Stats:
No. of players: 1
Amount of time to play: 30 min
Age requirements: 10+
Set-up time: 5 minutes

Legions of Darkness Rules Description:

Legions of Darkness is a solo play game of castle defense. You control your typical class of fantasy heroes and try to defend your castle from the rampaging hordes. Can you last until the last twilight?

To begin play you set up the map based on the scenario you are playing. Next you select which heroes you will have in your force. The heroes you choose may boost your starting magic energy.

Each round you will draw an event card based on the time of day, either day or night. These cards determine which enemy armies advance, if there are any special events and if there are any special quests to complete. The may also move the time marker.

The event card will also tell you how many actions and heroic acts you get this turn. Only heroes may perform heroic acts and your action totals may be modified by the current morale or events. Actions and heroic acts may be taken in any order you choose.

The actions available to you are attack, build, chant, memorize, cast spell, pray or quest. Attacking and hitting an enemy causes it to retreat away from the castle on its track. Building helps you upgrade certain areas of your castle to help you attack. Chanting can give you additional divine magic energy. You get new spells by randomly selecting one when you memorize (for arcane spells) or pray (for divine spells). You may cast any spell you have if you have enough magic energy of its type. To complete quests you must devote actions to them.

Heroic acts include cast heroic spell, heroic attack, move or rally. Heroic spells have greater effects and when you include a hero in an attack they may give bonuses. Heroes start in the reserves and must move to the castle. They may also move to different sections of the castle to attack foes on that track. If your heroes rally the troops morale increases by 1.

Battles are resolved by checking rolling one six-sided die and adding any positive or negative dice-roll modifiers (drm). You compare this to the enemy’s strength if your total is higher the enemy retreats.

If an army reaches a castle wall you place a breach token on that section of the castle. If an enemy advances on a breached section and into the castle you lose the game.

Your number of melee and ranged attacks are limited by your men-at-arms and archers. Priests give a bonus to your chant roll to gain divine magic energy. These resources may be reduced by events or battles. If you lose all your priests, men-at-arms and archers you lose the game.

If you are able to last until time marker is on the last space you win the game.

A Quick Review of Legions of Darkness:

Legions of Darkness is tense, quick to play and fun. The theme is good and there are many meaningful decisions to make. You will usually feel like you wish you had one (or more) actions or heroic acts.

Although all tracks are threatening, the gate track and terror track are doubly so. You must take care to guard these tracks. The gate track can hold and advance two armies and the terror track is fairly short.

You will agonize over which resource to remove and have to think of the ramifications of losing men-at-arms or archers or priests. These impact your number of and types of attacks you can make, so choose wisely.

The components are not amazing but they are easy to read and understand. You can even use miniatures if you have some, but they may not fit well on the map.

There is a lot of replay value with the included random scenario setup and different types of enemies and heroes.

Legions of Darkness is great if you are looking for an fairly inexpensive solo game with some depth and variety. It will definitely return your cash investment into hours of fun.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 5 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 1 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6