In Kinfire Delve: Scorn's Stockade, a tactical and cooperative card game for 1-2 players, you will fight your way through the well deck of challenge cards to reach Scorn, the Master of the Well, and face them in an epic final battle.
Scorn's Well is made up of four challenge cards, with Scorn himself in the middle. As a challenge is defeated, another takes its place, with 57 challenge cards in total. As you face the challenges of the Well, you may play a skill card from your hand only when it matches the color of the challenge card, e.g., if you're facing a red challenge card, then you may play only a red skill card. Some cards have two colors, and some are white, that is, wild. If the card you play does not defeat the challenge, you'll be able to add some progress to it and attempt it again, though you may suffer a penalty for doing so.
Other seekers can provide help by playing one of their own cards as a boost, but beware. Running out of cards nets you an exhaustion card before you can draw a new hand. Exhaustion cards are never good, but some are worse than others.
Defeating a challenge provides you a reward, such as regaining health or delving deeper into the Well, which is represented by discarding unseen challenge cards. Once you've made your way to the bottom of the Well, you'll face Scorn himself. All Seekers share a health pool, and if the pool reaches zero, you're defeated. This is a game that requires teamwork and persistence as the wells of Atios are unpredictable and quite dangerous.
—description from publisher
Images
- Amazing art design and component quality, especially for the price.
- Sturdy and well-designed box.
- Good travel game, doesn't take up much table space.
- Visually stunning cards.
- Good design and writing.
- Clear iconography.
- Affordable.
- Plays well solo.
- Very, very challenging, difficult to win.
- Rule book font is tiny.
- Can cause analysis paralysis.
- Healing opportunities are rare.
- Health ticks down quickly.
- Potential for losing the game by collecting exhaustion cards.
- May not be for players who dislike overly challenging games or feel like they are constantly getting beat up.
- vanquishing a malevolent entity
- a deep, hellish well
- Kinfire Chronicles
- Legends of Expedition: The Crumbling Pyramid
- Arkham Horror Second Edition
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Card matching — playing a card game trying to match suits using different powers on your suits to overcome these different challenges.
- cooperative play — a tactical and cooperative card game for one to two players.
- Dice rolling — You will get four of these custom D6, and you will use those to add successes to your challenges.
- hand management — you will have a hand of cards... If you don't like games that are overly challenging, and you don't want to feel like you're constantly getting beat up on every turn, this may not be a game for you.
- Push Your Luck — there is some luck involved, especially with uh when you roll those dice. Sometimes this uh d6 here will have the wild sign and the wild symbol that will add bonuses for you. And it'll also have this darkness symbol and that will often make things really bad.
- Resource management — it kind of has a resource management style system to it where you have to take a a a disability. You have to take an infliction, I should say, an affliction in order to draw more cards in your hand.
- set collection — if you ever get a set, like for instance, if you have regretful, discarded, and traumatized, you lose the game.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- But man, the component quality in this game is just amazing.
- This game is damn hard. I mean, super super challenging.
- I have a very, very difficult time playing it, but I have greatly enjoyed my time with it.
- But hey, Kevin Wilson, he seems to like those kinds of games. I mean, Arkham Horror Second Edition, anyone?