We’re selling Cage Match! The MMA Fight Game on Amazon for only $25 which includes free shipping. We’re getting some good feedback from players on Board Game Geek, from reviewers on BGG and elsewhere. If you haven’t bought the game yet, we are not likely to offer free shipping (for Prime members) through Amazon for much longer.
If you have bought it and played it, let us know what you think!
- Leave a rating and review on Amazon!
- Give a rating on Board Game Geek.
- Leave a comment here!
If you’re here strictly for Epic Duels and Unmatched, we’ve got some new LOTRED decks going, and some action on the The Mandalorian for Unmatched, check it out!
Looks like I missed the deal.
Our $20 deal went really fast The $25 deal with free shipping is still really good and will only be available for another month or so.
I wish I had a good excuse as to why it’s taken so for me long to write this, but I’ve just been lazy. 😛 Anyway, after about a month-and-half of playing, here are my thoughts on the game.
What I like:
-Simply put, it’s fun! It’s a well done, fast, light strategy game, which can have some truly epic moments (especially in the ground fights). For being a little strategy game it’s very enjoyable and I’m usually up for playing several fights in a row.
-Great component quality. Everything looks and feels great from the art, to the stands, to the action pads everything is top notch, which is especially amazing considering the price point. I honestly, only have one real negative about the components that I’ll get into below.
-It’s easy to introduce to others. I can go through the rules in about 5 or so minutes and after just a couple of plays most people “get it”. Unless the person is turned off by the theme I can easily see this becoming a great introductory game to the wider gaming community (like Epic Duels was for me).
What I Don’t Like:
-The score pad. Eh, I guess it works and is fine, but I’d like something both more visually interesting and reusable. Like maybe instead you have an actual board, that has an aerial view of a cage with the health still on the bottom and top, but the game comes with more blood cubes so you can track the health with those instead of using the pencil (honestly, I sometimes use LEGO pieces for this). Again, not a deal breaker, but could’ve been better IMO.
-The fighters are kind of “eh”. Maybe, it’s because I’m not the biggest MMA fan, but I haven’t found myself inputting any character or history into any of the fighters. Usually the fighters are just a different bonus or maybe they have a special move that I really like (Suzuki’s Whirlwind Kick is a favorite of mine), but it feels less like I’m picking a character and more like I’m just picking a bonus or move set. In one session, me and the person I was playing against had a lot more fun imaging that we were the fighters. And not really a pro or con, but on a related note, I’ve found it more fun to mix-and-match the fighters regardless of gender, which occasionally runs into the problem of two people wanting to play the fighters on the back and front of the same card, although I guess the easy fix to that is just to buy another copy of the game, so maybe this isn’t a problem. 😛
-I could also add that I ran into some rulesy questions early on, but your FAQ cleared those up nicely.
All in all, great job Roman! This is a really good game and one that’s really growing on me. I can see this hitting my table more often then a lot of big title games.
And if you know me, you know I was going to bring this up. Fan made content! I remember seeing you and Obi-Wan John talking on the wiki and you mentioned something about how Mortal Kombat characters would be a good fit for this game. So sitting here thinking about it, I’d have a lot more fun shouting before a match either “I’M PLAYING SCORPION! GET OVER HERE!” Than, “I’m playing Bruan Ferreira!” Of course, I need some more experience with the game and all the different fighters before I’d take on a project like that, but it is on my radar.
Awesome, thanks so much for checking it out! It sounds like you’re having fun, which is great to hear.
– Most important, PLEASE leave a short, positive review at Amazon and BGG (thanks for already showing up there).
– Your feedback on the fighters is so far unique. Most people like them, and many (though not all) are based on actual MMA fighters that are fairly easy to identify. Mainly, each brings some new moves and theme to the table, whether it’s a Flying Knee or an Arm Bar. I considered adding a history for each character but I’d rather let players develop their own narratives.
– Your feedback on the score pad is not so unique. It works, but we might have to figure something out for the next print run.
– I’ve played or witnessed hundreds of games but have never once seen the genders mix, but there’s no reason you can’t do it. However, as the sport itself always keeps the genders separate, I went ahead and double-sided the character sheets. So yeah, just buy another copy 😉
– I pushed hard for nice components, and am glad you appreciate that.
So your last comments invite this question, and please be honest, which you don’t seem to have any issues with providing: What do you think of this game engine, the “mat and screen,” rock-paper-scissors combat system? For any 1v1 game like a Mortal Kombat, which we’re both fans of, this is the system I’d prefer to even Epic Duels because to me, ED and Unmatched shine in 2v2 play. I think the Cage Match system could work with Star Wars characters (and even have some made), Marvel characters — you name it.
-Yeah, I get what you’re saying about the fighters, but I think my feedback on this and my mixing of genders speaks to where I’m coming from in relation to the theme. I mean I used to practice martial arts when I was younger and I really like martial arts fighting in movies and TV, but I wouldn’t really consider myself a fan of MMA as a sport (or any sport for that matter, but that’s a story for another day). For me, the theme is like, “Ah, cool fighting!” But, it’s my love of light strategy game that really draws me to the game.
-On the game engine itself, I do really like it, but with the caveat that I think you need something else going on to make it really “pop”. In the case of Cage Match that’s the focus tokens and the ground fighting. I think Star Wars characters would be really cool in this system if it was a lightsaber fighting game (not that Mace, Maul, and Grievous wouldn’t be intimidating hand-to-hand fighters), but it wouldn’t make sense to have the ground game in something like that.
If I remember correctly, the final Cage Match was a “simplified” version of the original game you designed right? Maybe, if you took that game and put the Star Wars theme over it, it would work, but for this current system you need something else (IMO) going on to really make it work.
And I’ll see about getting reviews up on Amazon and BGG. 😉
Yeah I think it’s true that a game that’s essentially rock paper scissors with hit points isn’t enough, you have to add some wrinkles. Star Wars characters would have Force instead of Focus, and 4 special moves instead of 2 specials and 2 combos, but is that enough without the ground game wrinkle to be an engaging game?
More specials does sound good; after all Jedi and Sith do have a lot of force moves they can use. I’m not sure if all that is enough to make an engaging game, but I think it’s at least worth trying out.