It’s time to fight your friends!

Hold up; before you go delivering an unexpected body blow to your good friend – let’s read what I mean first, right?

Well, the folks at Cold War, Inc. have released a game called Fight Your Friends. (Available Now!) Don’t worry parents, this isn’t one of those crazy, harmful, internet trends you hear about – but it could be – with any luck – a fun, trendy game to safely play! So let’s talk about Fight Your Friends.

The game comes with 60 unique characters – with the idea that these characters meet at Carnaval de la Lune, a nexus for all realities that meet and converge here to create an arena where the best group comes here in hopes of winning the tournament!

The game is broken down by stats – represented at the top of the card as Attack, Magic, and Defense. As two people flip their cards over; who ever has the card that wins by the most points, wins that round (so for example, if Player 1 has 1 attack higher, and 1 Defense higher; but player 2 only beats their Magic by 1; then Player 1 has a total of 2 points, so player one wins the round).

Aside from greatly detailed character portraits, on the “ticket” piece of the bottom; you find the character’s name, their gold value, their “special action”, and then on the right; three icons – the first (the tapestry) represents the character’s Order (Red = Society, Purple = Tribe, Blue = The Network), Class (Red = Warrior, Purple = Witch, Blue = Rogue) and Type (Red = Natural, Purple = Supernatural, Blue = Enhanced). So by looking at Tazy Crazy above, you can see she belongs to The Tribe Order, The Witch Class, and the Supernatural Type. But are all Order, Class and Type the same color? Not at all. Let’s take a look at another, shall we?

You can see Anne Bonny comes from the Society Order, Rogue Class, and Type is Natural.

So how does this work? You essentially pick your ten Friends (or crew) from the deck (no duplicates allowed!) of cards with a combined gold value of 30 or less. You play against another person – you look at your deck and see who you want to be the first contender from your deck and each of you lay down your first card, face down. Then, when you’re both ready – you flip over the card – whoever has the better over all score of stats (compared to the other) wins. So let’s take Anne vs Tazy as an example.

First we compare their Attack – Anne has a 6 with Tazy having a 4. So Anne wins by 2 points in regards to the attack. So next we look at Magic. Well, Anne has 0 here, but Tazy has 4, so Tazy wins by 4 here. Then we look at Defense, Anne has 1, while Tazy has 4, so Tazy wins by 3 here. Now, in the total scheme of things; it doesn’t matter how much over you are better than the other card. So for example, Anne has 2 points better in Attack; but this is still only 1 point for Anne. Tazy had 4 points in Magic more, and 3 points more in Defense; but these boil down to 1 point victories in each slot. So Anne won 1 slot, Tazy won 2. Tazy is the victor.

In the first round – special powers are not used (since it’s merely a stat block challenge) – so technically, using Tazy in the first round would not have been a wise choice.

Round two, Tazy gets to remain standing; as well as putting down a second card from their deck! (Now Tazy would have a friend at her side!)

Whoever put down Anne, now has to put down their second card (while Anne is considered knocked out), now has to compare against Tazy’s player’s second card – hope to win that round, and then has to face of against the Tazy card as well. And the battle continues. This goes on for four rounds. As I said, keep an eye on those special powers; because in some cases, special powers may chain react for a better result!

At the end, count up the gold from your perspective winning piles and see who has the most gold!

The game is quick and easy to learn! It’s a great price! Especially for such magnificent art, and the potential replay-ability of the game by mixing your characters up and seeing what combos may potentially work best for you!

I highly recommend the game, it’s available now right over here!

I want to thank Alex Fisher of Cold War for giving me the opportunity to play and enjoy this game!

• Tawmis