Wild Assent: Lavon Rising is live (Wild Assent rises again)
Update: Wild Assent: Lavon Rising has launched on Gamefound, and the campaign will run for 9 days. You may back the Wild Assent base game only, or Wild Assent and the Shadow of the Silvestrem expansion, or go all-in and get the base game and three expansions: Shadow of the Silvestrem, Lavon Rising, and Dangers of the Wilds.
Our preview post below was published on June 26.
Wild Assent: Lavon Rising is an expansion for the 1-4 player fantasy adventure game Wild Assent. The Gamefound campaign will launch on June 29, and it will also offer an updated reprint of the base game and the Shadow of the Silvestrem expansion.
Wild Assent can be played either solo/cooperatively in Hunt mode or competitively in Arena mode. It is recommended for new players to play the Hunt mode by following the Survival rules first, before jumping into the narrative campaign. 'Survival' means your team of heroes has to survive 10 seasons and hunt as many creatures as they can without dying.
To play the game solo, you need to control 4 characters. You begin by drawing three worker cards from the worker deck, and adding one of them to your Encampment. The Encampment board shows a number of buildings (temple, workshop, creature pen etc.) which you can upgrade over the course of the game in order to use their advantages. The buildings you choose to unlock at the beginning of the game will also determine your heroes' starting abilities. You then draw two Location cards and choose one to visit for your first hunt. The Location card will define the creatures you have to face.
Each round is divided in two phases: the Encounter phase, and the Encampment phase. Once you find the cards of the creatures of your Location, you will go through the Instincts deck, take out the five cards that each of the creatures uses to fight, and shuffle them together. Then, you have to populate the main board by randomly selecting a setup, and placing the creatures, the heroes and terrain features on the map according to the instructions. Your goal is either to kill or capture all the creatures you are facing. The Encounter phase starts by drawing one card from the Instincts deck. The card will say which creature activates first, who it is targeting, how many spaces it moves, and how much damage it does.
Heroes can move up to their movement limit, and then perform one action. The stats on each hero card show their range, the amount of damage they can deal, and the number of dice they roll to attack. When a creature is down to half of its health, you have the option of capturing it instead of killing it.
Once the Encounter is over, you proceed to the Encampment phase. You reap the rewards from the creatures you killed, and place the creatures you captured into the barracks or the creature pen. You can heal injured heroes, craft weapons, gain resources, go to the market to sell creatures, hire workers, and build or upgrade a building.
The Lavon Rising expansion adds more content to the game: new heroes and monsters, cards, gameboards, and terrain features.
You may check the Gamefound preview.
To play Solo you need to control 4 characters? That sounds tricky, as I usually have difficulties controlling just one.
The cards look very nice.
I glad I'm not "into" Minis, as I'd be buying way more games than I already am. This game has some nice lookin' ones, though. I've noticed KS games with lots and lots of Minis are often quite expensive (not surprisingly) and often quite well backed.
Many times the 'Image Section' of a game on BGG has more pictures of painted Minis than of the game itself (such as this one). I gotta admit, well-painted Minis look very cool!