Thrills and Chills twists and turns Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: Epic Alliances with several cool changes

Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: Epic Alliances continues to expand with the Thrills and Chills expansion, introducing three new heroes and some cool mechanics.

As a board game enthusiast and a Disney fanatic, I’ve got to say that the core game is an absolute gem. In a nutshell, Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: Epic Alliances – Thrills & Chills is a magical journey that brings Disney’s enchantment and strategic gameplay together seamlessly. The attention to detail in the artwork, along with the character development is incredible: The abilities of each character are closely matched to their personalities and individual stories which makes the play more immersive.

It’s one for the strategy lovers. The complexity of working as an alliance, keeping your characters out of harm’s way, whilst strategically placing them so they can attack other characters all on the mission to receive victory points quickly gets the hooks in. Thrills and Chills builds on that with different movements, actions, skills, and upgrades for each of the three new characters in this expansion pack — there are now so many characters that each time you play, it feels like a whole new game.

The “Thrills & Chills” expansion brings about the addition of two villains: The Horned King and Mother Gothel and a hero: Jack Skellington. When playing with The Horned King, he has a new mechanic: the cauldron! When played properly, this can play havoc with your opponent’s game plan. Jack Skellington also comes with a new status effect: Afraid, which forces a character on your opponent’s team to take a movement face and receive damage if it ends up next to a rival. Mother Gothel also bring some great unique traits, receiving stealthy status effects often, preventing her from receiving damage, and creating problems for princess characters.

We praised the core game’s onboarding when we reviewed it earlier this year: “This forward-thinking continues to the instruction booklet, which has you playing simple versions of the game, adding in a few mechanics each round, until you get to the highest level and are playing the full game with skills and a good understanding. This tutorialisation of the board game feels very welcome, especially to those who are new to strategy games!”

Overall the addition of the new characters and the extra rules that came with them gave the game a real extra level of replayability.

I particularly enjoyed Jack Skellington’s Afraid rule. On the other hand, as good as The Horned King’s cauldron is for blocking hexagons from your opponent, it lacks any real use. I would have liked to see some more rules specifically for the cauldron maybe something that would allow them to attack once and then be removed.

I like the idea of Mother Gothel targeting ‘Princess’ types for bonuses and I really see this as a mechanic that could feature in the future to give extra bonuses for ally characters with the same types or extra strength against opposite typing for example a Hero would be stronger against a villain and visa versa.

Whether you’re a Disney geek, a strategy enthusiast, or just on the hunt for a game that guarantees hours of fun, the Thrills & Chills expansion for Epic Alliances is one for you.

Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: Epic Alliances Thrills and Chills is available now.

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