While visiting a newly opened game store, I looked for something new to bring home to my play group. I told them that I preferred fantasy environments, cooperative or low on the cutthroat level of player interaction, and I'm a sucker for dungeon diving games. They told me they had the perfect game for me, and pointed out Thunderstone by AEG. Initially wary of another deck building game, I purchased it and took it home to learn how to play.
Knowing AEG's habit of not being able to put out a comprehensive (or correct) version of the rules, I was happy to find that the version I received with the game (1.4) read very well. Game concepts were explained and examples given to show how interactions would work, with some special attention to confusing cards that can trigger multiple effects.
The gist of the game is that you randomly build a "dungeon hall" with three classifications of monsters, randomly select four heroes to recruit from, and then form a small village of 8 additional support cards that consist of villagers, weapons, spells, and other items. You then start with a starter deck of 12 cards and use various values on them to either build your deck by buying a card from town, or head into the dungeon to try to fight a monster.
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| An average starting setup |
There's a stronger emphasis in this game to trash or "destroy" weaker cards in your deck to upgrade heroes, or to increase the odds of stronger cards to come up more often. There's even an option to take a rest action which would allow you to trash a card in your hand instead of heading to the village or dungeon. This makes every turn at least a little bit useful.
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| Not every card you get is useful |
The wife and I sat down and played a few games and really liked what we saw with it. This is different from other deck building games by giving you a goal to work towards with your deck. In something like Dominion, you just build up your territories for money and then buy points. In Thunderstone, you build up a party of heroes, equip them, and then send them off to the dungeon to fight monsters to earn points. It's much more satisfying to slay a dragon than it is to buy a province. At least for me, anyway.
We soon invited over our gaming group for some five player Thunderstone, and found that the game translated just as well to the larger player environment. The few cards that interact with other players, namely the rogues, were a bit frustrating with that many players, so I might recommend leaving them out of the rotation when you get above 3 or 4 players, but otherwise, everything ran smoothly.
There's few complaints that we have with this one. The black plastic card holder included is begging for the same kind of treatment that Dominion provides to keep cards separated. It does have small ridges that will raise and lower some cards, but they're not large enough to mark specific card groupings. The addition of slightly larger cards to act as dividers offers little help to keeping them in any easily searchable order, as well. I've already mentioned some of the hero cards that cause you to discard cards from your hand, which will often make the difference between being able to do something effective on your turn or not, but these are all relatively small complaints.
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| Cramped |
So if you're interested in deck building games, and enjoy a good dungeon crawler, Thunderstone might be right up your alley. With several expansions already out, and more on the way, you can rest assured that there's always going to be something new lurking in the darkness. There's also a few different sets of promos that can be gotten for free through AEG's website or for a small $5 fee through BoardGameGeek.com so be sure to pick those up as well. Happy Gaming!
