Dark Souls - The Board Game

Who bought it? Who already played it? Experiences, thoughts?
My gf and i threw some money at the kickstarter last year, and the game arrived last week. Played our first round with a friend 2 days ago, the game itself is a lot of fun, but the rulebook is absolute shit from a design perspective.
Got fucked hard by a sentinel on our first run, started a new round, and then cleared everything up to our chosen miniboss (gargoyle) before it got too late to continue.

Also, if someone could do me the favor, that would be great: Could someone that owns the english version of the game take a pic of the knights heroic action and post it here? We got the german version, and with the entire translation and the wording pretty much being ass, we're not entirely clear on how it works.

No picture, but the knights action is to roll an extra blue die after your usual defense die

NZ user here, still waiting for mine... some day...

Ok thanks man, the clears it up. The way the german version is worded, it makes it sound like you roll a blue die for every spark you have left, which let to me rolling 4 blue and 1 black die for my defense when i used it, which seemed to strong.

Number one complaint I heard about this game is the grind. Is there a grind? And is it a fun enough grind for a board game?

Bought and played (2p), very slow start but once the ball got rolling we ended up as literally unkillable murder death machines.

I'm talking biggy smalls didn't land a single point of damage here. I'd imagine that wouldn't happen in a game with more than 2 people due to gear sharing.

If you die bare minimum you're fighting every room encounter between you and the boss, more if you want more gear to improve your odds. I can easily see people wanting to clear the first set of encounters twice, potentially being required to more depending on luck and strategy (as cheesing encounters by manipulating enemy movement is the name of the game here).

Killing off the same room especially one that didn't pose a challenge the first time can be an unwanted diversion. Again I played coop so we each had our choice of gear, with more people that likely means more draws to make everyone happy. I know that the number of people determines the amount of souls from an encounter but I don't know how well this mitigates things.

I got mine a few weeks ago (eastern US) skipped work to play a solo game. I beat garg and dancer over 3ish hours (including setup and rules learning). Later played winged knigt and OnS with a buddy, working on third game with two friends.
Overall we have little to complain about. I really enjoy playing it and feel its pretty damn balanced, really excited for expansions and add ons in october. I think the relatively few main bosses and few classes hurt the game a bit.
The rulebook isnt great and some things have to be figured out by houserules or ignoring it (like the taunt numbers which remain unexplained)
There is no grind unless you feel you need to. You can choose to sit at the bonfire to refresh enemies (based on 'spark number' which is also your remaining continues) if you eun out of sparks you lose. So its a balance of challenging the boss with more chances or stocking up on levels and equipment. If you die enemies reset as well, its pretty much exactly the video game with how it works, except on a limited basis.

The taunt numbers actually are explained, it's just not referenced really well. If an enemy moves towards the closest player, and there are several players at the same distance, he moves towards the one with the aggro token. If the player with the aggro token is not one of those within distance, he moves towards the player with the highest taunt level. Took us some time to figure this out.

Are the minis any good?

not really, but they get the job done. The mold feels very cheap, i'd say they're at or slightly worse than a reaper bones mini.

What do you feel about the "one person dies the run wipes" rule? I don't like the sound of it as it sorta seems like it might work out either being too punishing or too forgiving depending on your playgroup, but I've not had a chance to play it to find out myself.

Because you're all constantly trying to pull enemies to different people everyone basically shares a collective health pool. So if anything it means the more people you have the less kitted out everyone is, but the more health the party has to share.

I don't think they're -too- bad. The regular minis are so-so at best, but IMO the bosses are pretty decent

Shit game from shit company. Basicly this pice of garbage is Kingdom Death for poor people. Like all things for poor people is shit quality. Plastics are joke - rules are boring and only dice chucking goes. No skill - Dark Souls is all about choices and skill - this game has none. Steam Forged is company run by drunkards that only want your money and as soon as KS founds were in they fookeed whole game up. Fook them and let those biches die forgoten

Stop comparing Kingdom Death to everything, it's not a dungeon crawler, it's not a skirmish game, it's not a racing game and there's no reason to compare it to Descent, Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Dark Souls, Conan, etc. just because it has miniatures too.

Yes. Well, I mean, they give you the option to choose not to out of impatience, but optimal play is to grind. That's how this game "kicks your ass". You do the dull dungeon crawl until you can't take it anymore and desperately need something fun to do, then you fight the boss prematurely and die.

Kingdom Death is exactly what this game supposed to be but better. Learn the ropes sonny

>it's not a dungeon crawler, it's not a skirmish game, it's not a racing game
But what it is?

It's a MOBA soulsborne metroidvania.

Own it, played it a few times and enjoyed myself, friends. Every encounter is its own mini puzzle, where you have to come up with a decent way to keep your guys safe while disposing of the enemies.

Mechanically I can't say anything against it, except it doesn't utilize all of its features effectively and there isn't too much variety yet in terms of layout and enemy placements and such.
To me, grinding is a chore and having just one treasure pile is a tad too random. Sometimes you draw powerful weapons early on and have to grind the same encounters over and over again to be able to use them, some other times you only find shite you can't use. That's why I use some house ruling to slice the treasure deck into three parts.

Overall, I like the game. The minis are alright, the game itself is fun, though it lacks in some departments (rules, enemy variety, random loot). Now waiting for Kingdom Death to arrive.

Dunno about you mate but Kingdom Death just seems to be a weird porn game to me.

It's a misery simulator.
A "tactical" luck pusher with minis.

There is absolutely nothing in common between Dark Souls and Kingdom Death. DS takes it's grimdark setting relatively seriously, KD is cheesecake. And that's where the valid comparisons begin and end.

Shows how much time you've spent looking at the pinups and not the actual game.

Statements like this start getting me slightly irritated.

Literally the first thing on their website is some mid-tier "mature" art that just comes off as cringy, their marketing for anything but the miniatures themselves is shit.

Stop trying so hard to force this. You might pull something.

Rules question. When my character is pushed from a node. Do I get to decide what node to be pushed to?

Unless its a boss, yes. If its a boss you are obligated to be pushed into a node on the same arc as where you were when the boss ran you over.
Sorta, but it never felt terrible to me. I've had about four games now, most with a full party and it hasn't really been an issue. By the time we would have gotten bored we were at the boss and wouldnt have had the sparks to grind further so the pacing worked out very well. Solo or two player I can see it being more an issue.
Seeing as they're board game pieces, as opposed to being a collectable minis game like warhams, I'm actually pretty pleased with them. They've been fun to paint thus far, i've got about half of mine done at this point.

Played it solo and had some grind but that was also me learning the game so it wasn't too terrible to deal with. Died three times to gargoyle as Solo knight, then picked up some greataxe I wrecked faces with for the rest of my adventure. Played it with another guy, and one time-saver rule we were debating was the ability to pass encounters you 'ace', being that nobody used a heroic action, estus, luck, etc. during the encounter, we just tick up some souls and move on to the next encounter. We admittedly were working on 2 hours only to play, so that might be part of the thing.

They're not super-resin-display models, but they're good for what they need to do.

Not even the same user, you fucking cuckold. Put your dick away and stop defending your shit game so hard.

In early access?

Being rude on the internet still doesn't count as an argument, so yeah. Nice try.

If your insecurity doesn't allow you to see past some scantly clad women in the artwork and the game-unrelated pinups, well, I can't help you much.

I got my copy and I plan on playing it soon. One thing is bugging me though, wasnt the game supposed to come with an invader? I thought an invader was supposed to be a mini boss.

t.grown man who invites company over to play a boardgame catering solely to his specific sexual fetishes

The invader got moved to the invaders expansion that arrives with all the other stretch goals later this year. They said they didn't know how to properly include him in the rulebook, so invaders are getting their own it seems.

>tfw you take your copy of KDM to your FLGS, put up a big display, and coax random strangers to play with you.

Yup nothing like playing KDM with 2 bi girls and indulging in an orgy after every session. Stick to you poor mans version with subpar rules, subpar minis and subpar style. You just dont deserve best in life apperently - also someone has to clean my cars

Oh shit. Thanks. That makes a lot of sense my group just figured the enemies moved into the aggro tokened range.

I get why they did it. The game would be soooo easy with 4 people to grind out every room, only needing one to survive to 'win'. So the devs would have needed to pump up difficulty but that hurts runs with less people.
It does make a bad die roll or two incredibly punishing but thats DS in a nutshell.

In full color?