I know it’s been a while since any updates, but I am still around and looking after the site. I have been updating the Tabletop Geeks Facebook page slightly more (still getting tons of tabletop games and playing them!).

Also, as a quick follow up to the last news post: Hex: Shards of Fate has recently released their large PvE update which now turns the game into an RPG TCG! There’s a whole campaign map, an RPG character/leveling system, and a TON of cards and equipment to collect! It’s incredibly fun, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Ragefire, which uses Escalation

First of all, this is definitely an alpha. What we currently have is 4 copies of every available card (most of the PvP set, but still missing about 70 cards from the first set for launch), a basic deck builder, and a way to challenge other players in a basic lobby. The PvE elements are not in, drafting is not in, the auction house is not in, and actually collecting cards is not in yet. Despite all of this I am having a ton of fun with it already.

For anyone familiar with Magic: The Gathering (MTG) the rules of Hex will feel very familiar and easy to pick up. The basic rules and turn structure are essentially the same. However, this is not just a clone of MTG and that is already apparent in the alpha. I have already seen some crazy decks built around the escalation mechanic (when you cast a card with escalation every copy of that card in your deck doubles in strength, then that card is shuffled back into your deck). I have also seen some interesting decks using similar mechanics such as The Ancestor’s Chosen or Pack Raptor.

In general, the pacing is a bit different thanks to the resource mechanics. In Hex all of the resources you spend are colorless. However, you also have threshold for the various resources which are not a cost but simply a value you have to meet before being allowed to cast a specific card. For example, a card with cost 4 and threshold 2 Wild would require you to have 2 Wild threshold before you could attempt to cast it and would cost 4 of your resources but this does not use up your threshold and you can cast as many Wild cards requiring 2 or less threshold as long as you have the remaining resources to play them. This resource system works very well so far and creates a lot of interesting options for players both in how to play and in deck building.

Example of a Champion

The other big thing in Hex is your champion. When building a deck you choose a champion to accompany the deck and each champion has a different charge power. Generally you get charge points every time you play a resource (though there are a few cards that can get you more charge points). The abilities vary from being able to draw a card to giving your troops attack/defense bonuses to creating a new troop and putting it into play. This adds a very interesting strategic layer to deck building that I really love. It also ensures that if you are drawing tons of resources you still have interesting things to do. In my time building decks I’ve found the champion powers to really tie the whole deck together.

The fact that I have had so much fun playing in what is just an early alpha that is missing most of the big features really bodes well for Hex. I am very excited for the future of this game. I can’t wait until drafting is implemented as I really enjoy the strategic aspects of drafts as well. The PvE aspects are also looking to be very interesting based on the various articles and interviews we’ve seen so far.

I have been streaming Hex on twitch for anyone who is interested in seeing the game in action. Just follow me there and look for me to be streaming. I have also put up a couple of highlights from my time playing and I’ll likely continue to add more as I stream. If Hex is something that interests you then check out the Hex page as it is still possible to get in on the alpha with a Slacker Backer donation.

The gameplay of Hex is something that will be very familiar to any Magic: the Gathering player, in fact, as each player has 20 life, a hand of 7 cards, and is playing creatures and spells to lower their opponents life to 0. The combat system in Hex plays out much the same as you would expect. There are some differences though. Some cards have gem slots and can be socketed with a gem to change the text on the card. Also, resources work a bit differently in Hex. Instead of land cards that stay in play and are used to generate resources when a resource card is played it adds to the player’s threshold values, resource value, and charge. Cards have a cost in resource points as well as a required number of threshold of a certain type (threshold is not a cost so it is not spent, it’s just required to have a certain amount to play that card). The charges are used to activate special abilities of your champion.

This is where things start to get really interesting, I think. When you play a game of Hex you have your deck but you also have a champion representing your character. This champion has a set of special abilities ranging from passive skills that modify things that happen in game to special cards to a charge ability that can be activated by paying a certain amount of charges for a special action. One of the examples we’ve been shown is a charge ability that costs 3 charge and allows the player to draw a card in exchange for losing 2 life. The abilities of your champion is going to make for some really interesting choices in building decks, I think.

The other big thing in Hex is the addition of a PvE element. Players will be able to complete solo and group (up to 3 people) encounters against special AI decks along a storyline while leveling their champion up. There are also specific PvE cards that can only be used in decks built for the PvE section of the game. In PvE the player can also add equipment to their champion that modifies the effects of certain cards. Each equipment fits into a specific slot on the champion so you are limited to only a few pieces. You will be able to earn new equipment through completing the PvE dungeons and raids.

One other thing worth mentioning is the world of Hex. Cryptozoic has created a brand new IP using some familiar fantasy elements such as elves and undead but they also have some interesting original stuff. For example, the Shin’hare are a race of rabbits with a lot of feudal Japanese elements while the Coyotle are a race of coyotes with a Native American theme.  

Overall Hex is something I am very excited for. The game will be free to play (you get a free starter deck and can earn cards through playing) with the option to purchase booster packs at $2/pack (15 cards) which is cheaper than most TCGs. There will be tournaments (including draft tournaments) as well. I highly recommend checking out the Hex Kickstarter and the official Hex website for more information including videos showing off the gameplay. As of this writing the Kickstarter has achieved more than 400% of it’s goal with almost 2 weeks remaining. It’s well worth jumping on the Kickstarter due to all the great rewards Cryptozoic is giving out.

Serpent’s Tongue

Serpent’s Tongue was something that had me highly intrigued last summer. Unfortunately they still have not shipped yet, but this isn’t all bad. They have been updating their backers regularly with what is going on and the delays seem well worth it from what I have seen. This is expected to ship soon so maybe I can have more information once it does. For now I can say that the production quality on this game is looking great from the previews we’ve seen.

They did release a print-and-play version for backers to test, but I did not get a chance to try it. I did, however, read through the rules. The rules sound pretty interesting but it’s hard to get a grasp for how it will play with the hand gestures and words of power until it’s on the table.

Tammany Hall

Tammany Hall went through a bit of a delay getting out, but it’s all shipped now. The first thing I noticed on receiving it was the high quality components. The board is very thick and sturdy and all the pieces are just great. I was incredibly pleased with the overall production quality (though I wish the stickers came applied as I spent an hour or two just doing that).

The gameplay is also something that I greatly enjoyed. This is perhaps one of my favorite games I’ve received from Kickstarter so far. It’s something that’s very easy to learn and pick up quickly, but something that can take quite a while to master. The turns consist of simply placing your wardens (which determine areas you control) and/or the immigrant cubes (which give you favor tokens) in sections of the city. At the end of every round (4 turns) players go through each section one at a time adding up their wardens and secretly bidding favor tokens to determine who wins that sector (thus scoring VP and starting with 1 warden in that sector for the next round). The player with the most sectors is the mayor and earns 3 bonus VP and then has to assign out an office card to each player giving them a special power for the next round. It’s very strategic and a ton of fun. I highly recommend picking this one up.

Disaster Looms

First of all, Disaster Looms is a project that has had some issues. There were some complaints about the quality of the components. I ran into two issues. First, one side of my CEOs and Corporations expansion rule sheet was blank. Fortunately this didn’t contain a ton of important information and was available on Board Game Geek to download. The other issue is that the player dashboard wheels had connectors that don’t quite fit right. This is something that is being remedied and we are waiting on replacement connectors still. The game is entirely playable without them, though.

The game itself is a lot of fun. It runs a bit long (somewhere in the 3-5 hour range from my experience, but that’s playing with new players so it could be shortened a bit). The rulebook I found to be a bit lacking and laid out poorly. Since release they have re-written and released the rulebook v2.0 which is much better. Things are explained a bit more clearly and there are more examples. The game itself is about players gathering people form earth and colonizing planets in a randomly generated hex grid.

The most interesting part of this game for me was the technology setup. Each player can research technologies on his turn, up to a maximum of 3. A player can also sell any technologies he owns to the public domain. The player who owns a technology has free use of it, but once it is sold to the public domain anyone can use it. Players may pay the owner of a technology to license it for that turn. This allows players to hold on to the highly sought after technologies and earn some income as the other players use them each turn. Since you can’t have more than 3 technologies there is some strategy in which technologies to hold on to and when to sell a technology into the public domain for all to use.

Exile Sun

Exile Sun was the first board game I backed and the first to arrive. The production quality on this was very good. The rulebook was pretty well done for the most part, though there were a few pieces that didn’t really fall into place until we actually played the game (though that is to be expected of most board games I think).

This is another game that has an incredibly long play time, likely around 4-5 hours for a full game. I really like the ideas used in the game and how everything meshed together. However, I do have a big complaint with the round setup. The game is played over 3 rounds and at the beginning of each round the players complete a Supplies action to assign their resources out to move new cards (better ships) into their main deck, draw cards from their deck, build ships, or obtain tech cards. Since it’s hard to do more than two of these on a given round the deck-building type mechanic of adding new ship cards to your main ship deck feels very weak. I feel like the game would greatly benefit from more rounds or more frequent uses of the Supplies phase to allow for some more interesting strategies.

Where the game shines is in the combat setup. You have various size fleets, with the sizes being hidden from other players unless they scan your ships, that you move around the board until entering combat with another player. During the battle phase each player plays a number of ship cards equal to the size of the fleet (3, 4, or 5 cards) into different lanes. Rather than any random mechanics here the players count up the power on their ships and assign that power to both offense and defense across all 5 lanes. It is a lot of fun trying to outsmart your opponent with the placement of your offense and defense. Do you go all out offense and hope to obliterate your opponent in a round or two? Do you protect your big ships expecting a big attack or your weak ships expecting your opponent to try and pick them off? Overall this is a decent game if you are looking for a space game of mostly combat, but there may be better alternatives.

Other Games

Unfortunately I did not have the funds to back everything we posted about so I can’t comment on Ground Floor or Defenders of the Realm: Battlefields. I have backed quite a few other games, which if you’re following us on facebook or twitter you might have seen us posting about. We’ll try and get some reviews up of these new games, including City of Iron (which I am very excited about), Monolith, Fallen City of Karez, and CoolMiniOrNot’s Guilds of Cadwallon. I have learned quite a bit about Kickstarter from all of these projects and the one thing you should keep in mind if you do decide to back any games is that they will rarely hit their target dates. I have had mostly positive experiences with Kickstarter, though, and will continue to back any interesting new games.

Crimson Siege

It’s that time again. Less than 6 months after the previous release, Dark Rages, we’ve got a new Nightfall expansion, Crimson Siege. As with the previous release, this is an expansion only and requires a copy of one of the base games to be played. If you have not played the base game yet then I recommend that you read our review for the base Nightfall game first as this review is only going to cover the new things from the expansion. As with previous expansions, Crimson Siege adds 4 new cards of each colored moon (2 actions and 2 minions of each color). In addition there is a new summon deck with a set of various ghouls.

Songbird 27

Each new expansion for Nightfall has added at least one new mechanic and Crimson Siege is no different. The new mechanic this time is Summoning. When a card effect says to Summon X (where X is a number, usually from 1-3) the player draws the top X cards from the Summon deck and immediately places them into play. When these summoned creatures are destroyed or discarded they are placed back at the bottom of the summon deck. This can be a really quick way to get multiple creatures into play.

The summon deck itself consists of ghouls of varying strengths and health. None of these summoned creatures has any special abilities; they are simply extra strength for attacking/defending. I would have liked to see a little bit more variety in the summon deck but perhaps this is something that can be expanded on in the future. As it stands now the cards from the summon deck are all a bit too similar.

Honestly, I am not quite sure what the intention was with the summoning mechanic other than to simply have more creatures in play at any given time. I always felt that not having tons of creatures in play was a strong point of Nightfall, but if more creatures in play for larger battles was something that you wanted from the game then this mechanic is perfect for you. I will say that in one of our games we happened upon a situation, which may not be incredibly common but is still possible with the summon mechanic, where one player was able to summon enough creatures in one turn to put out around 25 damage in one combat phase (which took us from about halfway through the wounds to ending the game in one combat). I had never seen anything quite like that prior to this expansion. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I will leave up to you as I am still a bit torn on whether combos like that are a good thing or not, though it was definitely an interesting thing to see unfold.

The Summons

My other concern at this point is bloat within the rules with all the new mechanics from the expansions. I don’t think we’ve quite hit the point where all of the new mechanics are too much yet, but with the quick releases and at least one new mechanic per expansion so far I can see it hitting that point quickly if they continue this pace. Adding new mechanics is certainly not a bad thing, but I realized when attempting to explain the game to a new player with all the expansions that there were just a ton of things to deal with at this point past the base rules (Avatars, Moon Phases, Summon, Feed, etc). Hopefully this is something that they have taken into account for future expansions. I wouldn’t mind seeing some expansions with just new cards and no new mechanics to deal with.

Despite the above concerns, this expansion is still a lot of fun. One thing I noticed was that it seemed like they made much more of an effort to give the different colors a theme. The blue cards, for example, all have some sort of card draw mechanic on them. I hope that they continue down this path as it would be nice to be able to identify a theme between the different colors as I think that would make it a bit easier to plan out a strategy.

Le Chat Rose, my personal favorite

There are also some very interesting cards in this expansion with new effects as well. One of my personal favorites is “Le Chat Rose” which allows you to attach any action from your discard pile to her as her chain effect then whenever she attacks you get to resolve the attached action card’s chain text (and the kicker allows you to resolve the attached card’s chain text immediately). Even if the summoning mechanic is not something that holds a huge interest for you this expansion has plenty of interesting non-summoning cards in it as well.

If you have the previous expansions already I would definitely recommend picking up Crimson Siege. If you do not already own Dark Rages I would recommend picking that up before Crimson Siege as I found it a lot more interesting overall and the Avatar mechanic adds a bit more strategy than the summoning mechanic. At the $29.99 price point, though, you’ll definitely want to add this to your collection at some point for some of the interesting new cards.

Dark Rages!

Since I have discovered Nightfall it has been one of the most played games in my collection. This month AEG has released yet another expansion, Nightfall: Dark Rages. Unlike The Coldest War, Dark Rages is a true expansion and not a standalone expansion so you will need a copy of the base game to play it. Since this is not standalone I will not be reviewing any of the base game features, so if you are not familiar with the game I recommend checking out our Nightfall review first.

So what do you get with this new expansion? You get 4 new cards of each color (2 action and 2 minion per color), 12 Avatar cards, and of course as with all Nightfall games you get draft cards and dividers for all of these cards. This set does not include wound cards or starter cards. I love having variety in my games so the new cards are always a welcome addition. There are a lot of interesting new cards in this set. The cards in this set build upon the rules from previous sets, and as such you will see a lot of Combat Effects (although there seem to be very few cards with Feed).

Perhaps the most interesting card in the set is the minion “Good Boy” whose special ability allows you to choose whether or not he attacks during your combat phase. If he does not attack he does not get discarded at the end of the combat phase, allowing him to become a permanent blocker. I have always been wary of attachment cards in Nightfall simply because minions are never around long enough to get much use out of them. While there are a few other minions out there that stick around for more than one turn they seem to be mostly be starter cards and only get one use per game so having a purchasable minion blocker gives you a good excuse to use more attachments.

Regeneration

It’s a good thing too, because Dark Rages includes some interesting attachments as well. Regeneration, for example, allows the attached minion’s controller to draw 2 cards every time that minion blocks. Combine that with “Good Boy” for a blocker that also re-fills your hand. This set is full of interesting combinations like this but I’ll let you discover the rest for yourself.

The big new feature of this set, though, is the Avatar cards. Avatar cards are cards chosen before the game which include 2 always on effects (a positive effect and a negative effect) for that player for the duration of the game. This is an interesting new dimension to the game that allows players to specialize. Most of the Avatar cards will give a bonus to 2 of the minion types (Vampire, Lycanthrope, Ghouls, or Hunters) and a penalty for the other 2 minion types.

Before the archives draft the players hold an Avatar draft. All Avatar cards are dealt out evenly to players and, in typical draft style, players pick one to keep and pass the rest to the left until all Avatars are picked. The players then perform the normal archives draft. After all the archives are set up the players may then choose to any one of the Avatars they previously drafted to use, or choose to not use an Avatar at all. This setup works pretty well. It forces players to pick a diverse set of Avatars during the draft since they don’t know what types of cards will be appearing yet, but then allows the players to make a better informed decision as to which Avatar to actually use once they see what cards are available in the archives.

One of my favorite new minions

The Avatars themselves allow for a wide variety of specialized play styles that can definitely change the game. The Pack Alpha Dominate the Parasites Avatar, for example, has the positive effect “Your lycanthropes and vampires cannot be blocked by ghouls or hunters” and the negative effect “You cannot claim ghouls or hunters.” If you are looking for something that can seriously alter strategies then you will love Avatars as these 12 cards are all different and are pretty much guaranteed to shake things up a bit. I really like the fact that you can choose not to use any of your Avatars as well, giving you the freedom of using your normal strategies or specializing.

I do have one issue with Avatars, however. While I like that they included a beneficial and detrimental effect for each Avatar to try and balance it out, the fact that the archives are random can sometimes lead to an Avatar not having detrimental effects at all. The Pack Alpha Dominate the Rot Avatar has the negative effect of “When you place a hunter or vampire into play, inflict 1 damage on yourself” with the positive effect giving your lycanthropes and ghouls 1 additional strength. In a game with very few or no Hunter or Vampire cards this Avatar card is exceptionally powerful for the player using it. This is just a minor concern that can be somewhat mitigated through careful choices during the draft.

Overall, this expansion is well worth the $29.99 retail price. If you are a fan of Nightfall then it is likely worth the purchase for the new minion and action cards alone. When you add in the Avatars this is an expansion you will definitely want to add to your Nightfall collection.

Serpent’s Tongue

Serpent's Tongue Core Set

One of the most interesting projects I’ve seen so far is Serpent’s Tongue. I am not quite sure how to categorize this game as it feels like it pulls elements from various sources including card games and pen and paper games. Each player has a codex (an actual hardbound book) that holds all of their 33 incantations (4×6 “cards”). There are dozens, if not hundreds, of cards to build your codex from which gives this the feel of building a deck in a CCG. Unlike a CCG though, players do not shuffle their incantations; they always have access to all of the incantations in their codex.

Players take turns casting incantations which consists of the player having to do the appropriate hand gesture and say the correct phrase in order to cast the spell. The front of the card has a special code that a player can decipher or they can memorize the incantations, while the back has a picture of the gesture and the phrase so the other players can tell that you did it right or not. There are a few game types including free for all and team competitions where you must do enough damage to defeat the other players/team but there is also a cooperative campaign included as well.

Ground Floor

Ground floor is an interesting take on the worker placement/resource style board games. Players take control of a new business and must build it to be the best business they can from the ground up. You allocate our your workers to various tasks each turn in order to do things such as gather info or make money. If you are into resource management games it is worth checking this out.

Defenders of the Realm: Battlefields

Defenders of the Realm: Battlefields is a spin off game from the previously published Defenders of the Realm. Whereas Defenders of the Realm was a cooperative game, Battlefields is a competitive game with two sides competing against each other: the Dark Lord and the Heroes. This game consists of players playing cards into the various battlefields to attempt to win that battle. Players must win on 3 battlefields or 2 of the same color battlefields to win the game. Since the game includes at least 14 different battlefields and 3 are in play at a time there looks to be a decent amount of replayability to this as well. While I have not had a chance to try out Defenders of the Realm yet so I don’t know much about the setting here, it looks to be an interesting game using a fairly standard medieval fantasy theme.

Tammany Hall

Tammany Hall

This game has technically already been released, there was only a limited number of release of 500 copies. Tammany Hall is a game of backstabbing and corruption. Players compete for power in New York City by helping immigrants settle for political favors, securing votes, and slandering opponents. I have to admit that after reading up on it I’m still not quite sure how it plays but the whole idea has me very intrigued, especially since it appears to be a sort of resource game with more direct competition between players. I highly recommend looking over the page for this one.

Disaster Looms

Disaster Looms is a hex based game in which players build the board during the game from various hex tiles. The basis of the game is that earth is being destroyed and everyone must be evacuated. Players compete to build colonies, save colonists, and earn money. There is also an interesting layer of the game in which each player has their own various technologies that affect the game and other players are able to use these by paying that player. I am personally a fan of games in which the board is built throughout the gameplay because it tends to keep the game interesting through many plays.

Exile Sun

Exile Sun

Finally, we come to Exile Sun. The Kickstarter for this game has actually already ended, but I wanted to post about it anyway because I backed it and will be reviewing my copy when it shows up soon. This is a space themed game in which players complete various objectives for points. There are a lot of elements to Exile Sun, but the one element that intrigued me was the combat system. Players secretly assign power to offense/defense for ships in 5 different slots in attempts to destroy the opposing player’s ships in each slot by overpowering the defense in a slot by having more offensive power assigned to that slot. This is an interesting game of strategy as players pick which ships to use in battle and then have to outsmart their opponent through strategic assignments of power. Keep an eye out for a full review of this game hopefully in July or so.

These are just a few of the interesting projects on Kickstarter. There seem to be lots of intriguing new projects going up all the time as well. While there is a certain risk to backing projects on Kickstarter, most of the board game projects seem to be mostly finished and simply looking for funding for mass production. Often you’ll find you can get a copy of the game cheaper by backing it on Kickstarter rather than waiting for retail, and in many cases there are Kickstarter specific expansions and rewards as well. I plan to do more of these posts as I find more interesting Kickstarter projects. If you have any suggestions for games on Kickstarter that you like then send us an email. We would love to hear about them!

Nightfall: The Coldest War is the latest (standalone) expansion to Nightfall, the deck-building game from AEG. We absolutely loved Nightfall, so we were excited to try this latest addition. The Coldest War not only adds new archive card options, but includes new wounds, starter cards, and a whole new aspect to the game with the moon deck. For those of you who are not familiar with Nightfall I will give a brief rundown of the basics of the game itself (though I recommend starting with our review of the core Nightfall game if you are not already familiar with Nightfall) and then I will get into the specifics of this expansion.

Nightfall is a deck-building game with several unique elements for a deck-building game. The first of which is the fact that Nightfall is a game of direct combat between players. At the beginning of every turn a player attacks with all of his minions in play before discarding them. Since the combat phase is the first phase any minions played on that turn last until the beginning of the player’s next turn, allowing them to be used for blocking in the meantime. Combat is generally pretty simple: assign attackers, declare defenders, and then assign damage. Any excess damage is dealt to a player in the form of Wound cards which enter the player’s deck, and the player with the least wound cards at the end of the game is the winner. However, when playing with multiple players it can be difficult to decide who to attack each turn.

"Clever Ivan", a New Starter Minion

The other major element of Nightfall is the chain system. Unlike most deck-building games in which players may simply play 1 action (which will sometimes give the player more actions to spend) the player may play a single chain. Each card has a large moon in the upper left corner, and two smaller moons beneath that. Each of those moons is of a specific color. The larger moon is the color of that card and the smaller colors are the colors that may be chained from that card. During the chain phase a player plays any card to start and then may continue to chain cards (as long as the large moon on the new card matches the smaller moons of the last played card) as long as he wishes. After the current player is done the player to his left may chain off of the last played card and so on until each player has had a chance to play cards, meaning every player has a chance to play cards on every player’s turn. Once the chain is finished all cards are resolved in reverse order. This leads to some very interesting outcomes, especially since some cards can alter or remove other cards in the chain.

Since there are no money cards the buy phase plays out different than most deck-building games as well. A player receives 2 influence (the currency used to purchase new cards) each turn and may receive additional influence by discarding cards from his hand. On top of this unique way of handling buying cards each player also has 2 private archives from which only he may purchase cards in addition to the common archives from which all players may purchase cards. The private and common archives are chosen in a draft at the beginning of the game, allowing the players to start planning their strategy before the game has even technically started.

A 2 Player Game in Progress, with Chain Events and Damaged Enemies!

All of the above are core mechanics and are true of the base game as well as The Coldest War. However, there is a completely new element introduced with this expansion as well, moon phases. There are 6 moon phase cards that make up a special deck. At the start of the game these are shuffled and one card is placed face up on top of the moon deck. Each card has a unique effect that changes the game while it is in play, such as increasing the strength of Lycanthropes by 2 or making all cards resolve their kickers when played. At the end of each player’s turn he may choose to leave the current moon phase or change it (either by placing the current card on the bottom and flipping the next card or shuffling the cards and flipping the top one).

One of the New Moon Cards

This adds a new strategic level to the game in which a player can plan certain plays around these moon phases (such as throwing all his Lycanthropes into play to try and take advantage of the moon phase, or changing the order in which a chain is played since the requirements do not need to be met to activate kickers). However, these do not always have a huge effect and you will find that sometimes the moon cards are ignored or that you will cycle through repeatedly without much coming out of it. Still, they are a welcome addition that can create some crazy and unexpected scenarios on occasion.

There are also a few card effects that did not appear in the base game, but did appear in previous expansions. Some cards include a “Combat” effect which allows the player to discard that card from their hand during combat for a special effect (such as a bonus to strength). This leads to some more interesting combat scenarios than the base game. The only other card prior to this expansion that included this effect is the Martial Law Wound card. The other effect that appears very rarely in this set is the “Feed” effect. A card that includes “Feed” may repeat an effect as many times as they can afford to pay the feed cost (such as discarding cards from their hand). This can be very powerful if the player is able to repeatedly pay the cost. These two effects make for some interesting new strategic options compared to the base game.

The thing that actually was very exciting to me was the introduction of new starter cards. While these are still 6 sets of 2 cards (one set for each color) they have very different effects than the base starter minions. If you have both the base game and The Coldest War you can use either set or you can allow players to put together their own starter decks picking any 2 minions of each color to build a custom 12 card deck to start with. Being such a huge fan of customization I really like being able to build my own starter deck.

The New Coldest War Wound, with New Art!

The final difference from the base game is the inclusion of three different wound types. Included are the wounds from the base game, the wounds from Martial Law, and a new wound type unique to this expansion. This new wound may be played in a chain, and chains to and from any color card. Using one of these wounds you can bridge that gap between two cards in your hand to keep a chain going. This also does not count towards the one wound effect per turn, so you may still use the old wound cards after using one of these new ones in a chain. On top of this, the wound cards have new art instead of the simple bullet hole art used with previous sets. Unfortunately this art is based around the Bite, Bleed, or Burn types which caused some confusion among the players I played with when two cards with the same art had different effects while another card with different art had the same effect, but this is really only a minor gripe.

Overall this has turned out to be a very good standalone game and expansion, though it adds a bit of complexity (which some players, such as myself, will appreciate and other players will not). If you already own Nightfall and are looking to add more or if Nightfall sounds intriguing to you and you are already familiar with deck-building games I definitely recommend picking up The Coldest War as it has plenty to offer. If you have never played a deck-building game before or do not enjoy too much complexity I would recommend purchasing the base Nightfall game, and then perhaps looking to The Coldest War later as it can be overwhelming if you are not already familiar with the basics.

Nightfall

Since the release of Dominion and the birth of the deck-building genre there have been a large number of deck-building games released. Each game brings their own twist to the table, and Nightfall by the Alderac Entertainment Group has several unique gameplay elements that make it stand out in my mind. The first thing you might notice though is that Nightfall is based around vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the night mixed with guns in a more modern setting.

Note: If you are not familiar with the basics of deck-building games I recommend reading our Dominion review first as that explains the basics of the genre.

The initial draw of Nightfall for me was the promise of direct conflict and combat between players. The one thing that I had a problem with in the deck-building genre (and specifically with Dominion) was the lack of interaction between players. In Nightfall players are directly attacking each other with their minions each turn. Added to the beginning of the typical genre turn setup of playing actions, buying, and cleanup is a combat phase.

A Minion Card

During the combat phase a player must attack with all of his minions, divided up amongst the other players as he wishes. The combat itself is fairly simple; the attacker chooses which minions are attacking each other player, defenders assigns minions to block each minion, damage is assigned to the defenders (defenders do not attack back), and then all attacking minions are discarded. Any undefended or excess damage goes to the defending player. Each point of damage dealt to a player causes that player to draw a wound card. Once all of the wound cards are depleted (there are 10 per player) the game is over and the player with the least amount of wounds is the winner. While wounds are not necessarily a good thing to have, the negative effects are somewhat negated by the wound effects on the cards. In the base set the only wound effect allows a player to discard wounds from his hand at the end of his turn and draw 2 cards to replace each wound discarded, meaning that players with too many wounds will not simply get left behind and in some cases it might even be beneficial to try and take a couple wounds for the extra card draw.

The other element that really makes Nightfall stand out is the chain system. Instead of having a single action to play each turn players instead are allowed to play a single chain. Each card in Nightfall has a colored moon in the upper left corner of the card and 2 smaller moons that denote what cards can be chained off of that card. During the chain (action) phase the player can start by playing any card from their hand. They may continue playing cards as long as that card’s colored moon matches the chain colors from the previously played card, creating a chain of cards. What is interesting is that after that player is finished playing cards the player to their left is allowed to then play cards chaining off of the last played card (and continuing this way until all players have had a chance to play on the current chain).

An action card has an effect in a chain and then is discarded.

Once all players have had a chance to play cards the chain is resolved in reverse order with the cards played last being resolved first. Cards have chain effects that take effect when they resolve that do all kinds of things from damaging minions or players to canceling other cards in the chain. In addition, many cards have a “kicker” effect that also occurs if the card they are chained from is of a specific color. If the card is a minion it then enters play and stays in play until it attacks at the beginning of the owner’s next turn. Since the chain phase comes after the combat phase minions played on a player’s turn are around for a full round to defend before they attack and are discarded at the beginning of the player’s next turn. Also, since players can chain off of another player’s chain they are able to bring in minions during another player’s turn. This creates a very interesting and strategic setup in which players have to decide when it is best to player a card into a chain, and how best to chain their cards together.

The buy phase is also different. Nightfall does not include any money cards. Instead, all players receive 2 influence (the currency used to purchase new cards) every and they may discard cards from their hand for 1 influence each. There is at least 1 card that gives the player a bonus to influence when played in a chain as well. This means that even if a player has a card in his hand that he does not want to play or is not very useful for the current situation he can turn it into something useful. Players do not discard their hands at the end of the turn however, so there is an advantage to not discarding all excess cards for influence each turn.

The Wound card

While I am discussing the buy phase there is another interesting aspect to the buy phase of Nightfall as well. The player may purchase cards from the common archives (the piles of cards in the middle of the play area) as well as from their own private archives. At the beginning of the game there is a draft in which players pick the 8 cards that will appear in the common archives (that any player can purchase from) and then each player also drafts 2 cards for their private archives (which only that player may purchase cards from during the game). These private archives mean that players can develop different strategies based around the private archives they pick.

All of these elements combined together make Nightfall a very unique deck-building experience. Nightfall is currently not only one of my favorite deck-building games but one of my favorite games of any genre! The base game comes with 24 unique card types giving plenty of variety and replayability when you consider the combinations possible with these cards in the common and private archives. There are also 3 expansions available currently (Blood Country, Martial Law, and The Coldest War) that add plenty of new cards to play with, including new wound types and more variety in potential chain combinations.

Keep an eye out for more deck-building game reviews coming soon, including a review of the Nightfall: The Coldest War stand-alone expansion as well! The Coldest War adds not only new archive cards but new starting minion options, new wound types, and an interesting new game mechanic, moon phases.

Dominion

We have recently discovered the relatively new genre of deck-building card games. If you are not familiar with the genre the name might conjure up thoughts of Magic: The Gathering or other CCGs. However, the deck-building genre is something very different. Instead of building a deck of cards and then playing a game with that deck the game itself is building your deck by purchasing cards each turn, not to mention the entire game comes in one box so there is no card collecting. We have tried out many different deck-building games recently, but I am going to start by reviewing the game that started the genre, Dominion.

The first thing that you need to know is what the cards are:
Treasure Cards are the currency with which players are able to buy new cards.
Victory Cards have no value during the game, but are worth victory points towards winning the game.
Kingdom Cards are the action cards which players purchase during the game. These cards have a large variety of functions allowing players to do things such as draw more cards, take additional actions, purchase more than additional cards on their turn, or even force other players to discard cards.

The Village card allows the player to draw 1 card and play 2 more actions.

The general formula behind Dominion (and for most games in the genre) is fairly simple. The goal of the game is to have the most victory points in your deck when the game ends (which occurs when the Province cards are all purchased or when any 3 supply piles are empty). Each player has their own deck of cards to draw from that starts as 10 cards: 7 treasure cards and 3 victory point cards. There are also several piles of cards in the center of the table, called the Supply, which is where players will purchase new cards from. A player’s turn consists of 3 simple steps performed in order: play an action card (optional), buy a card from the supply and place it in your discard pile (optional), then discard all cards in play and in your hand and draw 5 new cards (reshuffling your discard pile into a new deck if necessary).

Cards are purchased using money earned from Treasure cards in the players hand (and also some Kingdom cards that give extra money). Through purchasing new cards each turn the players are each continuously customizing their deck the whole game. The cards available for purchase in the supply consist of 10 different Kingdom cards (chosen by the players or randomly selected from all available cards), more Treasure cards (Copper, Silver, and Gold worth 1, 2, and 3 money respectively), and Victory cards (Estate, Duchy, and Province, worth 1, 3, and 6 points respectively). Since the end goal is to purchase victory point cards the general strategy consists of trying to create a deck that can efficiently purchase victory points each turn. Of course, since Victory cards have no purpose during gameplay having too many in your deck will dilute it, making it harder to get the good cards into your hand each turn causing the players to balance their victory card purchases carefully.

While the general gameplay is fairly simple, the variety in the cards makes the game very interesting. Players can use cards that allow them to play more actions creating intricate chains of cards. Through these chains players can build up a hand in a single turn to purchase high valued cards (such as the Province Victory Card) or trade in cards in their hands for higher valued cards from the Supply, for example.

Thief, an attack card

The core game consists of 25 different potential Kingdom cards to go in the supply, but only 10 different Kingdom cards are used in a single game. This means there are millions of potential combinations of cards, making each play different. There are suggested sets to use in the rulebook, but there is also a set of randomizer cards so that you can randomly choose which 10 cards to use each game. There are also many expansions available that add new Kingdom cards (and sometimes new rules) that will ensure that you never have a lack of variety.

The only complaint I have about Dominion is the lack of interaction with other players. There are a few “attack” cards that allow a player to do things such as steal cards from another player, force a player to discard cards from their hand or give other players curse cards (which are negative victory point cards), but for the core game there are only a couple of these cards so each player is mostly focused on himself the whole game. This is only a minor complaint though, as the game is still very fun.

One thing outside of the gameplay itself that should be noted is that the box for Dominion comes with a tray with dividers for all of the cards. As someone who is obsessed with keeping cards organized this is really awesome! It makes setup and cleanup much easier, and it keeps your cards safe.

Dominion Big Box, contains Game + 2 Expansions

I highly recommend checking out Dominion if you have never played it before, and especially if you have never played a deck-building game. It was the first of the genre, and after playing several different deck-building games the genre is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. Dominion is also one of the easiest deck-building games to pick up, and once you have the core mechanics down I’ve found that it becomes very easy to pick up any other deck-building game.

Keep an eye out because there will likely be several more reviews of deck-building games coming soon! Next up will be Nightfall which changes up the formula a bit with an intriguing chain mechanic and direct combat between players.

Dominion Core Game
Retail $44.95 Sale $35.99

Dominion Big Box
Retail $100 Sale $79.99