Slay The Spire Review

Like probably almost everyone else who backed the Slay The Spire The Board Game via crowdfunding, I was already a fan of the video game which was what enticed me into pledging for it. And there’s plenty of comparison between what this adaption keeps the same and what it does differently. However, I’m going to see if I can drop any pre-made opinions and attempt to review this independently as a board game to begin with, before comparing later how close an adaption it feels.

So, Slay The Spire is a co-operative Roguelike Deckbuilder. If you’re unsure how that works, let’s break it down. You’ll be playing solo or with up to 3 companions to beat the game as a team. Each character you can choose from starts with a very similar deck of cards, then through the course of game you’ll be able to acquire more cards to go into your deck to slowly build it around a game winning strategy. Now you get to add the roguelike aspect to the game, a genre made popular by video games (before then being blended with the deckbuilding board game mechanic to create the original Slay The Spire) which I would describe as being defined by two main aspects in modern games:

Firstly, you only have a fixed amount of challenges/rewards/resources available to come across before encountering a boss or moving to the next level. This could be a limited number of enemies to kill to gain experience to improve your character, or a time limit before the continuous wave of enemies get stronger, or, as in Slay The Spire, a fixed number of steps to reach the boss where each one has potential help or hinderance depending on how they play out.

Secondly, these games are built to be one run through only, no second chances, although there may be times when randomness present means it’s not possible to succeed. But, that won’t necessarily be a bad thing as each completed run, win or lose, can potentially provide you with rewards that you can use for your next run, slowly giving your character a stronger starting build to work with, permanent upgrades, or more options available to find during the runs.

Whilst there may be other aspects too, these are what I find key and both are present here, so let’s get into the box.

Taking A Closer Look

So, a caveat here is that I got my box from the crowdfunding campaign so it’s the Collector’s Edition, meaning one or two parts may not be present in the regular retail versions, but mostly I’ll try to look at the parts present in both. It’s very easy to mainly sum it up through one word though, cards! The whole point of the game is to build a deck as you play, so you need lots of cards to have the numbers and variety, then there’s four different characters present who each utilise their own individual personalised cards, so that’s four times as many cards required as just a single character, and also all the enemies you’ll fight and any rewards you gain will again be represented by decks of cards too, meaning even more required. If that isn’t enough for you, there’ll be more cards available that can be unlocked to make the decks bigger or replace some cards with alternative sets, meaning even more cards! Plus there’s sleeves too, enough in the box to sleeve all the cards, although these aren’t just a fun extra but something required for the game as it’s a key part of the mechanics. Keep diving into the contents and you’ll meet a stash of tokens to use throughout the game, before finally having everything out including the boards needed to play. I have to say, this looks an impressively produced game, I know I have the extras but even the normal games I’ve seen are a very good quality. There are four figures for the characters which are fairly well detailed, tokens are thick, the art looks just like the game it’s based on. The only thing that might put some people off may be the sleeves and the time needed to set this up to begin with, but the rest should be all good.

Getting Ready

I was going to start off saying the main part of the game is combat, but that would be incorrect. The main part of the game is the already mentioned sleeving! So, one of the core mechanics in the game is upgrading cards, either ones you currently own or are looking to add to your deck. But rather than adding more cards to a game box which is already stacked enough as it is, each card is instead double sided, so the back contains the upgraded version of the card. This is where the sleeves come in, all custom sleeves for the game that conceal the reverse of the card, so you still won’t know which is which, but at any point you can slide it out to check the reverse if you need to know what the upgraded side does. Often this will be at the point of choosing which card you’d like to upgrade, which means you never go in blind choosing to upgrade cards without knowing what their better effects will be. A side effect of this is, unlike other games with a similar mechanism, it keeps the front of the card clean so there isn’t any irrelevant text that might cause any confusion.

Anyway, now we can get to the main part of the game, which will be combat. Each run at the game will be set up as an Act, using one of the game boards and proceeding from bottom to top where you’ll face a Boss, even if you somehow avoid every enemy on the board the Boss cannot be bypassed and is mandatory to finish the Act. Your deck is only used during combat anyway, although some events may need affect the cards inside it, so again this is the focal point of the game as you develop your deck. Whatever Act you choose to play will have it’s own decks of cards for enemies, minions, events etc to set up, but they all share the same pool of randomised tokens to mix onto the board among the fixed spaces that determine where you’ll find additional enemies or elite enemies or non combat encounters on one of the multiple paths to the top of the board. Once you move to a space with an enemy then combat begins, each player in the game chooses one of four rows on the board before the enemies line up in front of them with any minions listed on their cards, although any Elite or Boss enemies will face all rows simultaneously. Combat involves all players drawing from their personal decks then playing their cards to attack or defend, the characters can choose between themselves which order to act in. After all characters take their turn then the enemies have their chance to retaliate. After that refresh hands and go again until only one side remains. There won’t be a time limit for this, if a deck runs empty then just shuffle in the discard and draw again. The goal is to defeat all enemies, and you can choose to attack any on the board, not just those attacking your character, which could be beneficial as if just one player is eliminated then it’s Game Over for everyone.

There could be other steps you choose to take on you climb up the spire that won’t involve combat, there are random events which could be for better or for worse; merchants appear here and there who will sell you powerful relics, one time use potions for various effects or cards to add to your decks; unguarded chests containing riches and rewards or vital safe spots to rest and recover you characters. Once you reach the eventual Boss at the top and successfully take them out then two options remain, call it a day or loot the Boss Room and move onto the next Act! If you move to the next Act then it’s time to re-set up the play area but with all the components for the next act to play. If you do call it a day though, as well as resting easy with your victory you will also get to go into the back of the rulebook, maybe tick some boxes if you managed to achieve any special conditions, or just a few boxes regardless for the first few runs, and you may just get to unlock something new for your next go!

Ascending

Now let’s get into some finer details of gameplay. Slay The Spire can be played solo as mentioned earlier, but it’s much more ideal to play with multiple players. Cards get generally more powerful when upgrading but some of them also add effects that help other players, an example being the starting Defend cards that gain the ability to give Block to any player after being upgraded. Offensive cards can always be used on enemies in any row though, so even to begin with if you can’t defend another player you can still attempt to wipe out the guys attacking them instead. This is one of the mechanics that helps two-fold, with the game scaling due to player count randomness, even if one player gets an unlucky draw with the enemy cards then you can try to help them out, and also helps with player experience levels, newer players to the game may not use their cards effectively so, rather than alpha gaming them in what to do, instead you can use your own cards to help keep them alive and in doing so keep the team marching towards victory. I personally haven’t found any real differences between low or high player counts, apart from the extra card for solo mode and powerful enemies having separate health bars that are dependant on the amount of players.
The game also gives you a choice of four different characters to use who have different playstyles, maybe you play as The Ironclad and go for an all out offensive build using multiple strength bonuses, or perhaps you use The Silent and a combination of poison and defensive cards to deal continuous damage while avoiding taking any in return. With multiple players it’s time to mix these up to your advantage by covering any weaknesses and protect you fellow player’s back. The other characters can mix up their styles slightly more, one uses various different orbs that each provide a different power and the other has a mix of styles which offer a different bonus for use or switching between them.

Now, another feature to discuss is the 6-sided die. Every round this gets rolled which adds to the randomness and will be used to determine a number of factors for that round, such as what relics provide powers and which attacks some enemies may use. This provides some slight extra element of difficulty, you might never gain the bonus from an artifact if it’s number never comes up, or an enemy could always use the same repeated powerful attack. However, by rolling this at the start of the round you will at least already know what attacks every enemy plans to use, and in doing so can adjust the strategy each round for whatever the enemies plan to do. So you might find sometimes this helps more than it hinders, sometimes the other way around, the true randomness is never knowing what to expect.

Keeping with the theme of randomness, each game you get to choose which path to take to reach the Boss, while most steps are set some will have tokens randomly placed during the set up, so you may find some paths look harder than others, or some may be more desirable. This may take some time to work out though, but through repeated playthroughs you’ll gradually start to work out what cards to expect in each deck, so you should start to get a feel for the better options to choose. Or so you think, as after a few games of unlocking cards and repeated victories you might choose to do a game using some Ascension levels. These are included difficulty modifiers that add different constraints such as weaker players or stronger enemies, which it could do by unlocking more cards to replace existing ones. To start with only Ascension level 1 is available, and each time you beat a level the next will be unlocked, with every level stacking it’s effects on the ones that follow. This does help to even out the gameplay over time, as once the player’s start unlocking extra cards and other benefits the game may start to get easier, and this keeps the gameplay feeling more fair and even. Boss battles have always felt like a close finish and requiring the right strategy to avoid sudden defeats, so even after all the bonus unlocks and Ascension set backs the game keeps that feel of having to try to get to the end and you never build up to a point of steamrolling the level.

The Spire

Well, I guess it’s time to also compare this to the video game, as it’s hard not to.

For starters this gives you a cooperative experience of Slay The Spire, which is something that the video game doesn’t make possible apart from back-couch-gamers, but that isn’t always fun for all parties. So now everyone gets their own character and the ability to contribute at the same time. This also means that all the characters are available from the beginning without any need to start with just one and unlock them through various requirements. Another side effect of the co-op mode is that the starter cards are more useful for players in the later game, while some play styles may mean you still want to cull them from your deck, others may keep some in the deck for upgrading, specifically the Defence card which allows you to add Block to any character when upgraded. When any player’s death results in a game loss this could be more vital than you realise. Also, as touched on earlier, multiple players mean multiple play styles at once, which combines with this point. Have you ever had an Ironclad run where you’ve had all strength and attack cards and have mercilessly sliced your way through the Spire, but fell to one errant blow with victory in sight where you just weren’t able to Block enough damage, well now you can go with that build without fear, as other characters can provide the Block you need. Although, be warned that not all builds will work the same in the board game adaption. Strength and Poison conditions, Weakness and Vulnerable effects and even the Shivs all work slightly differently on the tabletop compared to the videogame and may need some consideration before use.

Something else Slay The Spire does is simplification, for obvious reasons, so instead of worrying about early enemies with 40/50HP and dealing 5/8 damage per hit, you’ll be facing enemies with 10HP or less, dealing 1 damage per hit. There’s less bookkeeping which also ties in to reworking how all the statuses work, and this works with the die roll at the beginning of every combat round. Rather than tracking how many turns have passed for enemies or relics just roll the dice to see what happens. If you expect to draw an extra card every three turns then instead you draw a card on a roll of 3 or 4, in principle it should average out but does mean some relics can be more or less powerful on some runs depending on how good or bad you roll. To be honest I normally have a massive hoard when playing the video game that I forget about them until an attack randomly does double damage when I’m not paying attention for example. But, there is a downside to this, and you do need to remember to do your own upkeep, cards looking for the die roll are easier to not forget about, but you might have a relic that only provides an effect in ? rooms, or it’s been a long combat and you can’t quite remember if you used the once per combat relic yet or not. Another aspect of simplification is how the decks work for getting new cards, if you get a card reward then draw the cards from the top of the deck to choose from, after you finish picking return the rest to the bottom. Next time do the same and maybe you might be lucky enough to draw the golden ticket card, which is replaced by a card from your rare card deck. What this does mean though, is that if you don’t pick a card in the rewards, unless there’s multiple copies in the deck then you’re not going to see it again until you go through the entire deck, you could get two rare cards in the same draw and need both to make you strategy work, well likely you’re only going to get one to use this run. Additionally meaning specific cards are limited, if you’re playing The Defect then you can’t fill a deck with a dozen claw cards, you’ll get two and that’s your lot (unless you unlock more or use the Kickstarter Claw Pack). Once you know this you can plan accordingly and base your strategies around that, but pay attention to what cards come out at every unlock. This effect also applies to other decks too, relics, potions, even enemies, which in a way helps give you the thematic feel of the game being seeded like the video game. For any seed number the order you get things are fixed, randomly determined for a normal run but the option to pick your seed number exists, so if you encounter the Gremlin Nob as you first elite on floor 3 say, but then replay the seed and fight your first elite on floor 13 it will still be the Gremlin Nob. In the same way once your deck is set up in the board game you will always fight the same elite first, no matter where you encounter it. Related to that, if you encounter multiple elites past your third on the same floor you should find they repeat in the same order, much in the same way that by putting the cards on the bottom of the deck you’ll continuously fight the elites in the same order on that floor. [It may be that the video game is designed to work in this exact same way for other things so keeps card pulls, relics and potions on a big list and puts unused ones to the bottom each time rather than just pulling them at random, I don’t know enough about the video game from my experience to tell.] Mentioning multiple elites per floor, Daily Climbs still exist here, although only 36 combinations, but still it gives you something to spice things up now and then.

A final obvious difference between the two versions is the time taken for set up and tear down. As an example the first time I did a playthrough it took around 90 minutes to set up, complete Act I and then put away after, as comparison by this point digitally I could be close to finishing a second full run. To compensate for this the tabletop version allows you to skip out early Acts and start at a later one (even Act IV once it’s unlocked, so much easier than repeatedly trying to get there from the start when I’m having a series of bad runs and constantly failing in Act III).

Final Act

So running down some final thoughts about Slay The Spire. I’ll have to start by saying the main draw of Slay The Spire The Board Game is the multiplayer aspect, anything else present could be found in the video game, which I guess is a testament to how much of a good adaption it is to the tabletop. So, while the game does have a solo mode available, if you’re planning on playing solo and have the video game well it’s probably better to just play that one most of the time, you’ll find it much faster to get going and there’s definitely more variety available that way. Not to say that there isn’t variety or replayability in the board game though, 4 characters to take through multiple Acts that have 3 different bosses for each with multiple unlock cards for each character and 13 Ascension levels to play through after, as well as after all that attempting to complete 19 different achievements along with the 36 different daily climb combinations in the rulebook, that’s a lot of gameplay to go through if you want to try every combination!

Sometimes it’s easy to move game pieces around in tabletop games that track values, but these player boards have a recessed track for the cubes to keep track of Block and Energy etc (at least in the Collector’s Edition) which is nice and helps to stop the cubes getting knocked out of position, although some turns are very easy to just auto-pilot anyway, if you know you hand of Strikes can eliminate your chosen enemy or you have enough Block to prevent all damage that go. So once everyone knows what they’re doing turns can go past fairly fast so minimal downtime waiting around doing nothing, although as mentioned before previous players of the video game need to be aware that some effects differ like Weak only giving a -1 to damage and poison damage not reducing each turn.

New players to the game and veterans alike will have fun discovering the different combos that they can use for each character with the differences to classic builds for the video game runs, but this game does unfortunately already assume players will have some prior knowledge of the video game and how that works, with a few little parts here and there that would be vague for new players, but the biggest point being that nowhere in the rules does it say what to do once a run is complete. Now veterans will know to reset everything, de-upgrade all cards, revert back to your starting deck etc. However, in the rule book this has no mention of what you’re supposed to do, some newer players have finished Act III then restarted at Act I with the same deck that they ended with including all upgraded cards, so obviously encountered little difficulty after multiple plays. This has been mentioned online and the publishers are aware, releasing an Errata for the rulebook as well as planning to include it in future printings, but for anyone new playing it early they may get quickly bored or confused without a bit of research online.

Then some other little points that I feel like mentioning. The ability to ‘Save’ between runs means you can technically have four characters doing runs at the same time with minimal impact, you could even purposely do this one at a time to get the feeling of all characters running the same Spire one after the other as a bit of a challenge. Slay The Spire has unique sleeves, while I’ve not had any issues with them I did see one or two complaints about some damaged ones, and if by chance you did have enough damaged then you’d need to get them replaced directly from the publishers otherwise it ruins the game mechanics. For people who like games with miniatures, this only comes with ones for each character, all the enemies are represented by cards only, for better or for worse. It makes it far easier for gameplay but I know some people would like the options for Bosses to have a visual effect, even though the card holds a lot of information that a mini wouldn’t track. And I guess I should mention the end game tear down, needing to sort out the cards by type and undoing any upgrades, although the box does have places to store each part separately if you feel the need to.

Altogether I think Slay The Spire The Board Game is excellent, to the point that I haven’t actually played the video game since getting it (although I am aware of STS2 coming out next week which may draw me back in to practice), but I would say this is highly recommended (as a previous STS player) and one of my top multiplayer games of the year.