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Just played my first game of Arena of death, from the crusade of fire campaign book and I quite enjoyed it. Pitted a tau commander against a juggerlord. To my surprise the lord just barely pulled through.

The game seemed quite simple and yet quite deep at the same time considering it was only two figures fighting each other. It didn't feel too random, because of how the initiative buffs from the cards stack.
And the all the combat tricks meant the lords daemon weapon didn't get as much use as he'd like and the commander still got to fire his fusion guns in the middle of melee.

Getting into an advantageous position really helped the commander to evade the lord and sneak in some hits. And even though the lord was on a juggernaut and the arena is quite small, he still had to leg it for 2 turns before charging the commander.
And the roar of the crowd in combination with some of the cards mean that even the bolt pistol was useful, and even taking a combi bolter would have made sense.

Which got me thinking. Could this be turned into a proper entry point game for GW? They could make decks for various factions and featuring different gladiators based on their model ranges.
You could initially make a deck based on one kick ass chaos lord, or maybe a chaos lord and hound or two. Or for those multiple rounds buy the odd model of theirs to pit against your own character in a SOLO mode (or just for fun against other players, like a GM).
So they could sell like creature packs to fight against like a bunch of cultists or wyches or flesh hounds and so on.

I mean it would need a revision and streamlining and what not but I think the core concept isn't that bad both for GW and as a game on its own. Might prove to be a nice alternative to things like malifaux, with small enough model count. And it could live comfortably alongside 40k.



I wouldn't mind pitching GW some ideas, but I'd like to get a more solid idea how the game could be work.
So I'd like some suggestions on how it could work, both in terms of rules and sales. Obviously not relying on the codex, but on the options provided by the actual plasit kit.

The models they're selling are already fine the way they are. But I think it could use some dedicated terrain or even a realm board. A single board wouldn't be too expensive either. And remains compatible with the 40k range. It would be a good opportunity for some xenos terrain. In this case Dark eldar. But if you think along the old gladiators and specifically Ryse (the videogame), it would make sense to emulate enviroments from other planets and cultures. So it would be the perfect platform for the odd themed terrain cycles.

It would also allow them to release models completely outside of the codex cycles. Like an arbites clam pack that would have rules for arena of death, yet not for 40k. And they would have the option to already release models that will be in future codices in this way. Releasing a deck or so featuring said model would be easy in comparison. They could also add a character card to the pack/box, so a 40k player would be enticed to play the arena game too.

Which brings me to the cards. I imagine they'd be your run of the mill trading card format, so they could sell 40k sleeves. I would buy those even without any associated game. Fantasy flight already sells some, but there is room for improvement. Same goes for deck boxes, which could easily fit a miniature or two depending on the format (of the box) and size of the deck. The maneuver cards would be fairly easy to make and could be expanded with psychic cards and even shooting attacks.

As for the gladiators, you would still have to be able to gear them. So II'm imagining some kind of tray for gear not unlike the latest zombicide tray( that medieval one), with trackers for initiative, wounds, roar of the crowd and whatever else might be useful.
Attacks and damage ( resistance) could be determined by the gear itself including any potential passive stuff.

The post is starting to get big, so I'll stop here for now, but what do you guys/gals think so far? Any suggestions/opinions are welcome.

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