by FuzzySilk
I got the chance to play this game recently at a local convention and I really liked it. We played a 3 player game against the Dragons twice. First time we lost and the second time we won.I was really impressed with the design and feel of the game and decided to pick it up.
I was going to order the game directly from the designer but found out he sells the game directly through Game Salute. Well the local game store I use Myriad Games is the sister company to Game Salute so I decide I would just pick it up there, which is what I did.
Anyway I played a Solo game today to get ready for my Friday game group this week, to make sure I had the rules down and could teach. I played two hands against the Necromancers with the "Board the Windows" setup.
It started off pretty well. I decided I was going to use one hand to fight with and one hand to generate money for walls. That was the plan but it went out the window pretty quick.
I was able to kill most of the monsters by the time they reached the 3 section. I think only one main monster and a couple of Zombies made it to the end with out dieing.
I managed to build four walls (one got destroyed during the game) and I concentrated on getting Traveling Villagers over to the town. The problem was I only bought a couple of cards from the 8 available in each of my decks and since I was killing monsters I was taking a lot of wounds.
Things started to go bad when the Zombies finally started hitting. At that point I knew I had to switch gears and try to close the ShadowRifts.
So I started Exploring to get to them(I had used the recommended method of shuffling up half the ShadowRifts with the whole deck and then taking the half of the deck and putting the other half in there and shuffle that. This is so the ShadowRifts don't show up right at the top and you have an easy win).
Well I only had two ShadowRifts in the deck and it turns out with using this method I ended up having the 2 ShadowRifts next to each other only 3 cards up from the bottom.
I managed to get both of the ShadowRifts out on the same turn. The next turn it was do or die. I managed to draw a perfect hand in both decks the last turn. I had a Seal and a Heroism in one and a Seal and Resurrect in the other so I could seal the rifts when it got to the heroes turn. I just had to play it out.
My town came up with 3 Corpses, a Shrine and an other card I can't remember. There was one monster in the monster area moving to step two. It was the Beast of Bones: Kill the Mayor. No mayor so he went hunting.
5 Corpses came up in a row(so if that didn't happen and I dealt out the next town I would of been dead). Then something came up he was able to kill and I added a corpse. Then closed the Rifts and won the game. It was hard fought and we almost lost. It was a blast. The way a co-op game should be.
My town had a total of 11 Corpses, 3 Walls (Stone, Moat, & Shrine), 3 town Villagers(Guard, Smith, & Stonemason), and the Robber. My town was in very bad shape at the end and is a miracle I survived!
My two decks had(other then the starting hands):
Deck 1 Resurrect, 2 Seals, 4 Heroism, Lightning Daggers, & 8 Wounds
Deck 2 2 Fireball, 1 Seal, 5 Heroism, 2 Might, 6 Wounds
The wounds really killed me and Soulthirster's "Heroes discard all Might and Heroism" really messed me up. I had both Soulthirster come up in my game and in the future I would Explore and put them on the bottom if I got the chance. Also once the Zombies show up watch out...
I think my biggest mistake was not building my deck up more earlier and worrying too much about fighting in the beginning. This caused me to melee fight too much and get too many wounds.
But it is hard to balance getting cards for your deck, buying new people for the town, fighting the monsters and building the walls. But that is what is awesome about the game.
This is only my third game of this but I am very glad I have it and am looking forward to playing and figuring this game out. Can't wait to try different monsters and different setups. This game for me is blowing away Thunderstone(And I like Thunderstone a lot). I hope it does well and the designer can release a new edition like he wants and someday get an expansion. Really fun game!