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Review of Blight of the Plague Lord
Blurb from the publisher: 'Welcome to the domain of the Plague Lord. A monstrous mass of weeping pustules, his recent dominance has brought a new kind of danger to the Dark Castle, a threat more terrifying than any creature: the plague...
Blight of the Plague Lord is an expansion pack for Escape the Dark Castle, introducing new rules and content to expand and deepen your adventures.
A copy of Escape the Dark Castle is required to use this set.'
What you get: Your GBP 14,99 or equivalent will buy you Blight of the Plague Lord, the Adventure Pack 3 for the Escape the Dark Castle game line. It is reminded that Escape the Dark Castle is a one to four player cooperative fantasy adventure game that lasts around half an hour. The present expansion does not alter either the game's running time or its player count.
In addition to the game's rulebook, the game contains the following: 15 Chapter cards, 3 Character cards, 4 Plague cards, 4 Item cards, one Boss card, 3 Character dice, and one Plague die.
Gameplay: Escape the Dark Castle's third and final pack, at least for the time being, uses the tried recipe of its predecessors. Some of its components serve old mechanics, while others introduce new ones into the game.
It will not come as a surprise that the 15 Chapter cards form a concrete thematic castle, with a balance of fully negative effects, fully positive ones, and effects that find themselves in-between and require risk-taking. There are cells with prisoners reaching out to grab you, plague victims crawling on the floor, monstrous abominations, and many more. If players wish for more randomness in generating a castle, these can be mixed with the Chapter cards of the original deck and any other expansion, and drawn randomly.
The fletcher, the shepherd and the butcher are the castle's newest victims. They are different to both the characters of the basic game (attribute distribution: 4/3/1) as well as the characters of Cult of the Death Knight (distribution 6/1/1). The present characters are even more rounded, with statistics at 4/2/2. Each of them has a different stat as the primary one.
The four items are more powerful than the ones in the basic game, not however as powerful as the two found in Scourge of the Undead Queen. The splintered spear blocks your enemy when you hit irrespective of whether you rolled a shield or not; the dented daggers allow you to attack again when you hit; the frayed net prohibits an enemy from attacking for a round; finally, the tattered knapsack allows you to carry an additional two items which cannot however be immediately used.
Plague is the expansion's new mechanic. The plague die shows a different number of plague hits, namely 2 (once), 3 (four times), and 4 (once). Every time a player is instructed to roll for plague, he rolls the die and gets as many plague hits. When he passes a threshold of six and its multiples, these hits translate into loss of hit points. Thus, a player loses one point at 6 hits, another at 12, another two at 18 and so so and so forth. Plague rolls can be required from the Chapter cards (be it because the text demands it or because the entity on it is a plague carrier), or the four Plague cards. These have the back of Item cards, and are mixed into that deck. Thus, just like with Cult of the Death Knight, the Item deck hides negative cards that can make the characters' efforts even harder.
The eponymous boss would have been a standard heavy hitter, if only he didn't inflict additional damage through the plague die round after round.
The strong points: Blight of the Plague Lord has the strong points of the game's previous two expansions combined, even though it mostly follows on the steps of Cult of the Death Knight. You will not need more than 30 seconds to explain the new mechanics; as soon as you have the cards out, you are ready to play.
Once again the game delivers in new, fully symmetrical characters that cover all possibilities. The three new ones are the least hardcore, jacks of all trades but masters of, well, only one. If you want to try out more gradual distributions these characters do the trick. The interesting thing is that there are no double stats in their dice. As an example, the fletcher's shields include the fist and the eye in one case and the star and the eye in another. That is a full departure from every preceding character. These three prisoners might fare far better against opponents with diverse Chapter dice, against monolithic opponents however they have issues.
The new chapters are very thematic, with the characters encountering plague carriers 6 out of the 15 times they will enter a new location. Once again, they cohesively form a plague-themed castle that can be enjoyed as is without mixing it with the Chapters of the basic game or the other expansions. If you want to do it however, you obviously can. Once again, that's 33,33% additional cards to the game's initial 45. If you have purchased all three Adventure Packs, you have doubled the cards you have and have increased multifold the castle's replayability. All cards are marked as belonging to this expansion. If for any reason you wish to remove them in the future, you can do so with ease.
Plague is a gradual hit point loss waiting to happen. It might not be decimal, that's however the least of your worries. With the Plague Lord as overlord of the Dark Castle, you will be dripping blood left and right. Out of the 15 Chapter cards only four do not transmit plague in any way (either by requiring a roll, or through exposure to a carrier). In other words, this is thematically a very tightly constructed deck. Even more so, plague hits are also delivered through the Item deck. If you have added the item cards from all the expansions to the basic deck, 9 out of your 53 cards are now negative. That's a staggering 16,98%, or almost one item out of five. You should better be careful when constructing that deck and deciding whether you want to go for full randomness.
The Plague Lord is a cool final encounter, in that he causes damage even when he doesn't fight you. If you know what you are running up against, you'd better meet him either with many items that recuperate hit points, or items like the daggers in this expansion which allow you to attack twice.
The four new items are all the rage, seeing how they are all unique. The knapsack is by far the most useful amongst them; it even gets a half-page entry in the expansion's rulebook. It is ultimately easy to use (you can carry more, yet not everything is accessible at the same time). Just make sure you don't fall on one of these Item-eating Chapters that deprive the characters of their gear. This can be a more horrific experience than facing a boss card at the game's end.
Once again the artwork does not disappoint. It is plague related, of course. There are corpse-face guards, angry mobs seeking to burn the 'plaguers', rats, and many more. I don't get tired repeating how I like this seemingly amateur yet obviously professional effort. If Escape the Dark Castle ever becomes an OSR-style game, its intense drawings will be all the rage.
This isn't the game's only expansion. If you like what you see, or if it doesn't convince you enough, there are another two Adventure Packs to shop around.
The weak points: It is not that surprising that Blight of the Plague Lord has all the negative points of the previous two expansions combined.
Erratic Item card distribution, unless you create your Item deck following a specific method? Check. Go for a gonzo game with Curses and Plague included, draw all of them in the first nine draws, and- nah, you will have quit long before that. This is nowhere near a balanced experience. Even if absolute balance is not reached, a semblance of balance is still needed. The expansion desperately needed designer notes on how to handle Item cards and the creation of an item deck when a random castle is created with elements from all three expansions. This is the third missed opportunity for the publisher to provide them.
The same is also true for the construction of any Plague-Lord castle, should one wish to alter the mix of Chapter cards. That was easier in the case of the Cult of the Death Knight, seeing how the Chapters related to cultists were limited in number. Here, the cards relating to plagues are 11 out of 15. What is balanced, and what isn't? This is a light game, no matter how strong its narrative theme comes out as. Providing different setups that combine existing materials should have been a priority. Random draws of chapters can only get one that far.
Don't expect the expansion to solve the issues of the basic game; you still have to bring your own fun to it. It is still based on chucking dice, and decisions are mostly obvious. Characters still don't gain experience and rely exclusively on the Item deck. In other words, if you didn't like Escape the Dark Castle already, I am not sure about how this expansion can convince you about the opposite.
Conclusion: Blight of the Plague Lord is the visibly meatiest of the three expansions for Escape the Dark Castle. It provides the most tight thematic experience than any of the previous ones, good and bad cards for the Item deck, new heroes, and a new disgusting enemy to overcome. If you can only afford one expansion, or if you want to try how a single expansion works before you invest into more of them, this is the one to go for.
For more info on Blight of the Plague Lord, Escape The Dark Castle, as well as Themeborne, visit their website at https://www.themeborne.com.
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