Robotech: Force of Arms

After Robotech RPG Tactics, any game carrying this IP arrives with a perfectly reasonable burden of suspicion. Force of Arms looks like the harmless little option: tidy, quick, and covered in Robotech units. But the theme is pasted on, and the identical decks remove even the bit of flavour that might have propped it up.

Each player takes the same fixed deck of units and spends several rounds placing cards face down into a 3x3 grid. There is no decorative machinery around it: choose a space, conceal the plan, and fill the small matrix.

Once the grid is complete, cards score from the sums at their edges. It is a spare idea, and one that ought to produce a brisk contest of anticipation. Instead, the matching decks make for a peculiarly dry puzzle, where a draw feels less like a climax than a factory setting.

The first two games both finished 8–8, and a later game drew too, with all the inevitability that implies. It is quick and it contains a little thought. Credit where it is reluctantly due. As a game in its own right, though, it is spectacularly middling: a symmetrical filler that does its job, then politely directs you towards the better games in the line.

Updated session

The later play did not alter the verdict. Against a younger player it worked as a short, accessible introduction to the line's basic rules, but the speed, the modest thinking space, and another predictable draw gave Force of Arms no additional personality.