least one of the abilities is just a copy / paste error of another character’s ability and Hermit and Cub are consistently referred to by the wrong name. Feels like an earlier draft of the rulebook got sent to print, which, whoops. That said, this doesn’t really impact the gameplay at all; it’s just annoying.
Overall: 8.5 / 10
There are a few good games coming out along these lines, but I think Leaders hits a sweet spot pretty excellently. I love a quick and tactical two-player abstract game, and the various combinations of abilities that you can pull on your side or have to deal with from your opponent are all very fun and interesting. Add in some great art and you’ve got yourself a game. I think I worried that this was going to be more like War Chest, which I’ve soured on a bit over the years, but it really comes down to that tactical game vs. strategy game distinction, and Leaders falls into a spot I vastly prefer. I think that part of it comes down to just not punishing mistakes too harshly. If you goof something in Leaders, well, you’ll likely lose. Then you can just say “again”, clear the board, and try to make up for a bad move. It’s what I love about Santorini. I love that even as more and more games come out, new variants on classic tactics games can still pop up and still hit in a satisfying way. Yes, obviously, players are going to develop preferences based on what characters they like and how they play, but I don’t think any particular character is going to be completely useless. Though I would love to see BGA statistics on winning player configurations to see if there’s some sort of tier list. More out of curiousity than strategy. The game also looks good; there’s so much love that clearly went into the art and the graphic design and it ends up being a very striking product, up to and including the actual product design elements. The box having a drawer for the pieces is elegant, and the cards being embossed with insets and such is super classy. I wonder what a deluxe version of this would look like. If you enjoy a quick tactics game, you like abstract strategy with some nice art, or you just want to zip around the board as a little nightmare with a big claw, I’d definitely recommend checking out Leaders! I’ve really enjoyed it.
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