It was back in 2023 that I reviewed Combat Arena: Clash of Champions. This was a good gateway-level, battle royale game from Games Workshop. This was their second installment in this series, and it pitted 4 champions to be the last one standing: a Necron Warden, a Chaos Plague Marine Champion, a Space Marine Lieutenant, or a Space Marine Terminator. While the game lacked some variety in fighters, it was well balanced, easy to learn, and fast to the table.
Today’s review covers the third installment in the series of Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast from Games Workshop. This tactical game pits powerful warriors across the 40K universe who are trying to defeat the Dreaded Ambull while scoring more victory points than their opponents. it is designed for 2-4 players and plays in about 30 minutes.
Game Overview:
Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast is very similar to the other Combat Arena versions. The game is played in rounds, and each has the following two stages:
Stage One: Prepare – the Action cards are shuffled and each player receives five per fighter. Cards are kept separate and secret from other player(s). Then each player puts as many Initiative cards per fighter forward as they have energy, to make the Initiative deck for that round. The Ambull will always have 4 Initiative cards but does not have a marker on the Energy Track.
Stage Two: Fight – the top card of the Initiative deck is drawn and the player of the depicted fighter can resolve an action. This continues until all Initiative cards are drawn with the round ending after the last fighter resolves its action.
Actions: Players can resolve an action in two ways. They can reveal an Action card from their hand and resolve one of the three actions listed (such as move, attack, or a special action). After the action is resolved the card is discarded. Players may also discard two cards from their hand (ignoring the listed actions) and use a Unique action printed on their Fighter reference card. The Ambull will draw an Action card from the bottom of the discard pile to move and another to attack.
Fighters and the Ambull will also suffer Wounds from attacks. If the Health marker reaches the bottom, the fighter or Ambull takes a damage marker and covers the top space on their health tracker. If the fighter (but not the Ambull) has placed an injury marker on the top space, they will also draw from the Critical Injury deck and resolve the card. When the bottom space of the fighter or Ambull’s Health track is covered, they are defeated and that mini is removed from the arena.
When the Ambull is defeated the game ends. Players will gain 10 victory points if their fighter was not defeated and 5 victory points for each fighter they defeated. The player with the most victory points wins.
Game Experience:
The best thing about Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast is that the variety of fighters included is big improvement over Combat Arena: Clash of Champions. There are 10 in all and almost all (even the Ambull) are pulled out of Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress, but this does not lessen the fact you have plenty to choose from and try out. This amount of fighters gives new players a great view into the 40K universe (there’s lore included for some) and provides this game with a nice amount of variety and replay value that all players should love.
Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast — like other Games Workshop games — has great production values and minis are so cool. You will need to build all the unpainted minis, but they’re all push-fit and awesome in detail once assembled. The rulebook includes assembly instructions as well as examples of what final painted minis can look like. Plus, the Ambull Lair board, cards, and rulebook are all top quality. Like the minis, these other components all have excellent design details.
Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast has easy to learn rules, which makes this game fast to the table. There is an Energy track that directly ties to the number of Initiative cards you get per round, making Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast another well-balanced game. Certain powerful Action cards will move fighters down the Energy track, which keeps players from using too many powerful Action cards and thereby limiting Initiative in the next round. It’s worth noting that the fighters are also balanced and none feel overpowered except the Ambull, which is not balanced by design. Instead, all players will need to cooperate to defeat the Ambull, even though they’re also in conflict with one another.
Now, I usually don’t have issues with game themes, but this one was a bit weak to me given its 40K lore. The premise is that all the fighters (8 are of the Imperium of Mankind) are going to an abandoned ancient alien (xenos) space station, but the Dreaded Ambull has made its lair there. I guess this was supposed to be a winner-take-all theme with all fighters involved, but then you must defeat the Ambull to see who has won. I don’t understand allies brawling each other but 2 of the 10 are xenos fighters (an Eldar and Tau). Don’t get me wrong, I will still play any tactical battle game like this, but I love the 40K universe, but this just seemed off and worth noting.
The last issue I wanted to note was the victory point conditions seemed lacking. I mean I don’t have an issue with victory points for surviving or defeating another fighter, but there’s none for defeating the Ambull. For most of the game, you’re battling it with most of your attack actions and you get no reward for that effort. That just seems off to me. Also, there’s nothing in the rules if there’s a tie. So, maybe it’s a shared victory, but if so, then was the intention to be a winner-take-all or not?
Final Thoughts:
Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast is similar to Combat Arena: Clash of Champions; the rules are easy to learn and it’s fast to the table. It also is a well-balanced game in mechanics and in the fighters. Like most Games Workshop games, it has excellent production values. What makes Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast different from the previous version is there’s now a much greater variety of fighters to choose from, which helps the replay value of this game.
What holds Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast back from a higher score is a weak theme and victory conditions that are lacking (and no rules for how to handle ties in this supposedly winner take all game).
Final Score: 3.0 Stars – An easy-to-learn tactical game with a great variety of fighters but has a weak theme with sub-par victory point conditions, but is still nevertheless fun to play.
Hits:
• Great variety of fighters
• Excellent overall production values
• Easy to learn and balanced rules
Misses:
• Weak theme
• Victory conditions lacking
