/pic8426933.jpg)
Two clans, divided from the trials of being exiled, have held onto twin sacred amulets, prophesized to guide them back to their rightful kingdom. On a rare Fire Moon eclipse, both amulets have lit up, guiding them to the Boiling Sea and a mysterious monolith. Upon reaching the monolith, the light from the amulets ceased, and the monolith lit up, pointing each clan at two separate locations on the distant mountain. The two clans now race each other to build the Crimson Keep and summon the fabled dragon to rule over their newly reclaimed kingdom!
To begin the game you'll draw five cards from your deck and choose 3 to keep. Each turn you'll take two actions, Place or Replace a card, Flip a Card over (to activate it) or Draw Cards, Use a Special Ability or Attack, or Move. Each of these actions has a track that you'll be moving up, which will gain you bonus actions when you reach the top of the track! Carefully manage your actions and hand, because if you end your turn with no cards in hand, you'll automatically draw up at the beginning of your turn, instead of wasting an action on drawing cards!
There are three different types of cards, Building, Combat and Cavern. When you are Placing a card, you always place it on the inactive side. Once Flipped, the card is on the active side, and you'll be able to use its special ability.
When you place a building card, you'll be building up your Keep! You'll want to make sure its tall, strong and fortified! Combat cards will be how you attack the rival clan! And cavern cards will let you have enhanced actions!
The actions you take throughout the game, winning combats, building up your keep, and more will allow you to discover runes, which you will need to summon the mighty dragon! You'll need to pay attention to your Summon Board to focus on the actions that will get you the highest value runes possible! The higher the total value of runes you acquire, the more powerful dragon you'll be able to summon. But you'll need to keep a close watch on your rival's rune discovery progress to make sure they don't beat you to the punch!
Once one of the clans summons the dragon, an epic final battle ensues! The dragon will now face off against the other clan's fortress. Have you built it well enough to withstand the dragon's fearsome attacks? Each time you repel an attack by the dragon, you will injure it! If your fortress manages to defeat the dragon, you will rule over the kingdom! But if your keep falls, your rival will take control of the land!
Crimson Keep is a fantasy, tower-building, card placement, set-collection, strategy game for 1-2 players.
- great artwork
- thoughtful and unique action economy
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action-discard-for-token — discard a card to gain a combat token
- dragon-summon-endgame — dragon summoned to trigger final battle
- engine-building — engine-building to power actions
- Two-actions-per-turn — perform two actions; additional mechanics for sequencing
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Core mechanics of Snowonia but with a Cludo style of uh straightforward deduction.
- it's really fun.
- you need to do one action for one character and four actions for another characters, right?
- two-player battle game where there are also engine building to it and there's explosive endings
- you do two actions in your turn and then you can play cards, you can flip cards from in access to active sides.
- prototype by BA Games
- it's designed well for two player with cute artwork.
- lead and follow mechanic; choose to follow immediately or not; blocks the round
References (from this video)
- Feels very thematic
- Good introduction to fantasy themes like dragons
- Cool dragon summoning and building concept
- Interesting collapse mechanic when buildings are destroyed
- Fascinating and beautiful dragon cards
- Potential for a lot of card flipping at the beginning of the solo game if game state doesn't satisfy card abilities.
- Epic dragon summoning and tower building
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — Players choose from actions like drawing cards, placing cards, flipping cards, using special abilities, moving combat cards, replacing cards in the keep, and initiating battles.
- Card activation — Players can activate cards to gain abilities and gain access to tokens like attack and defense tokens.
- Combat — Players engage in battles by playing combat cards and using tactics, tokens, and dice rolls.
- Deck Building — Players build their Crimson Keep by placing building cards and activate their cards to gain abilities. They also have a clan deck.
- Dice Rolling — Battles involve rolling dice, with modifiers based on tactics and card abilities.
- Set Collection — Collecting runes is important for gaining summoning requirements.
- solo mode — The game includes a solo mode where Kai acts as the opponent, using an action deck.
- token management — Players gain and use attack and defense tokens throughout the game.
- Track progression — Using actions moves a player up a track, potentially granting a free action upon reaching the end.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This is set up right now to show the uh Midgame game state of Crimson Keep.
- And then you'll build this dragon with these cards, which I find is pretty pretty fascinating and beautiful.
- So, resolving the battle, something I do want to mention, um, and without getting into too much detail, because there's there's a lot of good meaty stuff when it comes to battling and what happens, um, when something is destroyed, there are, uh, instances where if a building is destroyed, there's kind of like a collapse situation.
- I have yet to really play a game that feels as thematic as this one.
- This is a very cool um you know, solo and also two-player game.