Trials of Maya
- Iain Robertson
- 10 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Trials of Maya is, in essence, an attempt to put a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) on a board. Having played it a few times now — both teaching and learning — I think it succeeds. For clarity; what I've been playing is a prototype, produced ahead of the game's Gamefound campaign, and the designers, Zain Memon and Anand Gandhi, are still finishing the launch version. So take this as a first look, not a final verdict...
If you know MOBAs, you'll recognise the shape: asymmetric champions, towers to destroy, neutral minions on the map, spawn points worth fighting over, and an environment where positioning matters as much as what you do. Losing your champion isn't fatal — there are consequences, but the game keeps moving. There are several modes, but the one the designers point you towards, and I'd agree, is the 2 v 2 team game: you're working with a partner, hunting for synergies between your two champions, with real rewards for planning ahead together. I've also played 1 v 1, which holds up well in its own right.
The game's most distinctive idea sits on your player mat, not the arena. You keep three Action cards in a row. Each round they slide one space to the right, the oldest leaves, and you place a new card face-down in the empty slot. Everyone reveals together. A card does three jobs at once: its Energy Gain value sets initiative for the round, it's available to activate for its actions while it sits on your mat, and three turns later, when it finally slides off, that same value converts into energy you can spend. So every play is weighing short, medium and long-term benefit at once — an unusual structure, and one of the strongest ideas in the box.
What I liked most is that initiative is something you have real agency over. Play a low-value card and you're probably going first, tho' you can't guarantee it. In 2v2, you can't coordinate openly with your partner about which card you're playing face-down, but you can make a reasonable guess at whether they'll want to go first and then plan around supporting them. There is a small downside: with so much happening in the action phase, and only a quarter of it 'yours' in a 2v2 game, there's definitely some downtime.
Beyond your one Action card, there's a sixth action beyond move/attack/push/pull/defend — drawing — which matters more than it sounds, since most champions start with a hand of four and there's no hand limit. Energy also funds relics (permanent upgrades, a short-term cost for long-term gain) and spells (instant one-off effects).
I've played two champions, the glass cannon and the mobile tank, and they couldn't feel more different — one desperately fragile and reliant on hitting hard and getting out, the other struggles for high damage but is a nightmare to pin down. The prototype had four champions; the published edition is promising nine more on top of those! Each comes with a starter deck that teaches you the character better than the rulebook does, and you can build your own 24–40 card deck if you want that extra layer — tho' we've not had the prototype long enough for me to have tried that yet myself.
The arena has more thought in it than I expected: high ground gives bonus damage, so where you attack from and finish your turn matters; the board is hexagonal and you can only move in straight lines, so crossing it takes real planning. Neutral minions work pretty well — damage one and it attacks you, as you might expect; kill one tho' and you can recruit it. Every point of damage you deal before a minion dies banks into a pool of HP you control, and you decide how much comes back when you finally take it — which rewards hammering minions, but also means you shouldn't leave a minion on a sliver of health for your opponent to snap up instead.
Once you're in the action phase, there's real depth: attack splits into four types, and actions interact — push an enemy into a wall for damage, push an ally into an enemy and only the enemy is hurt. Satisfying once it clicks, but it may not click in your first play.
As a prototype, a few small things are worth a look before Department of Lore publish the final version: some iconography is hard to read (dark text on a dark red background and an inconsistent health icon), and the 2D terrain and walls occasionally led to accidental illegal moves. We'd like to see more hex overlays to make the board 'three-dimensional' so that players can see at a glance a physical difference in levels of adjacent hexes. That said, this is already an impressive package with some great looking minis and set in a coherent world that has a backstory so well developed that the game comes with an accompanying full-length novel!
I've enjoyed Trials of Maya. It's got real depth, a genuinely good stab at putting a MOBA on a board, and champions that feel properly different from one another. The one thing you need to know: it's long... Even once you know what you're doing, expect a minimum of three hours. If you enjoy strategic, collaborative but competitive play and have an evening to give it, it's worth your time. Click here to check it out for yourself.
(Review by Iain Robertson)
