I have never heard of the books or the game so this was a bit of a random buy, was it worth it? No, to be fair this game is not bad it is just a really unbalanced game in my opinion.
Let us look at the basics even though we can see them on the box!
Players: 2
Age: 10+
Time: 20 - 40 minutes
Now we have that covered we need to look at what you get in the box!
What is in the box?
In this box we get;
70 cards (35 per deck)
3 wild cards
6 dice
Rule leaflet
23 expansion cards for dwarves the game (not this one, like why? Why put them in here?)
Setting up the game
Without a doubt, this is one of the easiest games to set up! Just follow these simple steps,
1: Gather your 35 cards and shuffle them
2: PLace them facedown to create a draw pile and leave space for a discard pile
3: Draw 4 cards for your starting hand
4: Smallest player goes first
5: Place the wildcards and dice in the middle of the table
Done, that is the set-up process!
How do I win?
The game instantly ends when a player has an empty draw deck, then the player with the most Victory Points (VP) wins the game. If this is a draw the player with cards left in their draw piles win.
How do we play?
There are three steps a player must take on their turn;
Draw a card
Roll the dice
Play a card
3 easy steps that we will now look at further.
Draw a card:
At the start of your turn, you must draw a card from your draw pile, if this empties your deck the game ends (see the how-to win section above).
You may have cards in play that allow you to draw more than 1 card, you must decide if you are drawing just one or two at the start. If you are drawing the two you must take both at once!
Roll the dice:
You start with the ability to roll 3 dice on each turn, some cards allow you to roll extra dice, you can never roll more than 6 dice, this 6 limit does not include the wild cards, this means if you had 3 wild cards and can roll 6 dice you technically can use 6 real dice and 3 wild card dice.
The axe symbol is a wild card - wold cards can be used as any number.
Some cards allow you to re-roll dice, if this is the case use them now and re-roll the dice you wish to re-roll.
Play a card:
Using the dice you have rolled you can pay to play cards, each card down the left and right-hand side will show the cost to play a card, this can be just a dice number such as a 4 or it could show a dice with a wave this means you need to have the same number on a certain amount of dice.
If you look at the image above you can see that it shows 2 dice with the wave symbol, this means you need to spend 2 dice with the matching number to play this card, in this case, I used a 2 and a wild card symbol to be another 2 allowing me to play this card from my hand.
When you buy a card the dice are returned to the centre of the table, you can not use the same dice more than once.
Certain card effects need to use dice also and you would use them in the same manner, you use the dice you rolled to pay the cost to use the effect.
Any used dice at the end of your turn go back into the centre of the table. That is the basic turn of play but there are other topics we will cover now.
Event cards and twist of fate cards:
These cards do not have a dice cost and can be played for free, you just need to read out the effect text, action this text and then discard the card.
Gaining wild cards:
If you play a card but do not use any dice this turn (use an event card or twist of fate card) you gain 1 wild card from the middle.
If you have all 3 of them then you can not take any, if you have 2 and the other player as 1 you take it from them. When you use a wild card return it to the centre of the table.
Attacking:
A very important element to this game is attacking, you need to attack cards to kill players allies and destroy their VP.
First, you need to match the required dice value to perform the attack, for each dice of that value you can inflict 1 damage.
Check out the guide below;
1 single number (5 for example) = For each 5 you roll and have not used you can use to inflict 1 damage if you rolled 2 5's, 1 wild card symbol and have 1 wild card you could inflict 4 damage.
1 - 5 = Basically any number can be used to attack.
4,5 = Any 4 or 5 can be used to attack.
You must match the health value of a card to destroy it in one turn or it will fully heal after you turn. You can kill allies and VP cards only.
1 card can only attack 1 card, they can not attack multiple cards, this means if you used the example above you could not kill 2 cards with 2HP each you can only kill 1.
Multiple cards can kill 1 card, if you have 2 cards that cause 1 damage each you can combine these to kill a card with 2HP.
You can choose to attack the other players draw pile, for each 1 damage you cause they must take 1 card from their draw pile and discard it! This is a great way to limit what cards they can use in the game.
That is everything to this game! I should mention the decks are the same so each player gets the same deck but with different images.
Final Thoughts
I am going to start by saying I and the other player both agreed that this was not a terrible game and it can be fun, however, the unbalance in this game is unreal!
What makes this game so unbalanced is the luck factor because if you are just not getting the rolls you need then you are s**t out of luck.
Next, the card that allows you to roll an extra dice each turn, these are brutal, if the other player gets these out and a few turns go by and you do not get 1 then you are f****d. In all three games, we played these cards were the deciding factor.
I could not believe how much one card could unbalance the game, it puts the other player on the back foot and it is near enough impossible to recover from it.
Saying that you can win if you play your cards right, look how many cards are left and go for VP cards and hope the other player rolls like s**t.
There is a tactical element to the game but not much, it really is a game of luck and hope you get the roll extra dice cards out to give you the edge, that is all you need to win this game.
4/10
