Skytear, the Tabletop MOBA | Skytear

Skytear, the Tabletop MOBA

Warhammer Underworlds meets League of Legends

What is Skytear?

Skytear is a card-driven miniatures game inspired by MOBA video games.

Build your deck, draft four heroes, and destroy the enemy Nexus to win!

You can play in-person with cards and pre-assembled miniatures and play it for free online on Tabletopia or Tabletop Simulator, with an officially supported free mod.

Play it for free online

Three game modes

Skytear has three VERY different maps, providing unique game experiences.

  • 1-lane map: quick tight matches lasting 20-30 minutes
  • 3-lane map: epic battles of 60-120 minutes for up to 8 players!
  • 2-lane map: designed for tournaments, games here last 30-60 minutes and actually manage to finish properly even during organized play events!
Review on boardgamegeek.com by ares1618 - Texas · United States

"I don't think I've gone more than an hour or two without thinking about this game in the last 2 weeks"

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This game is next level! And the fact that it comes from a new, small publisher just blows my mind! The core mechanics are easy to understand and quick to teach new players. But the depth of the game, and the mechanics involved are UNBELIEVABLE!!! I got a demo of this game about 2 weeks ago, and I don't think I've gone more than an hour or two without thinking about this game. If you like cards games, board games, or miniature games, this game is for you! And if you don't like any of those, this game is probably still for you - YES, IT IS THAT GOOD! It is a beautiful combination of MtG and LoL that, honestly, is flawless. GO CHECK IT OUT!

Cards Instead of Dice (and critical hits!)

Skytear does not have dice. We still like surprises and a bit of randomness though, so instead of rolling a dice, you flip a card and use the modifier in the top right corner to determine the bonus damage dealt.

The key point here, is that these modifiers become part of the deckbuilding process and help us balance cards. Strong power cards will have zero or even negative modifiers, so if you fill your deck with them, you will have hard time with dealing damage.

Review on boardgamegeek.com by gimlianon · May 2020 · Ontario · Canada

"The card play is a lot of fun and the heroes are all very distinct."

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Amazing 1v1 card driven MOBA. Picked up in retail during COVID crisis and have been playing on TTS. The card play is a lot of fun and the heroes are all very distinct. The designers are also super active in the community and are incredible helpful and enthusiastic.

Dynamic Deckbuilding

Forget everything you know about building decks!

In Skytear, you build a deck of 8 cards for each hero that you are going to draft from. This way you are essentially customizing the champions according to your taste and strategy.

At the start of each match, once the objectives are revealed, you will draft 4 heroes and shuffle together their cards to form the final deck you will play with.

Most importantly, we don't have junk cards that you will never consider playing with. All cards are interesting and "competitive" in their own way and the meta is really diverse and varied.

Watch the video to see Justin from the Battlecast build a deck with me, one of the developers.

Checkout the deckbuilder
Review on boardgamegeek.com by Moondraco - Madrid · Spain

"It takes around an hour when both players know the game, which is really low for the sensations it brings to the table."

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The best tabletop implementation of a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) that exists in the market.

PROS
- Its ruleset is easier than expected.
- Its abstraction level is high enough to avoid annoying checks, minion movement and so on, allowing the players to focus on the fun part: the heroes and their interactions.
- The gameplay rewards both an strategic approach to the battle and a tactical adaptation to your opponent's general strategy.
- The amount of heroes and cards, and the different victory conditions, gives it a ton of depth and replayability.
- It takes around an hour when both players know the game, which is really low for the sensations it brings to the table.
- It is visually appealling.

CONS
- Even in its simpler version, it is not suitable for non-gamers and I wouldn't recommend it with casual gamers.
- It gains a lot with constructed decks. I wouldn't buy this game if only planning to play it with the preconstructed ones.

Choose your faction... or not!

Unlike Warhammer Underworlds that has fixed war bands, in Skytear you can mix heroes as you please. They come from four distinct factions with asymmetric gameplay:

  • Kurumo warriors mark enemies to defeat them with coordinated attacks
  • Taulot followers place pillars over the battlefield to play as a collective hive mind
  • Liothan shapeshifters hunt in packs and transform into magical animals
  • Nupten mages deceive their enemies with illusions of themselves

You are free to mix heroes from different factions together, as long as you know what you are doing!

Review on boardgamegeek.com by gimlianon · May 2020 · Ontario · Canada

"The card play is a lot of fun and the heroes are all very distinct."

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Amazing 1v1 card driven MOBA. Picked up in retail during COVID crisis and have been playing on TTS. The card play is a lot of fun and the heroes are all very distinct. The designers are also super active in the community and are incredible helpful and enthusiastic.

Review on boardgamegeek.com by ZealDib83 - New Zealand

"PVP loves their game and has lovingly thought about every aspect of their work, including their customers"

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Skytear is an amazing game and seems to be the answer I've been looking for. PVP is a conscientious company who loves their game and has lovingly thought about every aspect of their work, including their customers. They are a company I can get behind.

Community First

Skytear is designed with organized play in mind from day zero, with interesting tournament prizes.

We also have an online league running with almost 100 players participating... while we wait for stores to re-open play spaces after the COVID19.

Join us on Discord to see how friendly (and chilled! :) we are. You can even interact with the creators directly, it cannot get more indie than this.

A Release Every 3 Months

New expansions are not mandatory to be competitive, but are keeping the meta fresh and the players excited even if they are playing every week or day, even!

And you are not forced to buy warbands (heroes in our case) you don't care about just to get the "universal" cards you want.

And yes, even during the Covid19 pandemic, we are guaranteeing a new release every 3 months.

Review on boardgamegeek.com by Alexws - Norway

"Can’t stop playing this."

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This is something truly special. It’s very rare for a game to be so easy to learn yet so deep. Can’t stop playing this.

Play Skytear for Free

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The Tutorials

Videos and resources to help you learn the rules, including the print & play version.

The newsletter

To stay in the loop about updates, events, and more (unsubscribe anytime with 1-click).

The Digital Version

To play Skytear with all 28 heroes on a digital tabletop simulator with people from our Discord server.

Is it really Free?

Yes, we shared 100% of Skytear for free online, no strings attached!

Even though we designed Skytear to be played in-person around a table with cards and miniatures you can touch... we decided to make a free version available online to grow the global community and play tournaments with hundreds of participants all over the world.

With this said, if you are sold already, and prefer to play in-person (it's like 100 times better!) you can browse our shop and enjoy free worldwide shipping from one of our 5 warehouses around the globe.

Otherwise, if you are still on the fence about it, just sign up above and we'll send you emails to evaluate Skytear and get started playing it!

Browse the shop
Review on boardgamegeek.com by Rob Mordak from Ontario, Canada

"Honestly, this is a steal of a price and probably the most cost effective game on the market today (I would know, I own hundreds of them)."

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OK, to start off, this is a M"O"BA (Multiplayer "Online" Battle Arena) Type game so your protecting your "bases" with your heroes and you generate little autonomous soldiers to assist.

While never really liking the video game version of this type of game, I actually quite enjoyed the table top version.

Wanting to test the waters before diving too deep, my fiancee and I sat down, watched the 5 minute tutorial video followed by her sleeveing the cards while I read the rules out-loud.
The 5 minute video does an excellent job showing you a super quick over view of parts, areas and heroes but it does miss out on important facts (especially for first game players) for:
1. How to build a deck (Yes, an example is provided in the tutorial in the rules but a quick flash on screen of the deck would have been nice)
2. How to use the outsider (the wording on the card is a little strange and the fact that, if you don't know there will be other outsiders, and you read the provided outsider card "set up, they can't move" followed by his possible actions: MOVE, Skirmish (a action that you can move up to two times), etc you can get very confused.
3. Missing this as an opportunity to display the game as shown in the tutorial to help the two parts flow together

That being said, we followed beginners draft, I was elected first play (which is only a bonus because you get a card that...lives on the table...or in your hand (unclear) and you never switch roles (maybe this is to allow 2nd player to always have the final hero activation?
I chose....red, she chose yellow and blue and I got the remaining green (Everything here has a specific name for the faction, their god and etc but they are complicated and super hard to remember), we build our decks as was exampled in the book, set up the board, got the objective cards and ....started

Truth be told, the game actually is super simple to play on the basic rules, without a worship action you do lose depth but you greatly gain quick action. We were killing either others minions and heroes right away and enjoying the strategy of hero placement and the like.
The outsider (while being complicated to use the first time around) wasn't as powerful as the lore led us to expect (which is actually a great thing as to not allow a huge power shift) and the mechanics and everything flowed very well.
We played a very forgiving game of take back actions, draw cards we forgot to grab etc, and it was actuality enjoyable. The tower attack never happened as we always managed to just be close enough in "mana" strength to avoid tower damage but we understood the concept relatively easily.

I ended up winning by completing the secondary objective of double kill on turn 5 and we both had an enjoyable time through the whole process. I wish we weren't as intimidated by the worship action and the the more advanced character sides but we were actually both very glad to have played the basic game first to understand the core concepts.

Pros:
+ Cost: for $99 you get a FANTASTIC supply of unique and well detailed miniatures, quality tokens, GAME TRAY and board. Honestly, this is a steal of a price and probably the most cost effective game on the market today (I would know, I own hundreds of them). The content here is close to a CMON KS level of product.
+ Community: I was able to find answers to all my questions within seconds of googling the answer, on top of that their are tons of support vidoes online and a very active discord and facebook community.
+ Insert: This cannot be stressed enough, super well done, the plastic isn't the best, nor is it always easy to remember where very hero fits, but this is just a fantastic bonus, plus it fits sleeved cards (sort of).
+ Miniatures: you get so many cool unique sculpts (YAMI oh my), and the detail and quality is excellent
+ Future support: not only has it been said from day 1 that leagues and new releases will occur ASAP and frequently, they have lived up to it. Today we received an email with a new campaign that has started that allowed us to input our game scores to see which faction has more control over the continent.
+ Variety: Different secondary objectives, card drafts, many hero choices, many outsider choices, etc, etc. The game gives you so much flexibility be it tactical, objective, etc that it makes every game unique and exciting.

Cons:
- Rulebook Flow: I have to put this first as I think that the rule book is the most important thing in a game, and this one just doesn't have all the information I need. While i know its impossible to list every possible question and situation, I think some major examples (such as setting up the outsider on the game board) are missing and that really hurts. (Yes, there is a FAQ and errata page set up, but it kinda sucks that those things couldn't have been in the rule book that's only a few months old). I also feel that many more example situation explications and diagrams should have been included for game play. The card drafting is a tiny 1 paragraph at the end of the book yet its ...1/3 of the game play? Shouldn't it be front and center? Do I always play with all 4 factions or was that just my tutorial game, can I just play 1 faction...These are my current questions. Again, yes, I know that their are probably answers online and a giant FAQ etc, but this is not a board AND ONLINE game, I should have these answers out of the box.
- Skirmish action: I strongly dislike that I cannot hit minions with this action, while I'm sure its fundamental to some game play mechanic, it's such a bad feeling that my damage 4 +2 card character has to use that attack to blow up a 1 wound 0 Armour nobody dealing 7 damage but then draws a 0 when attacking the hero 1 second later.
- Main Game objectives: So the main, always on objective is break the enemy nexus and you win, woo, but in a 5 turn game, as far as I can tell, unless your opponent leaves one flank completely unprotected and ignores you bulldozing in on that side, it's not going to happen. I guess it's not a huge deal when you have the 3 other mission objectives, I just think that Nexus only win is not possible in a 5 turn game. (Obviously the game designers have play tested this WAY more then my 1 attempt and it must be possible, it just think it's an un-achievable goal, and its the main win condition).

Final Thoughts
If you enjoy board games with minis and don't hate the MOBA style of game play, you'd be foolish not to pick this up. The game has a small footprint, tons of content, infinity replay-ability, awesome miniatures, asymmetrical factions, uniqueness, community, etc, etc, it really is a great game. While my cons list has more quantity in it than the pros, that's only my first thoughts and changeable aspect. This game has a LOT of potential and I recommend you pick it up and suggest your FLGS start supporting it. Plus I think they offer world wide free shipping on orders of $99 and up (aka the base game) and if that's not customer service, I don't know what is. Very excited to watch this community grow.

-Rob

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