Radiant: Offline Battle Arena

I’ll say it upfront: the designer is a friend of mine, but that does not change the fact that a great deal of work has gone into Radiant. It is another PvP card game, this time with the familiar MOBA theme: heroes hacking away at one another across different lanes.

The heart of the game is that clash between heroes and the attempt to make the most of your choices within the lanes. This is not simply a game where you throw cards down and hope: the match brings strategies to the surface, and the balancing seems to have been handled carefully.

Interaction is necessarily direct and competitive, as befits a PvP battle arena. But for the game’s real strengths to emerge, you need someone across the table who knows it as well, so that a strong metagame can develop rather than the two of you merely playing alongside each other.

That is also my main reservation: like many games in this genre, Radiant shines with a dedicated opponent. Thankfully, the box includes everything twice, so if you have a regular fellow combatant, the investment of time can pay off handsomely. If you change opponents every time, though, I would probably look elsewhere, toward Siegestorm, Warchest, Undaunted, and similar options.