#oneaday Day 66: Thunderstone

I said the other night that I'd talk a bit about Thunderstone "tomorrow" and then promptly didn't! Allow me to rectify that forthwith.

Thunderstone (or, more accurately, Thunderstone Advance) is a tabletop game for 1-5 players. There have been numerous releases over the years, most of which can be combined together to create an overall "custom" experience; it is a deckbuilding game, so most sets consist almost exclusively of cards, and in each individual playthrough you only use a certain selection of cards from the available pool, making for a great deal of variety.

The set I have is loosely based on Monte Cook's Numenera RPG setting, but no prior knowledge of the setting, stories or characters are required to enjoy the game. Many of the other Thunderstone sets have their own themed setup, but the common mechanics and card layouts mean they can be freely combined as you see fit.

Thematically, Thunderstone is a game about defeating monsters in a dungeon, with the ultimate aim being to defeat a powerful foe called a "Thunderstone Bearer". You accomplish this by engaging in one of two different activities on each of your turns: visiting the village, or delving into the dungeon.

Each turn, you draw a hand of six cards from your deck. The available cards consist of heroes, weapons (which must be equipped on heroes to be useful), items, spells and villagers. Most cards have a "gold" rating on them, and when you visit the village this is the main thing you'll want to be paying attention to.

At the start of the game, you choose a selection of all the aforementioned cards to lay out on the village board. Each card has a price, and on a village turn you can use up to the amount of gold you have on the cards in your hand to purchase something. This is then put on your discard pile and added to your deck that way; when you reach the bottom of the discard pile and reshuffle your deck, the new card will then be in the mix.

Delving into the dungeon also involves making strategic use of your hand of cards. In order to defeat a monster, you must accumulate enough attack power using your hand and the abilities on the cards therein, while taking into account the "darkness level" of the dungeon area you are hoping to defeat a foe from. Banish the darkness with enough torches or light-emitting items and there is no attack penalty; if any darkness remains, the penalty gets more severe according to how deeply in the dungeon your foe is ensconced.

Defeating a monster rewards you with experience point tokens, which can either be spent for one-off boons or used to level up hero cards, and victory points, which are how you win once the Thunderstone bearer has either been defeated or escaped the dungeon.

The interesting thing about the different cards comes in the form of their various abilities, some of which favour the village, others the dungeon. Certain cards have others as prerequisites, while others allow you to draw extra cards on that turn. Eventually, as in most deckbuilding games, what you're aiming for is a suitably "trimmed" deck where you are unlikely to draw the fairly feeble starter cards and instead have a flexible collection of cards; a "destroy" mechanic allows you to permanently remove cards from your hand, sometimes against your will!

The monsters are all grouped into various categories and levels, and each has a distinct "theme" to how you fight them. Some generally inflict some sort of penalty on you before you start fighting (such as having to discard or even destroy a card you might have been relying on); others require that you do certain types of damage to defeat them; others still might only be defeatable under very specific circumstances, such as dealing exactly 8 points of damage.

The game systems are simple and easy to understand, with most of the depth coming from the combinations of cards and how you apply them to various situations. It's quick to play, even with a lot of players, and a nice blend of mechanics and theme that will satisfy both those who like beating up monsters and those who like stroking their chin thoughtfully about possible strategies to outplay everyone else at the table.

For the most part, the game isn't directly competitive, but there are various ways in which you can affect the other players. Some heroes are specifically designed to make monsters harder to defeat for other players, for example, while simply purchasing the last of a particular item or defeating a monster another player had their eye on can potentially throw their whole strategy off.

It's a lot of fun and I'd like to play it a bit more often. Now it's hit the table for the first time in a while and we all enjoyed it, hopefully we'll have another chance soon.