Gid gud and die trying. - Dark Souls Board Game

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Grumpy Gnome: Thanks very much!

@Knight-Captain Tyr: Oh cool. Feel free to send photos out. Also thanks for the compliments! I fully agree with you as well. ;-) I do the occasional promo figures/masters/shots for rule books and so on, but rarely for big operations such as Steamforged with their slightly broader products. Would love to do that more of course!

@Bearwoodman: Thanks, too kind of you. The figures are pretty good actually. Of course they suffer from some of the problems that come with the material (the occasional bent stuff, mold lines, can't really file it properly or such). They're also pretty huge, more along the lines of 34mm foot to eye, which helps them getting the details on. In the end they're boardgame figures. I try my best to make them look raggeddy and give them this typical Dark Souls look, with the exaggerated strong, dotty final highlights in pretty much white to give them an 'outline'. That becomes very apparent in the video games. Pretty much everything is very drab and dark, so every object or enemy needs an outline or have their own imaginary light source in front of them so you can actually see them. It's very interesting getting that on a figure.


Few days ago I handed the figures over to the gentleman who told me to put paint on them. He's very happy with them, which makes me happy. Next up: Vordt of the Boreal Valley (first boss in Dark Souls 3, which to me is extra special because DS3 is the one I actually played first proper. My brother's been into the series since Demon's Souls, it took me a a bit longer.) and the Phantoms expansion. Which contains a ton of fun character figures, but they'll all be just either white spectres or red ...well, evil spectres. Which is a bit of a shame, but that's what they're supposed to look like.

[Bloggard]

fantastic work in this thread 

not that familiar with the video game - tried one, and needs too much synaptic skill for me (although interested in elden ring now there appears to be a workable co-op mod available ... ).

like the figures a lot tho' - and they're 'big' it would seem, which I want these days.

dunno ... BGG pretty much slates the gameplay - although I appreciate there are homebrew rules ... tiles look a bit dull - I guess they're probably a lot better in 'the real', and obviously are true to the aesthetic of the game anyway.

optional rules are mentioned right at the top- I've looked on Steamforged site, and you can d/load the rulebooks - is it the expansion rules you mean - or the BGG stuff?

seems to be some notdarksouls figures on etsy now too- very striking design.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

If the co-op is anything like the other Dark Souls games... that series has a weird approach to online gaming. On the one hand it's woven into the game in a fashion that blew my mind. (and in DS2 they do a thing with it which I still don't really get. It's the most innovative thing I've seen used in terms of online play).

I played a little Elden Ring and it's really cool. I think I prefer the slightly more claustophobic feel of Dark Souls, but Elden Ring rocks indeed.


I played the Dark Souls board game a few times. When I bought it the guy at the boardgame store (Planet Harry in Vienna. Tip Top boardgames shop. Nothing but board games and the people who work there (well, it is Harry and some other guy I think. Maybe somebody else before christmas) know their stuff. So when I bought it, I was advised to maybe think it over, becaue this game is nothing like a regular dungeon crawler. I would say that it gets the feel of the video games across rather well (not to mention all the stuff people know from the video game is in the game, it works as you'd imagine if you know the video games and so on).

It's an interesting game in its own right. It's not quick, but then again it's also not overly complicated or slow-feeling. The sessions just take a while. The house rules I mentioned before are on BGG. Few months ago we had a game using some of these house rules (one to speed things up and to make sure you get equipment you can actually use as per your class if you get to draw an equipment card, and another one to make the game harder to balance the other house rules' changes). It was perfectly fine.

Couldn't comment on etsy, 3d printing or digital sculpts based on licenses being sold for money. Well, I shouldn't.

Anyway, I'm actually not entirely sure if I can make a suggestion to buy the Dark Souls board game. It's a bit of an odd thing. And it may lead to expansion purchases (of course I'm the doofus who bought the new Heroquest and THREE expansions so far ). I mean Steamforged announced a second edition to be released some time down the line; i'm sure that's worth a look. Possibly more so than getting the base game now.

[Bloggard]

cheers Sigur.

Eldon Ring's co-op as designed (I understand) doesn't allow for you to play through the game entirely, er..., co-operatively with a pal. But there's a mod on the Nexus website which would appear to sort that (for the time being anyway).

as far as the board-game goes, well, if I get it now, I really have only myself to blame, given your thoughts. Do like the figures tho' ...

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Yup, they are nice. I mean SF got roughly 3 billion people back that thing on Kickstarter a bunch of years ago simply based on computer drawings of the figures. And they are cool figures of nice quality for boardgame figures.q

The crazy thing is that boardgames don't even get any less expensive now either if a new version is released, right? Normally I'd say "maybe you can pick it up for cheap once the new edition is around", but then there's this one card or little plastic nub that's not included in the 2nd edition which makes the 1st edition a highly sought after collector's item for nutters.

This may be a silly suggestion, but for a dungeon crawler have you played Mantic's Dungeon Saga? The figures are said to be pretty rough, but I heard good things about the rules. Maybe that's "2nd-hand-up-pickable". Or just Heroquest. You'll need a baddie player, you'll feel a bit silly for playing it, because it's really simplistic, but usually it's good fun.

[PineyPhantom]

Another friend of mine convinced me to try this game out in June and we wound up eschewing all tabletop in favor of DS until August, it was so much fun. You did an amazing job painting up the sets! I wish we'd been able to play with your minis!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Another friend of mine convinced me to try this game out in June and we wound up eschewing all tabletop in favor of DS until August, it was so much fun. You did an amazing job painting up the sets! I wish we'd been able to play with your minis!

Hey, that's great to hear! Makes me feel a bit silly for being on the fence on that game a little bit. I guess if I got to play with these figures I'd like it better as well, but alas, I have to give them away once they're done.

Great to hear you enjoy the game so much. Do you use any of the expansions and and house rules?

[Bloggard]

yes, I'd like to hear more about your postive experience PineyPhantom.

@Sigur - yes - had all the Dungeon Saga stuff at one point; sold it all on ebay in one go - the most enormous flipping box.
I got disenchanted due to the confusion / controversy about the 'adventurers' (I think it was) expansion which should have expanded the role-playing lite aspect of it. Development of the game seemed to end under a cloud regarding the original designer Jake Thornton.

Not helped by when I contacted Mantic as to whether the game was still being supported and  received a less than transparent answer which encouraged me to jump in. It then transpired that they had indeed dropped it (effectively) and gone onto the 'infamy' thing.

tbh, my interest in all of this is deffo figure-driven, so I might just start collecting the Etsy 'grimdark' proxies.
I've ordered one cavalry figure from what appears to be a 'good' printing service, and will prob. post here when received.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Oh right, Dungeon Saga was another Jake Thornton baby. He did good whilst writing rules for Mantic, didn't he.

[PineyPhantom]

As with any board game, I think a huge part of the positive experience was playing the game with friends who are also huge Souls fans, so we tried to play the board game in the spirit of the video game. We turned on the soundtrack for background noise. We had the fog door and you died tracks on standby to increase the immersion. As parents, we had to tweak some things (once we had a system for a room down to clear it without taking damage we would just give ourselves the souls to cut down on "down time). That was about as gamey as we got, and only out of necessity.
We did one two-man campaign first, realized halfway through we accidentally gave ourselves like double the souls we were supposed to have, so we agreed to have to spend souls to pay the deficit in scenario 2 until we caught up. It sort of evened it out. We were learning. In campaign 3 we played 3 players and did everything right. It was amazing. A third (and I imagine fourth) player doesn't significantly increase the time it takes to run turn order because the enemy's impending attacks usually clearly dictate an optimal course, which captures the game's kill move memorization mechanics for staying alive really well. You can try to go crazy and fireball an entire room at a low level. It very well might work. But boy howdy is it risky.

The rules, once you learn them, play very quickly. You can play the game very quickly but the setup for a campaign generally took us 30 minutes to an hour just getting pieces in place and deciding on characters. The combat flows so well it's almost criminal, which is deceptive because on misstep WILL kill you and send the entire party back to the firelink shrine. Progression flows well. Classes should really stick to their class gear, but legendary items allow for some amazing combos that make you feel strong and deliver without being game-breaking.

We actually lost the first campaign even with accidentally juicing up the first scenario. Getting killed 5 times in a row and losing to Ornstein and Smough was just as soul-crushing as it was in the video game. We had to wait a week to play just to try and cope emotionally with losing. Then we started the Lothric campaign with glee because the game is just too fun.

Even if I wasn't a souls fan, I'd still probably call this the most fun board game I've played since Axis and Allies 1940 Global, and this is better. It's fast, it's thematic as hell, new player friendly (if they've played advanced board games before) and was so engrossing we put aside all other tabletop for two months to play it more. 10/10 I had no complaints about this game.

*edit: we played with the base game, adventurers, explorers (summons/invaders/mimics), darkroot garden, and have old iron keep but haven't played it yet.

[Bloggard]

brilliant - thanks for the write-up.

so that was all with the original rules, and official expansions; no home-brew tweaks then.

I guess that more unforgiving approach will feel more correct to those familiar with the video-game.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@PineyPhantom: Aye, I guess that's a good summary. I just didn't play often enough, I certainly didn't have the sessions close enough to each other.

@Bloggard: Did you get the boardgame in the end now?


Right, I got to paint more DS figures! This time it's the Vordt of the Boreal Valley and Phantoms expansions.












full size image: https://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2022_12/1s.jpg.edf81e24a6d5a55bfd16d7b71f1400aa.jpg


By accident I painted one of the phantoms white instead of red. I only noticed that after taking the photos. So you can have a guess which one of those freaks is supposed to be red rather than white. White of course being allies, red ones being nasty baddies invading the players' plane of existance.

The Vordt of the Boreal Valley of course it a particular favourite of mine since he's the first proper big boss in Dark Souls 3, the first of the series I played (since then I played them all, except for Sekiro). Anyway. Hope you like the figures! Maybe I get to play the DS board game over the holidays as well. It's been a while, and it's a fun game. Of course all the figures in my box are unpainted. Which takes away from the otherwise magnificent experience of playing painted.

[Belgian]

Amazing paintjobs 

[Roo]

Wow great sculpts and what a paint job…amazing

[HappyChappy439]

Amazing work! 

You've really captured the look of the phantoms/dark spirits in the games!