Review: Blackstone Fortress

Now it's the holidays, I've had time to actually play this bugger as well as paint it! Invoking, therefore, the awesome responsibility of the Blogger, I shall chant out my opinion as though it weighs something.



As with previous boardgame reviews, I'm rating this on Rules, Balance, Quests and Components. This will one day be the standard format for all game reviews, so remember where you saw it first.

Rules

Kasfunatu and I are two sessions into our first campaign. For campaign game it is! As you guide the heroes of Blackstone into its knobbly recesses, you are attempting to do three things:

1. Plunder the depths for fortune and glory, as per standard heroic questing
2. Not get killed by the gribblies, as per see 1
3. Do it all quickly before the fortress adapts to your presence and eats you

You've got the eight heroes that come with the box as a finite resource to manage this (the Ratling twins count as one together). Once a hero is dead, they're lost permanently. And each quest, whether it gets you the clues you need to find the route to one of the four main treasure vaults in the fortress or not, will also add new foes and traps to the next attempt. 

So it's a legacy game, albeit a fairly mild one. If you find a vault, you'll be able to try it again even if you fail the attempt. There are ways of bringing back a dead hero. And your heroes can buy boss loot and level themselves up, and all this gets saved between sessions by the neat gimick of 'stasis chamber' bags that you put all the hero cards and stuff into. Yes, they're just plastic baggies with nice art on, and no, I don't mind at all. 

So far, so good. The rules themselves are the same as previous Warhammer Quest games, from what I understand (I haven't played one). Roll a bunch of dice at the start of your turn, all your actions (move, shoot, etc) require a certain score, you lose dice as you get wounded. Easy and fast, enough sensible skill to get round a bum roll, enough luck to keep it interesting. 

The rules are spread across three booklets, which is sort of okay? I see what they were hoping for, anyway. But until I get more familiar with them, I find myself flicking hopelessly from book to book, flapping them over the table and knocking stuff over like a nerdy bat. A single book with bookmarks would have been nicer, and also less liable to getting damaged or lost. -1 to the score, although it's partially my own ineptitude I'm rating here. 

Overall: 4/5, solid and fun

Balance

Hard to know exactly from two sessions. My impression is that it's not too tough on the heroes barring terrible luck, and that makes it a cheery and empowering blast. 

Playing as the Navigator in our first session, the very first thing that happened to us was an Ur-Gul ambush that left me with two grevious wounds. You can't really heal these, so I struggled to contribute much with half as many dice as everyone else. But I also had the Rogue Trader, and he did fine! 

All the heroes have their own flavour, be it the tanky but slow robot UR-025 or the dapper and nimble Rogue Trader, Janus Draik. Your best skills need sixes, but there are spare dice in a pool to offset your own crap luck, and you can usually pull something entertaining out of your hat on command. 

We never really struggled after the first fight, which was partially down to grasp of rules. The bad guys can take you by surprise, and your heroes get worse fast once wounded. Overall, though, they go down in cheerful hails of dice and fire, and rousing nonsense it is too. 

After our first session, we'd done well enough to buy some gear. I don't like the random shop mechanic, it draws too much on luck for my taste, but it's a nice end to a session. Our second one we found to be much easier (so far, we ran out of time before tackling the actual Vault), thanks to the new gear and guns. This strengthens my impression that it's not too tough on the heroes, but I can see that impression changing fast if something goes south. And it's fun! So I don't mind at all. 

The baddies are AI controlled, which means rolling a d20 (I know! In a GW game! Hurrah, it's the 80s again!) and consulting a behaviour chart. Which is fine for co-op play, but there's a suggestion that if you're playing with the full five, one player gets to be the forces of evil. Rather than granting them autonomy, they're still supposed to just roll the dice and obey the AI rules. Great if Slow Cousin Norman is round for the weekend, but a bit shit if it's a living person with their own brain. 

Personally I'd skew this rule in some way, not quite sure how. It's not that the baddies need clever tactics, the AI is pretty well written, but it would make for a dull night's play and I'd avoid it if offered. 

Overall: 4/5 again, less tactical than say Zombicide but much more entertaining than, say, Dungeon Saga

Quests

Until I've tackled a Vault properly, I'm not totally sure here. The big brag the game makes in terms of replayability is that no two quests will ever be the same. Look! The floorplans can be put together in all sorts of ways! There's a monster deck that makes sure you never fight the same group of foes!

Yeah, yeah. Fine - truth is, no, in terms of specifics, no two quests will ever go down exactly the same way. Let's face it, though, they're going to be pretty similar. The fights come thick and fast, and although the different mobs keep it varied, they're all pretty much the same. 

A random fight goes like this - face some generated foes in a random dungeonette, fight past them to grab some loot, try and get to the escape route before reinforcements turn up. That's fine, it's quick and fast and jolly. It's a waste, though, a few variants beyond 'it's an ambush! the enemy start nearer' would have gone down a treat. 

Same with the tile layout - first couple of times, it's pretty enough. But the tiles are pretty samey, actually, the relentless Grimdark makes them a little dull. Some are narrow corridors, some are large open rooms. Beyond cards that throw up unusual rules for a fight (e.g. all cover also slows you down, or reinforcements come more often), that's it. 

The Vaults promise to be more involved and therefore more interesting, though. There's clearly scope for more Dungeon Mastery here, giving an enemy player more scope for control or creating their own fiendish layouts. I'm too old and tired to bother myself, I think it's a shame there weren't more of these Vaults to pick from or randomly stumble into. Scope for improvements in the inevitable expansions. 

Doesn't scream 'endless variations', does it?

 Beat all four Vaults and you can tackle the final one, and there's a mystery envelope in the game that contains your reward inside. Once that lure is claimed (surely it will be a discount voucher for the website!), I can't see myself doing multiple runs.

Overall: 3/5. It's average, fun but with room for improvement.

Components

No surprises here. Top notch - the models are excellent, they patch into your 40K games with their own rules, the board bits are tough and the art is good. Especially in the rules books, actually, there's some really nice pieces in there. GW haven't skimped on what was clearly a Christmas temptation, so I can't really skimp on the score here. 

Overall: 5/5, top notch. 

Final Score

I'm going with an A- here. 

It gets the minus because it's not a fantastic long-term prospect. Obviously, GW want to keep stuff in reserve to keep you coming back for more. That aspect of their business practice has long tired me. Necromunda was an absolute arse for that, for example. A store of their quality and genius can afford to be more generous with the world of their games, that's what hooks you on a game and keeps you coming back. Beyond what they did for Silver Tower (half-arsed expansion packs, rules for new heroes and villains), this isn't going to be a flagship game. I'd be surprised to see flagship support despite their claims. 

Stop moaning!

Concentrate on the models, though! They have splashed out here, and the admission price is worth it. It's a very solid and fun game you won't regret buying. Playing it makes for a good night. It's not too taxing on the brain, you feel like a gallant hero pottering about and bashing nasties, it looks great and the coop and legacy elements all work great. Recommended!