Armageddon, a Galactus style cosmic entity, has come to claim the infinite realms for himself. Deities of each of these realms came together and struck a bargain with Armageddon to host a tournament of the realms’ champions every cycle. The reigning champions are offered unfathomable riches and power, but those who lose have their realms sacrificed to Armageddon.

Merit is a team based arena skirmish game, where two to four players can engage in arena combat in a fight to the death between heroes from six different realms. Each of these six champions have their own player boards with unique skills and status, as well as a detailed miniature for each. 

At the start of a game, players draft their champions; three champions to a team in a two and three player game and two each in a four player game. Each hero has a varying amount of health, movement, and armor stats, giving players the opportunity to explore various character skills, builds, and combinations. Each character has unique abilities ranging from tiers one to four, represented on their board in rows marked by roman numerals.

When setting up Merit, players grab the player board, miniature, and health dial for each of their champions, gaining health equal to the maximum printed on the character board. Likewise, players place a cube on the highest value on their character’s energy track; all other tracker cubes should be placed in reach of all players. Players each roll die to determine their heroes’ starting locations. Finally, players choose a level one ability to unlock for each of their heroes.

Rounds consist of three phases, beginning with the Level Up step. Players simultaneously unlock one ability from a hero of their choice for each Realm Stone currently in their possession. Once all players have made their choices, play moves onto the second phase: the Turn Phase.

During the Turn Phase, each player takes three turns, beginning with the player currently in possession of the Turn Dial. On any given turn, players may spend up to three energy to move their hero, use an unlocked ability, or influence one of the three Realm Stones on the board. Whenever a Realm Stone is claimed by a player, they either place a dice counter onto the the space and set the value to one, or increase the value of the die by one. This represents the strength of influence the player has over the Realm Stone tile. 

Lastly, during the Reset Phase players check to see if the win conditions were met. If not, each hero resets their energy to the highest value and prepares for the next round. 

The match ends during the Reset Phase if any player has control over all three Realm Stone spaces. If not, the game resumes and proceeds back to the Level Up Phase of the next round.

My team and I played three games of Merit to become familiar with the mechanics and heroes and I enjoy the core of the system and the characters provided. There’s a solid amount of ability variety between the six champions provided in the preview copy. Thematically, with the exception of Captain Teefs, the croc, most of the characters are horror themed. Since this is just the preview, I’m confident there are more characters that will be announced during the upcoming crowdfunding campaign.

• Captain Teefs: a swashbuckling crocodile, proficient in looting and smashing through armor.
• Joe Bokor: a witch doctor gifted in inflicting poison, forcing opponents to move, and ranged healing.
• Elvira Violeta: a vampire with a talent for dealing damage that leaves her targets bleeding out, draining them for health, and inflicting damage upon herself in exchange for gaining additional strength.
• Gargoyle: a living stone gargoyle capable of dealing heavy damage and guarding itself by increasing its armor value.
• Dr. Wolfgang: a werewolf scientist who gains extra strength from the moon and inflicts bleed with his terrible claws.
• Bog Troll: a slow and powerful toxic amphibian from the swamp who boasts the highest health of all of Merit‘s champions.