Tabletop Simulator - Darkest Night DLC

Hands down their best game, although it can be exceedingly deep with rich-text or rulesets -- and this can be a MAJOR TURN OFF for casual players... it's worth powering through, even more so if you have a friend who's familiarized themselves with the rules and is willing to be the game master to assist everyone along the way. 30 playable classes, smart and interchangable tactics, variables to control the difficulty, RNG keeps things fresh, and the base game is AMAZING and I can't believe they gave us all 5 DLC packs for free. (Over $60 worth of DLC in a $60 boardgame! For $8.00 you might as well be labelled as a thief). Up to 4 players, really any age group can do it but have at least 1HR set aside to truly enjoy the game and have some laughs. I've both roared with excitement or screamed furiously at a bad roll. This game builds up to high stakes rather quickly and punishes you for poor decisions. Please give this game a chance, and share it with those who you believe can handle it. Absolutely worth full retail. 10/10.

This game is a bit similar to Eldritch horror, in a way, and I mean it as a good thing. So if you like Eldritch Horror you are likely to enjoy this game as well. It has a bit more rules than the Eldritch Horror base game, but they are intuitive and not that hard to learn. I found the difficulty to be right on point, it's challeging but balanced, so winning is not impossible. Very good game.

It's good. My only complaint is with the broken links for the expansion rules. On Shifting Winds, From the Abyss, In Tales of Old all these have broken links for the rules PDFs.

The tabletop sim version of this game is extremely well made and thematic with some nice scripting to ease setup. The game itself is pretty cool and, while brutal, is pretty fun and fits it's theme well. My only complaint however is the HORRIBLE way the rules are laid out. You are guaranteed to flip around the rulebook scouring for simple rules that are by far the worst formatted rules I've ever seen. To compound this they use several instances of synonyms for completely different concepts to further confound new players. Even with that in consideration, and the fact I haven't won a single round, I still recommend it.

I love this game. But dissappointed that the DLC was released about the same time as the second edition of the game. My question is whether the Devs have any intention of updating to 2nd Edition?

If you like co-operative tabletop games, Darkest Night will be a fantastic addition to your collection. And the $7 price tag for the TTS version blows away the $140 or so the physical copy would cost, especially if you're like me and have nobody to play with in person. You play a medieval RPG party on a quest to save the land from the forces of evil headed by The Necromancer. There are 13 heroes in the TTS version: 9 base + 4 from the first expansion, maybe they'll add the second expansion later but don't count on it. Of these, you take four, and split them between the number of players - this maintains game balance, as there's always the same number of heroes, and the same number of resources available to the players. With these heroes, you will venture forth into the conquered lands and fight a guerilla war. The game does a fantastic job of maintaining the atmosphere: you have no hope of winning conventionally, almost everywhere has been overrun, it's only a matter of time until you lose, and you must remain hidden or the Necromancer will come after you to stomp out the final resistance against him. This last part is done with "Secrecy", a character stat that represents how well you're hidden, and increases as you move and hide and decreases when you expose yourself by attacking things or are detected by scouting enemies. Your goal is to find enough keys to obtain three holy relics and return them to the monastery to perform a ritual to cleanse the land of the Necromancer's presence. But, in a fantastic design choice, you can also just pick up one relic and go defeat the necromancer in combat for a more direct solution - though this will only work with a party that has good fighting skill and pools their efforts together to fight the necromancer. The only way to lose is for the Necromancer to overrun the Monastery (the last safe place in the land). Even if a character dies, you can keep playing; it's a setback, not an elimination from the game. It's a fantastic co-op game, and you can even play it solo if you are so inclined. It does the Disaster Management style of gameplay very well, and it's well-balanced so that most games will come down to the wire. It uses a very strong bell curving system where you roll some numbers of dice and if ANY of them is high enough, you succeed, working very heavily in the player's favor (as long as you don't have my Contagious Bad Luck). And the expansion adds new content without any major mechanics changes, so you can pick it up and add it in on your first game with almost no added complexity. It has tons of replay value too: the different hero combinations, the different starting board states, and the fact that each hero has 4 potential starting abilities, but you only get to start with 3 of those.

So happy to see this game on Tabletop Simulator. I've seen complaints about the rulebook, but as someone that owns and plays the physical game, this adaptation is very good and saves a lot on a game that normally has a massive setup/takedown time. I am VERY MUCH looking forward to seeing the expansions, as I own them all physically.

Note: This review (as you can tell based on timing) is based on the reworked version. That being said, I've played the old version extensively and have tested some stuff in the new version. Mechanically: This is a card & dice game. If you don't like randomness from dice being used in excess, don't get it. If you are OK with Eldritch Horror, you'll probably like this game. Roll some dice to do things, hopefully roll well enough to do the big things enough times to win. There is strategy because of the limited action economy (one action per turn, and moving is an action). It's very easy to lose focus and work on one thing when another thing goes off you needed to work on. Heroes get more complex as you move up the table (up = toward the edge), so go with the long row if you are newer. Thematics: Dark Fantasy setting (think Diablo). Heroes pull from numerous tropes in adventuring. If you can think of it, it's probably an option. Powers generally make sense for their heroes and while multiple heroes have the same mechanics in their powers, they at least made them function through different thematic mechanisms. Execution: Very nicely done. Even if you don't do a scripted setup (which takes the fiddliness out of setup by combining decks and pulling proper decks for your character choice) you can manually setup just fine like before. Rulebooks being physical objects is good for in-game references to other players, plus you can import a tablet and use the links from the in-game notepad. Room for improvement: The table has been known to occasionally let objects (mostly cards but sometimes tokens) fall through it. This happens inconsistently, is difficult to reproduce, and easy to correct in-game. It's QoL only, but it could be improved. Gamers tend to consider games based on mechanics and thematics in my experience. If you've played the physical game, this is a faithful reproduction for the most part. If you enjoy it IRL, you'll enjoy it here. If you haven't played it before, find someone who has so they can teach it to you. As long as you are fine with dice-based luck being a big factor, you'll probably be OK with it. If dice aren't your thing, then you probably won't enjoy this much.

The aesthetic of this game, especially in TTS, is wonderful. Being pretty new to tabletop games, I've never played this game or so much as heard of it before. The artwork alone sold me on the game. Everything is already set up when you load the DLC, as much as it can be. All the player(s) need to do is choose heroes, choose their power cards, and place a few things on the board. I've spotted some room for improvement. The "standing character" tokens look kind of cheap, and although true to their forms from the physical version of the game, I feel the developer could have made some effort to create 3D models for each of the heroes and the Necromancer. And then there's the 16-page manual that's provided with a pdf link. (it's easy to find on Victory Point's website) It's not good. The manual itself is the worst part of the game. For what's supposed to be a fairly simple game, this manual is one of the wordiest, most confusing things I've ever tried to comprehend. If you can find a good youtube video that teaches the game better than the manual can, be sure to let me know. After reading sections 4.0 and 4.1 of the manual numerous times just to try to understand how to begin the game, I think a video made by a guy who knows the game inside & out would be the way to go. If you ever do figure out how to play this gorgeous game, it looks like it will take around 2.5 to 3 hours to complete. To me, that seems a bit long.

Hopefully they will add the multiple expansions soon.. Until then, I'd say don't buy. This game has quite a bit of content once you get all the packs and additional heroes, for a total of 29 characters to choose from (this version only has the 9 from base game). Give it some time... EDIT 22/01 - First expansion has been added, very good! But there's much more to come if they add them all. Keep it up TableTop. EDIT 15/09/17 - 4 more expansions have arrived, providing hours of more fun! Hope they'll add the newest expansion too. (Small Hours, 2017) Which brings all the new cards and gameplay features from the new 2nd edition to this 1st edition. 3 new powers to ALL heroes along with a customizable map deck + TONS more.