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On his personal website Lang describes Kaosball, under the codename "Phoenix", as "a game I've been wanting to do for years", promising that it contains "[t]ons of minis, lots of 'factions', crazy special abilities and bloody confrontational game play". I asked Lang what in particular about the game was driving him, and he reeled off a list of answers that have all concretized in this game. "For many years I've been wanting to design – or even just play – a fantasy sports game that focused on the flavor and essence of the sport rather than direct simulation and micromanagement," he says. "There are plenty of games that simulate existing sports; I wanted to design a sport from scratch specifically to play well as a board game rather than an adaptation."
He continues, "I also wanted to make a sports game with a fair degree of luck and high variance, but rather than have the luck be purely external – state your action and roll dice to see whether you succeed – I wanted the action to be simple and card-driven, where you have opportunities to bluff and read your opponent. You know by looking at your hand how many strong plays you can make, and you choose when to make them. Using hand management, I believe, captures the feeling of coaches putting their playbooks to the test against one another."
Lang has worked in multiple existing fantasy worlds in previous designs – such as A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, World of Warcraft: The Boardgame, and most recently Star Wars: The Card Game – but this time the world is his own creation. "The IP (intellectual property) is something I've wanted to do for a long time, as well. Kaosball is fantasy, yes, but rather than Tolkien-esque high fantasy, it is based on the modern world, where I took a ton of different pop culture elements that we gamers love and made them into sports teams. For example, the Amazons have a roller girl feel, the Fangs have a goth clubber feel. I wanted to make a team for everyone who loves pop culture to be able to relate to, and have a play style that matches their expectations."
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Two members of the Götterdämerung Fangs
Naturally the goal is not simply to create teams that have a unique, clique-y look. You have to play with them as well, and the differences between the teams are what's at the heart of Kaosball. Says Lang, "I wanted teams that play very differently from one another, and focused the abilities on the team itself rather than individual players. The Daemons, for example, set the field on fire around them, whereas the archangel Paragons use self-sacrifice to boost each other when needed. The amount of team customization is very high, but it's more holistic; you draft and combo upgrades for your entire team (combined with your overall team ability) rather than micromanage individuals. In playtesting, I found that this left players free to focus on their power interactions, tactics on the field, and their opponents, which has a pretty unique feel. My goal was fast, smooth and visceral."
And since he was creating a sports game that focused on team play, he wanted to have the team players in the center of the action – thus, miniatures. "The game has a crazy ambitious scope, and I was not interested in dialing it back," says Lang. "I also had some pretty uncompromising goals, like having a single artist cover the entire IP, over sixty highly detailed miniatures, and I really wanted those magnetic player boards to make recordkeeping actually fun. After seeing how well Cool Mini or Not was handling high concept big box games, I thought they'd be a natural fit. And boy, did they deliver!
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From left to right, Fangs Bruiser, Daemon Bruiser, T-Bone and Amazon Runner
As for the game itself, here's a summary of what's going on:
Quote:
Kaosball is a new kind of fantasy sports game, combining rugby-style passing finesse and first person shooter domination-style scoring. The result is a tense game of skill, bluffing, luck, and lethal brutality like you've never played before!
Kaosball uses exciting card-based play mechanisms to put players in the role of a coach, managing their unique, game-altering team from scrimmage to sudden death period to outscore their opponents. Players need to balance scoring and killing their opponents, using powerful cheating effects all the while – as long as you have the money to pay off the ref. No two matches will play the same!
Kaosball includes multiple modes of play: traditional head-to-head, partnerships-based alliances, and "Maximum Kaos" three- or four-player mode; 30-60 exhibition games complete with a pregame draft for ringers and team upgrades; and league play with up to eight players and upgrades that stay in place from game to game, creating a unique sense of progression.
Kaosball uses exciting card-based play mechanisms to put players in the role of a coach, managing their unique, game-altering team from scrimmage to sudden death period to outscore their opponents. Players need to balance scoring and killing their opponents, using powerful cheating effects all the while – as long as you have the money to pay off the ref. No two matches will play the same!
Kaosball includes multiple modes of play: traditional head-to-head, partnerships-based alliances, and "Maximum Kaos" three- or four-player mode; 30-60 exhibition games complete with a pregame draft for ringers and team upgrades; and league play with up to eight players and upgrades that stay in place from game to game, creating a unique sense of progression.
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Three team logos, along with the logo for the entire Kaosball League
League play with up to eight players while the base game has only four teams in the box? No, wait, don't tell me – more teams are on the sidelines waiting to come into play. Perhaps the Gryphon Doors? Lang won't spill the beans on which other teams might exist, mentioning only that he's designed more than a dozen.
As for league play itself, he says, "The league is 4-8 players and plays quite well with four. It's a lot of what you'd expect, with some twists. You play each other team twice during the season, and the top seeded teams enter the playoffs for the Kaosball cup! I can't talk too much about the twists yet, but I applied the same design philosophy to league play that I did to the game overall. It is less focused on micromanaging your team on the player level, but rather combining cool team upgrades from your pool (which players draft at the beginning of each game and keep for the entirety of the league). Tracking your team's power level advancement during a league is quite deep and crunchy – just a bit different."
The magnetic player boards that Lang mentioned above assist players in tracking available upgrades and their team's improvement from game to game, allowing you to record your progress without having to write anything down.
He continues, "I also cut many traditional negative sports experiences from Kaosball. No permanent injuries, no permanent deaths, no running out of money, no negative feedback loop of doing badly in a game and having to carry that into the next. Instead, teams all just get progressively better and get more upgrades from game to game, so everyone gets stronger, and your focus is on competitively navigating through which types of awesome power you want to take."
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Two members of the Templeton Amazons because you knew busty amazons had to be in there somewhere, right?
With minor prompting, Lang gave more details about the gameplay in Kaosball, noting that it takes place on a 33"x22" game board. "Game play is simple. The kaosball is in the middle of the field, and up to four teams fight to control it while standing on scoring spaces to earn points. Runners can score, while Bruisers tackle and attack their enemies to control the field. On your turn you either activate a figure – sprinting to run really fast, or making a tackle or attack attempt against an enemy – or play a tactics card which generally changes something about the field."
"Turns are lightning quick as you do one thing, then your opponent does one thing, making for little downtime between turns," says Lang. "In addition, each of your figures has a 'killzone', which threatens the four adjacent squares. If an opponent enters a runner's killzone, the runner can attempt to steal the ball. Enter a bruiser's killzone, and they can tackle or attack you out of turn!"
And this is where players get into the "need to balance scoring and killing their opponents" as mentioned in the description. "When you kill an opponent's figure, you take it as a trophy and put it next to your team sheet," says Lang. "At the end of the game, the team with the most kills scores mega points – and in a multiplayer game, there are fewer points for second and third. Generally, it's hard to ignore scoring and killing (or defense against killing). You have to have a game plan for both aspects, and there is often a strategic point where you can shift. That's up to the player's judgement, though."
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Two of the eight superstar ringer figures: Macho Libre and Panda Monium
To continue with gameplay details, Lang says, "You always have seven cards in your hand, drawn from a common deck, which represent energy (bonuses to stealing, attacking, tackling or defending against an opponent talking those actions against you), tactics, and cheating cards (powerful effects that explicitly break the rules, but unless you bribe the ref using your in-game cash, you'll take a foul – the team with the most fouls at the end of a period loses lots of points). Managing your hand from play to play, and period to period is key."
"Once players have 'burned' a certain number of cards by playing them in contests or as a tactic/cheating that signals the end of the period," says Lang. "At the end of a period, there is another scoring phase for each runner standing on a scoring mound. (There is a major scoring mound for each team, way across the field, that is worth lots of points if you can make there and survive.) The game is played over four periods (with halftime!), and the highest score at the end wins."
Expect more details about Kaosball to emerge once the game is fully revealed at GAMA Trade Show, which opens March 18, 2013.
Obligatory giant badass dragon
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