Here to Slay is a card game in which each player tries to put together a powerful group of adventurers. A player wins by either collecting at least one adventurer of every class, of which there are 7, or by defeating 3 monsters over the course of the game. The adventurer cards are each unique animal-themed characters with absolutely adorable designs that greatly contribute to the game’s enjoyability.
More importantly (gameplay-wise), each character grants a player a unique ability when in that player’s party. Abilities have a wide range of effects, such as killing another adventurer, collecting additional cards, or making a player temporarily immune to attacks. However, these abilities are not guaranteed to work. Players must succeed a dice roll in order to successfully use an ability. The more powerful the ability, the lower the chance of rolling successfully.
The game further complicates things by allowing players to collect and use items. Some of these items—most notably, potions—allow players to manipulate dice rolls to their advantage. Potions specifically can even be used to manipulate an opponent’s dice roll to screw them over at an opportune moment. Basically, potions add strategy and resource-management to what is otherwise a luck-based mechanic. Additionally, any player can toss down potion cards at any time to influence a roll in their favor. This often results in funny situations reminiscent of Uno, where multiple players will place potions down back-and-forth to counteract each other’s potions, burning an obscene amount of the valuable items on one typically-undeserving action.
Furthermore, players only have a limited pool of actions they can take in a turn, making every attempted action a dangerous gamble. Because of how drastically the game’s state can change in a round, every turn is valuable, and a failed action is potentially detrimental.
By having players’ available actions change throughout the game based on their characters, and by allowing multiple moves per turn, Here to Slay gives players a lot of options each turn and keeps the gameplay always fresh and unpredictable. Nonetheless, by having players’ game progress (monsters killed & adventurers accumulated) openly visible, the game achieves a rare balance wherein players can’t predict what their opponents will do, but can still get a good sense of what to prepare for or who to prioritize working against.
Here to Slay’s system of limited moves and dice-based actions make the gameplay feel a lot like combat in Dungeons and Dragons, but without all the extra roleplaying and worldbuilding and character sheets and hours of preparation and unwieldy rulebooks and incompatible schedules. Make no mistake: Here to Slay is by no means a replacement for D&D, but it does an excellent job of distilling one small part of it into a fun standalone experience. Also, the art is more cute.
While I love Here to Slay, it is not without problems. Its many luck-based mechanics (drawing adventurers, drawing items, rolling dice) make luck more important than skill. It is frustrating for the game to expect players to think ahead, strategize, and plan out complex moves, only to throw all of that away because the dice weren’t feeling cooperative. Additionally, because a player’s options scale with their number of items & adventurers (i.e.: their prior success), a small streak of good or bad luck can rapidly spiral into making the game horribly unbalanced. In the games that I played, some players failed to make any headway at the same time that some players were a turn away from winning, all due to unlucky/lucky rolls. Losing in this way also just feels bad, as you literally lack the potential to make big moves until you get lucky, while other players easily gain ground with what they already have.
Despite its problems of luck and imbalanced feedback loops, I really enjoyed Here to Slay, and I look forward to playing it again.
(also i mean just look at these guys how can i stay mad at em)
