Edge of Darkness

A clever cross between Mystic Vale and Dominion with superb production quality. But with even only three players, the rounds took longer and longer, and towards the end a player could have 5-10 mins of AP trying to resolve their best move. So I got quite bored waiting a quarter of an hour for my next turn. I'm expect with familiarity the AP would reduce but then perhaps only if using the same mix of 10 decks.

Love the card crafting to create a common deck of cards. It's amazing how many card and location actions you can end up taking in a turn. Love it!

Update 6/1/2020 - well, during the second play where I already knew the mechanics I had to deal with the frustration of extremely limited resources - this could have been due to the available locations - but I didn't have much fun so I'm afraid we're giving it away.

Rating dropped from a 9 to a 6. I'm fickle I guess.

Overall I did enjoy the current version of Edge Darkness that I had opportunity to play. If you liked the card crafting aspects of Mystic Vale and Custom Heroes that the designer has been on, you more than likely will enjoy this combination of worker, card crafting, and resource management. As of writing this, the kick-starter has already been fully funded and is working on more art stretch goals check it out if you are interested in backing it at this point.

I actually like Mystic Vale better. Not sure why but the additional complexity just doesn't feel like it adds enough to the core system to justify itself.

Has elements of Dominion (fixed market based on setup/loadout) and Mystic Vale (enhancing cards in deck, rather than acquiring new cards).

I enjoyed my play of it, and will likely rate it higher as it sees more play. Due to the variety and random setup, I see this potentially having a lot of replayability, but also [i]requiring[/i] more plays to do well. Depth is great, but only if you don't stop at the surface level, you see.

The concerns I have about the game (that would prevent me from ever wanting to own it):

• Gigantic box. My back is not strong enough to carry this around in hopes that it gets played. Would only bring it if we plan on playing it, not to regular meetups.
• While not difficult to learn to play (it's a deckbuilder, look for combos and push them), requires investment and effort to learn how to play [i]well[/i].
• If it doesn't see repeated plays due to Flavor Of The Month, I wouldn't want to relearn all the nuance and depth every time.
• I'm a little worried that some locations are simply better than others, or simply terrible based on loadout, and I don't feel noob traps add value. Poor play can be done anywhere, but poor play shouldn't be sugarcoated and given attractive signage. Unfortunately, fixed market deckbuilders all suffer from this.

Things I liked:

• There's enough "game" here to go with the deckbuilding that it isn't just a mathematical calculation like Dominion.
• Having all players share a deck is fun, and adds decision points. Also some interaction and messing with each others' plans.
• It was fun. I enjoyed improving cards and moving workers around and balancing short-term and long-term objectives.
• I could identify decisions I made previously that didn't work out, so I could learn how to do better next time. Or how to read the loadout better. That is positive, because the game isn't ridiculously complex just to be opaque.

Anyway, I don't need to own it and likely won't ever, but it's fun to play, and I'd prefer to play it semi-regularly, or not at all.