Exiled Projectiles: Reviewing 'Rise of the Exiled'

The lines are drawn. Figures stand on two sides of the battlefield rearing to wage war, pulse pumping, armed with a variety of deadly devices. A call comes out across the eerie silence signaling the time to attack. The sky is blackened with an assortment of flying weapons colliding into each other, littering the ground below. Some fly short of their targets. Some meet their mark. Screams are heard from wounded warriors. Some advance, some retreat. Only one side will come out alive.

Rise of the Exiled is a fantasy throwing card game by J&E Innovations that enables anywhere from 2-12 players of all ages to launch all out war against each other across the dining room table. You may think that sounds familiar and like you've done that before on certain holidays or the majority of many day to day dinners, but let me clarify that, in my experience, Rise of the Exiled is unlike any other game I have played. It is a game that has managed to stay extremely simple, easy accessible, and entertaining for all types of gamers across the spectrum while being able to stand out from other games out there.

Rise of the Exiled features a super simplistic concept. You choose a character to play as, each with their own unique weapon(s) as well as some special abilities listed on the back of their character cards. The weapon cards associated with the character are on clear plastic cards. Everyone breaks apart into teams, and the players familiarize themselves with their specific abilities and weapons. From there, everything is generally the same across the board. Players place their character cards on the table, ready their weapons, secretly choose their targets, and simultaneously attack each other by tossing the clear plastic cards across the table at the opposing team's characters. Players must release their cards from the position of their character card on the table. Once weapons land, players gather up any weapons that missed the mark and any weapon cards that made contact with a character card are scored. In most cases, a weapon that overlaps with a character's legs or arms does 1 damage. If it overlaps with their body, it does 2 damage. If it overlaps with their head, the weapon does 3 damage. Each character has a total health of 7. After everyone marks their damage and gathers their weapons, the movement phase begins which allows all characters to move one card length in any direction (diagonally and orthogonally). Players can therefore get closer to their targets or retreat further away as long as the table has the space to let them do so. And the game is as simple as that.

There are some variations to the normal game mechanics related to the character's special abilities. For instance, one player uses a cat-of-nine-tails weapon. For this weapon, every tip of the weapon that touches a player's character card anywhere does 1 damage. Another character has armor with spikes coming up off her shoulder. If a player's weapon hits those spikes, she actually deals damage back at them and she can even throw her weapon on to her own card to cause even more damage to be deflected back on the attacker. Overall, it is these special abilities that really up the flavor of the game. Some characters have more than one weapon that act differently, some can skip their movement phase to do extra damage, and one of my favorites can actually blot out the sky twice per game where all players have to close their eyes during the card throwing phase.

I honestly wasn't sure what to think about Rise of the Exiled prior to receiving it. It seemed kind of goofy and light but appealing, and honestly it is all of those things. There were a lot of laughs when we played this game, and I really like how you don't really know who everyone is aiming at. I was also very surprised by the number of in-air card collisions. There were many times I was confident about my aim only to have my weapon deflected in mid air by the enemy.

I will admit to a few flaws in my experience, mostly to do with our skill level at throwing slick plastic cards across a dinner table surface. This game would work much, much better on an actual gaming table with a raised lip around the playing area and felt or some other material giving more of a grip to where your card lands. There were many times where our cards would fall short of a player card and slide across knocking the weapon we threw and the character we were targeting off the surface of the table. Obviously, we would assume that no damage occurred, but we'd have to guess where to put the character on the table after. Much of this was left to house ruling. Thematically, did the character run from the weapon? Do they start back at the edge of the battlefield? Then there were the characters that got pushed but didn't fall of the table. Do they remain in the new position and move from there? Do you put them back to the best of your ability where they were before they were pushed? Then there was a time when a player from the opposing team hit my teammate's weapon in the air and sent it back onto my card. I thought it was hilarious and totally think friendly fire should be a thing. J&E Innovations are still working on rule clarifications as well as variants, so we'll see what the final review says on these things.

Many of the characters and weapons are different sizes as well making some of characters easier to hit and weapons easier to hit with while others are easier to dodge attacks and harder to hit targets with their weapons. Personally, I feel this was an intentional design choice to give strengths and weaknesses to certain characters, but considering how hard it can be to actually hit another character card the first round or so you play (we ended up ruling our first game a sudden death mode because we had such trouble hitting each other!), I feel that the bigger characters are often going to get targeted more. If you are playing with the full health in mind, you also may need to provide some way for everyone to track their health as, currently, there is no feature in the game to allow for this.

All in all, WYLD Gaming enjoyed Rise of the Exiled. It's simplistic rule set, fast paced action, creative variability, and unpredictable chaos made for a fun filler game that can be played to add something a little bit different to a game night while waiting between heavier games. It is especially more fun with higher player counts and multiple teams. I can see this being a very easy game to teach a non-gamer or a young child who wants to join in the fun. Rise of the Exiled is currently running on Kickstarter and ends it's campaign on August the 31st. It is priced at a very affordable $18 and can be backed at their link here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/246157170/rise-of-the-exiled?ref=baey7z.

Please note, this is a review of a game that is in pre-production meaning some mechanics, appearances, rules, and other components may change. WYLD Gaming was provided this copy for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated in any manner, nor were their words, results, or review scores influenced in any way by anyone outside of the author's own opinions and perspective. If you've enjoyed this review, we encourage you to share it with others to help WYLD Gaming get similar opportunities in the future while also helping the game being reviewed get more attention for their Kickstarter campaign. Thank you!