CT FIGWith a beautiful design, and excellent cooperative gameplay, it’s no wonder Guardians of AsunDur was a runner-up for CT FIG‘s Best in Show award. While still unpublished, the game shows great promise, and is already playable and enjoyable.

In Guardians Of AsunDur players take control of six angels working together to restore Virtue in a world that’s being corrupted by Vice. All six angels are always in play, no matter the amount of players (the game handles 1-6 players). This means that angels are as evenly distributed as possible between all players. Players choose the order in which angels are activated at the start of the game, then move around the board trying to construct Light Strongholds in the spaces. If the players get to 7 points before the forces of Vice do, they win.

goe_setupOf course it’s not that simple. Dark Entities can enter the board through card draws, pushing the dark score up each time by the amount of previous Entities on the board. Also, each turn there’s a Vice stage where more corruption enters the board, and can spill over into other spaces a la Pandemic’s Outbreak mechanic. Thankfully each angel also has a special ability they can use once per turn. Actually, let me correct myself. Guardians uses an interesting mechanic where only another player in the same space as an angel can ask to use it’s special power. The player controlling that angel can’t activate their own. This really forces the players to interact, plan their moves, and work together towards victory.

Unfortunately when I played we lost, not paying attention to Dark Entities entering the board until it was too late.

I’m really looking forward to more games of Guardians of AsunDur, and I’m interested to see which publisher is going to pick it up. It was originally picked up by Game Salute under the name Feather and Flame, but the design is now back in the hands of Darrin Horbal, the game’s designer.