First Impressions: Fire Ferrets

First Impressions: Fire Ferrets
By Nathan Gardner

Fire Ferrets team ability is Counter Bend. An ability so powerful, it rightfully only exist on the signature cards.

• First, target any Space with your opponent's tokens matching the Active Bender's element and flip them to your side. 
• Then, you may move the stack 1 adjacent Space from its original position following Spread and Token Annihilation rules. 

The Fire Ferrets Signature cards are hands down the best in the game. Each has an explosive amount of damage output and each can counter bend.

Counter Bending is the best because:

1) Infinite range: The Space you target can be anywhere on the board.
2) Shield Infinite: No matter how many tokens of one element is placed down on any one of your benders, you get to flip all of them to your side. 
3) Defend + Attack: After flipping tokens to your side, move them at or near opponents benders to add onto the damage output you already sent out.
4) Defend + Defend: Say one of your benders has 4 fire tokens on their space and another adjacent bender has 4 earth tokens. If you counter bend one of the elements, you can move it to the adjacent space for Token Annihilation. With one card, you got to attack and with Counter Bending, defended two people.


The Fire Ferrets opening basic techniques have a damage output of 6, no matter which 3 cards you drawl. Even better they are all Normal damage, which I much prefer over Piercing damage on the first turn. Easier to defend yourself against bursts of damage. Their basic techniques also comes with a weakness, which is the teams overall weakness. Low range. Each basic card only has a range of 1. Getting a bender stuck on the sides or knocked back 1-2 spaces will have a hard time assisting the team.

Korra's Range Average 2.2
High Tide - 1
Liquid Lash - 2
Reverse the Current - 2
Flow as Water - 3
Serpent's Breath - 3

Bolin's Range Average 2.5
One-Two Punch - 1
Slate Slammer - 2
Rock Barrage - 2.25
Earthen Roots - 3
Kick Back - 4

Mako's Range Average 2.6
Flash Flare - 1
Solar Burst - 2
Spiral Flare Kick - 3
Firetrap - 3
Firestorm - 4

Each Team's Range Average
Fire Ferrets - 2.4
Wolfbats - 2.5
Rabaroos - 2.6
Tigerdillos - 2.8
Boar-Q-Pines - 3
Buzzard Wasps - 3.2

As we can see, the Fire Ferrets have the lowest ranges in the game. How big of a weakness is this? Hard to say. Most of the time, you only need to be shooting 1-2 spaces away. When Korra gets knock back to the final zone she won't be able to help her team mates until she buys more cards. If you have Liquid Lash or her signature card showing, do you really want to buy those? At the moment you need 3 range to help attack and both of those only have 2. For the most part I don't think the low ranges will effect them to much, just every now and then you might find yourself in a tight spot.


Lets take a look at the card options?

Korra the Waterbender

Starting with High Tide, you get to move then shoot for 2 Damage at 1 range. Hopefully the move can get you in range of your main target. As the game moves forward, we will need better options.

Liquid Lash for 1 cost is a small yet nice trade up. Instead of moving, you'll being Shielding one. Instead of 2 normal damage, 2 piercing with a plus one range. On top of all that, follow up with a hold token.

Flow as Water for 3 is Korra's bread and butter. Move, Shield, 3 Piercing at 3 range with 1 damage follow up. Good damage, defense and range really keeps her options open on the board.

Serpent's Breath for 4 has the same damage out has Korra's signature card, but with 3 range instead of 2. At first glance the card could look bad, high damage sure, but your a sitting duck...well no. The follow attacks make good back up blocking, defending 1-2 spaces for 2 each. The first part is piercing, so the follow up should always work.

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Mako the Firebender.

Mako starts with Flash Flare; Move. Shoot. Move. From there he gets two similar options each costing 2.

2 cost Solar Burst; Move, then shoot 3 normal damage at 2 range.
2 cost Firetrap; Move, then shoot 2 piercing damage at 3 range with a hold token follow up.
It comes down to what role is Mako playing on the team. If it's offence, 2 piercing for the guarantee hold is the way to go. If hes instead defending the other 2, then Solar Burst will help you do that. If no on needs saving, sending out 3 damage is a great back up attack. In either case the damage out put of both cards is 0 to 1 better then the basic. Instead of buying for damage, your getting these 2 cards for that extra range.

If you want a little more damage then look to Spiral Flare Kick for 3 cost. Mako still gets a move icon and two piercing attacks of 2 at 3 range. If your going offence your choice of each Firetrap or Spiral Flare Kick will depend on your Pro Bending school of thought. Pile on one space with hold tokens, or spread out damage on multiple spaces.
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Bolin the Earthbender.

Bolin starts off with One-Two Punch which is a shield and two small attacks.

His first upgrade is Earthen Roots. 2 cost which gets you a 2 shield, with 2 piercing at 3 range with a follow up hold token. Very similar to Korra and Mako's hold cards.

Rock Barrage for 3 falls a little flat. Its 4 overall damage, but they can't go into the same space. It is Bolin's only move card, so even though the 3 cost feels high for what your getting, its most likely a balance thing.

Slate Slammer is a strong 4 piercing with 2 hold tokens and sadly only 2 range. I can't see ever wanting to pic this over Earthen Roots. Roots costs 2 less and is pulling double duty defending and attacking at plus one range. Sure Slate Slammer does two more damage, but with your team mates that shouldn't be an issue. Having one more hold token will often seem like overkill.   

Trick Cards

How do Trick cards help?

Counter Bending is great. One strategy to try is to only buy those 5 cost cards, filter out the rest of your deck and draw nothing but those cards. To help speed that process up take a look at: Tremorsense (earth) and Trail Blazing (fire). Each discards cards from your main deck. When the Fire Ferrets are drawling nothing but Counter Bending cards each turn, its near game over.

Other tricks to consider are anything to defend yourself while setting up your build. Fluid Form (water) and any of the movement tricks work really well.

Fire Ferrets
Strengths

• Counter Bend
• Each Bender has access to Hold Tokens

Weakness

• Very low starting range
• Low range in general

Summary

Fire Ferrets are the face of the game and are the most welcoming to new players, yet can still be a strong team. They don't have to worry about the Cheat Flag on any of their cards, which opens their Trick selection up nicely.

Recommend Deck Build

Water
2x Flow as Water
1x Liquid Lash
1x Reverse the Current

Fire
2x Solar Burst
1x Firetrap
1x Firestorm

Earth
3x Earthen Roots
1x Kick Back

Overpowered Trick Cards

Overpowered Trick Cards?
By Nathan Gardner


I love the extra element of strategy and tactics that the trick cards bring to the game. But I wonder if all 48 were properly play tested. Lets take a look at some of the strongest ones.

Arc Lightning

• Remove 2 of your Fire tokens from your Firebender's Space:
• Choose an opposing Bender and knock their miniature down. That Bender cannot activate next Turn. 
• Yellow Flag. 

Knocking down a miniature adds a whole new rule to game with no references anywhere.

Removing 2 of your own Fire tokens at first glance looks to be a high cost. Most Firebenders can't due it for the first so many turns. But there is one Firebender who can do it on the turn one, Adi of the Rabaroos. She sends out two fire damage to an agent space, moves over and proceeds to activate Arc Lighting. You then use your other two cards in hand to lay down as much damage tokens as you can onto the knocked down bender. The trick is even more devastating when you wait until an opponent buys a card. They buy an Earth card, knock down their Earthbender. The knocked down bender cannot activate. So on their turn they will at least have one Earth card in hand, maybe more (you also have the knowledge of the cards they just played). Those cards can't be played this turn for actions, which also means no green trick cards either. If your opponent can't defend the knocked down bender with their 1-2 cards, you just got a free K.O. Plus you are making your opponent skip 1/3, 2/3 or even 100% of their turn pending on how many Earth cards they had in hand. 

As the game continues, they will be removing cards from their deck from the fallen bender, making a second Lightning strike even stronger. If they only have water and fire cards, knocking down the Waterbender will defiantly effect many cards in hand.  Being a Yellow Flag card is a benefit for Arc Lightning. If you didn't roll yellow the first time, your clear to use it again just fine. If you roll yellow, just don't use it again. You already got a lot out of it. 

Finally, if you're playing vs a single bender, you 100% auto win the game. There is no counter. 

Arc Lightning  

• Free K.O.
• Free Turn
• Reusable 
• Auto Win vs Single Benders

Game designers have unofficially stated on reddit that the card slipped through the cracks and recommend not playing with it. 

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Lets move on to a set of 3 cards I've been play-testing in almost 20 games vs opponents, mock games and plenty of theory crafting.  

Gravel Blast (Water)

• If your Waterbender and Earthbender are in the same Space:
• Put 1 Water and 1 Earth token in any 1 Space on the board. Then, Daze 1 Bender in that Space. 

Boulder Blitz (Earth)

• If there is an opposing Bender in a Space adjacent to your Earthbender:
• Put 3 Earth tokens in that opposing Bender's Space. 

Adrenaline Surge (Fire)

• If your Firebender is isolated:
• Amplify 4

All 6 teams can use the above three cards to great effect, but the Buzzard Wasps and Tigerdillos really shine. This is because each of those teams has a bender that can place a Hold token with basic starting techniques. I'll be focusing more on the Tigerdillos for examples, since the Wasps can still lose, even with super strong opens. When the Tigerdillos go first, in a hand of all 3 elements, they will be throwing out 14 Element tokens, 1 Hold token, and 1 Daze token. The worst I've seen is two benders getting knocked out. The mildest is just one bender knocked out. Average sees one knock out, with the other 1-2 benders getting pushed back. We really need to question if burning two trick cards and rolling the Referee dice is a fair cost for knocking out 1-2 benders plus other knock backs. 

How does this work? 

"Put" is a game key word. It lets you put element tokens onto spaces that already have element tokens of the same type.

Lets look at some sample play. Placement doesn't matter to much. Ideally if you're playing with 'player one places first', the Tirgerdillos would side everyone over to the left.

Adrenaline Surge: Amplify 4

For Defense, we'll assume the Fire Ferrets have an average build.

There are way to many tokens on Mako, so Bolin is going to try and save Korra.

Korra can't move and her two damage doesn't help anyone. She is able to deflect two tokens away.

Mako can take away one token, but its not enough, you would be better off discarding for Chi.

Check for damage. One bender in the drink, another pushed back a zone.

Even if the placement of the Fire Ferrets was different, on average you will still get the above results.

Before we go ban crazy though, can this be defended at all?

Currently I have only found using these Trick cards can save you.

Weave Through Air (Water)
Blurred Motion (Fire)
Rock Slide (Earth) or All For One (Earth)

These are all the "move your bender 1 space, ignoring Hold tokens" and All For One is Shield 3.

The Tigerdillios have to attempt to pin down whichever bender is in the middle, spreading out their 14 damage into 3 different spaces. Which from a defensive stand point, is every doable.

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So here comes the discussion. Unlike Arc Lightning, there are a couple of ways to defend against the Alpha Strike. To do so, you need to being using 3-4 Tricks cards out of the 48 Trick cards the 6 teams currently have access to.

Theme Format
Do we want the game to be only a few builds, Alpha Strike and Move Tricks.

Standard Format  

Single benders auto lose to these 3 Trick cards 50% of the time. It depends on their opening hand.

What should be done?

1. Ban Gravel Blast
2. Ban Boulder Blitz
3. Ban Adrenaline Surge
4. Start a restricted list. Can only take 1 restricted card per team.  
5. Change the "Put" keyword to follow Spread Rules (This would nerf other cards like Splintered Stones)
6. Change it so you cannot activate Trick cards on your first turn (This would nerf other cards like any of the ones that require benders to be in the same space)
7. Other?

I'm not a fan of 5 or 6, because it changes the core game rules and who knows what unforeseen consequences that could cause. I also don't like banning any of the three cards because by themselves, they are not game ending cards. If it was up to me, I would pick a restricted list. Each team can only pick and use one card from the restricted list. 

I would love to hear everyone's opinion on the subject.  

Edit/Update:

By no means am I trying to implement a restricted list. I'm mostly found what I think could be an issue and want to bring it up to the community to see if something should be done. Arc Lightning is an open and shut case. The 3 trick combo, you need to go first and need to draw all 3 different element cards. In a long league, it could be pretty common. 

Tournament and League Rule Suggestions

Tournament and League Rule Suggestions (until the official ones come out)
By Nathan Gardner

Game Setup
When going trough the 12 steps of the Game Setup ignore step 4.
After step 12, proceed to following step 13.

Step 13
The Start Player places their Bender miniatures in Zone A on their side of the board.
Then, the second player places their Bender miniatures in Zone A on their side of the board.

Referee Calls The Match

1. Before the tournament, have the Tournament Organizer or group decide if there will be time limits. If so, once the time limit has been reached, have the active player finish their turn and go directly to tie breaker rules. 
2. During a league or swiss rounds of a tournament, all the ways to determine a winner when the Referee calls the match remain the same. During single-elimination rounds of a tournament, the game can't end in a draw. Before the tournament, have the Tournament Organizer or group pick one of the following to determine a winner. 

• If referee determines the game to be a true draw, go to the next players turn continuing the match. Check for win conditions at the end of every turn. (This would be very low on my list. If they got this far with no clear winner, its might not happen. In a time scenario, this would just waste time for everyone else)
• Rock, Paper, Scissor
• Whichever player currently has the most Chi
• Starting with the Start Player, each player rolls the referee dice in turn order. The first person to roll the Yellow Flag is the winner.  

Ban List

Trick Card: Arc Lightning

Format

1. Theme: Each player may select any of the six named bending teams.

• Boar-Q-Pines
• Buzzard Wasps
• Fire Ferrets
• Rabaroos
• Tigerdillos
• Wolfbats

2.  Standard: Each player may select any of the eleven named teams. 

• Boar-Q-Pines
• Buzzard Wasps
• Fire Ferrets
• Rabaroos
• Tigerdillos
• Wolfbats
• P'Li 
• Unalaq
• Kuvira
• Avatar Korra
• Amon

3. Fantasy: See page 21 of the rule book.

• When playing the Fantasy Format, the back of benders cards will no longer be the same, which has been stated to be part of the 'cost' of creating a custom team. 

Tournament Round Options

Number of Players	Number of Rounds	Top Cut
2-4	2	n/a
5-8	3	n/a
9-16	4	n/a
17-32	5	4
33-64	6	8

League/Swiss Scoring

5 points for a decisive win (knock all 3 opponents benders out)

4 points for a win by Referee calling the match

2 points if a true draw

1 point if loss by Referee calling the match

0 points if decisive loss

Optional Championship Match
During the Final match (or even all of the top cut) of single elimination, instead of playing one normal game, you play 1-3. This would more reflect the 3 rounds from the T.V. show. This option would add a lot of time to your day, so choose it only if everyone has the time to spare.

First person in any game (round) to knock all of the opposing benders into the drink is the winner. If it happens to be round 1, then no more rounds, we have a winner. Otherwise, if the Referee has to call the match each time, then after all 3 rounds, which ever player won the most is the winner. If someone wins the first 2, you would still play the 3rd, since the losing team could still win by knocking the opposing team out.   

Notes

Why change the Game Setup? Currently the rules state for the players to both place at the same time. If placement is a part of your winning strategy, you might change your miniatures around once you see your opponents set up, which could cause them to also switch around and back in forth it goes. Just better to have a rule for one at a time placement. 

Fantasy Format. Normally I would highly recommended you use art or opaque sleeves. It's not required and pending on the seriousness of the tournament, everyone could be 100% friendly about it, but players are encouraged to use sleeves both to protect their cards and to protect themselves against accusations of marking or manipulating decks by exploiting variance in the size, wear, or texture of their cards. The one issue with using opaque sleeves though, is that there looks to be no opaque sleeves that are also the same size as Pro Bending deck cards. Only transparent ones. So that's a bummer.

Regarding the different back cards one of the game designers has stated the following:
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It's part of the 'cost' of creating a custom team. 

That said, if all players in your tournament agree to use opaque sleeves, then I see no deep problems with doing so. It would be a problem if only some players are doing it, however.

One thing that's going into the tournament rules on this point, however, is that when using a mixed team after you shuffle your deck you must cut it once (just so no one gets accused of shuffling a specific character's card to the top of the deck because you can see its back).
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We're kind of stuck with no or transparent sleeves, so everyone agreeing to use opaque doesn't matter. We will have to play with the mechanic of "you make a custom team, you and your opponent will be able to see that card coming up in your deck."

Being forced to cut your deck after shuffling doesn't make much sense though. You don't have many cards in your deck, so cutting it for gain (subconsciously or for malice) would be terribly easy. I would recommend rolling a dice to determine how many cards to cut. Maybe we don't even need that. I don't know, maybe one day IDW will take this opportunity and make sleeves to fit their cards. I would certainly buy them.   

First Impressions: Buzzard Wasps

First Impressions: Buzzard Wasps

By Nathan Gardner

Buzzard Wasps team ability is to keep your opponent low on Chi, while you continue to buy stronger cards. Mid to late game you should be battling an opponent who is still on Basic Techniques with little to no upgrades. That's the goal, yet sadly it will never happen.

Choking Chi doesn't work in this game, when each player has so many ways to gain it.

• Gain 1 Chi during the Keep Focused phase
• Discard cards for Chi
• Catch up Chi when a bender goes in the drink
• Deploying the tricks Good Vibrations / Channel Chi 

Plus the earliest the wasps can start denying is on their second turn.

Half the time when your opponent goes first, they will start at 2 plus 1 for the turn, plus 1 to 3 for discarding cards. Before you even take a turn they are buying 3 to 6 Chi worth of cards. That is a couple of juicy advanced cards or one powerful signature. Onto your turn where you buy some Sting cards. Back to your opponent in their second round of buffing up their deck. Even if you went first, they will still buy 4 to 7 Chi worth of cards.

One tactic is to lay down some damage to force them to defend and not discard for Chi. Well, maybe for any other team. Wasps though, they have the lowest damage output in the game.

Damage output of opening hands

Wasps 3-5
Tiger 4-6
Wolfbats 6
Rab 6
Fire 6
Boar-Q-Pines 6

So maybe we have to rethink the strategy. Wasps can't fully do a choke strategy, but maybe its more of a little extra your doing in addition to a standard fighting mind set. You'll be able to keep them from buying all of their big cards, so as long as your able to stay ahead with your purchases, you can win this. Unless of course their strategy is low cost cards, then you pretty much don't have a team ability. Lets move on though. 

What are the Wasps card options?

Lets first look at the Wasps, Waterbender Loong.
His Basic Technique is Dark Waters.

• Shield 1
• 3 Range for 1 Pierce damage with 1 follow up damage into an adjacent space. 

Pretty standard stuff for the early game. For the mid/late game we need to buy stronger cards.

For 2 Chi you could get Sink or Swim. We'll compare it to Dark Waters based on us wanting to remove the Basic Technique during the Stay Sharp phase. You gain 1 moment, keep 1 shield and trade in the 1+1 damage for a solid 2 damage. It's plus one range, but that isn't noticeable on the game board. The biggest difference between the two cards is that the new one lets you defend allies for 2, where the basic defends allies for 1, but you could also defend your own space with the follow up. The damage options are pretty equal in my eyes. So, for 2 Chi, you're just gaining a move icon. No where near enough to move you into the mid game.

Riptide? For 3 Chi you also gain a move icon, but lose the shield. Then it's another way in dealing out just 2 damage. Riptide also Stings twice, but we already know Stings are just an extra afterthought. Spend 3 to deny your opponent 2 (a turn later at that)? Spend 3 to change how you deal out 2 damage? Whats the point?

We finally see a valid option in Undertow. For 4 Chi, Loong is taking the teams role of utility artist. One move, 3 pierce damage at two range, follow up with 2 holds. The range is a tad low, damage output feels like it could be better, but those 2 hold tokens are pure gold. Just as long as your team mates can dish out their fair share of damage.
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Ko the Firebender. One of the two benders in the game that can hold people down in their opening cards. Ko's Burning Embers is very good. Movement, 3 range, 1 damage, 1 hold token. Ko's early game only falls a little flat because the Wasps open volley is on the low side.

Ko is off to a good start, what else does he got?

For 2 Chi you could buy Stroke the Fires... you wont be.

Burning Embers to Stroke the Fires, you keep the one moment, keep 1 damage, lose 2 range and trade in the powerful hold token for a Sting, which is worse than normal, because of the one range. You're paying Chi to make your deck less effective.

In comes Darting Flames also for 2 Chi. This one looks to be a nice balance of offence and defense. 2 move icons will make you hard to pin down. At the same time you're launching three separate 1 damage attacks, 2 of which can be used to defend allies (the 3rd being a pierce attack). Darting Flames looks to be perfectly costed and will help you stay alive in the mid game, but doesn't have enough damage to push back. We need a finisher.

Solarspike, a 3 Chi card with one movement, 5 pierce damage with 3 range and a Sting. Incredible. You would want to take all 3 copies if it weren't for the catch. Its a yellow flag card. If you roll yellow, Solarspike is essentially a dead card in hand. Most of the time it will be to big a risk to roll the Referee dice when you already have one yellow flag. So that means Solarspike is more of a buy when your ready to finish someone off.
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Finally there is Shan the Earthbender. 

He opens up with Rolling Stone, the only Basic Earth Technique with both a moment and a shield icon. With that, Shan has the ability to stay alive until he can buy for the mid / late game.

Granite Grip is a 1 cost for two separate, 2 damage attacks, each with 1 range and follow ups of a hold token. Its also a yellow flag. This card doesn't have the power nor the range to be effect late game. Its more of a gain ground early card. Your hoping to buy and use it before Shan is knocked back a zone. The one range is a major handy cap that isn't worth rolling the referee dice.

Rock and a Hard Place is a 3 cost for a shield 2, then attack for 2 damage at 4 range with a Sting. Same range as your Basic with +1 damage. Your also trading out your movement for Shield 2 instead of 1. Your pretty much paying 3 for 1 extra damage, which isn't cost effective.

Stalagmite is a 4 cost for a 4 damage at 4 range following up with a Sting and a Hold token. This one feels average. Its not terrible, but not to great either. It has no defense items and at 4 cost, I would really hope for some. With only so much Chi to spend during a match, I would much rather purchase the 4 cost water card Undertow. One less damage but one more hold token. Plus it has a move icon.

Trick Cards

How do Trick cards help?

For Waterbender Loong, Salt Spray jumps up right away. Spend 1 Chi, Your opponent loses 2 Chi. Yellow Flag. It has the same issue as Sting. If your opponent goes first, your not stopping them from buying. In a long League or Tournament, there will be times you wont draw your Waterbender cards turn one, giving them even more time. There will be times when you go first, Salt Spray and roll Yellow on the Referee dice. Do you push your luck in future turns, or has the Chi denial strategy all ready petered out? Instead, you could use pretty much any water Trick, besides Spirit's Guidance.

For Firebender Ko, any Trick with an Amplify that you can trigger right away, will make his first turn hold token that much better. Ko is the best player on the team, you could even think about doing two fire Tricks. 

For Earthbender Shan, we are most likely not buying cards for him. So you'll need him to drawl fire through any means necessary. Best bet, make him as annoying as possible. I recommend reusable Tricks that throw out Daze or Hold tokens. 

Buzzard Wasps
Strengths

• Alpha strike with Ko

Weakness

• Low damage
• Cards over costed
• Limited deck building options

Summary

Buzzard Wasps have one cool looking color scheme, but when it comes to Pro Bending, they rank the lowest in the league.

Recommend Deck Build

Water
3x Undertow
1x Water Spout

Fire
2x Darting Flames
1x Solarspike
1x Arcing Stinger

Earth
3x Stalagmite
1x Rockfall

Daze by the Numbers

Daze by the Numbers
By Nathan Gardner

Daze - You may choose 1 Bender in the Space targeted by the attack you just completed that is not already dazed. Place a Daze token on their Team board. A Dazed Bender ignores the first Ability or Attack icon on the next Action bar they perform. The Daze token is returned to the supply after a Dazed Bender performs an Action.

Who and What can Daze? 

WolfBats

•     Tahno with Head Shot and Frozen Floor
•     Shaozu with Power Flare and Heat Wave
•     Ming with Titan's Throw and Epicenter 

Anyone using the following Trick Cards

• Gravel Blast
• Unstable Footing
• Headstrike

Amon's 'Electric Tonfas' Chi-Blocker

• Amon giving an Order with From the Shadows, Revolution Begins!, and Make an Example. 

Daze can be a powerful effect if timed correctly. If you target Josei from the Tigerdillos and he only has his basic techniques yet, you know for certain that when Josei is dazed, his next card played will ignore the first icon of moving. No math involved, Josei is 100% not going anywhere when dazed. 

But what happens when Josei has gotten a few cards or what about all the other benders out there? If your able to memorize every card in the game, no issue at all. Daze is a powerful weapon for you. For everyone else, its time to play the odds. 

Targeting anyone in the game (Single Benders excluded), you are most likely preventing them from doing an attack. 

If you narrow down to bender type, attack remains the most likely followed by stopping movement for both Fire and Water. 

Earth benders break the mold. You are most likely to prevent them from using a Shield icon. 

Daze is the Swiss army knife of Pro Bending. You can use it defensively or offensively. My favorite defense Daze has been stopping Korra from using her Signature Technique 'Reverse the Current'. Its just one giant attack. Seeing your opponent buy it, you know its going to happen next turn, so Daze that water bender. For offense, knowing there is a high chance to prevent Fire/Water from moving or Earth from blocking, you are free to unload element tokens at them. Poor Bolin, he and the other Earth benders seem to be the first to fall in many games. Not always, but seems like a lot. 

Board Game Review

The Legend of Korra: Pro-Bending Arena 

A review by Nathan Gardner

Legend of Korra: Pro-bending Arena is a board game pitting 2 people against each other in a competitive sport of throwing Earth Discs, Fireballs and Water Blasts at each other.

Each person has a team of 3 miniatures and the goal is to knock your opponents miniatures back off the arena into a pool of water… aka the drink.

Theme 5/5

If you’re a fan of the show, it goes without saying that the game captures the essence of the show's Pro-Bending sport.

Gameplay 5/5

The game is fast paced

You’re not sitting there falling asleep while waiting for your turn to come back. Turns are short and engaging; watching your opponent’s moves and planning your next steps.

Rules are simple and easy to teach new players

I’ve been able to play and teach a dozen different people so far, from beginners to experienced gamers and everyone was able to play without hesitation.

Tactics and Strategy

Each playable character has their own deck that can be custom built every match. Each team can take 3 different tricks with them and there’s over 50 of those. You can play any of the 6 theme teams, or do a fantasy team, mixing and matching the 18 benders. Replay ability feels endless.  

Game Components 3/5

Miniatures look amazing. The kickstarter box comes with 21 figures and each is uniquely and dynamically posed. Plenty of detail for anyone like myself wanting to paint them.

The cardboard tokens nicely reflect everything they need to represent in the game. The tokens are all double sided so each player can keep track of their own markers. Some of the tokens do this well like the Hold token. One side blue and the other orange. Other tokens, like the 3 element tokens are just a little bit lighter in color. Those tokens are not easy to differentiate from each other. If you got the kickstarter box, you also got some plastic element tokens and it fixes the issue. One person uses the plastic, the other cardboard.

Card Sizes

Why did they make the card sizes so big? It’s not like they are trying to make extra room for cool art work. What’s worse is the back of each card shows the team symbol that character belongs to. So if you make a fantasy team, you will know which cards are coming up in your deck during the game. That’s a really big deal if you’re trying to play competitively.  I was able to try the game at Gen Con before the kickstarter. The two designers where in presence and they were the ones to teach me the game. I made comments right away about the card sizes and the backs regarding needing sleeves to do a fantasy team. The designers felt down to earth and seemed to take my input seriously. I wonder how come the cards still ended up the size they are.  

I have seen online that people have found a close enough sleeve size in Mayday games (61mm x 103mm). But they are sold only in transparent, so they don’t work either. 

Edit: I recently learned that the designer wrote about the card backs on board game geek.

Q: When mixing and matching benders to create a custom team, you and your opponent can clearly differentiate which bender's cards are coming in the main deck because the backs are all different. Is that intentional or just a side effect? Follow-up question: if it's a side effect (and you were going to run some sort of semi-official tournament), would you recommend sleeving the cards with opaque backed sleeves to remove this advantage/disadvantage?

A: It's part of the 'cost' of creating a custom team.

That said, if all players in your tournament agree to use opaque sleeves, then I see no deep problems with doing so. It would be a problem if only some players are doing it, however.

One thing that's going into the tournament rules on this point, however, is that when using a mixed team after you shuffle your deck you must cut it once (just so no one gets accused of shuffling a specific character's card to the top of the deck because you can see its back).

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Huh?

1: Part of the cost of creating a custom team is gaining advantages of knowing when that card is coming up in your deck? I don’t like that all.

2: There are very few cards in your deck at any one time, so the answer of "you must also cut your deck" doesn’t prevent anything.

3: It also doesn’t seem like an actual cost/game mechanic if it’s okay for everyone to use opaque sleeves.  

4: But if it’s truly meant to be a game mechanic cost, with the option that you could sleeve anyway, why not make the cards a standard size?

The Rulebook

Just check out this thread below:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1943546/compiled-rulebook-errors

Other Thoughts

Single Bender Teams

The kickstarter version of the game comes with 3 more teams, in the forum of single bender villains from the show. I wish they didn’t do this at all. The 3 characters had nothing to do with Pro Bending and a match against one of them doesn’t have that same feeling as playing against a legitimate team. Taking them out, they could have added a 7^th three person team, which would be great, since there are many teams not made yet from the show.  

Hard to get new people into the game

I’m sure it’s a money thing, but I can still wish on this next one. I wish the retail version was the kickstarter version. Showing the game to new players, a lot of them like it and want to buy in, but the retail version only has 2 teams for $50. Seems like a lot when the kickstarter box has 6 teams (plus the 3 solo benders) and was sold for $65. I was happy to see the retail version went on sale on a few websites and some friends were able to buy in for $25.

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Do these bad points make the game bad? Not at all. 

Rulebook? One good edit and send out a new PDF.

Game Price? Hopefully they will announce the kickstarter teams in a separate box sooner or later and at a good price point, to capture the retail buyers.  

Single Bender Teams? Their extra and don’t take away from the core game. Just please when it comes to expansions down the road, give me a small box of Platypus Bears vs Rhino Lions, before giving me more Red Lotus characters.

Card Sizes? The first so many tournaments and leagues my friends and I plan on will be theme teams anyway, so this doesn’t affect us right away. 

Overall I give this game a 4/5

I love playing this game with my friends, family and soon in competitive play of my own making.

Can't wait to talk tactics and play new people!