Kinfire Delve: Vainglory’s Grotto Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto from Incredible Dream. Kinfire Delve is a dice chucking card game for 1-2 players that will have you trying to defeat the evil bad guy.

New game publisher Incredible Dream rocketed onto the scene with the release of their first game, Kinfire Chronicles. It’s a really fun dungeon crawler that even made my Top 10 Games of 2023 list (review coming from Brian soon!).

The second game from Incredible Dream is skipping Kickstarter this time and coming straight to gaming stores. Kinfire Delve: Vainglory’s Grotto is a cooperative dungeon delving card game for 1-2 players that takes about 30-45 minutes to play. It plays best with two players.

The goal in Kinfire Delve is to reach the bottom of the well (card deck) and defeat the final boss (Vainglory). Each turn, the active player must attempt one of the four available challenges. You tackle a challenge by playing a skill card (optional) and rolling the 4 dice. The skill card will provide you with successes and a special ability, and the dice will add successes to that tally for each matching color you roll.

If you reach enough success to defeat the card, you send it to the discard and collect its bonus—usually letting you discard extra cards off the top of the well deck. If you don’t quite reach the total needed, your progress stays but you’ll suffer a penalty, usually wounds. Then the next player takes their turn.

Interestingly, you don’t draw cards at the end of your turn. The only way to get more cards is to take an exhaustion card (too many of these and you might also lose), which refills your hand.

Once you’ve made it through all 57 cards of the well deck, you have to take on Vainglory. Defeat him and you win. Run out of life,