1475: Thundercards

We’ve finally got our Internet back after it being down for most of today as well as last night — not to mention BT’s site noting that the problem was reported at 4:30 am and would be fixed by 12 am (errr…) — but yes. Internets we have. Woo!

While it was down, Andie and I went out for a bit, initially to have a scary grown-up talk with a mortgage advisor. We’re well on the way to owning our own house, though I’m hesitant to talk too much about it right now in case it all falls through. Exciting, though.

Anyway, Andie buggered off after lunch to go and see a friend in Portsmouth, so I thought I’d have a wander into town and see what was what. Actually, I had a vague idea in mind that I wanted to pick up a copy of the board game Mage Knight that I could play solo while the Internet was down — while our regular gaming group is hesitant to return to the game again since our last 5-player game took literally all day, I do like the idea of the solo game, which is much shorter owing to the lack of downtime.

Long story short, I went to Forbidden Planet (which appeared to be playing host to a Magic: The Gathering tournament of some description — interesting to know) and had a browse of their board games. There was no Mage Knight — they haven’t had that in for a while, I don’t think — but they did have a game called Thunderstone which I recalled seeing positive comments about in the past.

I didn’t know much about Thunderstone, but a quick browse of its BoardGameGeek page revealed that it was very positively received by the community as a whole (an average rating of 8.1 is very high for that notoriously picky community) and was something that may indeed be worth picking up, particularly since it was £10 off as part of Forbidden Planet’s sale. So I grabbed it, took it home and gave its solo version a go — yes, the fact it supports solo play is one reason I was willing to give it a shot.

Many board games take a significant amount of time to “unpack”, what with all the counters and tokens you need to pop out, but Thunderstone takes the cake in that there are about a bajillion cards, all of which need to be sorted into their own little compartments — though thankfully the game does include special “divider” cards to make organising the box pretty straightforward.

The game itself is a deckbuilding game with elements that are similar to both Ascension and Dominion, but with enough unique flavour and mechanics to make it clearly its own beast. The gist is that you’re a faceless hero attempting to save the realm of Numenera — a setting I’m not familiar with, but which I understand is relatively popular in fantasy enthusiast circles — from “Doom,” some sort of amorphous unpleasantness that has been hopping through dimensions from the original incarnation of Thunderstone to the version I bought today.

Your “goal,” such as it is, is to defeat an evil horrible Thunderstone Bearer, a powerful monster who shows up later in the game, and one who brings about the end of the game if you allow him to advance far enough. In order to do this, you’ll need to recruit heroes, purchase equipment and then tonk a whole load of monsters on the head with various blunt and sharp implements until Big Bad comes out, you tonk him on the head and save the day. (Or until Big Bad comes out, you fail to tonk him on the head and the world is swallowed by eternal darkness, or something.) Victory is determined not by whether or not you beat the Thunderstone Bearer, but by the number of Victory Points you’ve earned at the end of the game — this is a competitive game at heart, though in solo play you are playing against the game itself rather than simply attempting to amass as many points as possible.

Each turn, you can either visit the village or delve into the dungeon. Going to the village allows you to spend money up to the value of the cards in your hand to purchase various items or the services of local heroes. You can also use XP tokens gathered through previous successful combats to level up your existing heroes — so long as they’re in your hand on that turn.

Yes, this being a deckbuilder, you’re somewhat at the mercy of the cards you draw, though through careful use of various abilities that let you “discard” (remove temporarily) or “destroy” cards and manage your hand more effectively. Although there’s a random element that can, at times, be frustrating when you don’t quite get what you want, as with most deckbuilders it’s about considering what you might need a little way down the road, and planning accordingly. It’s all very well recruiting a deck full of “Strong” heroes (massive Physical damage, may only level up after combat instead of in the village) but as soon as a monster that requires you to twat it with Magical damage at least once shows up, you’re buggered if you haven’t allowed for that eventuality.

The monsters all have interesting abilities. Some force you to destroy cards in your hand before you can confront them, some provide benefits after you’ve killed them — you add them to your deck as trophies rather than keeping them separately as in Ascension — and one particular category, known as Ultraterrestrials, all have an infuriating special ability where if your total damage exceeds — or, in some cases, is not exactly — a particular value, then you simply can’t kill them, even if you would have otherwise obliterated them off the face of the planet. This makes for more interesting strategies than simply acquiring as much power as you possibly can — it’s worth your time to gather some abilities that will let you reduce the amount of damage you inflict, too.

Anyway, I played a solo game and lost to the game. It was reasonably close, though — I think it was 54-46 in favour of the game, if I remember rightly — which isn’t bad for a first attempt. I’d be interested to see how the dynamic changes with more than one player, so hopefully I’ll have a chance to get it to the table at some point in the near future.