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Round Structure

Apex Legends: The Board Game
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Round Structure

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The Round structure in Apex Legends: The Board Game is designed in a way that establishes clear rules, allows players to cooperate, and makes it possible to keep the different Legends’ abilities faithful to the ones you know from the original game. The Round board consists of a Round track and an Initiative track, each with its own marker. That said, let’s dive into the details!


Round Track

The game consists of a maximum of 9 Rounds. As suggested by its name, the Round track allows the players to follow the course of each playthrough round by round. At first glance it’s just your ordinary track, but its role is essential in keeping up with the order of events, which is especially important in a Battle Royale game. When does the Ring close? How much damage will it deal? Do we have enough time to complete the Objective? All this vital information is easily accessible on the Round track.

Initiative Track

The second track is the Initiative track. It represents two full Rounds and offers a detailed structure for each one. Why more than one round, you ask? Extending it to two rounds allowed us to create a flexible system for timing the Legends’ abilities, without the need for the player to manage them a lot. You will find more about this in the Timing Abilities section. 

  1. You resolve all Ability tokens and effects below the Initiative marker.
  2. You activate all Legends from the current Team, one by one, in any chosen order.
  3. You move the Initiative marker one space forward on the Initiative track.

After each Team performs its turn, it’s time for the Transition Phase, which consists of four steps:

  1. The Round marker is moved, activating all special effects on the Round track.
  2. All Legends outside the Ring take Ring damage.
  3. All Ability cooldowns are reduced by 1.
  4. You draw a Feat card for each Legend you control.

Once all these steps are resolved, the next Round begins.

Legend Activation

The Legend Activation stage is when the Legends perform their actions to fulfill the game objective. As mentioned above, each turn sees all Legends from one Team activate in sequence. This fosters better cooperation and plan making within the Team. When the Legend is activated, it may perform various actions.

Standard Actions, common to all Legends, allow them to move on the map, interact with allies and objects, use items from their Inventory, and attack enemies with their weapons.

Another set of actions comes from the use of Feat cards. These are unique to each Legend, representing their individual characteristics and areas of expertise. You may play each card in one of two ways—either pay their cost to perform an effect or discard it for free to perform an additional move action.

Last but not least are the Legends’ Abilities, also exclusive to each Legend. Ability cards come with their own cost, timing, effect, and cooldown. We did our best to adapt the Tacticals and Ultimates you know from the original Apex Legends. One of the challenges we faced was simulating their different timings and durations, which brings us to the next point connected with the Initiative track—timing the Abilities.

Timing Abilities

As there are many Legends in Apex, each having unique abilities, we decided to put them in groups for ease of use. After testing different solutions, we eventually arrived at a division based on their activation and effect time. We thus focused on the use of three keywords:

  • Immediate – You resolve the Ability’s effect and place the Ability token on cooldown. These abilities usually do not have a lasting effect, or the effect lasts only until the end of the Legend’s activation stage. 
  • Duration: X – You resolve the Ability’s effect and place the Ability token below the Initiative track, a number of spaces ahead of the Initiative marker as denoted after the Duration. The ability lasts until the token and the marker are in line with each other. An example of a Duration ability is Bloodhound’s Eye of the Allfather. Once you use it, marking enemy characters on the map with Raven miniatures, its effect lasts for a few turns.
  • Delay: X – You place the Ability token below the Initiative track, a number of spaces ahead of the Initiative marker as indicated by the Ability’s Delay. Once the Initiative marker is in line with the Ability token below it, you resolve the Ability’s effect. This allows your enemies to attempt to avoid the effect of the ability during their turn. An example of a Delay ability is Gibraltar’s Defensive Bombardment. Once you use it, you immediately place the Defensive Bombardment miniature on the map, but it will begin to have effect only after the specified time.

These keywords cover most of the abilities in Apex Legends.

That’s all for now! 

See you next time!