Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 60 min
Age requirements: 13+
Set-up time: 5 min

Kaosball: the Sport of Total Domination is a sports miniature game of bluffing, area-control, and luck.

Kaosball Rules Description:

You start Kaosball by choosing your team. There are four teams in the base game and each has a different stat line and special power. You may also purchase other teams to add more variety to your games.

You also get 12 dollars to spend in an auction and seven cards. Up for auction are team upgrades and wringers. Upgrades help your team score points, get more cash or even re-roll dice. Wringers are free agents that gain your team’s special power and can both handle the ball and tackle other players. They also have a unique special ability.

Besides wringers you have two types of players, bruisers and runners. Runners can score with the ball and bruisers can attack or tackle your opponent’s players.

After the auction the game begins with the ball in the center of the field. Orthogonally adjacent to it are four scoring mounds. If you start the round with a runner figure holding the ball on a scoring mound you score points equal to the current period (one through four). There is also a scoring mound worth five points on the opposite side of the board from your team’s start position.

On your turn you can play a tactic card or activate one figure. Tactic cards can help you place walls or fire on the field, move twice your speed, or cycle your cards. Most also let you activate a player. When you activate a player you either, sprint, attack or tackle. The sprint action lets you move 5 spaces and then runners may steal the ball. Attacking another player may damage or kill them. And tackling will knock them down for the rest of the period.

When you attempt to steal, attack or tackle there is a contest. During a contest each player secretly selects an energy or cheat card to play. Energy cards are numbered one to five and add to your handling (for stealing), attack or tackling stat. Once you play a specific number you cannot play it again for the period. Well you can but it counts as a zero. There is also an upset energy card that is worth zero or an auto-win if your opponent played an energy card of four or more. If you tie your opponent in a contest the current player rolls a die that has plusses and minuses that will break the tie.

Cheating cards can increase your stats even higher than five or force your opponent to play his card face up. At the end of the period you must bribe the refs if you cheated. It costs one dollar for each cheat card you played. If you don’t have enough money to pay for all your cheats you might get fouls. The player(s) with the most fouls loses points at the end of the half and end of the game.

After activating your player you draw back up to seven cards and play proceeds clockwise.

All the cards you play are placed in front of you. A period ends once one player ends their turn with nine or more cards in front of them. The other players get one last turn and then the period ends. You discard your played cards and draw back to seven cards.

At the end of each period any runners score if they are on scoring mounds, regardless of whether they have the ball. At halftime you also reset your players on your line of scrimmage and score for having the most kills or lose points for the most fouls. In a three or four player game the second most and third most kills and fouls matter too.

Quick Review of Kaosball:

Kaosball is a fun miniature sports game with a lot of tactical options. You must bluff and get lucky to dominate. It plays quick and is fairly easy to explain and play.

The components for this game are really nice. The miniatures look cool and the chits are all highly produced. The player teams may be warped a bit but should flatten out under a stack of books. The rules are fairly well-written and have a great table of contents. You can download the FAQ here. The upgrade tokens are magnetic and stick the team boards which is really cool. The art is a bit racy as there are a lot of well-endowed women on the box and in the rules.

I like how the energy cards work and how contests are resolved. You can try to bluff opponents or just hope wear down their hand. With upset cards and cheats you never know quite what to expect.

Kaosball is pretty easy to teach. I do think veteran players will do better than noobs. But the learning curve is not too steep and the rules can be explained five to ten minutes. Many board games (sport-themed especially) cannot be explained so quickly.

Matching upgrades to teams and adding the right wringers makes the auction really fun and interesting. You have to be aware of how much cash you spend if you plan to cheat.

I also like how quickly this game plays. There can be some analysis paralysis that sets in but most turns happen quickly and there is little downtime.

There are a couple things I wish were different about the game. It can be a bit too luck-driven. And mostly I am talking about the cards you get. There is one tactic card that you cycle your hand but if you don’t get it you are stuck. This can be very frustrating.

I am not sure the base teams are very balanced either. The amazons are able to attack and threaten diagonally and this gives them greater flexibility and makes them very deadly.

Also for being a sports game the ball doesn’t matter too much. This is especially true early on when scoring at the beginning of each round only gets you one point and puts a huge target on your player.

Kaosball is a fun medium weight sports game. It is not as involved as DreadBall or Blood Bowl but plays faster and is easier to teach. If you are looking for a sports game that plays up to four pretty quickly give this one a try. You can even download the league rules and give them a try here.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 3 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6