Kinfire Delve: Scorn’s Stockade Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Kinfire Delve: Scorn's Stockade, published by Incredible Dream. This cooperative dungeon crawling card game is the second in the Kinfire Delve series.

The Kinfire Delve series is an interesting beast. Each game in the series is its own standalone card game of delving and… firing kin(?) for 1 or 2 players; but, when combined, characters and bosses from each set can be mixed and matched as desired, and the game can be taken up to 4 players. This approach makes the series cheaper to get into, but also more intimidating to figure out where to start and which entries to avoid.

Fellow BGQ reviewer Tony Mastrangeli reviewed Vainglory’s Grotto, the first entry in the series, and had a great time with it. Is the follow-up, Scorn’s Stockade, able to stand on its own?

Kinfire Delve: Scorn’s Stockade is a cooperative dungeon-delving card game for 1-2 players (1-4 with an additional Kinfire Delve product), that takes about 30-60 minutes to play. It plays best with 2-3 players.

Kinfire Delve has a simple set-up. A deck of 57 cards forms the well, and players must work together to fight their way through the well and defeat the Master before running out of health. Only four well cards are face-up at a time, and each turn a player must either resolve a face-up event (usually discarding it afterward) or attempt an available challenge.

When you attempt a challenge, you may first play an action card from your hand, provided it matches the color of the challenge. Action cards have a base value and may have additional abilities depending on when or how it is played. If you choose to play an action, other players may then contribute their own cards, contributing the boost value at the bottom of the card rather than the action at the top. Whether cards are played or not, you then roll the four dice, which may or may not contribute additional progress.

If the total progress on the challenge meets or exceeds its difficulty, that challenge is completed, and players earn the