by: Michael Barnes

AEG has already struck post-Dominion gold once with Thunderstone, the dungeon-delving game that promised and delivered “deckbuilding with a purpose.” They’re back in the draft with Nightfall. I can hear your eyes rolling and that smirk you’re making reads “another deckbuilding game?” But hear me out, I think this one is quite a bit different from its peers. I think it makes a pretty good case for itself as likely the first of what we may as well go ahead and call the next generation of this particular genre.

The deckbuilding in the game is a major component, but it’s not the only element as it is essentially a stripped down combat-oriented card game. It’s closer in some ways to a collectible card games but with a fixed drafting scheme and tightly limited card pool.

Unfortunately, as is common in the genre, the mechanical elements don’t do much to illuminate theme regardless of the fact that the game offers more to do than simplistic card drafting and endless shuffling. It’s a post-apocalypse scenario wherein eternal night has befallen the earth and warring vampire and werewolf factions have taken over. There are also ghouls in the mix, as well as human hunters that go after the monsters to protect what’s left of non-monster civilization. The game doesn’t really do much with all of that other than offer a couple of pieces of throwaway fluff stories and provide a context for all of the artwork. The narrative might just be card-name deep, but it’s still more interesting than building a medieval town- as long as it stays well north of the questionable terrain mined by those silly Underworld films.

The setup does work in terms of setting up a very bloody, very aggressive kind of gameplay where players get a chance to just completely hammer each other over the course of the game, wiping the table with played minion cards and doling out wound cards to all comers. This is not a game where you’re carefully tuning your deck to squeeze out extra actions or ducats, this is a game where you’re drafting the biggest werewolf on the table to go kill the guy sitting next to you. Or you’ll pick cards to lay as much direct damage on another player as possible in a single turn. Nightfall is highly interactive, not just in terms of aggression but also due to a unique and quite innovative chaining mechanic that means you’re never sitting quietly and watching another player buy cards, waiting for the VP tally-up at the end of the game to see who won.

Each card- minions and actions- has three colored moons. The big moon is sort of the card’s native color, and below it are one or two smaller ones. On a player’s turn, they can play any card out of hand to begin a chain. The next card played must link its color to one of the smaller moons on the previously played cards. There are also enhanced “kicker” effects if the card played matches the primary color of the previous card. But here’s the real kicker. Once the main player has finished playing cards, the next player can play on to the chain and so on around the table with a “last in, first out” sequence of events. During the chain’s resolution, effects occur and any minions played take position to attack on the player’s next turn or to defend attacks from other players.

Chaining creates some very interesting, dynamic gameplay where everyone at the table is involved in every turn. It also adds substantial depth to the drafting mechanic, as it becomes important to build a deck with combo paths and options. I do feel that the mechanic stops short of its full potential, as there doesn’t seem to be any particular scheme to the colors or any sense of synergy between the cards. This is exacerbated by the lack of variety between the cards in the base set. There are too many instances where cards have similar effects with only variations in cost or color. It’s nothing that expansions can fix, but I would like to have seen a more robust assortment of card effects and functions in the box.

Another potential issue is that in practice, the chaining mechanic can be confusing. There is often a cognitive speed bump in working out effects, particularly since you might have four or five people each performing four or five actions in a single player’s turn. This can lead to some spectacular interactions and exciting play, but without several games’ experience it can bog the game down and it really needs to be able to stay in a 30-45 minute range.

One element that isn’t confusing or potentially slow is the combat. One thing I absolutely love about the game is that at the beginning of each turn, a player must attack with every minion they’ve got on the table and after that, they’re bound for the discard pile. No turtling allowed. This creates a strategic question as to when to play a minion for its effect knowing that it will have to attack on the next turn, after which it will be discarded and temporarily out of circulation. Minion combat is simple. They have a damage number, and the defender can put their own bloodsuckers and dog people in the way to absorb hits. Any damage that gets through is taken as wound cards that are added to the player’s deck. The goal of the game is to come out of the fray with the least of these wound cards.