Unboxing Dark Souls: The Board Game by Steamforged Games

I've never been a huge fan of the Dark Souls video games (I prefer fun to frustration usually!) but some might remember I tried the demo of this board game adaptation at Salute a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, I love co-op games in general. I'm usually a bit wary of these miniature games on kickstarter, I feel a lot are sold more as miniatures with some token rules. Steamforged however are a well established gaming company with the popularity of their flagship game, Guild Ball over the last few year. Sadly I haven't got a group together yet to play it so this will just have to be a contents review!

First up with all kickstarters, did they deliver with their promise? The original shipping estimate was April and I got it in May so that is an acceptable tolerance level, congrats guys! This is only phase 1 so there is still more to come but this is everything they initially promised. Let's see what we get shall we?

The box is bulky as most miniature games are:

Opening it up you're immediately greeted by the iconic death screen from the video game.

Under that we have the standard set of cards, the card stock is good quality and the cards are very clear with no tiny text (which I appreciate as I'm forever having to read out cards for my parents with some games!)

A large cardboard box might contain some miniatures?

It does! A bevy of bosses! The base game comes with 2 main bosses (The Dancer of the Boreal Valley and Dragon Slayer Ornstein & Executioner Smough) and 4 mini bosses (Gargoyle, Titanite Demon, Winged Knight and Boreal Outrider Knight) Also a aset of wooden subes for recording information on character sheets (which have recessed slots for them)

The sculpts are good and you can see how big they are.

Another cardboard box contains the rest of the miniatures (the 4 heroes as well as 16 lesser enemies)

And here are the intrepid heroes that the players can choose from.

Next up perhaps the most important part of any game, the rule book. A bad rulebook can ruin a game. This one is A4 in full colour and as far as I can tell from flicking through it is well presented.

Cards, rulebook, miniatures....what else does every kickstarter game need? Tokens! These come on the standard pop out sheet complete with player equipment sheets (that look awesome, an area where I feel the likes of Zombicide skimped slightly.

Finally we have the board tiles 9 of them, double sided.

I'm impressed with the quality of the game, the components all look to be well produced and thought out (I love the hero cards and wooden blocks system, so much better than the flimsy card sheets you usually get with these type of games)

The game was £80 on Kickstarter with £75 early bird pledges and is available from the usual retailers right now for £100. Shipping was £20 on kickstarter (which I felt was a little high) so it comes out pretty much the same.