Review Summary: Just because it is an easy game to understand does not mean that it is an easy game to defeat.

Blurb from the publisher: 'Fallen into the Last Bastion, the heroes attempt to beat back the hordes of the Baleful Queen. If the citadel falls, it's an entire civilization which will be swept away, and an entire world will fall into chaos...

Last Bastion is an epic cooperative game, based on the mechanics of the game Ghost Stories.

Resist the attacks of the Horde!

Take advantage of the resources at the Bastion!

Organize yourselves and fight the monsters to the last!'

What you get: Your EUR 42,90 or equivalent will buy you Last Bastion, a cooperative tower-defense game for one to four players that lasts under 60 minutes.

In addition to the 12-page rulebook that can be found on the company's website free of charge, the game contains the following: 8 Hero figures, 4 bases and 8 boards, 64 cards, 4 Horde boards, 9 Bastion tiles, 4 Enclosure tiles, 15 figures, 47 tokens, 5 dice, one scoresheet, and one Power Description booklet.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never played Ghost Stories, the game Last Bastion reimplements. Thus, I cannot meaningfully compare the two games.

Gameplay: The layout of the Bastion is randomly determined by nine tiles, each of which provides a different action. As an example, the Tavern grants a hero one Life and one movement, while the Tomb of the Ancient Kings reduces the life of the active player while eliminating one Monster card in play. Each player controls a unique hero, not unlike in an RPG. Each hero starts with three life, one equipment token relevant to the hero, and one call to arms action. The halfling can move faster (or give his extra movement to another hero), the Arcane Warrior can reroll some of her combat dice once, while the melee warrior rolls extra dice and ignores Horde card effects. Each player also has a coloured board in front of him (red, green, yellow, blue) which can host up to three monsters.

How are the heroes and the locales interact? Simple. The heroes will lose the game if they lose three out of the nine Bastion tiles, if all of them die, and if the Horde deck runs out. The heroes win if they face the Warlord in combat and defeat him. The game has four distinct difficulty levels and grades its victories based on the level as well as additional parameters like how many heroes died, how many tiles were lost etc.

The game is played in turns. These are divided into the Horde Phase and the Hero phase.

The first phase is when the baddies act. The players will first activate the Horde's recurring effects, like suffering corruption, losing equipment etc. The player applies the power of the Horde board if all of its locations are occupied by monsters. Each board has a different side-effect. The red will see a player lose one life, the green will eliminate a card from the deck (bringing the game's end a bit closer) etc. This is however unlikely to happen in the first few turns. The player simply draws a Horde card and places it on the board. Placing a card on the board is regulated by simple rules: coloured cards go to the board of an identical colour, black cards aim the active player, while if there is no space available in the aforementioned options, the active player chooses where to place them. In case there is no space at all, the players bleeds life. Each Horde card has from one to three effects. These are broken down into four categories: entrance effects (activated as soon as the card is placed on the board), ongoing (applied continuously by all players), recurring (applied by a single player every time his turn comes), and exit effects (applied when the monster dies). Examples of effects include the active player losing life, the players being unable to use certain dice against the monsters, the players losing their next movement, or even beneficial affairs like receiving life or equipment from the reserve.

The Heroes act in the Hero phase. They can move once and act once, in the order they choose. Acting means either activating the bastion tile a hero is currently at, or fighting a monster adjacent to his tile. Combat is straightforward: roll three dice and defeat the monster's resistance. If the monster wins, nothing happens. If they hero wins, the monster is banished. If it has exit effects they take place right now. Alternatively, a hero can use call to arms, a bastion tile activation from afar.

The strong points: What a deceptively easy to understand tower defense game. The rules are simple and to the point, the gameplay is clear, the objective is well-defined. Yet, the game comes out as better than the sum of its parts. The heroes have meaningful, if slightly repetitive, choices. As with every coop each action will be discussed in committee, at the end of the day however each player controls one hero only. This reduces the problem of alpha players imposing their will on their partners. There is no AI controlling the monsters. The system on how they move and act is as thoughtful as it is simple. You will have monsters that will strive straight for the bastion's precious tiles, while others act as resource wasters. I like a lot what I see design-wise, including small details where the real estate value of the corner bastion tiles (a dreadful place to be movement-wise) is increased by allowing hits to both its exposed sides simultaneously.

I enjoyed the Horde's actions more than I did the heroes. The bad guys don't attack or counter-attack themselves. Their ability dictates when and what will happen; good luck getting rid of them before they start locking down your team's options. There is high number of Warlords, so that the game never gets stale. The different difficulty levels guarantee that you will never get cocky, no matter what. Try beating three different warlords, if you believe you are that good.

The rulebook is very well written. If it was of a standard A4 size and not in this enormous square configuration I would have been much happier. The designers did a great job of separating the setup and sequence of play from the unique and asymmetrical powers that the board, the heroes and the baddies provide. If other publishers are watching, this game gives free lessons on how to write readily comprehensible and easily accessible rules. Incidentally, this includes the pictographs. After a couple of games you will know all of them by heart.

The game's production values are high. I have seen sturdier boxes in my life, at the end of the day however this isn't a biggie. All the components are hosted inside custom made inserts; your minis will live for ever, especially if you decide to paint them. The miniatures are nice, but the grasp of evil figures (a howling skull based on an octagon) are even cooler. I am going to use the hell out of them in other games. The components that help create the board are made of thick cardboard. The art is cartoonish and slightly comical. I might have preferred a more serious take, at the end of the day however this is a subjective opinion, not to mention how the game could have possibly been misrepresented as meatier than what it is.

The weak points: Last Bastion missed an obvious opportunity by not including more than nine tiles for its ever-changing board. Why not? If you do it for the heroes and for the warlords, you should also do it for the locale. That would have geometrically improved the game's replayability. Other than that, I honestly don't have more to say.

Conclusion: I am positively impressed by what Last Bastion did. Easy, fluid, and very entertaining, I won't be surprised if for some groups it transcends from a filler to the evening's main game.

To find out more about Last Bastion and Repos Production, take a look at http://rprod.com.

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