okay so, MOBA on a table, that was my first reaction when someone described this to me and I nearly wrote it off before playing, because how do you get the cooldown-ability-farming loop of a video game genre onto cardboard without it either being a shell of the real thing or an unplayable mess of exceptions. Guards of Atlantis II gets it right in a way that surprised me. Every player controls one champion out of a big roster, each with a hand of exactly five multiuse cards that move you, attack, defend, or trigger a special ability depending how you play them, and the elegance of that constraint is that once you’ve played a few games you start reading your opponent’s hand just from what they haven’t done yet.
Teachability is where this one gets complicated, which is my whole thing, I always time how long it actually takes a table to get moving. The base rules explain fast, genuinely simple, but the character cards themselves are text-heavy and specific enough that new players routinely have to read a card three or four times before the interaction clicks, and I’ve watched that friction turn a first game into a slog even when everyone’s excited going in. Get an experienced MOBA player at the table and they pick it up fast. Get someone who’s never touched the genre and you’re doing a lot of hand-holding through round one.
Setup and teardown is where I have real reservations, honestly, not because the box itself is complicated to unpack but because this is not a light Tuesday-night game, the fixed player count requirement (you generally need it filled out properly to feel balanced) and the sheer number of character cards mean you’re committing to a real session the moment you pull the box down, and the box itself is large enough that hauling it to a friend’s place is its own small project. I’ve heard more than one person call the lack of a good tray solution the single most annoying thing about owning this, all those hero cards and tokens rattling around until you sleeve everything or buy playmats, which, once you do, genuinely transforms the experience, several people in my circle only really fell for this game after switching to sleeves and mats.
The gameplay itself earns the hype more often than not. Games can be genuinely brutal and deterministic in the sense that a strong opening lead compounds, but I’ve also watched real comebacks happen off a single well-timed card, and the asymmetry between heroes means every match plays differently depending who’s picked what. There’s a real failure mode some players hit, though, where the first two turns with a full hand feel great and then, once everyone’s spent their cards, it devolves into cautious repositioning while waiting for the round to reset, cat and mouse rather than combat, and if your group doesn’t keep pace snappy that stretch can drag hard.
Four stars. This is a deep, rewarding, occasionally punishing game that rewards a group willing to actually learn its two dozen-plus heroes rather than just the base rules, and it is absolutely not a game you pull out for people who don’t already want to commit an evening. If your group has any MOBA players in it, it converts them almost instantly. If it doesn’t, budget real teaching time and don’t be surprised if game one runs long.