Welcome back to the arena.
If you read our introduction to HexaDome Legends, you know the pitch: a MOBA on a table, two teams of four, and a box that covers both players. This article is the follow-up question, which is the one you ask standing in the shop holding it.
What is actually in there, and do I need anything else?
Short answer to the second part: no. Longer answer below.
The Number That Sells the Box
Eight characters. Enough for two people to play the full game.
Not a demo. Not a cut-down starter with a fold-out rules sheet and a promise that the real version costs more. Both sides, complete, for $90 in the Core Box.
We sell a lot of miniatures products and very few of them can say that sentence. Most core sets in this hobby are a down payment. This one is a game.
Everything in the Box
Eight preassembled miniatures. Single-piece casts on premoulded 30mm bases, in a board game plastic that takes detail well, with very little in the way of mould lines. No glue, no assembly, no evening with clippers before you can play.
A double-sided game board. Hex grid, thick cardboard, with the scoring zones printed and marked positions for terrain. It fits comfortably on a dining table, which is not a small thing for a game you want to play on a weeknight.
Character cards, one per aristo, carrying their attributes and abilities.
A deck of tactics cards. This is the bit people miss. Each character has four cards specific to them, which you gain access to when you take that character, plus a set of generic cards with duplicates so both players can draw on them. So building your team is also building a deck.
Initiative cards, the small ones, which are what you place face down each round to set your activation order.
Custom dice. Corvus Belli use these across their range, and the original Aristeia! is where they were introduced.
Tokens and player dashboards, on decent card stock with clean die cuts.
Two books, and they are genuinely two. A learn-to-play quick start that walks you through selecting a scenario, setting up, forming teams, building decks and deploying, and then a full reference guide with the complete rules, four basic scenarios, reference tables and a glossary. The reference guide is the one you throw in your bag for game night.
An organiser insert. The whole game stores in its own box, which is the sort of thing you only appreciate the third time you play.
The Eight Characters
Four are returning from Aristeia!, four are new. They sort neatly into roles you will recognise instantly if you have played anything MOBA-shaped.
Gata, controller. No attacks at all. One ability blinds, the other is pure movement that lets her place herself next to a target, and a passive makes her harder to hit at close range. She reaches scoring positions other characters cannot.
Maximus, tank. Seven health, an attack that pushes and stuns, and two passives that protect the rest of your team. He locks down an area and stays there.
Miyamoto Mushashi, attacker. A close-combat specialist with two attacks, and a switch on one that lets you make the other for free. When he knocks someone into the infirmary, he gets to move.
hEXx3r, controller. Like Gata, no attacks, but two very good abilities: one immobilises, the other displaces. Displacement works on your own team as well as your opponent's, which is the interesting part.
Tangerine, support. The only dedicated healer in the box. She removes negative states, hands out shields, and her passive makes everyone else's shields stronger. A support who buffs the thing she provides is a genuinely tidy piece of design.
Obake, tank. An extremely damaging attack including a red die, plus an ability that either heals or shields him depending on his state. A self-healing tank that can raise its own defence.
BeatBox, ranged attacker. Hits from five spaces away, can mark targets himself, and one of his attacks gets stronger against a target with no line of sight to him. Get behind someone and it is devastating.
Afara, controller. The most conditional character in the box: several abilities key off being next to a wall. Pair Afara with someone who hands out shields, like Tangerine, and the passive turns those shields into movement.
Choose your first team if: you want to understand the game fastest, take a tank, a controller and an attacker and learn what each does before you get clever.
The One Warning Worth Reading Twice
These are 30mm premoulded bases, and Infinity uses 25mm bases for infantry.
The old Aristeia! packs shipped both bases so you could use the models as alternative Infinity sculpts. These do not. The base is moulded on. If part of your reason for buying was proxying these into your Infinity force, that plan does not work, and it is much better to know now.
One more for the storage-obsessed: the bases have very little lip underneath, so a 1mm rare earth magnet sits proud in the recess. If you magnetise your trays, go thinner or use flexible magnet sheet.
Do You Need Anything Else?
Two products exist beyond the core box, and only two, which makes this the easiest buying advice we have ever written.
Cold Blood, the Valkyrie and Nadir expansion set, $36. Adds two characters to the pool, and because every character brings four tactics cards, it widens your deck-building options as well as your roster. It requires the core box. Buy this second, once you have played enough to know which of the eight you keep reaching for.
The Frost Dice Set, $15. Fourteen dice with a frost finish.
Here is the honest note on the dice, and we would rather say it than take the fifteen dollars quietly. Do not buy them thinking they are essential. The real argument for owning a set is table flow: two players stop passing the same handful back and forth, and the game moves faster. That is a genuine improvement, and it is also fifteen dollars for dice you already have one set of. Your call, made with the facts.
The Best Value: the core box on its own. $90, eight characters, two players, complete. Come back for Cold Blood after four or five games.
Should You Buy It?
Yes if: you want a complete game in one purchase, you have one person to play with, and you would rather learn eight characters deeply than assemble forty models.
No if: you want the miniatures for Infinity. See the base warning above.
Soon if: you are interested but not sure. This is a small new line and restocks come from the publisher, so it is not one to sit on for a season.
So which of the eight are you drafting first? We will guess Miyamoto Mushashi, because it is always Miyamoto Mushashi.
Enjoy the show.
