It's up to you promoter

 Star Warrior wraps his arm around the neck of Thantos and holds him in a rear headlock but Thantos counters and rakes Star Warrior in the eyes temporary blinding him. While Star Warrior tries to rub the double vision from his eyes Thantos capitalizes and hits with a huge running clothesline downing the Heroic Star Warrior. Thantos not wasting any time goes in for the kill and entwines his legs with Star Warrior and locks on the extremely potent Masterlock.....will Star Warrior tap out?!

With easy to follow rules, some cards and charts, and of-course a couple of d6 dice, Champions of the Galaxy by Filsinger Games has for over 20 years provided fans of wrestling both intergalactic and here on good ol earth the ability to live out their dreams of being a fantasy booker. COTG is a game that is easy to get into and I have been enjoying for the last several months with a rich cast of characters and a very extensive history spanning at the time of this writing about 70+ expansions just to the core champions line.  

The concept at its core is very basic you have 2 wrestler cards with some fantastic art on the front representing the wrestler and a set of 3 levels of offense and defense on the back of the card. The wrestlers roll off to see who starts the match off in the offense and rolls on the level 1 chart of their wrestler to see how hard of a hitting move they attempted to deliver. The move rating (which goes from 1-3) determines which chart on the defense the opponent rolls on. If the result is a 1: daze, 2: hurt, or 3: down this determines which level of offensive the attacking wrestler will roll on in their next attack with rolling on higher level offensive usually providing harder hitting moves and on level 3 the chance to try and hit their finishing move. Alternatively if the defender rolls their name with a -1 or -2 they have reversed the attack and are now fighting back at either level 1 or 2 offense. Play moves back and forth between the wrestlers like this until either a finisher by the attacker or a pin is rolled by the defender. If a finisher is rolled the opponent immediately must roll against their pin rating with 2 dice with any result adding up to above their pin rating counting as a kick out otherwise they have ben pinned and have lost the match!

Along with the basic rules of above there is times when an attack or defense forces a player to roll on one of the 8 special charts including whipping your opponent into the ropes or turnbuckle, performing a top rope death jump, and fighting outside of the ring. These can lead to all sorts of interesting and some times unexpected results such as a sudden roll up pin attempt, disqualifications, and being counted out. To go along with these charts each wrestler at the bottom of their cards provides a rating between A-C with A being the best defense against rolling on the specific chart to C being the worst defense against that chart. Typically when a chart is called for it will be the opponent rolling against the chart with their rating to see how the attack affected them or if they pull off a cunning reversal. 

Once you have mastered the basics there is advanced rules which slightly change some wrestlers moves when listed on their card, adding fatigue after each pin attempt making further pin attempts easier for the opponent, and finishers having a finisher rating which adds to the opponents pin and fatigue making it harder for the opponent to escape the end. Most players very quickly once they have the basics down switch over to the much more dynamic advanced rules. 

The beauty of the game is its simplicity, with the above items you can very quickly get started playing in the core games rich history from various starting points all along the timeline or create your own fed with your own unique timeline. The often spoken catch phrase from both Filsinger games and its many devoted fans is "its up to you promoter" meaning there is no wrong way to play the game so long as your are enjoying it. The message boards are full of carefully created wrestlers from just about every promotion that has ever existed in time, to unique and new wrestlers created from the imaginations of fellow promoters who are ever happy to share their creations with the rest of the world. I myself have really enjoyed a created wrestler named Alkalil, Eater of Ants who is an Aardvark version of the legendary ECW Sabu. 

Speaking of legends outside of the sci-fi version of the game of Champions there is also the Legends of Wrestling line which focuses on wrestlers like Nick Bockwinkel, Abdullah the Butcher, Harley Race, Randy Savage, and the before mentioned Sabu. Just having spent time going through the names of the wrestlers in the legends sets have really opened my eyes to wrestlers from yesteryear that were long before I got into watching that are really worth checking out.

However not every one is interested in perhaps wrestlers they never heard of before they got into wrestling and want to play with more contemporary actors of our current generation. That is where the Indies sets come in covering a good chunk of the Indy wrestling scene in the likes of Chikara, Ring of Honor, CZW, Shimmer, Evolve, even Olde Wrestling Extravaganza!. For the fans of GCW and CZW they have just released the best of the deathmatch set featuring some of the most well known names in the deathmatch scene like G-Raver, Jimmy Lloyd, Alex Colon, and the death match folk hero himself Nick F'n Gage.

Overall Champions has been a winner in my book offering options all across any type of wrestling you might possibly want to play with, heck nothing stops you from having  Star Warrior face Macho Man Randy Savage in a no rope barbed wire match for the NWA heavyweight title as every single wrestler from every variation of the game uses the exact same rules with the exact same charts with the same stats on the back allowing you to decide how you want to play. 

It's up to you promoter.

Rating: 5/5

Solo Playability: 10/10

Link: https://filsingergames.com/