Monday, 15 May 2017

Unboxing - Dark Souls the Board Game (Part One)

This was pretty much an impulse buy based purely on the look of the miniatures rather than having any real familiarity with the video game on which it's based so any comparisons between the two will have to be done by any game fans reading this rather than me...

First an introduction courtesy of the game manufacturers...
Dark Souls™ - The Board Game is a strategically challenging, deeply immersive combat exploration game for 1-4 players set in the Dark Souls™ universe. Players choose from a number of core character classes and explore dangerous locations full of monsters, treasures, and deadly boss fights.

Designed specifically for the Dark Souls™ universe and introducing a number of innovative gameplay mechanics, with world-class miniatures faithful to the rich universe, this game delivers an experience that captures the very essence of the original video games.

This first article will concentrate on the mechanical elements of the box contents with the miniatures themselves getting their own feature a bit later. You can see larger versions of the pictures by clicking on them and they're at a high enough resolution so you can get a good idea of the level of detail.

Dark Souls: The Board Game
It came in a box...unsurprisingly...
...This was a bit of a surprise however...

Dark Souls: The Board Game - Booklet
The game comes with an instruction booklet containing all the rules you'll need to play a game as well as a section focusing on running a campaign rather than a one-off adventure. There's artwork on the majority of the pages which is a nice touch and the rules are well explained in both word and diagram form. Here are some sample pages to give you an idea...

Dark Souls: The Board Game - Dice and Tokens
The box contains a handy container for the cards necessary to play the game though once unwrapped they do slide about a bit so some elastic bands or bags might be an idea.
There's far to many cards to show you them all but I will show close-ups of the cards for the various creatures in their own feature...
...there's also some dice and cubes to use as markers...
...as well as card tokens and some dials that you'll need to assemble yourself...
Once assembled the dials look like this...there's some clear plastic pieces that clip through the middle in order to hold them together and allow them to rotate...there's also nowhere to store these properly in the box once they're assembled so if you don't want them rattling around the box then a bag of some kind is probably a good ides...

Dark Souls: The Board Game - Game Board
The game tiles are sturdy enough and well detailed as well as being double-sided. The 'bonfire' tile shown first below is your home base and the rest are the locations for your various adventures. Here's pictures of both sides of them...

Dark Souls: The Board Game - Miniatures
The miniatures are surprisingly detailed for board game pieces so they'll get their own detailed look in part two...

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

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