Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 3 – Blight of the Plague Lord

A Miasma Infests The Walls Of The Dark Castle

The foundations of the Dark Castle are built on the looming, ever-present threat of your demise. It is not often swift; your health bar ticks away slowly as the game progresses, but you often reach a point where you know that the end could come with a few bad roles. Expansion 3, ‘Blight of the Plague Lord‘ expands on this, festering and growing the sense of dread like expanding pustules.

Gosh, this is a jolly start to a review. Don’t worry, the experience is actually extremely enjoyable, with you and your fellow prisoners battling against a great invisible force, plague. Brought upon the castle by the half-human ‘Plague Lord’ and his infected minions, plague adds a whole new strategic dimension to the game, which is balanced out by character dice with unique ‘split doubles’, as well as 4 powerful new item cards to be found in the item deck. Unfortunately, they aren’t the only new thing you may find…

This is the deepest, darkest expansion of them all, and only the most determined and cunning prisoners will be able to escape these 15 brilliant chapter cards. Will it be you?

The Plague Mechanic

Plague is a growing threat that players must try to avoid like, well, the plague. That is a tall order though, since the Plague Lord has embedded it in all areas of the castle. Each character starts the game with no plague, but can become infected by interacting with a carrier (friend or foe) or by being forced to roll for plague with the special plague die. For example, if a player is struck by an infected enemy, they gain 1 plague, but rolling the plague die can cause a player to take up to 4 plague. Every time a player reaches a new ‘plague threshold’ (after they reach 5, 10, 15, 20 etc.), they take immediate damage.

By far the sneakiest way plague can get to you is through the plague cards in the item deck, adding a new sense of dread to the previously calm moment of taking an item. Sure, the item deck is now full of powerful new gear, but its contents can also lead to your death, which is always reassuring. This mechanic can lead to truly fascinating situations, such as one player being free of plague while the other players suffer. This player can isolate themselves from the rest of the group, not draw for or trade items, stop leading into chapters and avoid fighting carriers to escape infection; but this can end up being more damaging than contracting plague. It is also important to make sure that one person doesn’t get too much plague, forcing players to balance out who takes the riskier moves.

In some games, one or more players could go most of the game without contracting plague. Other times, everyone can get it on the first chapter card. In either case, you don’t feel like you are missing out on the experience of the expansion, which is the greatest strength of this mechanic. Aided by the fantastic chapter cards (like the medieval plague doctor and the heart-wrenching 15th card), plague is a truly constant threat, whether you have it or not. The way that players choose to respond to this threat is what creates amazing and difficult decisions, because, unlike a lot of the probability and dice decisions in the base game, there is often no clear strongest path. And just when you think you are in the clear, and that you haven’t accumulated enough plague for it to be a problem, you read the boss card…

The Plague Lord

‘At the beginning of each round of combat, roll for plague once and apply the result to all players’.

I will never forget the chill that ran down my spine when I first read that card in-game. As well as potentially applying 4 plague per turn, the Plague Lord also deals 3 damage, and plague damage cannot be blocked in any way. To put that into perspective, the Plague Lord, at max output, can deal 5 damage per turn if a player doesn’t block and started the turn with 12 or more plague. That is a lot. He also starts with 4 dice + 1 for each character, making him tricky to defeat too. With limited items and normal characters, this would be almost impossible, but a new set of powerful characters can turn the tide.

‘Split Double’ Characters

‘Butcher’, ‘Shepherd’ and ‘Fletcher’ are the new characters for this Blight of the Plague Lord expansion, whom all share a unique trait on their character dice; split doubles. Instead of the usual double, which blocks damage from attacks and applies 2 of the same trait, these doubles apply 2 different traits. As always, there are 2 doubles on each character dice, but each double is now unique. As an example, ‘Butcher’ is a might specialist and his two doubles are a might/wisdom and a might/cunning.

These tend to be more useful than traditional doubles, since you can remove 2 different traits with a single roll, and potentially more by using some fancy items (which happened to me in my insanely lucky review run of this expansion). Also, the specialist trait now appears on 4 sides of the character’s die, rather than the standard 3, allowing for more consistency when you need something to come up. When used together, these 3 characters are perhaps the strongest team that can be formed throughout all of ETDC, making this expansion a great pick-up for new and experienced players.

New Items

With the introduction of plague cards to the item deck, drawing from it can now be a risky move, especially when players are given the option to do this on chapter cards. Thankfully, this risk has been balanced by the great new rewards on offer. Three combat weapons, including one net to trap enemies in, are designed to prevent attacks and allow teams to take out enemies more quickly. Theoretically, the ‘Dented Daggers’ can remove 4 dice from an enemy in a single turn, should the player roll a double, then roll a double again.

While these are double-handed items, the ‘Tattered Knapsack’ mitigates this issue. It is essentially a backpack for one character, allowing them to carry 2 additional items in the bag (which does not count as an item itself). This means that needing to discard items because there is no space becomes far rarer, although the items in the bag can only be accessed between chapters. There is no time to dig around for that Brew of Might while a bear is trying to eat your face, apparently.

More annoyingly, you cannot access the items in the knapsack during non-combat chapter cards, even ones that are about stopping to trade with somebody. During chapter 8, a plague doctor offers excellent trades for an item card, which would be the perfect oppouritity to take something out of the knapsack, but this is not allowed. I understand that this would be very powerful, but surely that is the point of such an item; one with a single copy in the item deck, and will come up quite rarely anyway. This is the only real gripe I have with this expansion…

Rule Ambiguity

The complexity of this expansion means that situations can arise that are not clarified by the rulebook, and some rulings that are printed in black and white don’t make logical sense (like the knapsack problem). For example:

‘If a player is free of plague and chooses to take an item from a carrier (whether that is by taking an item card drawn after surviving combat against a carrier, or by trading with a fellow prisoner who is a carrier) they must roll for plague.’

Ok, that makes sense, but what if a character who is free of plague wants to give an item to a carrier, like an apple or loaf of bread? In the rules for the base game, it states that characters put their items down whilst trading, so no contact would be made between the carrier and the other character. So, no infection? It is not stated anywhere I can see. What about using an ‘Effervescent Evasion’ during combat with a carrier? The name of the item implies that you avoided the attack, but should you still take a plague if you did not block? I dunno…

In these scenarios, you need to make your own ruling, although I advise using common sense as a benchmark rather than how it would effect the team’s chances (the story of the journey is the most important part of the game, after all). Given the number of cards and conditions that span all the ETDC content, it’s understandable that a few things could slip through the cracks of the rulebook. Also, having to think about the rulings in a lore context can ironically create more immersion in the castle experience. This did lead me to be a little bit cheeky and trade an item out of the knapsack with the plague doctor (evil chuckle). Don’t worry, it didn’t make much of a difference in the outcome of this incredible game…

The Luckiest Castle Run

To test this Blight of the Plague Lord expansion, I entered the castle with a team of Shepherd (my partner), Butcher (my dad) and Fletcher (me). Due to drawing a start card that is only available in the Collector’s box (DCCB-SC01), we ended up drawing 6 item cards immediately, which is fun when the item deck is full of deadly plague. Inevitably, one of the plague cards came out, and by the end of the first chapter card, everyone was infected. Thankfully, the ‘Dented Daggers’ came out as a reward shortly afterwards, so it started to balance out.

A few chapters later, another plague card came out, and then the ‘Tattered Knapsack’ came out as well. At this point, I wondered whether I had done a good enough job of shuffling the item deck (which is especially important in this format). My notes here also say ‘Card number 8 (plague doctor) + knapsack is stupid’. Savage.

The fascinating draws from the item deck continued, as my dad drew ‘The Replication Stones’ AND ‘The Fury Shard’, turning the ‘Butcher’ into a plague-busting powerhouse. Not only that, we had now drawn and equipped all the new items cards (except for the ‘Frayed Net’), meaning that combat never lasted more than a couple of turns. We had also drawn all but one of the plague cards, confirming my terrible shuffling.

I also noticed that each time we had to roll for plague, we had rolled the minimum of 2. This was the most fortunate aspect of this game, since it was keeping our plague levels below the more dangerous thresholds. This meant that, with about half our health left, we had a really good chance to fend off the Plague Lord.

I turn over the boss, and we make the most critical plague roll of the game. It was a fifth consecutive 2. The Plague Lord had 7 dice on him, with more might than anything else. We rolled our character dice…

Butcher rolled a single might, which turned into 2 via ‘The Replication Stones’. Shepherd rolled a wisdom/might split. Fletcher, with the Dented Daggers, rolled a split cunning/wisdom, then a cunning/might. We had rolled 8 traits in a single turn, and the Plague Lord was immediately defeated.

The power held in the new items when they are combined is immense, but the luck that ran throughout this game was miraculous. The chance of all 5 rolls of the plague die being the minimum possible value was 0.41%. I’m almost certain I will never see a game like this again, but the castle holds infinite possibility, so you never know what you may roll…

Final Thoughts

The third and final expansion pack (Blight of the Plague Lord) provides the best value for money of them all. It is a brilliant experience in it’s own right, and can enhance the game in a variety of ways when it’s components are used elsewhere. The items and characters can help you escape for the first time, or you can combine plague with the curses of the first expansion pack to make it insanely difficult. It offers more complexity for players who want to mix up the format, and the illustrations and italic text are some of the best the series has to offer. Sure, it requires a bit more luck on the rolls and the item draws than normal, but those rolls can create some enthralling results.

(This item requires the base game of Escape the Dark Castle to be used).