T.L. Simons has made a new boardgame – and we’ve picked up 250 copies
and they have arrived!
– please don’t order this for international delivery –
Tactical area control meets fantasy adventure in this card-driven cooperative game of animals against machines from the designer of PARKS and the creator of Bloc by Bloc.
Join your fellow animal defenders to clear pollution, fight mechs, breach walls, build camps, and rewild factories across a modular map that changes with each game. Play as one of four unique animal factions: the Council with its fortitude and bread, the Order with its wisdom of the flame, the Sect with its ingenious inventions, or the Coven with its spells and subterfuge. Can the defenders band together to heal the land and defeat the machine invasion? Or will the Commonwood succumb to an endless industrial winter?
It’s up to you and your comrades to decide.
Game details:
Title: Defenders of the Wild
Game Design: Henry Audubon & T.L. Simons
Illustration: Meg Lemieur & T.L. Simons
Publisher: Outlandish Games
Publication date: October 2024
Players: 1-4
Age suitability: 14+
Playtime: 1-2 hours (30 minutes per player) * subject to all the usual qualifiers [maybe one of the players takes AGES to decide what to do? Maybe everyone likes to talk. Maybe everyone wants to get it over with quickly?]
Mechanics: Action points | Area Control | Card driven | Co-operative | Hand Management | Hidden information | Highly modular board | Push your luck | asymetric playstyles | Solo game possible | Tactical combat | Unique faction abilities | variable difficulty levels
Components: 80 unique illustrated animal character cards, card hexagonal board tiles and frame, wooden components, card tuck box, eco-friendly paper and card (310g greencore cards) and premium linen finish, wooden organisers for each faction, oversized (19mm) die.
Country of manufacture: China
Tactical area control meets fantasy adventure in this card-driven cooperative game of animals against machines from the designer of PARKS and the creator of Bloc by Bloc. Play as one of four unique factions and assemble your crew of defenders from a wide range of animal characters to resist the machines across a modular map that changes with each game.
War has come to the Wild. For millennia, animals have weathered shifting alliances and the cycle of hundred-year seasons-but they’ve never faced an enemy like this. An army of machines powered by corrupted magic is rampaging across the woodlands, enclosing everything in its path and exploiting the warmth of the world. Across the marshes, plains, mountains, and forests, scrappy crews of defenders rise up to resist the machine occupation. The partisans hail from four factions, each determined to fight back in their own way: the Council with its fortitude and bread, the Order with its wisdom of the flame, the Sect with its ingenious inventions, and the Coven with its spells and subterfuge.
Players are organizers of the animal resistance who have converged on a dangerous flashpoint in the war against the machines. Construction has begun on a new machine core and sprawling factory complex where an animal village once stood. Engines are building walls that enclose habitat after habitat while mechs guard expanding factories and toxic pollution spreads. Organizers must cooperate with each other despite longstanding factional disagreements and help their network of fellow defenders take actions in the right locations and at the right times in order to win this crucial battle. Clear pollution, fight mechs, breach walls, build camps, and rewild factories before the machines complete construction of the core and conquer this region of the Commonwood.
Can the Defenders band together to heal the land and outsmart a seemingly impossible enemy? Or will the Commonwood succumb to an endless industrial winter? It’s up to you and your comrades to decide.
Praise from gamers who give praise/reviews:
“You are the robber pawn of Catan. You are the barbarians in every civilization game. You are the people
lost in the creases of the maps drawn by empires. And you’re not going to take it anymore.”
– Dan Thurot, Space Biff.
“A well designed woodland rage against the machine that is challenging, thoughtful, and fun.”
-Jack Eddy, Cardboard Herald
“It’s been so long since I’ve really been wowed by a cooperative game. The design is so elegant and so
smooth.”
-Ilya @ Kovray’s #1 top game of May 2024
“Most anticipated game of 2024”
-Chits and Cardboard
“This game is being asked for over and over again. My son is waiting for me once again to play this game
because he liked it so much.”
– David McIntire, Neon Gorilla
“Whether playing with my nine-year-old or a group of adults, I’ve been having a heck of a time smashing
the machine.”
-Dan Thurot, Space Biff
“This is a great movement puzzle which is exactly what I’m looking for. A lot of exciting moments here.”
-Jason Perez, One Stop Co-Op Shop
“Spirit Island + Root? Outlandish Games has an absolutely outstanding co-op game on their hands here.”
-Liege of Games
“The best cooperative game I have ever played”
-Mike @ Onebookcase
“Defenders Of The Wild takes the most exciting elements from cooperative games and presents them in a
charming, condensed and intense form.”
-Piotr Wojtasiak, Games Fanatic
“A charming but razor-toothed game that slaps a sterner face on the anthropomorphic woodland
creatures craze that’s been going around”
-Dan Thurot, Space Biff
“Well-chosen mechanisms, well-balanced randomness of the cards and map, stylized illustrations, high-
quality components and a strong sense of cooperating around something profound give Defenders of the
Wild tremendous vitality.”
-Piotr Wojtasiak, Games Fanatic
