For Glory Review

A two player fight to the death, with deck building. For Glory from Spielcraft Games puts players in charge of their lanistas and must train their gladiators by purchasing new fighters, tactics, or by gaining the favor of influential patrons. Each player starts with a basic deck and on their turn, they can choose to purchase new cards with their income or they can play cards to their villa which is permanent bonuses, to one of the arenas, or they can reserve cards for later. When you've done everything you can, discard your hand, refill the markets and draw back up. Each gladiator has a set amount of bloodlust and whenever the arenas have passed a specific amount, the combat phase triggers. If it doesn't then the next player will go. In combat, players can optionally add more gladiators to an arena at a premium cost. This can help turn the tables of combat, however. Then they'll take turns attacking, resolving arenas one at a time. You can either attack directly or play a tactic card. This is where the reserve comes into play. You can buy your reserve for 1 coin each and this can allow you to play reactive cards in combat. Once all of the arenas have been resolved, players can gain special bonuses if they've won and then they'll clean up and add new arenas. The first player to amass 6 glory will be the winner and own the gladiator school.

The Good: For Glory comes exactly as advertised. It's deck building concepts work flawlessly and the combat resolves quickly with a ton of strategies in play. I love the overall balance of combat. You can go all in on one arena or try and spread out your fighters to try and gain more glory but even if you only win one arena you can still potentially end up with the same amount of glory. It's beneficial to try and take as many as you can, naturally. The reservation system is phenomenal. It gives you the option to save your butt in a pinch. Three different markets means there's plenty of choices throughout your turns.

The Okay: There were aspects of the rulebook that I found to be a little bit confusing. Certain parts had layouts that I didn't love and needed to reread a few times before I figured out what was going on for the most part. Especially around combat but once it was sorted out, it was a breeze, it just took some time to learn.

The Not So Good: I do wish that the expansion content could have been in the base game, meaning the solo and 4 player game modes but I understand why it was made the way that it was and don't get me wrong, it's great, I just wish I could play it solo or introduce it to more people at a time. Also, if shelf space is a potential concern, the box could have probably been shrunk down for the base game.

Final Thoughts: Overall, I love For Glory. I think that parts evident. Deck builders aren't a game that I generally default to unless there's another mechanic with it that I enjoy like worker placement. For Glory changes that for me. Sure, there's combat phase but it's so quick and snappy that it doesn't take anything away from the actual deck building side of it. The card play is so great and it's opened my eyes to other games like it. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a joy For Glory is to play. It's over 4,000 rank on BGG feels like it should be many thousand places higher.

Thanks to Spielcraft Games for providing a review copy.