Madcala
- Board's Eye View
- 33 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Designed by Aaron Hein and Manny Trembley, Madcala is a standalone game set in Druid City's Wonderland's War universe. It's a duelling game for two players, each of whom takes on the asymmetric role and powers of one of the characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice books. It's only the theme and the continuity of Manny Trembley's distinctive artwork that connects Madcala with Wonderland's War, so you're not at any disadvantage if you've never played that (2022) game.
Madcala takes its portmanteau word title from the Mad Hatter and the traditional game mancala. It's played on a mancala board (or rather, a mancala layout on the supplied neoprene mat) with crystal shards in place of the conventional stones. Gameplay too mirrors mancala in that, on your turn you take all the shards you have in one place on the board and you place one out in each of the following places in clockwise order. Think of Madcala tho' as mancala meets Villainous (Ravensburger) with the take-that back-and-forth of Star Realms (Wise Wizard) or Magic: The Gathering (Wizards of the Coast) thrown in for good measure.
The game comes with six main characters for players to choose from: Alice, Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, Red Queen, Jabberwock and Cheshire Cat. Tweedledum & Tweedledee, and Caterpiillar are added in a small expansion. All of the characters have their own asymmetric power and special abilities so they play differently, giving Madcala a lot of replayability. Most characters start off with 25 health, and - just like in the take-that card games - your object is to reduce your opponent's health to zero before they do that to you.
Gameplay is mostly straightforward, tho' we did have a few small but irritating rules queries come up that required clarification or adopting 'house rules' over some particular card effects or refresh capabilities. Cards are used for their additional effects and you routinely trigger the effects indicated on the board wherever you finish your mancala move. Aside from adding or refreshing cards, and adding or removing shards, some spaces reduce your opponent's health. There are spaces that restore health but players will almost always lose health at a faster rate than they can regain it, so the game has a finite limit to it: most of our plays at Board's Eye View have come in at under 30 minutes.
Madcala is an enchanting duelling game that invariably leaves players eager for a rematch and a chance to explore how all the other characters powers work.
