Cracked LCD 20.8: Nightfall and Thunderstone Expansion Reviews
This week Mike looks at a couple of recent AEG expansions to popular deckbuilders.
Date: Thursday, July 28, 2011
Author: Michael Barnes
by: Michael Barnes
Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) has made quite a name for itself in tabletop gaming circles over the past couple of years, releasing a number of interesting titles including two of the better post-Dominion deckbuilding games, Nightfall and Thunderstone. I reviewed Nightfall favorably here at Cracked LCD a couple of months ago and I thought the unique “chaining” mechanic whereby players use previously played cards by other players as resources was a compelling differentiator as was its emphasis on direct conflict.
I’ve never covered Thunderstone, primarily because I passed it up when it released in 2009 rather hot on the heels of Dominion but with the promise of offering “deckbuilding with a purpose.” It’s essentially a dungeon crawl game with decks geared toward sending heroes off to combat monsters. It’s a hot mess in terms of rules and card effects, but I’ve come to really enjoy its high level of volatility and I like the concept of using the card drafting to tool up typical D&D heroes with upgradable classes to go fight a wide range of creatures with various effects, all while dealing with penalties keyed to darkness and the depth of the dungeon. Bring a torch.
Recently, AEG has expanded both of these games with Nightfall receiving its first game-changing extension with Martial Law, which doubles its card base and adds some new mechanics. Thunderstone gets its fourth (and nastiest) add-on with Thornwood Siege. My biggest beef with most deckbuilders, other than their current over-proliferation, is that they almost always need a larger card base out of the box. Playing a deckbuilding game after an expansion or two is usually a very different, more expansive experience and I’ve come to almost feel that it’s better to wait until these types of games develop a little further before jumping in.
Martial Law is completely playable as a standalone game and does not require any part of Nightfall. This does require some duplication of components with the first release such as the 12-card seed deck each player starts with, but the remainder of the set is all-new cards that I think have a much finer balance and leverages the differences between vampire, werewolf, hunter, and ghoul factions in more interesting ways. I felt the base game didn’t have a wide enough range of card effects, but with Martial Law I think that deficiency is alleviated—particularly with the new “Feed” mechanic that allows players to use a card effect during the resolution of a chain multiple times by paying an associated cost- typically a discard.
Wound cards also receive some new functions, and as in the base game they generally impart a balancing effect that keeps decks flush with damage from breaking down and burying the player. Direct damage seems to be emphasized more, and card effects tend to be more subtle. Minions that stick around after combat and buffs make the man-to-man (vampire-to-werewolf?) angle more compelling.
I’m inclined to recommend Martial Law over Nightfall to those looking to get into this series. I think it’s a more interesting set of cards out-of-the-box, but the products are definitely complimentary and having a doubled card base is naturally going to add value and variety to the game. I like the direction this game is heading in, and anyone who thinks that deckbuilding means “Dominion clone” by default should look into this fine game.
I got into Nightfall on the ground floor, but I came into Thunderstone right after the release of the Dragonspire expansion earlier this year. Essentially, Dragonspire was like Martial Law in that it was an all-new core set with slightly more complexity and trickier card effects. I went all-in on the game and rounded up all of its expansions and I’m sure that if I had played just the original set I might not have liked it as much. Every expansion has added minor rules and elements that you may or may not even see depending on the subset of cards you play with in each game, but this means that the game is always unpredictable. Sometimes, that’s a great thing, sometimes not so much.
The new Thornwood Siege expansion has turned out a good one, but I’d recommend it only to those who have played out the rest of the available add-ons and I don’t think that I would opt for it over one of the others that are available. It does add some rules complexity and fiddly tokens, but more significantly Thornwood Siege increases the overall difficulty of the game by introducing monsters that appear in the Dungeon that can attack and destroy cards in the game’s Village area (that’s where you draft cards). There are also stalking monsters that affect players while they’re hanging out in the Dungeon. Siege cards that appear in the Dungeon also trigger global, game-effecting events.
These elements do some interesting things to the game, particularly because a greater impetus is placed on clearing raiding, stalking, or besieging monsters from the Dungeon. The effect of the Village and its cards being in danger creates some different strategic situations and overall the new cards make the game feel more overtly hostile to the players so it does feel like a meaningful extension. A new set of equipment, spells, items, and heroes- some rather powerful- and new monsters like Verminfolk and Centaurs increase the card range past the point of fitting in one box so there’s definitely value here for fans of the game looking for more.
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