I went into this expecting a Blood Rage retread with a paint job and it isn’t that, it’s closer to area control chess than the dice-and-luck brawler I braced for. Compete and win on wits alone, no randomness in the combat resolution itself, which I appreciated more with every play since a plant shift teaches you to distrust anything you can’t audit. The merging-gods mechanic, where two struggling players can combine into one deity mid-game, is the one piece that felt genuinely new to me, and it took real getting used to, the idea that suddenly you might not even control your own god anymore is a strange thing to accept the first time it happens to you.
Teachability is a mixed bag here. The rules themselves aren’t complex once you’ve sat through one full round, but there’s a lot going on simultaneously, the battles, the monster summoning, the temple building, the auctions, and I’d put the real learning curve closer to two full plays before anyone at the table sees the actual paths to victory instead of just reacting turn to turn. First scenario, first game, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t teach itself the way I wish it did. The player aids help, but I wanted a cheat sheet specifically for combat resolution order sitting at every seat, not just one shared reference card everyone has to lean across the table to read.
Miniature quality is CMON-standard excellent, which is a real selling point for some people and irrelevant to others depending what you’re after. Compared to Blood Rage and Rising Sun, the other two legs of this loose trilogy, I’d put this one in the middle, more strategy, less chrome, feels more area control than pure combat once the pieces start moving. Solid, tighter than its reputation suggests, worth the table space if you already like this designer’s other work.