Some positive comments about Kinfire Delve by Incredible Dream Studios encouraged me to stop by their booth and scout out the card-based dungeon-delve type game. While there, I got a gander at their new worker-placement Kinfire Council whose twist involves players voting on new rules at the start of each round. Going in and out of the gaming hall I kept seeing lots of blue and red boxes being played. It turns out they were the same game, Call of Duty: the Board Game, and it comes in two flavors with two unique characters in each box. The boardgame mirrors the computer game. Players preprogram a turn, trying to secretly move around the board and get a jump on their opponent. Combat uses dice and cards. Winners gain points while eliminated losers just spawn back in again later. Arcane Wonders was also showing off Leylines, a sort of collect and deliver game that is a remake/reimagining of a Spiel des Jahres winner from 1987!

Incredible Dream Studios

Kinfire Council

Kinfire Council is a two to six player worker placement game with some political (game-wise, not real-life) overtones. Players are members of the council of the city of Din’Lux and are trying to increase their influence while simultaneously helping the city to repel an attack of cultists.

Every round (there are five rounds) starts with the revealing of some decrees. These decrees affect how the game is going to play this round. The catch is, players get to vote for which decree will be used. Then, players take turns placing their workers to take actions. There are eighteen or so spots with two more that change from round to round. More powerful actions also cost coins, a moderately scarce resource that can be obtained in various ways. In lieu of taking an action, a player can place a worker to arrest a cultist. The cultist is claimed as a sort of resource and can be traded in for things at a later point. This is also important to do, as the cultists have their own score and a player can only win the game if they also have a higher score than the cultist score/track. Other actions include building a lighthouse – a kind of communal effort of spending resources that can yield quite a few points depending on how high it is pushed and one’s contribution. However, cultist attacks can knock it down a few pegs so that’s something to watch out for… A final action of note (there are lots of gather/spend resource type actions) is one that triggers the docket chosen (voted for) at the start the round.

As mentioned, the game starts with asymmetric player conditions. Each player is assigned a unique character, which is an improved worker with special abilities. This worker can even teach the other workers their tricks. The largest difference between players will be their councilor. Councilors have wide ranging powers. Some may provide free actions (no worker needed), allow a player to substitute resources for others, might start with extra stuff, one even grants all of their workers the same ability as their character.

An expansion to the game, Kinfire Council: Winds of Change, adds more “stuff” (like new lighthouse spots and new decrees), a solo and a co-operative mode, and some sort of “rezoning laws” that are meant to change up the game board over several plays.

Kinfire Delve

It’s been released over the past couple years but it’s new to me. After hearing some good impressions of this cooperative game I thought I would look up Kinfire Delve. It is a cooperative (or solo) card game in the dungeon crawling genre. It now comes in three releases, each release containing two characters and a big bad guy to defeat. The game can be played solo or cooperatively, and characters from several releases can combine to increase the player count.

The game is card-based. The big bad boss has a deck of challenge cards (50+) that need defeating before you can take on the BBB more directly. Players attempt one of four challenges available on their turn by playing cards matching a challenge and rolling dice. Success means progress tokens get added to the challenge, put on enough and gain the rewards – sometimes even discarding unseen challenge cards! Fail to defeat the challenge in time and you’ll face a loss of health or cards. Players can use cards in hand to help others during their turn, but if you want to draw a new hand of cards, players must also take an exhaustion card which often triggers nasty ongoing effects that can drag you down and lose you the game.

Vainglory’s Grotto was the first in the Kinfire Delve line, it included a defensive bruiser and a high-damage lady with deadly nails. There are now two more. Callous’ Lab has players attacking challenge cards arrayed around the central Callous personage. The two heroes are a fire-wielding healer/scholastic character and a bow-person that “shoots from afar” but also has ways of avoiding problems entirely. Scorn’s stockade has a bardic healer, good at drawing cards with some dice reroll powers, and the other character messes with progress tokens and the ability to ignore penalties and health loss in some situations.

Arcane Wonders

Call of Duty: The Board Game

Ghost vs Shepherd or Price vs Makarov

Call of Duty: The Board Game is based around the first person shooter video game, Call of Duty. Players take on the role of a single fighter and duke it out on the game board using (simultaneously chosen) preprogrammed actions and some hidden movement. There is a basic and a more advanced set of rules for the game for those wanting more options during play.

In addition to the main board, each player has their own, personal map and a handy reference screen to hide it behind. Players can kit out their personal dude/dudette with weapons and items before the game starts, hopefully so that they can lean into their preferred play style.

Turns are preprogrammed, with four actions set up at a time. This includes things like aiming, using items, moving, sprinting, and even what direction you will be facing. Gun ammo is a limited resource, so don’t forget to reload. Players then take turns revealing their movement on the shared, main map. As soon as a player enters the line of sight (LOS) of another, combat is initiated. Players then roll dice, play cards, etc… to determine a winner. The loser is eliminated (for now) but if the defender makes a good showing the winner may end up wounded. All is not lost, of course, since a defeated opponent will just “spawn in” again at a later point.

The game defaults to eliminating players to score points but there are other game options like capture the flag, etc.. Players can earn extra points for “killstreaks” which is when they eliminate several opponents in a row without themselves being eliminated.

The game actually comes in two flavors, a red box and a blue box. Each box has its own maps and has two different characters to play (for a total of four.) There are also rules for four player games.

Leylines

Leylines is a new take on an old Spiel des Jahres winner that had players bidding against each other for the privilege of moving around Europe delivering goods. Well, gone are the trucks (or whatever they were) and in come the fairies, wrapped up in a groovy-looking circular board.

Players are attempting to gather the resources in the forest and travel the leylines (ooh, titular tie-in!) back to the markets for selling. Movement is accomplished from rolling dice and using them to program actions at the start of the round. The dice are then used to progress through the circular forest and back to the markets.

A display case outside the exhibitor hall, showing off some of the past Arcane Wonders games – Cat on the Tower and Buffet Boss.