Black Rose Wars: Sator Box

My latest game-night table was an attempt at Black Rose Wars with the Sator Box and expansions that finally arrived after a disastrous Kickstarter fulfilment: there had already been delays and problems before the pandemic, so you can imagine what came next. I call it an “attempt” because, before the game even begins, it takes patience to sort an absurd amount of material. The expansion adds roughly three times the content of the base game, and the challenge is not just sorting it; it is figuring out how all those options fit together into something coherent and playable.

At its core, it remains a game of wizard duels with miniatures and Euro-style roots, where spell choices and tactical positioning provide the framework for the necessary pew-pew. With the base game, I had the sense that there were serious pacing issues, and I do not remember it as anything truly astonishing: cute, yes, but hardly the revelation of the century.

With the five new schools we used, along with artefacts, equipment, new rooms, and the new forgotten spells, player interaction becomes much wilder and less predictable. The new schools are imaginative and clearly stronger than the original ones, while the forgotten spells contain some completely unhinged ideas. So, instead of the base game’s lightly tactical magical shootout, our session felt more like Wiz-War: trashiness, spasms, and unmistakably more enjoyment from the chaos. Honestly, we enjoyed it more — a small Abramović experiment, only with much more plastic.

For me, though, the box’s real value seems to lie in its solo and campaign modes. The solo mode looks particularly well developed, with dedicated support and separate decks to make it run, while the campaign is especially interesting for a regular group that can leave the game set up. That alone saves a significant part of the endless laying-out and packing-away.

Is it worth the money? In my opinion, no — just as, axiomatically, almost no game with this many miniatures is. But if someone absolutely wants to invest in plastic obsession, there are much worse places to throw their money. At least the expansion miniatures here are genuinely impressive, and the wizard figures in particular have the presence you want from such an overloaded fantasy box.