Dire Alliance: Horror is live (Tactical card play in a horror setting)
Update: Dire Alliance: Horror has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 21 days. You may pledge for a copy of the game with or without the minis, or for the minis alone.
Our preview post below was published on October 24.
Dire Alliance: Horror is a 1-4 player deck building and dice rolling game in which you fight against forces of evil. It supports both a competitive (designed by David Thompson) and a cooperative mode (designed by the Sadler brothers), and it will launch on Kickstarter on October 27.
In the cooperative (Raid) mode, you will choose one of the available factions to go up against. Each faction has its own minions which are activated by the Villain's deck. You will also choose your hero who also has a deck of their own. Each hero can be customized by selecting a class and adding items and weapons cards to their board.
Each time a hero defeats a villain, they get to add a card to their deck, whereas if a hero is damaged, they lose a card. If there are no more cards left in your hero deck, you lose the game. Turns alternate between the opponents: your hero plays 2 cards, then the villain plays 2 of theirs. Then your hero plays the rest of their cards and the villain reacts.
Dire Alliance has a double-sided board, each side of which comes with five associated scenarios (two co-op, three competitive). When you play a card from your hand, you either play it for the actions listed on it, or in order to move your mini on the board, attack, or claim an objective. When a fight takes place, you roll the dice you have in your dice pool and may mitigate the result by using your cards.
I'm also doubtful about the compatibility of the different games in the series. Many factions have abilities that are based on some keywords which seems thematically tied (e.g. "sated"). It's a bit like Magic: The Gathering, expansions are compatible, surely, but actually cards within an expansion arc refer to the specific abilities of one another, making any blend between expansions rather pointless.
Yes, it appears that this is the start of a series. By the way, the Hungry Gamer said that the game may not have enough replayability, unless they reinforce it via stretch goals.
For some reason the layout of the player boards strongly reminds me of Heroes of Terrinoth. Since I really like that game I'll have a look in Dire Alliance, but I have no interest for the theme so I'll likely pass and wait for the probably upcoming Fantasy version.