Shadows Over Innistrad: Arena Of The Planeswalkers Review

We take a look at the second expansion for Hasbro's Arena of The Planeswalkers series.

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[jchangesqlawcenter]

Fantastically produced video with clear and detailed review, well segmented between unbiased information and specific opinions. Thanks!

[jonanjello]

Your videos have fantastic engagement, clarity, pace and quality.
I appreciate your thoughts down to details like the minute turn marker and showing the game's miniatures among your custom HS terrain.
Totally Subscribed and looking forward to more your game reviews.

[jamesivan]

What a great review! The intro is stellar and I like your down to business path.

[trla]

I bought this year's ago on a garage sale, very interesting

[bilbobloodaxe]

I recently bought into Arena of the Planeswalkers because I'd heard it was the very same as Heroscape in all but name. Very happy with it so far.
More recently I found my original Heroscape core box set (Rise of the Valkyrie) in its entirety, which I had thought lost years ago. My son and I are going to have some massive battles in the next few days!

[isaacgaming]

Incredible review as always! It really is a shame that they don't give us more terrain. I really don't want this game to die out and they have to begin to recognize that sadly that could happen with the lack of terrain you are so right! Recently I've purchased heroscape terrain on eBay and you could not have been more spot on: This game is fantastic and really does have the potential to be a truly awesome game when you add in a whole bunch of terrain! I really do love the new units in SOI, standouts for me being the necro and ghoul! But I digress, another fantastic review thank you guys so much for the upload! With this kind of content your channel is going to blow up in no time! I'll be sure to share the review on forum pages and such to get the word out! Keep it up!

[nickvandam]

I managed to pick up all of the MGT Arena of the Planeswalker sets for cheap a couple of years ago. While I don't think it is better than classic heroscape it is a nice expansion to it, but you're right it falls flat without more terrain. A lot of the decision making that makes it interesting and exciting comes from choices involving positioning with terrain. Thanks for your videos.

[CarlosMendez-meob]

Also they could create STORE terrains. Meaning that if you step on a STORE terrain, that character can buy items for healing, atk and def bonuses and also weapons. Make a rule so the characters have an amount of money to buy items. Characters can carry 5 up to 10 items and maybe 2 weapons. There could be 2 Store terrain, one being the item store and the other being the weapon store. For example Potion being an item and it's effect could be "When use remove 2 damage counters from 1 character unit". A weapon example could be a sword giving a +1atk dice while attacking. Also when you defeat an opponent's character, your character can receive the remaining money from the defeated troop. It's just an idea I have and also can be fun using items, weapons and spending money to have more strategies for the game.

[BradSpiceFX]

for a new channel your one of the best table top channels ive found! keep up the good work! :D

[CarlosMendez-meob]

What they should do could be terrain bonuses. For example, water can increase 1+atk and def for blue characters. They should add more hex tiles so we can create our own scenarios as we did on heroscape. This game is pretty good but terrain is what makes us create field strategies using our troops.

[OlafVonBarto]

I was thinking the exact same thing you said in your final thoughts. Getting the extra terrain seen like a good idea, also this game looks fairly simple and short enough to not scare my gaming mates away when I talk about miniature games. I like to play Infinity but you should see the look on their faces whe we go through the basic rules.
At this point I don't see Hasbro giving another expansion but I think this is "enough" if combined with the extra terrain.
Keep up the good work, my friend. You're videos are great.

[pricecamper]

Hasbro:" what you want heroscape to be made again? You want to buy terrain separately for arena? Here! Have a disney theme monopoly! Or maybe a spongebob theme? :)"

[TheSnowCoveredPlainswalker]

I play ALOT of Arena/Heroscape, using Arena as the base and assigning colors to the older Heroscape units based on their existing lore and how it would fit into Magic if it were a part of it, I honestly adore it and hope to God they keep making content :)

[paulcoy]

I consider myself very lucky. Used to work at a toy store, and bought the two big sets, the castle, and tons of packs of Heroscape for half price. Gonna keep them forever. Hard to find cheap pieces nowadays. Oh, I also got the Marvel Heroes set. That's awesome.

[Barl]

They seem overly cautious in the way they release this game and it brings a lot of issues, the main one being the lack of terrain as you get into. But also the lack of common squads, that you can have more than one copy of in your army.

I think this could be solved within the model they seem have now: 1 big core set box and 1 small expansion box. Now they may change this up and start releasing Booster packs with a single squad of three figures and maybe a terrain tile and that would great. But what I would like to see instead is that they use the small expansion box releases for common squads and terrain, no planeswalkers, unique squads/heroes and preferably no spells. That way we can buy multiple copies of those and get some more terrain in the process.

I like the big terrain boards as they can get you into the game quite fast compared to having to build the entire battlefield from the ground up. But it is plain to see even a few more terrain tiles can make this game shine. I have only played with the core set stuff so far and each game all the interesting stuff always happens around those two sad little hills, that are the limit of what you can do with just the core set tiles. I am not even asking for a tub full of tiles like the Heroscape core set, even a doubleing of what is in a core set now would take the game to another level. If I hadn't vowed to curb my boardgame spending this year I would track down at least a handfull of more tiles.

[biggdave]

Found this and the first game at a 5 Below! Well worth it.

[CristianGonzalez-kmlm]

I recently got planeswalker arena and was planning on getting this version since me and my brothers have been having fun with the original version. The video has made me decide I want this and I am gonna subscribe

[manjr]

Looking forward to the painting video!

[Georgesbarsukov]

I think the issue with adding terrain is that the characters lack mobility in this game so adding terrain would break the flying/land balance. In heroscape there were many mobility abilities to counteract that.

[timothysmith]

I need a better explanation on Sorin's ability "BLADE MASTER" are you saying that on Sorin's attack turn i can attack each figure on an adjacent hex from Sorin. "Example I am Sorin i am activating my ability "BLADE MASTER" so if i have 4 figures in adjacent hexs from me i can attack all for on the same attack turn?