An interesting concept, but relatively flawed in execution. While the battles are fun while they are working, I found that

1. Billboards give too many points

2. It's relatively easy to 'spawn camp' the enemy

3. The portion of your base that you can customize matters relatively little in most arenas.

4. Pathfinding is terrible, and it's possible to get arenas into a state where the combatants can't reach each other, particularly in the bridge level.

5. The ui is relatively obtuse.

I found myself forgiving the somewhat dated graphics (it looks good enough that you'll never have trouble figuring out what's going on) and enjoying the gameshow scoring mechanic of battles, but grinding my teeth over the poor ai and ui, and the relatively opacity of the combat mechanics.

Overall it's probably one of those games that's going to grab some people the right way, but it just didn't do it for me. After a few sessions I haven't found myself wanting to go back to it.

This is a surprisingly good RTS, if you can get past the dated graphics.

The gameshow premise really doesn't serve as more than a background to what boils down to a capture the flag / base assault style game. Eliminating the enemy sanctuary is an instant victory, alternatively you can score points by siezing rotating billboards, or taking out your opponents fighters. The enemy will be trying to do the same to you, so you're forced to split your forces between defence and offence.

There are four different races to choose from, and four classes of warrior for each race. While the classes tend to be the same (warrior, fast warrior, heavy warrior, buff) their special abilities vary by race. There is some team management involved as you buy players and decide who to send into a match and who to keep back to recover wounds.

Your own sanctuary is persistent and can be customised with everything from decorations to traps. You're free to redesign the entire thing, providing you have the funds available.

There are some issues with pathfinding, but an active pause feature lets you deal with them easily. The tutorial is good for giving you the basics, but the combat system is slightly more in depth yet the mechanics behind it are never fully explained.

Instant skirmish and multiplayer are available. There is also a single player campaign which gives you a range of skirmishes to fight through. While there's plenty of content there, eventually the gameplay can get a bit repetative.