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Do you like your head to head battles? Do you like summoning weird and wonderful creatures to whittle down your opponent's health? Well, if you do you will probably like Sanctuary: The Keepers Era. In the same vein as Summoner Wars, Radlands or even Magic, Sanctuary is a battle of wits, endurance and hand management that sees you take control of one of six wildly different factions. So sharpen your blades, grab your quick reference card and let’s fight!
Gameplay
Summoning And Smashing
If you have played any head to head card battler previously, you will slip into Sanctuary like a beautifully fitted pair of jeans. It has a simple turn structure, good iconography and plays very smoothly. Each player takes one of the pre-defined decks, of which there are three in each of the game’s two boxes. Your deck is made up of Acolytes, Rituals and one Champion. After setting aside your Champion, you shuffle up and are ready to brawl.
Your side of the battlefield is made up of four columns and two rows all protecting your Sanctuaries from being attacked. This is how you lose the game, when all four of your Sanctuaries fall, you lose, simples! You may play cards in front of your Sanctuaries as defenders or in the row above them as attackers. As in many of these types of games, you will attack in columns, or lanes and must block attacks with your defenders.
Firstly, on your turn, you collect two Essense Crystals, which is the currency for summoning your troops into battle and casting rituals. Then you use the Essense Crystals you have to play cards from your hands which all have a cost associated with them. Some are free and some are quite costly. As you summon Acolytes they enter the field of battle turned sideways, or ‘exhausted’ and cannot fight this turn, unless they have certain traits which we will discuss later.
After you have finished summoning an all manner of beasties and warriors it is time to do battle. Combat in Sanctuary is a simple affair and I certainly appreciated that. Each of your attackers has an attack stat and if there is no defender in front of your opponent's Sanctuary you will damage it by that amount. If there is a defender in front of the Sanctuary then both units attack each other simultaneously and if any unit's attack value is higher than the opponent's health value then they are destroyed. It's elegant and very streamlined.
After all the fisticuffs and pugilism have taken place you perform your end of turn activities. All non-fatal damage is reset, any exhausted units become active and will be ready for battle next turn. All your Sanctuaries Decay values get decreased by one (more on that later) and you draw back up to your hand limit. You may also discard cards if you wish but be careful as this can be costly, for reasons you will soon discover.
Sanctuaries And Hand Management
Each of your four Sanctuaries has two trackers on it and a special, very powerful ability. The first tracker, for tracking Aegis, is basically the health and when the health is depleted, the Sanctuary is destroyed and you can no longer use its special ability. You do not want that, one thing I did notice in my plays of Sanctuary is how powerful these abilities can be. The other tracker is for tracking Decay, which as I stated above reduces by one every turn. When this tracker reaches zero, the ability of the Sanctuary is active and the true fun begins. Each faction's Sanctuaries are different, with various stats and abilities, making each bout feel unique.
Hand management in Sanctuary is key. If you ever have to draw cards at the end of your turn and you have none, you must choose one of your Sanctuaries to be destroyed. So you can see for yourself how damaging this can be do discarding unwanted cards should only really be done when vitally needed. On the flip side of that, if you attack an already destroyed Sanctuary your opponent must remove the top card of their deck forever, not even discard it, remove it forever, yes, forever! You can use this to chip away at your opponents' deck and give them another thing to be thinking about. It's a clever system on a few levels, keeping lanes where your opponent has no Sanctuary alive and also providing tactical options.
Champions, Attributes and Abilities
Each of the factions has a powerful Champion, the strongest of your units and only useable once. Your Champion sits at the side of your battlefield and can be summoned, during your summon phase whenever you have the resources to do so. When they die though, it is it, no re-run, no respawn, finito! When and where to summon your Champion is critical to success, you can move units but it is not easy to do so. There was one faction I played that could move units about with ease but more often than not, when a unit is deployed, it is there for the long haul.
Each Acolyte and Champion has icons on it that correspond to the Attributes they have. If you have played games of this ilk before you will instantly know what some of these are. Some units are summoned ‘active’ and can attack this turn, some units will kill units when attacking, no matter what health they have. Some units are shielded from abilities and some units even activate their abilities when they die or when they are summoned.
Some cards have abilities to make them more powerful or fit into a certain unit archetype. Some units get attack bonuses depending on if units are flanking them, some units get bonuses depending on if they are attacking or defending and some units just kill other units when they die. The great mix of Attributes, Abilities, units and Sanctuaries makes sure every game of Sanctuary feels alive and tactically challenging
Components
There are not many components to discuss in these small boxes, which I kind of adore really. While there are a few components I found irksome, being able to slip one of these boxes into your pocket and taking it over to a friends and duking it out is brilliant. However, I did find the trackers for the Sanctuaries far too small and they could slide about all over the shop. It's only a small thing but they did get in the way a few times.
I absolutely adored the art on the cards, each faction is brilliantly realised, themed and designed. The artwork is so detailed, beautiful and attractive. The cards are of a decent quality too, I think they will hold up to many battles and scrapes. All in all, I loved the overall package Sanctuary brings, lovely translucent crystals, beautiful cards and all in a small, very portable box. I just wish the Sanctuary trackers were a bit less fiddly.
Final Thoughts
While Sanctuary may not be my absolute favourite game of this genre it certainly has qualities to be admired. Its artwork is beautiful, its game flow is precise and quick, its tactical choices are plentiful and it comes in a little, portable form factor. I loved the Sanctuaries and their special abilities and playing each faction felt truly unique.
If I am going to someone's house or to a game night where I know people like one on one battlers, I would have no qualms throwing in the small box or boxes of Sanctuary: The Keepers Era. It's quick, entertaining and has just the right amount of rules and decisions. Right, I’m off to destroy someone's Sanctuaries, catch you on the other side!
