The Guardians: Explore Review

The Guardians: Explore has one of the most unique themes I’ve come across in a while. It is about a group of kids on spring break who are fighting monsters that threaten their town of Arthursburg. Equipped with blanket forts and imagination, you play the role of one of these children to combat the forces of evil and become a hero. What a cool premise! It immediately takes you back to being a child and going on wonderful pretend adventures. Unfortunately, my excitement for the game ends there. This deck-refinement (no, not deckbuilding) game had some great potential that was ultimately snuffed out by its confusing rulebook and subpar gameplay.

There are two ways to play the game: Apprentice and Guardian. The Apprentice version serves as an introduction to the game, omitting the drafting phase in favor of preconstructed decks for each character. It also plays in only four rounds instead of the full eight. In the Guardian version, you draft cards that will go into your starting deck. This is part of the meat of the game that the box touts, but it’s confused by the suggestions listed on the back of the player mat. So, am I supposed to choose what combos I think are cool or just go with what is suggested? If I go with what’s suggested, why bother drafting at all?

As for the actual gameplay, during your turn, you visit one of the location tiles without monsters on it and use its ability. These location abilities let you get new cards, trash ones from the deck (this is the “refinement” aspect of the game), draw/discard cards, gain more attack, and so on. This would be an interesting decision if you weren’t limited by the presence of monsters. Consequently, you just end up going where is available, often resulting in a “I guess I’ll go here… I don’t really care…” kind of decision, like when the neighbor kid invited you over and you accepted since you didn’t have any better offers. Moreover, there are occasions when no one is strong enough to defeat the monsters, so they end up just sitting on the location for a good chunk of the game.

If you practice swinging enough, eventually you’ll learn to bash and pulverize like a pro.

After choosing a location with monsters present, you add up how much energy (to power up items) and attack you have and defeat the monsters at your location if you have equal or more attack than the monsters’ combined health. Then you defeat them and earn the card as a trophy for endgame points and sometimes in-game bonuses. You can then place your blanket fort at that location, making it safe from monsters spawning there so you and others can use its ability next round.

Just hanging out in the garage, battling robot vacuums.

In the fourth and eighth rounds, players can opt to not fight monsters in the city and instead battle the boss. Players can choose to work together, combining their attack to defeat the monster. Although the rules say you have a choice in cooperating or not, you are penalized for declining to join in the battle. And even if you did join the battle, you are rewarded in order of who contributed the most attack. It’s a very bizarre incentive system that I’m not really sure what it is trying to push you to do. Attack? Cooperate? Work on your own? It’s all very confusing and ends a bit anticlimactically. After defeating the first boss, you get an additional “Super” card. After defeating the second boss, you get an additional quest for endgame scoring.

Yes, the plaid tablecloth does make it easier to line the boards up.

Like many other Kickstarter projects, this game was clearly made by someone who loves games (and, I assume, deckbuilders) and I certainly applaud them for coming up with a really novel and fun setting. There were some good ideas here and I really wanted to like it. However, the lack of sophistication in this game completely removes any enjoyment there might have been within it. Unlike most deckbuilding games where you get satisfaction from seeing your deck get stronger and having more abilities, this is lacking in The Guardians. I assume the intention was to start out fairly strong and then refine your deck with the specific cards you want, however this never really comes together. Adding to your deck feels more like your blanket fort just came crashing down instead of reinforced with those perfectly-sized decorative couch pillows Mom would rather you not use.

Lastly, I feel it’s necessary to mention the production quality. The boards and cards are decent enough. The art is easily the best part of the game and really conjures that sense of whimsy that the theme is going for. However, many of the graphic design choices look rather amateurish. This includes the rulebook, card, and playmat layouts/designs. The font on the cards is small, making it hard to read. The graphic design can also make it difficult to differentiate card types from one another. Still, the biggest offender is the rulebook. It’s riddled with errors and lacks explanations for basic concepts while over-explaining others. The game is fairly straightforward once you get into it, but that’s very hard to see from the start. There is an updated rulebook available on the official website, but that only has corrections for card counts, not overall clarity.

I think newer gamers might be okay with a game like this and perhaps not be as critical of its flubs. It’s fairly light and doesn’t outstay its welcome. The theme/story is entertaining and there is not anything outright broken in the design. However, as an avid deckbuilding fan, it’s not going to compete with the much more seasoned designs already on the shelf.