Kaleva of the Finnish Forests (2015)

Overview

Kaleva is a strategic board game in which two players strive for victory aided by the powers of ancient Finnish heroes, gods and legends!Players battle each other trying to overcome the other player's protective magic. The winner is the player who is first able to move three game pieces into the opponent's magic shield.

In Kaleva, each player places six cards so that each corresponds to one of the board's six columns. Each card then gives its power (numerical value 0-9) to each of the player's own pieces located in that exact column. On your turn, you can move one of your pieces into a neighboring space either straight or diagonally. Whenever a piece is moved into another space where the opponent's piece is already located, the pieces fight. In that case the attacking player reveals the card that controls the column where the attack originated, and the defender reveals the card of the column the piece is located. The high card wins, with the losing piece being removed from the board. The used cards are removed and replaced with new cards from each player's own shuffled deck.

Two of the cards have special powers. When moving a piece in the column of a 0 card, you can scout a single card of your opponent, after which you discard the 0 card, and replace it with a new card. Whenever the piece in the column of a 1 card is defending against a stronger card, the piece evades the attack and the two pieces change places.