Fame & Fable review: "Pairs gentle strategic fun with tempting press-your-luck mechanics"

Fame & Fable is a strategic card battler that takes the concept of combat in tabletop roleplaying games like D&D and distills it into a deckbuilding bonanza. Taking cues from combat-focussed TTRPGs, it sees you grappling dangerous foes in the name of fame, recruiting a cast of allies, collecting unique magical items, and pushing your luck in order to fulfil contracts for the people. So far as pitches for the best board games go, that's pretty strong.

It's highly competitive as a result with some fun action and light strategic elements that'll have you discovering endless new abilities for your arsenal and combining them for epic takedowns of some truly legendary monsters. Backed by his own wonderfully flamboyant graphic illustrations, Owen Davey told me Fame & Fable was meant to capture the most fun aspects of tabletop RPGs – which for him is the combat – without all the boring gumph surrounding it. And that, it does.

Fame & Fable features and design

• Build a team and strategise around how to defeat monsters
• Catch-up mechanics adds actions for those lagging behind
• Luck plays a big part, but there's enough agency to make you feel epic when you nail a run

This fantasy adventure revolves around hunting monsters for glory and gloating rights. Only one of you can claim the title of Champion, after all, and up to four players will push their luck in an attempt to outdo one another at slaying those beasties.

Slide open the box for Fame & Fable and you'll be met with just a few card decks, wooden tokens, counters, and a three-panel game board. The latter holds the card market – an open pool of contracts, items and allies that will make up your hand – as well as the fame track which your counters will move around as you score points and earn moon tokens. This is also where the monsters and legends live, but we'll get to these rascals in a second.

Each player's starting hand contains a hero card to represent their chosen token, and two allies. All have their own base and special attacks, along with a potential choice of attack types (be these elemental, poison, or simple weapon attacks). You also start with a single unique item, from reviving potions, to poison daggers, even holy hand grenade-style weapons.

Throughout, each player runs through three phases in turn: dawn, day, and dusk. At dawn, empty spaces in the market are refreshed and you receive three action points – that number is upped depending how many moon spaces sit between you and the leading player, which is a great way for lagging players to catch up. Spending an action at dawn along with a moon token lets you ready exhausted allies, and you may spend your new market card to refresh a row in the market if things are looking dire.

Day is the real pulp of the game, bringing glorious battle to those who seek it… and to those who don't. Here you can spend an action to draw a monster from the open pool or randomly from the deck, each with their own special abilities, resistances, or weaknesses. Confident players might draw a far higher-health legend at random instead, but these take far more of a beating.

At any point you can deploy allies and make attacks, which are free actions. Special attacks are not, however, costing either actions or a sacrifice to damage values in favour of added fame or a really gnarly move. Allies become exhausted and items are discarded after use, though you can recruit allies and buy items from the shop at any time by spending actions equal to the pips on that card.

Dusk sees players checking for fulfilled contracts and totting up their score to move around the fame track. Taking a moon token as you pass it not only readies all other players' exhausted allies, but also triggers a draw from the optional moon deck. The latter is a great way to shake up play with wild blanket rule changes that affect everyone.

As for the artwork of Fame & Fable, it's absolutely outstanding. It's an incredibly good-looking game, with designer and illustrator Owen Davey's unique style lending it a real presence on the tabletop. It's vibrant, quirky, and full of personality, so stands out from the best card games with ease.

Gameplay

• Variable difficulty and game length, plus a solo mode
• Separate turns feel a little like everyone's playing different games, but take that actions pull you back in
• Forgiving mechanics make it easy to bounce back

In deciding which monsters to take on, it's a simple case of calculating where best to spend your actions to earn the most fame, though adding up your fame is a perilous act in itself. Land on a skull and you'll draw a legendary monster for your next turn, so part of the tactics involve ending your turn with the right number of points to avoid these spaces until you're ready. These spaces are more frequent in the late game which, along with the thrill of the chase, helps ramp up the pacing toward the endgame.

Pushing your luck as to how many monsters you can handle in a single turn, and knowing when to screw over your opponent or make a sacrifice, are the other major tactical choices. They're a lot of fun, though a lot of the game does run on luck. It means there's plenty to anticipate, but not much chance to think ahead while you wait on another player's turn. As such it runs into a similar issue that Wyrmspan has been called out on, in that it can sometimes feel like you're playing separate games. Still, there are enough take-that actions, such as stealing from another player's hand or forcing them to discard, that help pull you back into the action.

Learning Fame & Fable takes a matter of minutes, though there are some rules clarifications you'll need to go back for. The choice to start with Day in the rulebook skips over an important mechanic (the eye cards that attack immediately), though once you've absorbed everything it's all easy to recall and teach. It's also much appreciated when a game has solo and shorter game options, and the variable difficulty of the moon cards can humble experienced players, and even the playing field for newbies.

That's really where the game shines. Despite some incredibly brutal cascading events, Fame & Fable is a generally forgiving game, with some inspired catch-up mechanics to help you bounce back from a wretched turn. It's not the most intensely brainteasing card battler out there, but it'll keep you coming back to get a more efficient run.

Should you buy Fame & Fable?

I'm blown away by the brilliant simplicity and gorgeous artwork of Fame & Fable. Finishing my first game having met two legends in my first two turns (I'm bad at math, what can I say), I was desperate for a rematch. The fact that chance plays such a large part will frustrate some, but with it being so easy to bounce back I found myself constantly hanging onto hope. Plus, there's heaps of replay value with tons of combos to discover.

Ratings

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How we tested Fame & Fable

After devouring the rules from cover to cover, our reviewer played sessions of Fame & Fable to get a sense of its strengths and weaknesses in practice. They then used their experience covering the industry to compare with similar products and see how it stacks up to them.

To get a better idea of how things work behind the scenes, don't miss our guide to how we test board games or the full GamesRadar+ reviews policy.

Looking for more challenges? Don't miss the best 2-player board games. As for something more lighthearted, be sure to check out our guide to the best family board games.