Board Game Heaven Unboxing 248: RIVALS (Unkind Games)

About Rivals, from BoardGameGeek:

Rivals is a deckbuilding board game based on a Battle Royale gameplay. You play the chosen one of your clan and fight to save your people from extinction. [The new V2 rulebook is now available for free as a PDF on the publisher's official website.] - Features - To win the game, you just need to be the last survivor or to have obtained 5 victory points. To obtain victory points, you will have to either kill an opponent or buy them using the resources you will obtain by collecting on the map. Battle royale board game Deck-building, the central element of the game Collect resources to implement your strategy Scalable map over the sleeves, be careful not to fall... - The map - Focus on the board and the interactions with the evolving map ! ?? RIVALS is played in several rounds, each divided into two rounds of play. During their turn, players have 2 action points to move, collect resources from a tile, play cards from their hand and interact with sponsors. The WildTech (=map) is made out of 43 tiles. You can explore, collect resources and fight your opponents. Crystal / Resin : These are harvest resources, they allow you to craft shields, uninstall cards from your deck and buy victory points ! Interface (black tile) : If you collect on this tile, you will be able to collect new cards for your deck and optimize it. Anticipation : This resource allows you to recover additional dice to defend yourself from your opponents The evolution of the map : At the end of each round (2 turn in a round), parts of the map will be destroyed, players will have to draw cards to discover the affected areas. Be careful not to fall... - How does battle work ? - The attacker gets 2 action points to use offensive cards. The cost of the card is in the upper left and the distance to perform your attack in the upper right. Finally in the center of the card is the number of damage as well as the special effects. Regarding cards, there are 2 types. Cards for physical damage and cards for mental damage. Finally you will be able to combine certain offensive cards with utility cards to add a boost to your attack. For the defense part, when a player attacks you, you get 2 defense dice to block attacks. Throughout the game, you will be able to get up to 6 of them during an attack phase. In order to have more defensive dice, you will have to collect on tiles with “anticipation”. Finally, elements of the map such as the forest will give you an additional die if you are on the square. - Lore - AT THE DAWN OF 3221 Humanity is all over the galaxy. After centuries of research, science finally unraveled the secret of hyperspeed. The Network, supreme political council, sealed the destiny of all clans. In order to avoid the conflicts and wars to come, each clans located on each planet of the Milky Way will designate an Ashak to stand for them in the WildTech, a hybrid arena : half-real, half-digital. You embody one of these Ashaks and will carry your clan's hopes. The ultimate battle is yet to come and no one wants to discover what is hiding beyond the void.