Table Battles: Doomed (2024)

Overview

In this radical reimagining of Amabel Holland’s popular Table Battles series, players fight a series of short, snappy battles that are forgone conclusions. One side brings to bear overwhelming advantages while the other struggles to stave off certain doom as long as possible. Eventually, they will weaken. Inevitably, they will break. There is, mechanically speaking, no way for the doomed side to prevail – no victory condition at all, and no way for the other side not to achieve theirs. But it’s not about that.

It's about how hard you fight when you know you’re going to lose. During each battle, the doomed side will score points – a running tally that carries over from one scenario to the next. If by the end of the third battle they’ve hit a certain threshold, they win the game. But that threshold increases when you choose which of the game’s six battles to fight next – easier battles raise your threshold more than hard ones. The doomed player also has access to Advantage cards – once-per-battle powers that let them break the rules in some way. But each of these you take on also increases your threshold.

From the encircled Romans at Cannae to the trapped paladins at Roncevaux Pass, the outmatched French fleet at Trafalgar and the desperate highlanders at Culloden, this expansion spans desperate, hopeless battles from across human history and points toward an exhilarating new direction for Hollandspiele’s bestseller.

—description from the publisher