Fed up with all the haughty heroes invading your dungeon that you worked so hard to decorate, you’ve taken matters into your own hands. Now, your trophy room is adorned with the finest collection of these adventurers, which you’ll show off to anyone who dares to enter after them.

What Is It?

Multi-Use Cards – Cards can be put on players’ walls or in their stock on a turn, with stock cards eventually moving to their accolades to be scored later. Depending on where and when cards are placed, players may trigger abilities, or earn certain tokens.

Chaining – If players have cards in certain spots non their wall, and are able to put the right cards in their stock, they can potentially trigger multiple abilities in a row for bigger turns.

Set Collection – Players can score points for sets of attributes on cards in their accolades at game end.

Bonuses – Players can use the expert tiles to add potential end game scoring bonuses, or in-game abilities to their boards.

Who Is It For?

  • 2 to 4 Players – It works well at any count, but I do prefer it with 3-4 because there are more options for players when it comes to certain abilities (i.e. stealing cards)
  • Ages 12 & Up / Mid-Weight Gamers – Gameplay is pretty simple overall, but there’s definitely a good level of strategy of what cards to take, where to put them, and a bunch of scoring details to pay attention to throughout the game
  • Fans of set collection, multiple ways to score, and trying to trigger abilities
  • Players who don’t mind a little luck of the draw and a shrinking personal board

Variants

Shield Board – This changes the number of wall spots from 11 to 9, and changes how scoring works and how players activate scoring. – It’s not super different, but I do like the scoring changes because it gives players a little more choice for considering strategies. It’s nice for a slightly shorter game, or just to try something different

Expert Tiles – Players choose 4 sides of the 7 double-sided tiles at the start of the game to put in the spots at the top of their board. They are activated if the player completes the column on their wall, meaning each spot has a card and the attribute of the card is visible and identical. Some tiles have end game scoring, some have immediate effects, and some have ongoing effects. – These can be very tricky to actually activate depending on the luck of the cards, but they give a lot of variability when it comes to strategy and definitely make the game a little more interesting.

PROS

  • Aesthetics – I think the art is really fun and vibrant
  • Components – Good quality boards, cards, tiles, and tokens
  • Rules are well-written
  • Good level of strategy and choice in what cards to take and how to use them, even with the dwindling placement choice as your board fills up
  • Good opportunities for chaining / combos
  • Lots of ways to score, especially if you add in the expert tiles and choose some of the scoring ones
  • Snappy / smooth turns

CONS

  • I understand why the cards are small, for the sake of the boards, but there’s so many and I find the smaller cards harder to shuffle in big quantities
  • The theme does not shine through the game
  • Players can definitely get unlucky card draws. It’s rare that you have no choice, especially early on, but sometimes you are really hoping for certain attributes or people and just never getting them to come out on your turn

Final Thoughts

While I wish the theme came through a bit more, I still liked the game. I thought it was a little puzzley in nature, and I thought how you set yourself up to score was interesting throughout, on both sides of the board.

I think I would always play with the expert tiles because they add another interesting layer to the game, but with younger or newer players the game is still good without them. I do wish there were more ways to mitigate luck, but since the game is pretty short, I don’t mind it.

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 7/10

Designers – Amélie Assié, Romain Lisciandro
Artist – Jean-Baptiste Reynaud
Publisher – Sit Down!
MSRP – $30.00
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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