Kinfire Delve: Scorn’s Stockade review — A standalone expansion done right

Scorn’s Stockade is the second standalone set in the Kinfire Delve trilogy. We already reviewed the first box, Vainglory’s Grotto, which you can read here. This review will cover the things that have been added or changed from the first game.

Characters

Scorn’s Stockade comes with two new player characters, Feyn Longstride and Naz of the Windstrikes. These characters are both very different from the two included in Vainglory’s Grotto. Naz is a tactician with abilities aimed towards working with others. She can move progress tokens around and potentially use special attacks to knock out multiple challenges at once. Feyn has the powerful ability to allow rerolls, which can be game changing and makes him a welcomed character to bring to any dungeon. The variety each of the different characters brings to the game is one of the greatest aspects of Kinfire Delve.

Three or four players

Now that two sets are released, by combining them the game plays up to four players. I’m usually the sort of gamer that likes to play cooperative games mostly by myself. However, I think Kinfire Delve is actually most enjoyable when played with three or four players. There are enough meaty decisions to make with each character that trying to manage multiple all alone can be a bit overwhelming. Discussing potential strategies with other players is also part of the fun. Each character will need to work together and use their specialties in order to successfully defeat the master at the bottom of the well.

Difficulty wise, this game is very well balanced at all player counts. The more characters involved, the less cards each of them gets. Only two boosts are allowed during any challenge, so deciding who will use boosts and when is important. Each character also has their own card that allows the players to recover fatigue. With more players burning through their decks, fatigue can build up quickly and lead to a loss if not managed properly.

One aspect of higher player counts that may bother some is the rarity of lantern activations. Lantern skills are essentially the “ultimate abilities” for each character. They become available so rarely, though, that some players may never get to see theirs activated, which may be disappointing. For the team focused players, it shouldn’t be a problem.

New dungeon

My biggest complaint with Vainglory’s Grotto was that the game was too easy for me, even while using the hard variant. I really wanted the next set to crank up the difficulty. I’m happy to say that I am not disappointed! Scorn’s stockade brings the pain. Challenges have higher difficulties and do more damage. Even powerhouse Khor had trouble staying healthy when I sent him through alone.

Scorn’s Stockade also feels different from Vainglory’s Grotto. Vainglory has abilities that interact with multiple challenges of the same name. Scorn is more about powerful individual challenges and global abilities. There are some “good” challenges to help you recover from the beating you are taking, but Scorn is always watching. If you try to slow play then he is likely to punish you.

Another introduced feature that I love is alternate win conditions. Inside Scorn’s well there are three artifacts that, if you manage to find and collect all of them, will win you the game! Given the randomness of the well deck and how delving works, even finding them all is unlikely. But it is great to have another means of victory. If you find one piece early on, do you spend the effort to try and collect it in case the others show up? Or do you save your energy and just let it go?

Conclusion

My one desire after playing Vainglory’s Grotto was to have more difficult dungeons. With Incredible Dream fully delivering with Scorn’s Stockade, and the added ability to play with three or four players, I have no choice but to score this game even higher than the already excellent first set. That being said, despite extremely close games, I still manage to take home the victory most of the time. I hope Callous’ Lab goes and pushes the difficulty up just a little bit more. We’re experienced delvers now, we can handle it.

Once again, this small box with mostly excellent components (tokens and dice still look a little cheap) and endlessly superb gameplay is absolutely worth the $20 asking price. Of course, if you want to have every option available, then you will need to buy both (eventually all three) of the sets. If you only want one of the sets to play solo or with two players, then I would recommend Vainglory’s Grotto for an easier experience and Scorn’s Stockade for more of a challenge. Both boxes contain excellent characters.

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