Arena: for the Gods! is a new board game from iello, designed by the creator of The Big Book of Madness, Maxime Rambourg.  Arena:  For the Gods!  will release at this year’s Origins Game Fair, on June 14.

In Arena:  For the Gods!, the players are heroes chosen to represent six different mythologies, thrust into the arena for a free-for-all battle to the death.  Before the match, the players must bid their life points to acquire the best weapons they can.  Then, using the custom dice and their equipment, they fight it out until one of the heroes is killed.  At that point, the healthiest hero still alive is declared the “champion of the gods” and wins the game.

Arena:  For the Gods!  is illustrated by Paul Mafayon, the artist of Welcome to the Dungeon and Diamant.  The game includes 6 cardboard figures with stands, 6 player screens, 1 game board, 130 life point cubes, 7 dice, 24 tokens, 48 equipment cards, 7 pillars, 7 arena tiles, and a “reserve” bowl.  Arena:  For the Gods!  is intended for 2 to 6 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about half an hour to play.  MSRP is $39.99.

Iello will premier the game at Origins in Columbus, Ohio the week of June 14, and release the game into the trade two weeks later.  To promote the game, iello will offer an exclusive promo card to anyone who demos the game at Origins, and a different promo card available only to those who pre-order the game from participating brick-and-mortar retail stores.  A cross-promotional card for King of Tokyo will also be included in each copy of Arena:  For the Gods!

Later this year, iello will release a new game based on the Lovecraft novel To the Mountains of Madness (see “Rob Daviau Tackles Lovecraftian Horror in New Game”).