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Black Rose Wars – Giveaway and Overview!

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Category: , Age: 13+ 45 - 120 Min 2 - 4 Players 2018

Ludus Magnus Studio come back to Kickstarter with their next game, Black Rose Wars, after two extremely sucessful campaigns. The game contains a ton of components and deep gameplay while maintaining an easy to grasp flow. Saying that, I won`t go into details about the rules but scratch it’s surface with an overview.

Game Overview

First of all, we can expect top-notch quality components by Ludus Magnus and a stunning production overall in terms of graphic design and choice of game pieces. It contains at least 34 highly detailed miniatures and 18 double-sided hexagon room tiles which make the modular board. We will get the rest on our way.

Theme

You are one of the mighty Mages of the Black Rose Order, seeking to becoming the New Great Master by acquiring the power of the Black Rose Artifact!

Goal

Gain the most power points by killing your opponents, completing Quests and more, to be crowned the new Great Master.

Basic Flow

The game flows in turn that are divided in 6 phases:

  1. Black Rose Phase: An Event cards is drawn and resolved and players without at least 1 Quest card get to draw one.
    Event cards represent the influence of the Black Rose on the fight among the Mages. They may be immediate or passive and there is an Event board that keeps track of the active events. All such cards discarded will add power to the Black Rose. For now, imagine what this might mean!
    Quest cards contain the challenges you have to overcome in order to gain certain rewards. They are divided into three decks in ascending difficulty, getting harder as time goes by.
  2. Study Phase: You first draw 2 cards from your deck, your Grimoire. Then, you get to draw 4 cards from any School of Magic deck and add 2 of them to your hand. Important to mention that you have the option of “banning” a spell from your hand, taking it out of your possession to lighten your deck.
  3. Preparation Phase: Here a programming mechanic kicks in. You may place from 2 to 4 spells face down on your board, preparing for the next phase. They will resolve in order, except by the one that is placed on a special space, the Quick Spell. That card can be used at any given time throughout your next phase instead of keeping the order of the cards, giving you a nice utility aspect.
    Spells have two possible effects, meaning you have to place them in the proper oriendation to indicate which one you want to use.
  4. Action Phase: The meatier phase of each turn, where all the action takes place! Here there are quite some options available for you but the main concept is that you get to use some of the following resources in a combination of your choice: Quick Spell, Standard Spells (the ones in order), 2 Physical Actions. The latter are points you can use to move, inflict standard damage and activate a room’s action (yeah, rooms bear actions!).
  5. Evocation Phase: Evocations’ turn to take action! Evocation cards represent creatures or effects you can summon into play. You can have up to 3 at any given time and they come with their own miniatures to enter the battle.
  6. Clean Up Phase: Usual clean up stuff while checking if anyone or the Black Rose has 30+ power points. If that’s the case, the game ends and all players count up their remaining end-game points to reveal who is going to be the new Great Master.

This is mainly how the game flows and a general feel about what to expect.

Closing

I left out a lot of details and awesome elements of the game for the sake of this overview but I want to point out two more vital mechanics. The first one is an area control style in terms of damage dealt to enemy Mages, something we have seen latelty on CGE’s Adrenaline. Power points are awarded this way to the players with the most and second most damage as well as anyone who inflicted at least one damage too.
The second one is the fact you can destroy the rooms and be awarded with points for that!

Check out now Black Rose’s campaign on Kickstarter for further information and awesome updates about the game and it’s Stretch Goals!

 

Ludus Magnus Studio is giving away 1 copy of Black Rose!
Enter Now!

Black Rose Giveaway

The game will be given away and shipped – if Black Rose gets funded on Kickstarter – by Ludus Magnus Studio. The winner is picked randomly and will be informed within a week after the draw! All giveaways follow BoardGame Stories’ Terms and Conditions!

 

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