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Cursed city difficulty


CDM

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Just a quick one here as I've seen reviews and play throughs and lot of claims about how easy it is.

I've received my copy and having let two people play who are novices to board games in general it's actually not easy at all. It seems fairly balanced for learning the games and getting better as the difficulty increases bit with some board game knowledge you'll unlikely fail although characters may die you'll probably not lose enough.

My criticism of the reviews is there often coming from very intense gamers who know how to maximize every roll and situation. Most players including myself aren't that well inclined and make mistakes. It doesnt help when some play throughs are correcting mistakes they've made in a rush! And gaming the system in their favour and quite frankly getting the rules wrong!

I've started going in now and the only change I've now made is to slow the game down slightly so more chance of getting nightfall. Ive seem numerous fixes and additional rules on bgg etc but mines a very simple one..close some doors. Start of the game roll 50/50 chance of each door being closed. 4+ to open like an extraction. Just seems to add the peril slightly and helps with line of sight. It doesn't slow hostiles down, they will open the door if they ever need to move through it. 

Nice and simple change and I'll see how it goes long term. 

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Thanks for sharing this. I did feel Silver Tower was generally too easy but their were occasions when our group got into serious trouble. I was really interested to hear your comments that it isn’t as easy as has been said and I like your ideas for upping the difficulty in a simple way.

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The group I'm gaming with completed our second test journey yesterday - scavenger journey this time (first one was a hunt).  The thing that we've worked out is that it's really important to actually work out a plan of action, if each player blindly goes off doing their own thing then they'll run into trouble pretty quickly.  Looking at how the encounters level up as the game goes on suggests that the journeys will actually increase in difficulty quite a bit, especially if you're unlucky and get Gorslav with zombies on the board or the watch captain with skeletons.  More things to kill also means longer missions which means a higher chance of getting into night.

What currently feels good is that the game is dependent upon dice rolls.  I know that sounds silly, but getting a good destiny & activation roll really makes a difference.  Equally we had a blood born that took an amazing amount of punishment as we were rolling high on our D12 ignore damage rolls!

From our limited play, the game feels "completable".  Am sure that as people play we're going to see a real variety of little tweaks - locked doors is a great idea (some board tiles are rooms after all).  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we may get a pack of additional encounter cards and models - purely for variety rather than anything else.  A dire wolf would be pretty scary to face!

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I’m working my way through the journeys, and can appreciate the slow ramping up of the difficulty. Sure the heroes gradually level up, but the increase in opposition (numbers and strength) more than makes up for it. I think it plays like a video game, where you expect to clear the first levels, but then it gets harder. Also the decapitation journeys works like boss levels with added difficulty. I dont expect a narrative game like WHQ to be hard - just enough difficulty to add a looming risk of the occasional defeat, while my heroes go through the campaign.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 1 month later...

The basic mechanics are pretty straight forward and logical. There is quite a bit of decision making as to how each model moves and acts. Would I use the words easy, simple and non-complicated? Probably not, perhaps easy to grasp the basics but the rules have quite a few layers to learn. I wouldn't recommend this game for young kids, maybe something like 10-12+ years of age.

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  • 6 months later...

I need to play more games of this, but the two I've already played did feel pretty easy. Everyone feels super mobile so you can get from one side of the map to the other pretty easily. This meant we were virtually clearing the board every turn and most of the enemies didn't get a chance to fight back. At one point I thought we were misinterpreting the rules and we took a break to watch some lets plays to make sure we were doing it right. I do enjoy the mechanics (dice management is fun) though so I definitely wanna keep going with it.

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On 7/26/2023 at 3:40 PM, Jaffinch said:

I need to play more games of this, but the two I've already played did feel pretty easy. Everyone feels super mobile so you can get from one side of the map to the other pretty easily. This meant we were virtually clearing the board every turn and most of the enemies didn't get a chance to fight back. At one point I thought we were misinterpreting the rules and we took a break to watch some lets plays to make sure we were doing it right. I do enjoy the mechanics (dice management is fun) though so I definitely wanna keep going with it.

Lots of people see this as a bad thing but it does a good job of easing you into it especially with new to Baird game people. The difficulty Ramps up more from level 2 and get progressively more difficult.

I found myself doing as many scavenge missions as I could for realmstone as some of the weapons and armour are needed in later levels.  Nightwars is very difficult! The game gets harder as you get better

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