REVIEW: Borderlands: Mr. Torgue’s Arena of Badassery Board Game

Hello, traveler!

Recently, Gaming Trend has been covering a lot of Borderlands, including Borderlands 4 and an interview with Monster Fight Club’s John Goodenough. With Monster Fight Club’s (MFC) new, upcoming campaign on Game Found for Borderlands: Mister Torgue's Arena of Badassery 2, we thought it would be an excellent time to cover Borderlands: Mr. Torgue’s Arena Board Game. If you haven’t had a chance to play yet or have considered backing the newest edition, then read on!

Borderlands: Mr. Torgue’s Arena of Badassery

Monster Fight Club’s Borderlands: Mr. Torgue’s Arena of Badassery is a co-operative, campaign–driven, dungeon-crawling, looter-shooter for the tabletop! Part miniature game, part board game, the game itself is a chaotic, enthralling dive into the world of Pandora. Fully funded on Kickstarter back in 2021, the game is an homage to the looting-shooting campaigns of the games, set within a variation of the arena combat of Borderlands 2’s Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage DLC.

In the board game, four Vault Hunters take on waves of enemies to complete a scenario’s objective, with dice-rolling combat, chaotic enemy drops, and loot tokens along the way. While players can play single scenarios, the framework of the game is designed to be a campaign where players play a series of scenarios during which they gain better guns and abilities. There is a smattering of enemies, loads of weapons and gear to loot, and a game mechanic  (the [RE]action dice system) that, when blended together, helps capture the chaos of Borderlands combat in a way that works for the tabletop.

Players can choose Vault Hunters from any game to play, and can even select some NPC characters like Tiny Tina and Moxxi. Enemies range from the standard bandits and psychos, to the Claptraps of their (failed) revolution, all the way to the Psychoreaver and Ravenous Wattle Gobbler. This also means the guns, grenades, and equipment comes from the different games as well!  

At its core, the game is designed to give you an impression of the games, not be a one-to-one comparison. Video Game-to-board game adaptations can be fraught with challenges and leave players asking themselves, “Why wouldn’t I just play the game instead?” From my experience, I walked away from the missions asking myself, “Why haven’t I played more of this?”

I backed the Kickstarter in full, and so I had access to all of the Vault Hunters, enemy spawns, loot, scenarios, and 3d terrain for this review. If you didn’t get a chance to back the Kickstarter or only have the Core Box, you can find the full catalogue on Monster Fight Club’s website, including the Core Box, Box of Badasses (which includes all of the other Vault Hunters), 3D objects, and rulebooks!

Monster Fight Club’s Borderlands® Collection

This is a group of all Monster Fight Club products that are part of the Borderlands® world!

Monster Fight Club

The Miniatures

For what you get the box for, the miniatures are of pretty decent quality. They’re soft plastic, kind of the standard for board games. Vault Hunters come in gray plastic, and their sidekicks (Bloodwing, turrets, big mechs, digi-clones, etc.) come in clear blue. Most enemies come in the orange plastic; skags come in purple, and the claptraps come in yellow. The 3d terrain, which is optional, comes in an orange-brown or a gray plastic, depending on what set/expansions you get.

Overall, the miniatures have a good amount of detail and are sturdy (for those of us who are butterfingers and drop minis way more often than they’d care to admit). Some minis may show up warped, but that’s an easy fix with warm water. 

If you haven’t already, check out our Learn to Paint: Borderlands article if you’re interested in quickly painting up your Vault Hunters (and Psychos!) for the table. These miniatures lend themselves to being given some quick painting techniques, which can really enhance your play experience.

The Cards & Tokens

The Core box alone has over 400 cards and over 20 different kinds of tokens. This covers all of the [RE]action tokens, status effects, loot, scenario, etc., tokens you’d need for the game. 

The Vault Hunter cards are designed to match the general skills and abilities of their character within the game. The Vault Hunters have some base stats on their card, which are added to by one of the three skill tree options, which you can switch between in game (kind of like doing a Respec in the video game). The enemies, while similar in stats for things like attack, movement, and health, don't have the [RE]action tokens and instead have some extra abilities for when you fumble an attack against them.

Playthrough

Setup

Even though the board may be small, you’re going to need a lot of space for your characters and gear, the decks of guns and equipment, enemies to spawn in, the Announcement row, rulebooks, a dice tray, tokens, and your beverage of choice. Because the game is so fast-paced, it’s really important to keep your area clean and organized so you can quickly add or remove tokens and figures as play progresses. I would recommend at least 3’x3’ or a little larger - we played on an old Star Wars X-wing Miniatures game mat.

Scenario 1: Explosive Extravaganza

The beginning seems like a very good place to start, so we started with the first scenario. We used the Borderlands 2 characters: Axton, Zer0, Maya, and Salvador. Once we got all set up, we were ready to rock and roll [insert Mr. Torque’s guitar solo impersonation]. Before we rolled out into the field, we discussed how we were going to focus on sections or groups to grab the bombs to detonate the zones. Additionally, we also wanted to grab a lot of loot, so we made sure to collect the loot tokens as quickly as we could. We moved as a unit, starting combat with the pieces that were most likely to hit/deal damage the easiest (using our [RE]action tokens!) and then went down the line from there.

Best laid plans, right? Our first round went great - we removed a ton of enemies, grabbed loot, survived the enemy wave, and… then drew the event card for the Announcement deck. This spawned in a Psychoreaver. Now, fortunately, all we had to do was one point of damage to remove him from the board, but the fact that an end-game boss entered the fray in Round 2 of the 1st scenario was a serious WTF moment. It’s totally random which event cards come in and how the announcements happen, and this is the event that just so happened to be pulled.

Having this monstrosity on the board really put the pressure on us; we didn’t have great ways to deal damage to hit him because we had starting weapons, and we still had the objective to play. Fortunately, between Axton and Zer0, they made short work of the remaining enemies. Salvador was pretty useless until he got his second gun (which he needed for his ability), so it was up to Maya to land a hit on the Psychoreaver. After two dice rolls, she finally got it!

After such a brutal round, we all gained a ton of confidence in our tactics, and we proceeded to wipe the board clean. We even had time to spare to get the vending machine tokens to have extra loot to draw from. To put it mildly, we crushed that first round; Psychoreaver and all. This game is pure dice-rolling chaos, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Between Scenarios

For those who like inventory management and character building, this part of the game is really well done and honestly a lot more fun than I thought. The scenario rewards players with a Level token to use for their skill tree. Additionally, when drawing from the vending machine decks, we got to place out additional cards because of the vending machine tokens we collected in the first scenario. This gave us more options and a distinct advantage for building out our characters. We scored a lot of loot and guns in the scenario, which we were able to freely trade between characters. Salvador and Zer0 got some sweet gear, so between their loadout and skill tree, they were ready to wreck in Scenario 2. Axton and Maya were able to upgrade their guns as well, but the vending machine draws really favored Salvador and Zer0.

Once we were happy with the new loadouts, we set up for Scenario 2!

Scenario 2: Divide and Slaughter

Feeling confident from our first scenario, we wasted no time in moving out into the field. Our objective was to blow up two Hive Spires, which released two Goliaths. With the new weapons, our tactics and dice rolling really leaned in our favor. However, in Round 3, the event card activated the Slaughterlight! This added a nice little boost to the enemies, forcing us to change tactics. Axton was caught out in the open (well, the enemies spawned behind him, unfortunately), so he suffered some wounds and ended up fighting for his life. While that did cost us some spending money afterwards, it really wasn’t that big of a deal. We farmed a lot of enemies, got a ton of loot and money, and even ended up getting another level token for everyone. While Salvador laid down the fire, Zer0’s consistent enemy KOs cleared the field for Maya and Axton to loot and take on the objectives. The Goliaths went down in a single round, despite them being active during the Slaughterlight. 

To Be Continued…

We got some solid weapons from the endgame vending machines, and between them and what we scored from the board, we felt our characters were really ready for the next round. That’s where we left it, but we’re definitely coming back for more!

Impressions

If you are a fan of the Borderlands games, dungeon crawler board game rules and mechanics, and the randomness and chaos of combat from dice rolls, then you will love this game. The essence of the Borderlands franchise is sewn throughout the characters, cards, and combat in such a way that you are left with the impression of having played any of the games, but in the tabletop format. While there is a bit of a learning curve, and you may find yourself spending some time flipping through the rulebooks to check for interactions, the rules and flow of the game become quite smooth and simple. Game component organization is an absolute necessity. In its entirety, whether it's just the Core Box, or inclusive all of the expansions, Borderlands: Mister Torgue's Arena of Badassery expertly captures the vibe of mayhem for fighting psychos and looting guns and gear to level up my favorite Vault Hunter, and leaves me wanting to play it again and again, just like the video games themselves. 

Have you played Borderlands Mr. Torgue's Arena of Badassery yet? Let us know! Follow Gaming Trend for more board and miniature game reviews and articles!