Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: At The Ready expansion review – Be our guest and let’s get down to business in Sherwood Forest.

The Op is back with the fourth expansion Disney Sorcerers Arena: Epic Alliances with At The Ready. Sorcerer’s Arena is a 2 or 4 player game where teams of magic users from the Disney universe are battling each other to gain supremacy. Throughout the game, characters use different abilities from special decks, navigate player conditions, and try to gain enough points to meet their win condition before the other team. You can check out an overview and review of the core game here. 

At The Ready introduces players to three new characters in: Mrs. Potts, Mulan, and Robin Hood. Each of these characters relies upon their deck of cards and abilities without the introduction of any new rules or status effects as in other expansions. A continuing addition is the introduction of constant abilities.

Mrs. Potts is an interesting addition to the character line up due to her low attack value and reward for getting knocked out. Her skills and constant abilities allow the player to manipulate the deck and rearrange cards. When upgraded, Mrs. Potts will give victory points for each character on a crown space. Her deck is really about relying on the positions and actions of other characters on the board. When her cards are discarded, they all give the player abilities to heal, draw cards, earn victory points, or remove status effects, giving Mrs. Potts a great supporting role.

Mulan is a character who shows leadership and can support her team in a variety of ways. Mulan has two skills that allow her to deal damage when an enemy is surrounded by other allies, and healing adjacent allies. When upgraded, Mulan gains a large amount of the Tough status and can use the markers to reduce damage on herself and her allies. Mulan’s deck truly shines when she can empower and move her allies around the board. Her attack cards are useful as well and can also give her the Tough status to take extra damage.

Robin Hood was the character I was the most excited about. I mean, who doesn’t love anthropomorphic outlaw heroes? His skill allows him to discard certain cards to add range to his attacks and his constant ability gains him stealthy when earning a victory point. When upgraded, Robin Hood will steal from a rival with more victory points than him when doing damage for the first time each round. In a similar fashion, many of Robin’s attacks allow him advantages when going up against a rival who is richer, by virtue of their victory points. Many of Robin’s cards hold ranged attacks and ways to earn the stealthy status effect.

Overall, this group of characters adds some fun elements to the game. Each of the characters is powered up by manipulating their allies or their rivals. This brings a fun element into the game when using these characters with other expansions and the core set. Mulan being able to manipulate movement of characters can help deal deadly attacks when surrounding enemies. Robin Hood can slowly steal points away from another player while other allies can go in for larger chunks of points. As a team themselves, they didn’t mesh overly well, but are great additions to other character combinations. It felt like the card quality has improved on this new expansion, but since I’ve had to sleeve others, I can’t relish in the improved quality. Despite the small flaws, this is a great expansion to synergize teams from the previous pantheon of released sorcerers.

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