The Gaming Den

My board game Darkest Night is now officially published! You can order it here.



For those who haven't seen it before (or who have forgotten), this is a fully-cooperative game where a band of fantasy heroes fight a guerilla war to defeat a necromancer who has just conquered their kingdom. It's a bit like Arkham Horror.

There are nine playable characters, each with their own deck of power cards granting them unique abilities and different playstyles.

I posted a print-and-play version of the game here a LOOOONG time ago...it's gone through a number of refinements since then (and acquired some amazing artwork).

There are downloadable rules, a preview article, and other promotional stuff available from the product page.


EDIT 12 May 2016: Just in case anyone is seeing this for the first time, we are currently Kickstarting a second edition of the board game:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/56 ... -edition-0

Congratulations!

Heartfelt congratulations, Manxome.

echo

Congrats, Manxome!

Congrats, mate.

Good job, brother!

I'm gonna buy this for myself for Christmas. It looks awesome.

Congratulations!

Darkest Night looks nice, good luck with it!

AVS sucks donkey balls.
Edit: Paypal worked!

Wow, the art is gorgeous. I'd buy this if I had money.

Congrats!

I'm reasonably sure I said congrats when it was first picked up, but congratulations again on getting it so nicely published.

My copy of Darkest Night just showed up in the mail. Looks nice. Planning to play a game this weekend.

Artwork is great, turns play really fast, which is nice for avoiding off-turn boredom. The 'puzzle' board is definitely worth it. But the rules are really confusingly organized.

A few more points:
[*]I haven't gotten to use any artifacts yet, probably because I haven't been searching in the right place.
[*]There is some nice synergy between specific characters (e.g. prince and thief), which is fun to figure out.

P.S.
In the printed version, the dynamic range is compressed, and it looks like the only dark-skinned character is the necromancer. Something to consider correcting, if possible.

Played through with 3 people earlier today. The necromancer kept generating zombies that all got rendered useless by a rune the Wizard laid down at the beginning of the game. We decided to pretend that the zombies were too busy dancing to cause trouble, and that the necromancer couldn't bear to spoil their fun. Still, things were looking pretty grim when people realized the first half-dozen turns had been mostly wasted.

Game culminated with the prince sacrificing his life to bring the knight the 2 keys he needed to dig up a relic in the mountains and get a net +2 to highest roll fighting the necromancer. Won via combat in the mountains while the darkness counter was at 27.

Fun was had all around, and one person asked me to bring the game up to his dorm next weekend so some of his friends could try it.

Victory Point Games is having a Cyber Monday sale tomorrow--10% off everything with the coupon code Great_Gifts (case sensitive).

Darkest Night has reached the top of their 60-day sales chart (which is perhaps not surprising for a game that came out 58 days ago, but is still satisfying; it may already have passed my previous two games combined in lifetime sales).

Does VPG do demo copies? My FLGS has a game night on Wednesdays that routinely draws 50+ people. They happily take demo copies form publishers, and order stock based on what's popular. Plus, I've been too broke to buy Darkest Night yet, so it would be cool to play it there.

I don't think there's an official policy on that. If the store emails AlanEmrich@victorypointgames.com they may be able to work something out.

Finally got a copy! Questions:

How does Corruption interact with the Seer's prophecies? If the seer is in a corrupted location, she can't activate them, I assume. If she enters the Corrupted zone during her turn, does she retain the bonus? Again, I would assume not. What if the Seer is in the monastery, and uses a prophecy on another character who is in a Corrupted location. Strict construction of the blight's wording suggests that the other hero retains the prophecy's benefits.

Also: Can an Acolyte activate shadow veil (to suppress blights) in a location that has Corruption?

Also: Do Divine Right and other default-grace boosters grant bonus grace when you gain them?

EDIT: Can you stack multiples of the same blight in one location? It feels like you shouldn't, but I can't find a rule against it. Then again, I'm also failing to find the rule for when you run out of tokens for a blight type, which I know is in there, so I'm clearly missing something.

Heroes at the same location as a Corruption lose their "bonus" powers. They can still benefit from the bonus powers of heroes at other locations. Thus, a Seer in the same spot as a Corruption can't use her Prophecies (even on other heroes), but a Seer at a spot with no Corruption can use her Prophecies on a hero that is at a spot with Corruption.

Corruption prevents the use of Dark Veil, though if you use Dark Veil at a location with no Corruption and then move to a location that has one, I would allow Dark Veil to remain in effect (until the end of the turn, as normal).

You don't automatically gain grace when your default grace is increased (nor do you automatically lose grace when your default grace is reduced, even if it is reduced to a value that is below your current grace). Your default grace only matters when praying or when a card specifically refers to it.

You can have multiples of the same blight in one location. Their effects are cumulative (e.g. if there are 2 skeleton blights, you need to combat each separately at the end of your turn).

The rules for running out of blight tokens of a particular type are on page 10 (rule 12.1): you draw another map card (and if you draw 3 in a row without finding a blight you can use, you just pick one--a rarely-used rule, but necessary because you can theoretically have a situation where you are out of every blight that can normally appear at a given location).

By the way, we're about to start beta testing of the first expansion, With an Inner Light. Test kits are supposed to go out this week, but you can probably still sign up if you want.

And the Nymph promo just went live in the BoardGameGeek store today! (They've got a 6-month exclusive on it as part of an advertising deal, so you can only get it from them.)

I saw that a new edition of Darkest Night will be kickstarted soon. Excited to see this become part of VP's main line of games!

Here's the announcement, if anyone else wants to read it:
http://www.victorypointgames.com/news/d ... d-edition/

Sounds awesome! Darkest Night has intrigued me for a while now (wallet has been thin, though), so a Kickstarted second edition sounds like a great opportunity to get into it. Let us know when it starts, will you?