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Vampires have been a mainstay in folklore for centuries. Inspiring many movies, stories and of course board games. Countless perceptions of vampires have been created over the years, allowing the imagination of their creators to run wild. So how have Richard Garfield and Renegade Game Studios interpreted their version of these blood-sucking legends? Let’s find out if you dare, with The Hunger!
Fancy A Steak
In the Hunger 2-6 bloodthirsty vampires have awoken and its feeding time. As you venture out from the safety of the castle grounds looking for your next tasty meal of refreshing human blood. But be aware! You must precede with caution, because if you fail to return to the castle by the end of the 15th round, you will suffer the fate of the rising sun and be burnt to a crisp. Losing all your accumulated points in the process!
Sound harsh? This is the beauty of this game. If you’re not careful all your hard work will become undone. At its heart, the game is a deck builder, seeing you deal 3 cards each from your deck to determine your speed points for that round. You will then have to decide how many of these points you want to commit to your movement and how many you want to hunt with. To the side of the main board is the hunt track. Each round a new set of cards is added and cards from previous rounds are shunted down to a lower cost. This is where you will spend your speed points for hunting and effectively build your deck with new cards.
Do You Come Here Often
The village in which you and your vampire buddies go hunting in, is a one-way road all the way to the labyrinth. This is the furthest point from the safety of the castle but can also provide the best rewards. So, you must decide if you want to risk it all for more bonuses which will lead to bigger points, or do you stay close to the castle to increase your chances of a safe return?
Visiting crypt spaces will enable you to gain mission cards, which if completed will grant you end of game points. Chest spaces further on into the village will give you a one-time effect to use when you see fit and if you are lucky enough to get the parasol bonus, this will give you an extra turn at the end of the game to get back to the castle if you should need it. Each round the first turn is given to the player that is furthest away from the castle, so add this to your thinking and you can get first dibs on those tasty new cards.
Pick A Card, Any Card
There are 4 different card types to choose from during the game.
- Power cards will provide you with speed points which can be spent on movement and on the hunt track, some will provide you with effects to aid you on your journey.
- Familiar cards are your friends, mythical creatures that will stay permanently in your hand once played and will grant you bonuses until the game end.
- Eternal rose, these beauties lie furthest away from the castle and will certainly be risky going after them, these rewards are great, but will they leave you hard pressed to get back? There are only 3 available so choose wisely.
- And of course, humans, these will be the main source of points during the game but won’t offer you any speed points. Lower scoring humans will just give you points, but the tastier higher scoring humans will give you negative effects when drawn, slowing you down in the process and certainly drive a stake into your plans. Human cards are sorted into 4 different types which can offer points at games end for certain set collection bonuses.
All the cards that you hunt will go into your personal deck and at some point, be drawn out into your playing hand. So, you must be mindful as to what you’re hunting, you don’t want to keep drawing a hand full of humans otherwise you won’t be moving at all. The cards on the hunt track start at a cost of 3 speed points, then each round all un-hunted cards move right and decrease in value to 2 speed points and finally to 1 speed point where the cards can get pooled, so the opportunity to hunt multiple cards for just 1 point could be a smart bit of business, consider it like a vampire buffet.
Component Quality
The artwork in this game is great. The characters have been portrayed in a cartoon style, which give the vampires a less threatening feel than the usual gory gothic personas we are probably used to seeing. This in turn welcomes a wider range of players to the game and allows slightly younger players to get involved who may not like the darker side that surrounds vampires. But this does not take away the essence of the characters, the artist has done a fantastic job in achieving this. This has been transferred into the game board giving it a very thematic feel as if you are playing in an eastern European village.
The player tokens are different coloured wooden discs, which have a screen-printed image of each vampire on them. The scoring counters are also coloured wooden pieces matching your scoring tokens. I was a little disappointed by the cards as I felt they were a little thin, and considering they are the main component to the game and will be handled quite a lot, it may be advisable to sleeve them if the game comes out a lot. But this is a minor grip. The box insert also gives you plenty of slots to separate and sort the cards and components, which is helpful when you have a large deck of cards and 6 personal starting hands.
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed playing The Hunger and felt it brought a few interesting elements into the game. Even though the game is a deck builder, it does feel more like deck destruction as the game goes on. Your hand effectively gets weaker the more humans you hunt. So, striking that balance of what to hunt and when really come into play. But by far the best part of the game is the push your luck side of the game.
Do you risk moving further away from the castle for the allure of greater rewards? If you do, then you run the risk of being burnt to a crisp if you don’t make it back. That’s the beauty, you could be flying high one minute scoring lots of points, then bam! You mistime your return or get a run of bad draws from those pesky humans and its all for nothing. You lose! And all you can do is add up what could have been. But it did provide plenty of discussions after the first play about tactic and strategies for our future endeavours on the hunt, and I am looking forward to getting this game back to the table.
