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Fantasy worlds are busy places, aren’t they? There’s always stuff going on. I’ve never yet read a fantasy novel in which someone just potters around for the day, does a few chores, puts their feet up and reads a book about a bunch of people obsessed with things called ‘mobile phones’. No, these fantasy people are action people, they’re always being epic and brave and they’re always in the thick of things. Show offs. Guess what, though? I can offer you something better than reading about action-packed epic people. You can actually be those people. Welcome to the epic final battle of every book you’ve ever read.
Crimson Keep is a fantasy, tower-building, card placement, set-collection, strategy game for 1-2 players. The art is WOW. No game looks like this. The cover, the rulebook, the inside of the box even, the board, the high quality card decks, covered in illustrations from a graphic novel you wish you could read. This game is epic in every way – make sure your table is ready for this beast. The main board is huge, the player boards chunky, and it’s a real looker when set up.
Each turn you'll take two actions, Place or Replace a card, Flip a ard over to activate it, Draw ards, use a Special Ability or Attack, or Move. Each of these actions has a tracker that will gain you bonus actions, Carefully manage your actions, because if you end your turn with no cards in hand, you'll automatically draw up at the beginning of your turn, instead of wasting an action. You'll need to build up your Keep, use Combat cards to attack the rival clan, and place Cavern cards to earm enhanced actions. Once Flipped, the card is on the active side, and you'll be able to use its special ability.
The actions you take throughout Crimson Keep, winning combats, building up your keep, and more will allow you to discover runes, which you will need to summon the mighty dragon. They can't resist runes. It's like me with cheese. Looking to summon me? Grab a tub of Dairylea. You'll need to pay attention to your Summon Board to focus on the actions that will get you the highest value runes possible. The higher the total value of runes you acquire, the more powerful dragon you'll be able to summon. But you'll need to keep a close watch on your rival's rune discovery progress to make sure they don't beat you to the punch.
So many decisions, trade offs, chances to push your luck and 2nd guess your opponent’s intentions. Should you place this Crimson Arch next to this Obsidian Stair in your keep and earn a matched pair of runes? Or send a Troll to your Barracks? But look, if you use a special ability or battle this turn, you’ll get to place a Summoning card, and you need all three to bring on the dragon. Or perhaps focus on moving the Strong Dragon marker backwards on the tracker so you can summon it sooner?
I’ve had the pleasure of testing a prototype version of Crimson Keep recently and found it to be tremendous, absorbing fun. You will feel like you’re in the third act of an amazing fantasy movie, particularly when the first dragon is summoned and lays into one of the keeps. Head here for the official webpage, and keep an eye out for the crowdfunding launch.
About the author:
Steve is currently a freelance board game blogger, but often dreams of life as a pirate, or as a ghost herder in the Lake District, or as an evil estate agent who sells haunted houses for his own dark pleasure. Instead of figuring out how to do these jobs in real life like a normal lunatic, he tries to write about them instead, and releases the resultant books upon the unsuspecting world via famous digital bookstores. More books are bound to follow. Find this peculiar entity here.
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