After successfully playing Gloomhaven until we’d completed the main storyline (and gotten fed-up of pointlessly chasing missions for little reward) our gaming group decided it was time to embark on something new. What to play? We considered a few co-op dungeon crawl games, Shadows of Brimstone, Advanced Heroquest and Tainted Grail all made the shortlist and we decided that Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon was the one that we wanted to give a go.
Opening the Box
Inside Tainted Grail you are confronted by cards, oh so many cards. There are also some miniatures, one for each character, one for the Forebearer (I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers) and the menhirs (more on those later). There are character boards for each of the four playable characters, letters and maps to start the game narrative. A rulebook and campaign book, there are also logs that you can track party achievements on. There are numbered dials for tracking various things and they also proxy as coins for some mechanics. A couple of dice. Cubes for tracking of stats etc (we ended up buying more of similar size but a variety of colours as stats, especially reputation, far exceeded the amount that could be shown using the system provided). Loads of stuff basically! Oh… also the rulebook and storybook for gameplay. The version that we played also came with miniatures for the Guardian Encounters to add a bit of colour to encounters, though these were in a separate box.
The Cards
- As noted, there are a lot of different cards.
- There are personalised decks of combat and diplomacy cards for each character along with personalised combat enhancement pool cards too.
- There are encounter decks in four different colours that represent different “flavours” of encounter (3 combat and one diplomacy).
- Map cards that build your adventure.
- Chapter set-up cards that tell you how to prepare for each new chapter.
- There are chapter specific events that give you a quest to aim for alongside a deck of random events.
- Decks of items that you can find, buy and craft in-game.
- Decks of quest-specific “secret” items.
- Character skill cards that can be bought as you advance.
Possibly more that I can’t remember as I author this!
The Story
Inhabitants of the isle of Avalon, as conquered by King Arthur long ago. He who rid the land of its previous inhabitants and made the island safe for inhabitation. Arthur saw that the island was protected by the “Menhir”; keeping “The Wyrdness” from twisting the land and making life unbearable. The greatest heroes from across the land gathered together to help solve the problem, these are not your characters! You play the original heroes’ concerned apprentices who have gathered after their masters failed to return. Time for adventure!
Playing the Game
In tainted grail you have a map of locations on large cards. The art on these is really nice. As you place the location cards, they build a large image of the island. I thought that these really added to the game as the pictures feel super immersive and atmospheric.
Locations can only be visited, however, if they’re adjacent to an active menhir. This leads to your first task, finding out how to activate menhir so your adventure can continue! You’ll see this on your quest cards when setting up chapter 1 too.
Living a Day:
Each day, your party members have a limited amount of energy to complete their actions. Then, at the end of the day, you must consume food and rest to regain this. This means that keeping a ready supply of food is essential in keeping your character going. In the game, there are mechanics (no spoilers) that serve to maintain a time pressure on the team. It is, therefore up to the group to manage your energy effectively and balance splitting up vs the risks. This brings us nicely to encounters…
Encounters:
In Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, there are two types of encounters; combat and diplomacy. Different characters are more geared to combat and others to diplomacy. Both encounters follow a similar structure. You draw cards, play them in combination (where possible) to either drive down an enemy health
bar (in combat) or increase an affinity bar (in diplomacy). In both cases, after a player has taken their turn, the enemy responds, with negative consequences for your character. Succeeding generally brings rewards (gained by all) and loot (party rewards to share as you see fit).
Managing resources, both things you gain like food and magic but also your energy, health and terror are critical. Both energy and terror are limited by health. Take too much damage and you leave yourself limited in the energy you can gain back. Lack energy and you won’t be able to travel, gather food or, most critically at that moment, heal. Self-preservation is critical, so too is keeping your fellow characters safe and well.
Exploration:
Along with encounters the other thing you’ll spend a lot of your playtime on is exploration. When in a location, a character or party of characters can “explore”. The game then starts to remind me of a choose your own adventure novel.
You read a paragraph, make a choice and then get directed to a new numbered section etc until your exploration ends. This is how you drive your story/game forwards. Your explorations will lead to interactions and discoveries. Eventually you will uncover side quests that run alongside your main overarching, chapter ending, quest.
At times you get directed to a section of the exploration book called the “Book of Secrets” this contains parts of the exploration that, for some reason, do not get included in the normal area for a particular location. If I’m honest, this is a bit frustrating as you end up having to decode the area’s number using a dial. Whilst novel, it does not serve much purpose other than to inconvenience and slow down play.
In fact, the slowness of gameplay is something my group found very frustrating. The incredibly limited number of daily actions, along with the potential need to repetitively explore the same areas and hit the “golden combination” needed to progress a storyline can get very challenging. All the while you are working through encounters and burning food each day; food alone can be tough to come by. We’d find ourselves spending entire game days farming food to then go to a location and spend game days exploring to try and match the choices that would get us the next achievement.
At this stage, it is confession time, one member of my gaming party downloaded a “cheat sheet” that feeds the required locations and action choices to attain certain achievements as this process became so grating on our sessions. This has been useful, as the game remains challenging in its mechanics and using a lot of your time in exploration then having to do things just to stay alive became very repetitive, not something any of us were enjoying.
Permanent Death:
When a character dies in game, they are lost to the party. If playing with a four-player party a single death is the end and immediate restart of the game (unless you use the more forgiving rule option “Allmother’s Mercy”). If playing with a smaller party, a dead player can restart with one of the unclaimed characters. This makes death a “must-avoid” scenario, since this game takes long enough without having to re-start all your characters.
The Good and The Bad
As the lover of narrative in our gaming party, I have enjoyed the rich story-telling element of Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. My gaming buddies prefer the action element of games and like the challenge of overcoming encounters but do not so much enjoy the narrative; in fact, I am unsure they really know any of what is happening in the story.
