Dale Yu: Review of Kinfire Delve: Scorn’s Stockade 

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Dale Yu

Kinfire Delve: Scorn’s Stockade

  • Designer: Kevin Wilson
  • Publisher: Incredible Dream
  • Players: 1-2 (up to 4 if you have two modules)
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 60 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Kinfire Delve: Scorn’s Stockade, a tactical and cooperative card game for 1-2 players, you will fight your way through the well deck of challenge cards to reach Scorn, the Master of the Well, and face them in an epic final battle.

Scorn’s Well is made up of four challenge cards, with Scorn himself in the middle. As a challenge is defeated, another takes its place, with 57 challenge cards in total. As you face the challenges of the Well, you may play a skill card from your hand only when it matches the color of the challenge card, e.g., if you’re facing a red challenge card, then you may play only a red skill card. Some cards have two colors, and some are white, that is, wild. If the card you play does not defeat the challenge, you’ll be able to add some progress to it and attempt it again, though you may suffer a penalty for doing so.

Other seekers can provide help by playing one of their own cards as a boost, but beware. Running out of cards nets you an exhaustion card before you can draw a new hand. Exhaustion cards are never good, but some are worse than others.

Defeating a challenge provides you a reward, such as regaining health or delving deeper into the Well, which is represented by discarding unseen challenge cards. Once you’ve made your way to the bottom of the Well, you’ll face Scorn himself. All Seekers share a health pool, and if the pool reaches zero, you’re defeated. This is a game that requires teamwork and persistence as the wells of Atios are unpredictable and quite dangerous.

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Dale Yu: First Impressions of Weirdwood Manor

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Dale Yu

Weirdwood Manor

  • Designer: Mike Cassie
  • Publisher: Greyridge Games
  • Players: 1-5
  • Age: 13+
  • Time: 90-120 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by distributor, Flat River Games

Weirdwood Manor is a cooperative board game that marries great adventure gameplay with some euro-inspired underpinnings, as you and your group of valiant companions battle to protect Weirdwood Manor and its enigmatic ruler, Lady Weirdwood, from an invading Fae Monster and his Clockwork Scarab minions.

The Manor is a mysterious and magical place where rooms and the pathways between them can shift as time progresses.  When you set up the game, you randomize the 11 rooms in the outer ring, the 11 rooms in the middle ring, and the 5 rooms in the inner ring.  Each ring is separated from its neighboring ring with a circular corridor ring-board.  The game has a few extra “Expert” rooms which can be added in when you are more experienced with the game. 

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Gen Con 2024 – Wise Wizard & Dead Alive

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Matt J Carlson

Another temporal pairing writeup, I was given the low-down on all things Wise Wizard Games right after stopping by the Dead Alive Games booth. Wise Wizard Games talked me through the drawing party game Caution Signs and a kids version of Star Realms, Star Realms Academy. Both are launching under a new Wacky Wizard Games label. Star Realms Rise of Empire, a legacy game, should be out soon as should their back-to-their-roots 10th Anniversary set which is the original deck with art spanning entire cards. Hero Realms Dungeons is a new campaign and brings along with it new character decks and adventure decks that supply everything needed to take characters from level 1 to 24. New products include Sherlock Solitaire which is a 1 or 2 player co-op game of managing card placement. It has a similar vibe to traditional solitaire but with some thematic elements. The final big discussion was about Draconis 8, a full-on trading card game complete with starters and sealed decks. Each card is digitally printed to be unique (mostly number changes) and scanning in a code will bring your recently purchased pack into the digital version of the game. Regarding Dead Alive Games, I was able to get a short rundown on last year’s medium-weight economic game Lunar Rush and their new family-friendly campaign game, Cyber Pet Quest, where players are pets roaming around the house trying to search out their owners.

Dead Alive Games

Cyber Pet Quest

Cyber Pet Quest has players as pets off on an adventure to save their owners. It is a casual or family campaign that takes place over 11 chapters. Players move their pets around the house, interacting with things via a small stack of cards. Players can move quickly, or sneak around which slows you down but makes it easier to be healed. The game has a player and enemy deck that is shuffled each round and used to determine who gets to move next. This keeps everyone on their toes and reduces quarterbacking issues somewhat. Enemies come in four levels of difficulty which also determines how many steps they can take around the board. They move and attack everyone in their path, with players granted a die roll to try to avoid damage. Players also earn luck tokens on some rolls which can be spent on charms – used in later games. “Cute” items can be found in the game which are the one-time-only items that are very powerful. Each chapter of the game has a maximum number of turns rather than a player elimination mechanic so players who are knocked out can simply be revived.

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Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2024 (Part 3)

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Dale Yu

Far away we sailed our knarr, with the help of the maps of misterra, aiming to settle along the moon river which feeds from okanagan, the valley of the lakes. We named this planet unknown “Rauha” … and then the robots ate our pizza.

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Gen Con 2024 – Chip Theory and Cephalofair

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Matt J Carlson
Friendly Chip Theory Gearloc Plushie

Today we put two big box retailers (the boxes to their games are big) into one big box article. Cephalofair was showing up the latest of their upcoming Gloomhaven RPG and they had a small side table showing off their micro (size, not content) game Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs. Meanwhile, in the Chip Theory booth, I snapped photos of some of the bling for the upcoming Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era. Play a card game version of an old-school fighting arcade game in Neon Reign, complete with a neon palette. The solo 20 Strong series keeps going strong with three new fairy-tale themed games – Tanglewoods Red, Gold, and White. We end with a brief survey of a few games in the kid-friendly Chip Theory Kids line.


 

Cephalofair

Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game

Appearing soon in Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game Core Rulebook and Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game Deluxe set, this is an RPG based in the setting of the Gloomhaven and Frosthaven settings. Many familiar classes, enemies, and other story elements appear – often in some expanded form. Gameplay is reminiscent of the boardgames, players manage a hand of dual-use cards that also govern their initiative order. From a birds-eye view, it looks very much like a standard game of Gloomhaven. Where the RPG side of things provides deeper story ideas, backgrounds and maps of areas, players can create characters from scratch rather than use preset ones from the boardgames. The tactical combat remains very similar to the boardgame but layers of RPGs are placed on top. The Core Rulebook contains everything needed for play (for both players and GM) whereas the Deluxe Set comes 

Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs

In a “Honey, I shrunk the adventurer” moment, you just walked into the wrong shop in Gloomhaven and have been miniaturized. You are now stuck as a tiny creature until you can convince the proprietor to reverse the curse. A miniature adventure deserves a miniature game, and Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs is a miniaturized (rules, not box & pieces) version of Gloomhaven that is played as a solo game. Even the play time is miniaturized, running about 20 minutes per session.  Everything about the game is slimmed down to make a faster playing game on a smaller footprint. Rather than a whole deck of cards, a player starts with just 4 cards to use. When used, however, they are flipped over to show a new card on the back. That means you better get what you need done in nine rounds. There is no longer a map. Well, there is still a map but it is now shrunken down (by the same magic, perhaps?) to a single card. Monster and hero attack decks have gone away. Instead, dice provide randomness (+,-,x) cross referenced with a table so one can see the possibilities as they start to come up. The entire solo game runs through 20 different scenarios. Both the attack table and a player’s cards can be improved as they level up during the game. For those needing variety, there are a total of six heroes (from previous games) available to use. The game was released last spring and I’ve had some good times with it. In terms of value per gram (or mL), it’s very close to the top of my collection.

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Dale Yu: Review of Task Team

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Dale Yu

Task Team

  • Designer: Olivier Finet
  • Publisher: Gigamic
  • Players: 3-18
  • Age: 7+
  • Time: 20-30 minutes
  • Played with various review copies provided by publisher

In Task Team, two teams go head-to-head over a task while the third referees. Play with three people or three teams for even more fun!  The goal of the game is to be the first team to win seven madcap tasks.

To setup, split your group into three teams. There must be at least one player in each team.  There does not have to be the same number of players in each team.  Shuffle the task cards and create a deck. 

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