Radlands

The Game

Radlands is a two-player head-to-head card game by Australian designer Daniel Piechnick. Set in an apocalyptic future (think Mad Max), you are rival tribes trying to exterminate each other. You win by destroying all three camps of your opponent. 

I learned about Radlands through a series of articles on game design written by the designer. They are well written, candid and insightful, a must-read for new game designers. Some examples in the articles mention Radlands. So when I saw Radlands at a game store in Cologne, Germany, I decided I must get a copy and see how all those principles in the articles translate into this published game. 

In the game, players start with choosing their three camps from six randomly drawn camp cards. The game comes with many different camps so there is variability. Every camp has a different ability. The other cards in the game are people and events. You can play up to two people cards in front of a camp to protect it. People cards have various abilities you can use, e.g. attacking your opponent’s people or camps. There is a raid ability which lets you send raiders. Raiders are a special type of attacker which directly hits a camp, even if it is protected by people. Normally you can only damage a camp if it is unprotected. Cards, be it camps or people, all have two life points. The first time damaged, you turn the card sideways. It loses its abilities. The next time hit, it will be destroyed. There are cards which can heal though. 

You have three camps, and they have different abilities

This is what an early game looks like. 

The camps are well protected now. 

This is the raider card. Both players have one. You need the raid icon to deploy your raider. 

The event cards have a countdown mechanism. Most event cards need to be placed on a track, and they advance at the start of your turn. They are triggered only when they complete their countdown. This means your opponent has a little time to prepare to defend or at least to try to mitigate. 

The first person to destroy all three of the opponent’s camps wins. 

The Play

I played two games with Chen Rui back to back. The first one was quick but the second dragged somewhat, because we got better at defending and we had cards that could heal. You usually have three or four actions on your turn. Water is your currency and also your action points. The cost for playing a card is in water. By default you only get three water on your turn. Turns are generally fast and there is little down time. 

Game in progress with younger daughter Chen Rui. 

The icon in the top left corner is what you get if you discard the card. 

Events have a black-and-yellow border

There are many different characters in the game, all with different abilities. You want to build up a good army of fighters, both to protect your camps and also to give you good attack abilities. You don’t have attack abilities by default. You need to have cards in play with attack abilities, i.e. specific icons. There are cards with crazy abilities, e.g. the truce card returns all characters to hand. The camp abilities are interesting. They make every game a little different. You want to play to the strengths of your camps. 

There is a great variety of cards. 

All three camps have been damaged, and are thus rotated 90 degrees.

Many colourful characters

The Thoughts

Radlands is polished. I did not find it particularly interesting, because it felt like just another two player battle card game. There is no specific problem, just that I did not find anything that stands out. I wonder whether I have unconsciously set too high expectations after reading Daniel's article series. I might not be being fair to the game. I do like the variety in the camps and how interesting some of their powers are. I see Radlands as a well crafted product. Both well developed and marketed. It is ranked high on BoardGameGeek.com, which is no small feat. It has good art. Gameplay is smooth and streamlined, without being overburdened by too many resource types and stats to track. So although the game did not click with me, there is still a lot I can learn and benefit from.