The world of Ethera is vast and different. Over the centuries the ordained bloodline of Numa Sera has expanded their empire across the continent. The politics and tactics of ruling such a vast empire are not so black and white, and not all people can easily submit to the rule of another. The knights of Dena Vale are used to the cold and harsh conditions of the mountains and believe in honor and truth. The “cat people” of Meran have built their small kingdom and adapted their abilities to adapt to anything the world throws at them. The clans of the Siaan De’e take what they need and destroy anything that stands in their way. Who will rise up and claim control of Ethera when the war is over? In The Winds of Numa Sera board game, to the victor, goes the spoils.

The world of Winds of Numa Sera was introduced in a crowdfunded graphic novel published in June of 2022 by creators Morgan Rosenblum and Johnny Handler. The board game, coming to crowdfunding in June of 2024, has players controlling one of four kingdoms trying to gain influence over the world. As players exert their kingdom specialties, they will vie for four different win conditions with the player who reaches two of these conditions first winning the game!

WIN CONDITIONS

There are four unique win conditions players can accomplish to win the game. In a short game, players only need to reach one and in a longer, normal, game players must achieve two conditions.

• Master Victory: reach level four in one of the five skill types. Players will spend money to acquire skills that give bonus stats to specific actions in the game.
• Conqueror Victory: control four strongholds at once. Littered throughout the continent are a number of strongholds. Controlling them helps increase a player’s income and gives them special upgrades throughout the game.
• Champion Victory: slay three enemy heroes from one or different players. Heroes can have a big influence on the game’s flow so taking out an enemy can help level the playing field.
• Legend Victory: unlock all five different ruler classes. As players achieve different milestones in the game, they will unlock titles that grant different bonuses in different situations

 

KINGDOMS

Each of the four kingdoms in the game has its own player board, three unique hero cards, and a specialty geared towards one of the win conditions. Each of these cards outlines that specific hero’s attack, defense, and health statistics and a unique ability tailored to the clan’s preferred strategy. At the beginning of the game, players will choose a line of succession for their heroes. If one is killed, the new one steps up and takes its place. 

Each player board has the player’s starting resources and a unique upgrade tree that helps players throughout the game. When unlocked these trees provide one time, ongoing, and repeatable upgrades.

NUMA SERA

The Numa Serans are the ruling empire of the continent and occupy the far east of the continent. They are able to amass capital quickly gearing them towards the Master Victory which requires the purchasing of highly priced skill cards.

MERAN

The cat people of Meran are adept at many different skills and are able to use the actions of others for their benefit. This makes them geared toward the Legend victory as they are able to dabble in many different areas.

SIAA DE’E

The barbarians of Siaa De’e are brutal and aggressive making them suited for the Champion Victory. Their ability to get battle cards out easily and incentives for attacking make them a very offensive faction.

DENA VALE

Tough and hardy knights of the North, Dena Valeans are good at taking strongholds and defending them making them suited for the Conqueror Victory.

THE GAME

The game progresses, player to player, in a series of player turns until someone has met the victory limit set by the players. A player turn starts by activating any beginning of turn abilities in a player’s card tableau and then progresses through two phases.

Phase I – Explore

The explore phase has one required action and a number of optional actions. All actions can be taken in any order but must be completed before entering phase 2. The required action of the round is drawing from the exploration deck. In this deck players will encounter a number of different cards that can be kept secret and added to a players hand or must be revealed to all players if an eye symbol is located at the bottom.

• Boon Cards: These cards are revealed to give players a choice between two positive options. Usually a player can be selfish for a smaller reward or choose a bigger reward that helps other players as well.
• Hazard Cards: These cards are revealed and show some of the negative effects of exploring the land. Effects included losing power, or health, discarding cards, or losing equipment or skills.
• Maven Cards: These revealed cards are advisors and experts that can help a kingdom with special abilities. Players are given a one time bonus or can choose to keep up to three mavens for an ongoing boost.
• Battle Cards: These cards are kept in player hands and can be used to different effect in battles initiated in phase 2 of a player turn. They will cost capital, or money, or power to play in battle.
• Mythic Items: A few mythical items are littered throughout the deck that can be equipped if a player has a prerequisite skill.
• Pool of Essence Cards: These mythical bodies of energy test players to gain their bounties. If a player passes the test, their current hero is blessed with a special ability that lasts until the hero is defeated. Your new hero must pass the test in order to gain the pool’s abilities.

The optional actions can be done anytime during phase one. The buy action lets you purchase items from the World Forge Market and take the item into your hand of cards. The equip action allows you to equip items from your hand to your hero. The hero has one head, chest, and pack slot and two hand slots to equip items. Items often boost abilities needed in different phases of the game. The buy action also lets a player purchase skill cards from one of the five skill colleges. Each skill college offers four levels of upgrades to your player’s abilities. A card costs ten capital per level making a Level I card 10 capital and a Level IV card 40 capital to purchase. The use action allows players to use special abilities listed in their card and player board tableau, though many are one use per turn. The trade action allows players to offer trades to other players around the table and trades only happen if all parties agree.

Phase II – Build or Attack

Players have a choice when entering Phase 2 of their turn to build or attack and it can be a tough choice as you progress through the game.

Build

Taking a build action triggers the income mechanic of the game giving your player residual capital. This residual capital can be upgraded through cards and conquering strongholds. After gaining capital, players can check off another box on the build tree located on their player board.  Players must follow the flow of the tree from top to bottom having previous boxes checked before they are able to check off a lower box. 

Attacking

When taking an attack action, players can target one of three things

• Independent Strongholds: These strongholds are located on the main world board and represent unconquered strongholds. Each stronghold has a defense stat that players must overcome. If a player successfully conquers a stronghold, they will gain a capital reward from the bank and increase their residual income capital score.
• Player Heroes: Players will target a hero from another kingdom. If they can reduce that hero’s power down to zero by the end of the battle, they will claim the hero’s card toward their Champion Victory goal.
• Player Strongholds: Similar to Player and Independent battles, players try to take control of strongholds from another player. Winning another player’s stronghold gives them any capital on the card and control.

A battle takes place over four steps. First the player determines their battlefield and what they are attacking. Players will determine their hero or stronghold stat depending on if they are attacking or defending in the battle and place the value in the designated box on their player board. Attacking players, and defending players if a hero or player stronghold joins the battle, can then play one battle card from their hand face down to their board. Players will reveal their cards at the same time to determine any battle effects. Step three has each player rolling a battle die with different positive and negative values. Players will determine if any of their abilities affect the dice roll and write their die value in the second battle box. The last step is to determine their total battle score. Attackers will win if their total score is larger than their target’s defense score. Defending heroes will take damage equal to the difference in these scores and strongholds will be conquered by the attacker. If the defender wins, the attacker will take damage. Ties will always go to the attacker

Players will continue taking turns, exerting their abilities, collecting skills and items, and determining the best strategy forward until a player hits the two victory conditions to win the game.

Final Thoughts

We were able to play a deluxe version of the game and, I have to say, the production quality is fantastic. Having a graphic novel that is designed to be a visual medium as the jumping off point makes the transition to the design of the game much easier. The artwork throughout is vibrant and full of depth. The cards being different colors allow for easy clean up and sorting throughout the game. The flavor text on the cards help draw you into the story, even if you haven’t read the graphic novel. If you have read the graphic novel, you can see some of the touches that the designers took to make the heroes match their personalities in the graphic novel. For example, Lelia, the empress of Numa Sera, gets stronger as she builds her tree mirroring her growth in the graphic novel.

The player and world board designs are fantastic as well. Everything in this game has a home. The individual player boards walk players through turn structure and are uniquely designed for each kingdom in the game. The finish that allows players to use the dry erase markers to keep live stats throughout the game is a nice touch as well. The dry erase mechanics are functional and help reduce other counters that would be needed to track power and health stats. Each of the build trees is very well balanced to the kingdom it represents. Numa Sera builds up their economy and gains capital in a variety of different ways. Dena Vale will build up its strength based on the strongholds they control.

The gameplay is highly interactive and only gets better the more players you add to the game. Both the two and four player games gave great experiences and great moments, but the game truly shines at four. With two players, you don’t really have the option to use the trade action, because you don’t want to give your sole opponent something they want. At four players, gaining a temporary ally against another opponent opens more opportunities to advance your own kingdom. Our four player matchup was played with a few other GamingTrend writers and we all left the table with smiles on our faces. Throughout the game we were engaged with what was going down between two other kingdoms to determine if the outcome of a battle or a trade would affect our own turns. We laughed at crazy combos of battle cards and dice rolls and all enjoyed when a combination of equipped items took out the attacker on his deathbed. We all loved the multiple paths to victory and never really feeling out of the game. All of us were ready to trade kingdoms and start another game after the first playthrough.

The one downside to this game is that it needs some space! Having large cards placed around the player board and the edges of the world board mean you need some playing room. My two player games took up a large portion of the table and the four player game need to be spread down a long table. Some of the cards will be able to be hidden under the boards more as you memorize the abilities in future plays, but for new players and most needing to constantly scan cards for abilities, it’s definitely a hog. One other small thing would be making sure all mechanics scale to player count. Currently, skill college cards are limited by player count, but this may need to be applied to strongholds available as well. Finding some ways for players to interact with a non-player trader in the land could also bring some more functionality to the 2–player game.

While the game is coming to kickstarter, this game is basically finished. I was able to sit down and chat with Morgan Rosenblum, co-creator of the graphic novel and the game, and hear a little about the design process of the game. As graphic artists, they started with art and wanted to make sure the game looked beautiful, which they definitely achieved. Like many games, this game went through many different iterations and playtests, but the game was also critiqued and molded by the community of fans of the project and long-time board gamers. The designers used multiple feedback loops for each iteration of the game,  preserving the parts that players loved and taking the rough patches back to the drawing board. Over time, the design evolved from a straight player elimination game into the immersive and thematic multiple win condition game that it is today.

If you are interested in owning your own copy of Winds of Numa Sera, Darkrose Studios is running an interest reservation campaign leading up to the Kickstarter launch. For a refundable $1.00 reservation fee, you will receive a mini-expansion with your kickstarter pledge. You can find all the information here for the reservation and get signed up for the kickstart launch here. If you are interested in the Winds of Numa Sera graphic novel, check out the listing here from Dark Horse comics or ask your local comic store.

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