by Tekkor
Just figured I would help contribute a bit more feedback and information on Darkest Night after receiving it today and playing my first game with my 12 year old son.
Unboxing & Components:
We were very impressed with what we saw as we opened the box for the game. I actually ordered two boxed edition games from VPG on this order (the other being In Magnificent Style).
Both looked great. We had to wipe a bit of the soot away on the laser cut chits but it wasnt too bad. But everything was there and looked good.
Manual:
I read through the manual and it was presented in the typical VPG style (I have 4 other VPG polybag games). Took me maybe 30 minutes or so to read it and look at components...read it again so that I felt like I had a good enough understanding to start a game.
Game-play:
We each picked 2 characters. I selected the Rogue and Seer. My son picked the Druid and Acolyte. It took us a couple turns to get the order of actions down...we kept forgetting to do an "Event" prior to moving for instance. Early on we were doing pretty well. However it became apparent when the "Darkness" track got around 8 and we still didnt have an Relic that we were probably spending too much time trying to fight Blights on the map.
So we changed our agenda. We decided to ignore Blights for a few turns and concentrate on getting an Relic on my Seer as with her Premonition ability make a good Necromancer killer (that we learned from the explanation in the Manual).
Well it didnt quite work out as expected as I tried a turn action on the Action and rolled 2 & 3...which was not going to help. But we kept on.
The end of the game showdown came in the Mountains zone. We were able to get all 4 characters there and lure the Necromancer there with the Rogue's low 2 in secrecy (Don't ask, lol). The final confrontation came down to us needing to clear two Blights (Consecration and Zombies) with our 3 characters and then give the Seer a 2 die roll chance to get a 6 with the Relic (extra die for her one ability that gives 2 die rolls to all actions that turn).
We got lucky and my son took out both Blights with his two characters.
So (and hopefully this was right by what we read the rules to mean)...then we let the Seer take her two rolls.... 3 & 4. Doh. Then we realized...hey we can trade the relic to the Rogue...use his ability to pay a Secrecy and roll 3 die for combat!!
So we had one more chance... 1,3.... 6!!!
We won. My son and I did a High-Five and knocked the Necro on his side.
Post Game Impressions:
We had a great time. We are fairly sure we got all the rules right and did everything right. One small thing we think we messed up at most 2 times was not decreasing secrecy just for attacking regardless of the result. We didnt catch that until a few turns in.
We also own Defender of The Realm and AH. Elements of the game for sure reminded us of those. But it just plays much faster and.....cleaner if that makes sense. AH while we love it...we have only played maybe 4 times in the 4 years I have owned because of the huge time commitment. DotR is better but in a way I find it a bit too fiddly sometimes...moving all those guys around..placing new guys all over etc etc. This game has the same general feel of those but is just faster and less fiddly.
We also really liked the feel of the different characters. My son liked the Druid quite a bit..changing to different forms etc.
I was slightly concerned actually with winning the first game. But then we sat there after winning and discussed what could have happen if I had not rolled the 6 on the last die. It could have gotten really ugly fast. We already had 4 Blights on the Village...with 1 blight on Monastery. He could have moved to village on a roll of 1 or 2....put another blight on Monastery...then been sitting on the 4 Blight Village where it would have been impossible to kill him...waiting for him to move somewhere else...so on and so on.
So really it could have spiraled out of control very fast if we had not dropped him there.
Great game overall. We plan to play it again this weekend with my oldest son who is 16 and see how it goes.
VPG and Mr. Lennert....well done.
