I've spent the last several weekends playing Mr. Torgue's Arena of Badassery. I've really enjoyed it - in fact, my entire group has really been enjoying it.
Glossary for those not familiar with the series: Vault Hunter = player character.
Note: I'm playing with the Box of Badasses, which is the KS stretch goal content. It's supposed to come to retail (although possibly split up), but isn't available just yet.
The game is what you'd expect from Borderlands - taking on huge numbers of enemies, collecting loot, building a character with skill trees, and trying to achieve objectives while the world keeps throwing chaos at you.
You get colored tokens, red, yellow, and green, which correspond to the dice - red d6, yellow d8, green d12.
Most characters start with 3-4. Those tokens are used for everything. Want to make a skill roll? Pick the token you want to use, exhaust it, and roll the same colored die. Want to make an attack? Pick a token, exhaust, roll a die. Want to move? Red tokens = 1 space, yellow = 2, green = 3. The enemy turn comes around and one of them 'puts you down?' If you saved any tokens after your turn, you can spend it to try to get a kill. Succeed, and you're back on your feet (the Fight for Your Life mechanic from the video game.) That makes the tokens a resource that you really have to make decisions about. The more you move, the fewer actions you have, or if you spent your big dice to move, the less likely your actions are to succeed. Go stronger on offense, and you may not have as many options on the enemy turn.
The tokens represent health, too. Players always start with green and yellow tokens. Get attacked, pick any token to defend with (even an exhausted one), rolling the appropriate die. That means that you can roll your green D12 over and over for every attack. But if you fail the roll, the green token becomes a red token, and now you're rolling D6s. Fail a defense roll and a red token, and you're down. Die, and it's $500 to respawn (
"Hyperion thanks you for using our New-U station. Your personal quest for vengeance has netted us millions of dollars.") Don't have $500? That's how you lose.
Enemies are the same as the video game - a horde of weak, easy-to-kill enemies mixed with the occasional Badass or named enemy. Their AI rules are straightforward, using a sort of aggro system. One player has the 'Spotlight.' All enemies will always focus movement and attacks on that player if possible (if they can't get into position to attack them in one turn they'll go for someone else.) The thing that makes it interesting is that each player draws a card every session that determines when they get the Spotlight. Maybe it's collecting two or more loot tokens. Maybe it's getting a critical, or not killing an enemy. It adds another layer to the strategy each game, letting you choose how to manipulate the enemies - but also making it risky to do certain things if you really don't want to end up being the target.
The map is covered with lootables (chests, skag vomit, mailboxes, etc), loot tokens. Loot tokens can let you reload your weapons, heal, swap inventory for free, or draw a card from one of four huge decks of equipment cards (ammo, meds, weapons, and legendaries.) Some can be saved and used as cash later. The rarest token allows the entire party to level up. Kill an enemy, draw a loot token. It's constant, and it's an extremely satisfying mechanic.
At the end of the session, you can sell any extra equipment, sell any unused loot tokens, and add that to the money you didn't spend respawning. You then draw a set number of cards from each equipment deck which you can then spend said money on. This is surprisingly important, and the loss of $500+ here is the real penalty for a death.
Once you've chosen which loot you'll keep (each Vault Hunter can carry a grenade, a shield, two class mods, and two weapons, plus three unequipped cards), you may get to level up (in addition to the loot token, the scenario can grant you levels.) The real benefit there is that you gain a token that you can place on your skill tree, granting you a new skill or tweaking an existing one (every Vault Hunter gets three different skill trees to choose from, and can switch between sessions.)
Then you move on to the next scenario in the campaign. And that's another nice thing they did - the campaign is set up like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. You do mission #1. Win, and you're given two options, described only in announcer-speak. Choose, and move on to that scenario. Win, and you're given another choice. Or lose, and you're shunted to a 'Make Torgue feel better about you being a loser' scenario. Win, and you're back in the main narrative. Fail the 'lose' scenario, and Mr Torgue sends you directly to the finale - enjoy the final boss without having leveled up and gotten enough gear. One rare loot token can also give you bounties. Bounties are quick mini-missions based on various Borderlands quests. You draw a card from the bounty deck, roll one of ten random map setups, and go. You cannot level up in bounties, and failing brings no penalties, but you get to keep any gear you find, and you're guaranteed at least one legendary. And with the Box of Badasses, there are a ton of bounties - the deck is probably an inch and a half tall.
Pros:
~They did a really, really good job of translating a video game into a board game, an iffy thing to begin with. They managed to capture the essence and feel of the mechanics, characters, abilities, and setting within the board game.
~Multiple short campaigns. We can sit down and play through a campaign, which increases investment as our characters grow, but we can do so without having to dedicate most of a year to it.
~They do a good job with the skills, allowing each character to play multiple ways, including (depending on the character) support and utility as well as straight up murdering.
~Cooperative, and can be played solo. And it isn't one of those coop games where it feels like four people playing solo at the same table - the abilities and builds interact, strongly favoring groups who play together and support each other.
~Great components. Miniatures, terrain, cards, tokens, etc.
~Lots of cards and unpredictable events.
~Allows for enemy substitution, meaning that you can swap those Psychos for Skags, or a Marauder for a Shotgun Tink.
~They have all of the character. If you get the Box of Baddasses expansion, you'll have access to every playable character from every Borderlands game, plus a few extras (Moxxi, Tina, and Mr. Torgue himself.) And that includes all turrets, shields, drones, pets, etc. that each character would have.
~The CYOA style campaign and scores of bounties, combined with the sheer number of playable characters and builds (again, with the Box of Badasses content) gives more replayability than most campaign-based games. You will never see every mission in one campaign, and you'll rarely see the same bounty twice.
Neutral:
~The game is mostly about player skill and strategic decisions, but sometimes luck can make a mission too easy or too hard (the one mission we lost was because we had 'spawn' cards four turns in a row before we had good weapons, which absolutely buried us in more enemies than we could clear.)
~I'm being honest here: Part of the appeal for me is the setting. It's a good game regardless, but someone who doesn't enjoy the Borderlands setting might not enjoy it as much someone who does.
Cons:
~Regardless of the number of players, the game is balanced for four Vault Hunters. That means that if you have two or three players, someone has to play multiples. And to solo you need to run the full team (which isn't a 'con' for everyone - some enjoy the coordination puzzle this can create.)
~A little high-priced. Not boutique high, but a little higher than what I'd expect.
~The manual. The rules aren't particularly heavy, but the manual is poorly organized and some rules are ambiguously phrased, the don't offer enough examples, and the rules are too wordy, which makes it slow to look things up.
What doesn't kill me makes me stranger.
4 cards and one item per hero, and they'll be either swapped out or upgraded at some point.
Thanks! 
