Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: Epic Alliances – Turning the Tide expansion review – No punch backs when you get a little wet and a little cursed.

I was pleasantly surprised when I first cracked open the original Disney Sorcerer’s Arena: Epic Alliances game and got it on the table with my wife. As a Disney fan, I have generally been disappointed in the cutesy games that surround the entertainment giant. The skirmish nature of the Arena, however, has led to some hurt feelings and raucous laughter and hit the table many times. With the surface only scratched with the core set, publisher The Op, comes with the first of many expansions with Turning the Tide.

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. Turning the Tide introduces players to three water themed characters with the “Oceanic” trait from a wide range of the Disney canon. 

Moana employs an ability to put out water tiles on the board for her and her fellow oceanic teammates to use. When moving through a water tile, oceanic characters get an extra space of movement across the board. This can really move a character across the board when you have all three available tiles lined up. When upgraded, Moana can rearrange the top two cards of her deck. Moana’s deck relies on having ocean tiles on the board and optimizes attacks, healing, and movement when they are on the board. Having other oceanic allies use the tiles can slow her down a bit if certain cards enter the fray.

Stitch is kind of wild and all over the place. He gets powered up by damage and has a special ability to discard cards to remove status effects. When upgraded, and when using some card abilities, Stitch is able to assign a new “No Punchbacks” effect, essentially stopping a damaged character from being able to retaliate. A lot of Stitch’s cards have varying effects depending on the amount of damage he deals or the number of hearts he has. These varying effects are reminiscent of the craziness of the character in the movie.

The only villain of the bunch and my favorite character in this expansion, Davy Jones uses the curse status to his advantage and has the ability to curse his allies and regain health when cursed allies deal damage. When upgraded, Davy Jones can “Summon the Kraken” and deal damage to characters adjacent to any space on the board he chooses. His deck is filled with cards that curse and exploit allies and rivals with the cursed status. 

As a team, the three characters worked well together. However, with only one other oceanic character from the core game, there are not a lot of options for oceanic synergy outside of this expansion. When it comes to production, I again will complain about the card quality and the easy bending. I have immediately started sleeving these cards due to the amount of shuffling that takes place and the feel of the cards in my hand. My copy was also missing a Davy Jones figure, however, the Op was very swift in sending me a replacement through their customer service portal online. With the new status condition, when playing characters from the expansions, players will need the instructions handy instead of only relying on the reference on the back of the manual.

Overall, this was a fun expansion with Davy Jones being my standout. I am still excited by this game and find it to be palatable for a wide range of age groups. With new status effects, tiles, and constant abilities being added in this first expansion, I can foresee storage problems and the need for compiled rule books in the future. Until then, I will continue to get this to the table when needing a fun skirmish.

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