We wrapped up fantasy (and sci-fi) month with two new to us games. Leviathan Wilds came to us via trade after I foolishly (spoiler alert!) decided not to back it on crowdfunding. Storybook Saga I did back on crowdfunding. Both of these games came into the house this year so no lingering long on shelves for these titles!
Leviathan Wilds is Shadow of the Colossus the board game, except instead of destroying giant creatures, you're clearing corruption from them. The actual play is straightforward. You reveal the threat which you, hopefully, can then avoid. You select one of three action cards in your hand to use for its AP value. You then spend that AP on various actions to climb the chosen leviathan and clear the corruption. But card selection is where things get tactical. Every card has an AP value but also a skill. Skills can be played anytime for free and can be really pivotal when played smartly. However, using them burns through your deck and if your deck empties, you fall, potentially taking damage and losing progress toward a corruption node. After your turn, you resolve the threat and draw back up to three cards. This continues between players, with threats growing more hazardous, until all corruption nodes are cleared or every player is defeated. The real beauty of this game is in the combinations of heroes and classes you can play, and making good tactical choices with your cards. There's so much depth in those combinations and to your tactical choices. We had such a good time, even though I didn't come close to playing optimally. I picked hero and class on vibes and then proceeded not to play to my strengths, but we pulled out the win (mostly with my wife carrying).
Storybook Saga is a solo battler using public domain stories like Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz. You choose a location, get the associated boss and companion, then draft six starting heroes to fight three increasingly difficult battles with. This is, at its heart, a dice chucker. The villains each have a skill that is activated by certain dice patterns and targets specific heroes. Your heroes all add dice to your pool that you then roll, one by one, and apply to a hero to try and activate their skill. Interestingly, though the villains activate first, even if they do enough damage to take out a hero, that hero still gets to act and you get a chance, depending on your skills, to keep them up. It's very different from how most battlers like this work. You win if you get through all three battles and defeat the boss. Even if heroes are knocked out, the still provide one die to the pool and you do have limited opportunities to replace them during battles. Defeating villains also gets you items to equip or bonuses to use so your heroes get stronger as you succeed. There is a fair amount of luck obviously, when rolling dice, but that also makes it exciting. There are skills that allow for mitigation too. We had a lot of fun with this and, for a small box, there are a lot of heroes and villains, each unique, to provide a lot of variety. Also, the art is knockout.
