The Coliseum

[Velrun]

The Coliseum is a deck-builder board game using cube cards for anything from 2 to 8 players. The players start with low-powered cards but will slowly unlock better cards as the tournament progresses while also leveling their character up to gain abilities that function both in combat and between games. Link to the visual spoiler:

https://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/66309

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The tournament begins with each player getting three random Race cards to choose from. They pick one and will keep that race for the rest of the tournament. They could look like this



Most race has only a single ability that works during games and a focus ability that works outside games. Each race has some specific medium or high-powered cards attached that the player adds to their starting low-powered deck which then equals their starting 40 cards deck.

After the players are done with their race selection, the first game begins. All games are 1v1. After each game, all players will enter the board game part of the cube called the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is kind of a world map that all players have access to and it is the same for everyone. The Kingdom is a grid of 40 custom cards called buildings. The grid has 8 rows and 5 columns.



I am so, so sorry about the poor drawing Better picture incoming soon!

Each square is a building. Buildings are face down unless they have been turned face up. Whenever a building is purchased, each adjacent face down building is turned face up in all four cross directions (up, down, left, right) but not diagonal. Players may usually own the same buildings and all players begin the tournament with two starting buildings. Let's take a look at the two starting buildings.



Castle gives gold which is the ressource you spend to buy new buildings. Each building costs 1 gold unless it says otherwise. When the players are in Kingdom they may buy new buildings for the gold they have and they can use those buildings to power grow in various ways. When a building becomes yours, you put your marker on it. Players may only buy buildings adjacent to buildings they already own.

Barracks is the way you're getting new cards. It uses the mana symbols in the upper right corner of your race + your class (Players can also get classes besides their race later in the tournament). The race examples above each have two land symbols and three colored symbols.

Players may activate each building they own once each Kingdom visit.

Whenever all players are done with Kingdom, the next game begins. The winner of the tournament is the last man standing. How many games you have to lose in order to get knocked out varies from tournament to tournament depending on what the players want.

 

[Velrun]

I used to be a custom card fanatic But now we use custom cards as a way to describe the rules instead and special abilities the players can have. We prefer custom rules over custom cards. The custom cards that are still in the cube are the ones that are specifically related to the rules of The Coliseum.





We also have a few cards that have altered mana cost


"Bruna at 6 mana is playable but still below par. However it is now attractive to run both Gisela and Bruna again if you happen to draft both."

These cards are in the cube as real Magic cards with a super slim sticker at the top right corner below the original mana cost.

 

[Velrun]

This is no longer relevant

Here is how The Kingdom used to look. We used to call it The Town and it would be an enormous playmat that looks like this.



This had instructions on what to do once you were sitting outside and spectating the other players. We no longer use The Town because we have switched to The Kingdom and buildings.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Can you explain to me how your Potion mechanic works? It looks pretty interesting.

 

[Velrun]

Can you explain to me how your Potion mechanic works? It looks pretty interesting.

Yes of course I will The potion mechanic you are referring to is the one we have on the talent card called ‘Alchemy’ which is a level 1 talent. It is the only card in the cube that creates potions. You find it about 50 % of the way down if you click on the link above.



Each player may only have up to 1 race, up to 1 class and up to 1 talent which means they will have to abandon their level 1 Alchemy if they want another talent later during that tournament.

Almost all talents have an activated ability that can be activated only once each game. This specific talent has an activated ability called ‘Brew’ which creates a custom card that gets put into the player’s hand. Here is how it works:

Shuffle the 5-card deck of Prefix ingredients and reveal the top 2 cards.
Shuffle the 5-card deck of suffix ingredients and reveal the top 2 cards.

Then choose 1 prefix and 1 suffix card. Meld them into a custom card called Alchemist’s Potion. Put that card into your hand. Alchemist’s Potion has a mana cost, a suspend cost and two abilities. It is an instant.

Thank you for asking and sorry about the late reply.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Yes of course I will The potion mechanic you are referring to is the one we have on the talent card called ‘Alchemy’ which is a level 1 talent. It is the only card in the cube that creates potions. You find it about 50 % of the way down if you click on the link above.

View attachment 2904

Each player may only have up to 1 race, up to 1 class and up to 1 talent which means they will have to abandon their level 1 Alchemy if they want another talent later during that tournament.

Almost all talents have an activated ability that can be activated only once each game. This specific talent has an activated ability called ‘Brew’ which creates a custom card that gets put into the player’s hand. Here is how it works:

Shuffle the 5-card deck of Prefix ingredients and reveal the top 2 cards.
Shuffle the 5-card deck of suffix ingredients and reveal the top 2 cards.

Then choose 1 prefix and 1 suffix card. Meld them into a custom card called Alchemist’s Potion. Put that card into your hand. Alchemist’s Potion has a mana cost, a suspend cost and two abilities. It is an instant.

Thank you for asking and sorry about the late reply.

That's ok! I'm interested to see if I can adapt some form of the prefix-suffix idea to my own projects in the future. It looks really fun!

 

[Velrun]

We've added an energy mana symbol to each building that has an ability that you may activate during each Kingdom visit.
In our experience some players would sometimes find it difficult to understand which buildings had activated abilities and which were passive bonuses.



Before on the left side. After on the right. The energy symbol has no effect but is just there to help players spot the buildings that can be activated each Kingdom visit.

 

[Velrun]

We're introducing 'walls' to the Kingdom. (The Kingdom is the world map that all players visit between games simultanously in order to power up before the next round of Magic.)

The walls cannot be penetrated = Players cannot purchase buildings outside the walls. The new building Drawbridge can undo this. Here is the new Kingdom world map (sorry about the hand-painted quality)





In the middle you see Castle and Barracks; the two starting buildings that all players begin the tournament with.
Around the two starting buildings, there are 10 empty spaces. Five of those buildings are random and the other five are Shrine, Fountain, Dungeon, Torture Chamber and now also Drawbridge. The 10 cards are shuffled and place face down (but 6 of them are turned face up again because they are adjecent to Castle and Barracks in either left, right, up or down direction)





As you can see the Drawbridge has an ENERGY symbol which means it can be activated once on every Kingdom visit, which is once between each game of Magic. This should lead to a situation where you can't simply expand your Kingdom in every direction you'd like but have to semi carefully choose which directions you'd like to expand. When a wall is removed, it is removed for all players which means you're also helping your opponents whenever you remove a wall.

Buildings inside the walls can only cost 0 or 1 gold to purchase.
Buildings outside the walls can cost anything from 0 to 3 gold to purchase.