Edge of Darkness

Edge of Darkness is AEG's new, enormous beast of a box: annoyingly bulky, largely because it also has to house the essential cube tower. I understand why it is there, but at a time when we are all fighting for a few more centimetres of shelf space, productions like this make me despair a little. At least there is the consolation that the box will presumably fit future expansions as well. Huzzah! In design terms, it is classic D. Clair: taking proven mechanisms and giving them one fresh gimmick. The core here is Mystic Vale's card crafting, so anyone who got tired of sleeving and unsleeving there should not expect a miracle here. For me, though, Edge addresses exactly the issue someone might have had with Vale's card pools: it does not feel as easily solved, nor does it confine me to such bland options.

Every game begins by building the city, choosing 10 of the 34 locations in the base game. Each location brings along its own cards, so the setup works like a scenario or a randomised market in a deckbuilder. This does not merely alter small details: it can lead to pure engine building or to a full-on take-that festival, where, instead of Edge of Darkness, it feels as though I am playing Lunch Money while Orcs chew on me. The range seems impressively well considered and genuinely caters to very different tastes.

On my turn, I draft cards through a Rochester-like mechanism, improve one of them, and then play them for resources or, more importantly, to move agents around the city and gain abilities or permanent stats. After every round, the cube tower checks whether the monsters are going to attack someone. At first, the whole tower can look charmingly silly, as if I accidentally opened Fireball Island, but in practice it ties into the rest of the game and builds tension. The only issue is that setup and teardown are disproportionately heavy for the length of a session.

Overall, I would keep this firmly in the “try before you buy” category. Not because it is a bad game—far from it, it has honest, engaging gameplay—but because the cost and preparation time mean I first need to be sure my group will want to bring it to the table often.

Updated session

On my third play, I used a more combat-oriented scenario and the game changed character noticeably: this time it reminded me more of Thunderstone Quest than of the earlier sessions. The experience was just as good, but it demanded entirely different strategies to survive. That confirmed my initial impression: on its own, Edge of Darkness is above average, but its greatest strength is that different setups can radically transform the game. I love it now, and I am preparing a game with Dunestar to see what the pit fighter mechanic does to it.