"League of Legends" board game spinoff "Mechs Vs. Minions" will launch soon. The development of the game started as a passion project.
According to the official website of the online strategy game, the board game will be launched on Oct. 13, at 11 AM PST. Fans who want to purchase "Mechs Vs. Minions" can only get it exclusively on the Riot Games Merchandise Store page. The board game costs $75 plus shipping and handling, which depends on the buyer's country.
The first wave of the board game will be manufactured in English and Simplified Chinese for now. The game developer hopes to expand to more languages in the future for other fans in other countries around the world.
The board game will have 10 different missions for players to tackle with, and each of these will take them an estimated 60 to 90 minutes to play through. Players will have to cooperate where they take the role of one of the four different League champions, which are Corki, Tristana, heimerdinger, and Ziggs. They will have to fight off waves of enemies while they are in their mechs.
The package will feature five game boards, four painted mech figures, and 100 miniature minions. It will also have other items like dice, cards, acrylic shards, a miniature of a power source, and many more.
Producer Chris Cantrell told Polygon in a video conference that board gaming is a hobby that the company loves. He said that it is a type of gaming that they are excited about. He also said that this is a project that they were inspired to create.
In early 2015, just before the original version of the board game was about to start its production, Cantrell and the team decided to call for help. The Riot team paid The Dice Tower critic Tom Vasal and Shut Up and Sit Down critic Quintin Smith for assistance. They were compensated for a private playtest and consultation.
Cantrell said that Vasal tried it out first and he was satisfied with the board game. Smith was still coming from his flight so they waited for him, and when he arrived and played the game, he said that he loved it but he did not want to play the game again.
Smith then gave some advice that changed the creative direction for the entire game, wherein he suggested that it should have modular game boards so that each session could be different. He also brought up the idea of an ongoing campaign that would build a story arc, which convinced Cantrell to design 10 different board games to make it interesting for players.
Check out the board game's overview video below: