Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation’s adversary card made you lose two health and discard an ally. Avatar: The Last Airbender – Aang’s Destiny by The Op Games is a 2-4 player cooperative deck building game reimplementing the popular Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle game.
For an animated series that originally premiered in 2005, Avatar: The Last Airbender has a delightfully rabid fan base, from my kindergarten-aged niece who is on her fourth or fifth watch to my full-grown husband, who sings ‘Secret Tunnel’ with passion and abandon at every possible opportunity. It is a well-loved IP that has had its share of struggles with the quality of its adaptations. So does this new game do the series justice? Or will the fans throw it out like last year’s blubbered seal jerky?
Gameplay Overview:
The game is divided into 7 boxes, and as players progress through the boxes the opponents that they face will get stronger, and the objectives the players have to achieve will get more difficult. As you play through the boxes the story of the show progresses chronologically, taking you on the journey with Aang as he masters his powers.
Players start by selecting heroes from the series, each with their own starting deck of cards. Different characters have different strengths. Aang, being the Avatar, can use multiple bending styles without needing allies. Katara has strong healing abilities, and Sokka can help keep the fire nation ship at bay. Appa is cute.
The starter cards in each deck mostly have Purpose, Health, or Attack values. Purpose is used to upgrade the player’s hand by purchasing cards from one of two marketplaces. One marketplace has elemental bending cards, which grant special abilities when they’re used by a character who is able to use bending style. The other marketplace has items and allies that grant bonuses. Hearts are used to keep a player’s health meter up. If the player dips into negative health, they faint, which has negative consequences for the game. Attack is used to face adversaries.
The combative Fire Nation has a ship on a tracker that is stalking you, and a deck of Adversary cards featuring antagonists from the show. These often have negative ongoing effects for the players until enough attack damage is dealt to them. There is also a deck of Fire Nation cards that turns over a new negative effect to the players each turn. If the ship tracker progresses too far, you will get multiple of these Fire Nation cards flipped each turn.
Finally, there are also Objective cards representing story beats. These can be completed by the players by spending Heart, Purpose, or Attack tokens, as described on each objective. They reward the players when the conditions of the Objective are satisfied. Players win if they complete each Objective and defeat all of the Fire Nation Adversaries. If the ship ever catches up to the players, they lose.
Game Experience:
What this game does best is upping the ante with each box the players progress through the campiagn. The first two boxes are very much just there to get you used to the mechanisms, and then box three takes off the training wheels and pushes you downhill. We almost immediately lost our first attempt at box three due to an unfortunate starting combination of Adversaries and Fire Nation cards. Our second attempt went much more smoothly, but that was only the first of many times across the seven boxes that we had to repeat plays to succeed.
Two players feels ideal for this game. We also played with three and four, which made it harder to keep everyone healed up and spread the marketplaces too thin. Solo is definitely doable and enjoyable if the player uses two characters at once. Some characters are more useful than others, and it’s fun to replay through box scenarios with different combinations.
While not required, someone will probably have to play Aang every time, but Appa’s helpfulness is limited with Aang in play. At the end of each box, the character’s deck resets to its basic cards, plus any character specific rewards earned by completing objectives. When these rewards are issued, they go into the character’s deck whether someone is currently playing that deck or not. This keeps each character progressing equally through the game, making it so you can switch up your team as needed without worrying that one character will be under-leveled. The reward cards match story moments, fostering a feeling that the decks aren’t just improving in strength but also developing as characters in line with the show’s journey.
The game is challenging and exciting, upholding the standard of Hogwarts Battle while improving on some mechanics. I like having two markets to select cards from, one available universally and one for specific bending abilities. It adds a new layer of strategy to the deck building. We also really enjoyed the new Ally card system. If a character can’t do a specific type of bending, they can play down an Ally who can.
Sokka, for instance, doesn’t have any bending access, but, once unlocked, his character ability lets you cycle through the universal marketplace for Allies more quickly, which he can use to become more versatile. The objective deck also helps keep the show’s story centered in the game, tying the theme together. The changes to the system are small enough that if you liked playing Hogwarts you’ll likely still enjoy Avatar, even if you’re not familiar with the IP. I know that there is also a Toy Story game in this series as well, but I haven’t played it, so I can’t reference it for comparison.
My one complaint is that Avatar is a show lauded for its art, with a warm, rich color palette, and I don’t feel like the production of the game really captures that. The matte black and silver box is plain and prone to fingerprint smudges. The board and cards all feel very beige. Non-character-specific bending cards use ink and brush style illustrations that are beautiful, and consistent with the lore of the show. The rest of the cards have simplified static illustrations from the animation over backgrounds with faint outlines of the geography of the nation that cards hails from. While this is a thoughtful detail, the parchment-colored cards blend into the parchment-colored board, and the palette is so muted that nothing really stands out. Other Avatar games, like Fire Nation Rising or Crossroads of Destiny, have art that is more dynamic and has more movement, making this game feel a little stale in comparison.
Final Thoughts:
Avatar: The Last Airbender – Aang’s Destiny doesn’t disappoint. It delivers all of the story beats and character growth that you want, laid on top of a simple-to-grasp but challenging-to-master system. If you’re a fan of the company’s previous cooperative deck builder games, this one tweaks and improves the system, while still putting the players through their paces. If you love Avatar: The Last Airbender, hop on your sky bison, grab your loyal winged lemur, and yip yip your way to the store for this one.
Final Score: 4 Stars – Fans of the show will be satisfied, and fans of the game system will rejoice.
Hits:
• The game implements everything people love from Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, while tweaking the system to make it more layered.
• The show and its characters are well represented, progressing players through their journey in a way that makes sense for the story.
• It is solidly challenging for players who enjoy co-op games or deck builders.
Misses:
• The art is less dynamic than previous games based on the same IP.
• Not all characters are created equal, and some aren’t as useful to gameplay.
Source: Board Game Quest
