Nightfall - Deck Building Game

Nightfall is made by Alderac Entertaiment Group and is designed by David Gregg. It is a deck building game but is slightly different in terms of achieving a victory in the game.

The sun has retreated from the earth. It has been a little over a week since the last hint of light shone over the horizon, and the chaos has begun. People fear for their existence, while scientists struggle to explain the phenomenon.

Until they came.

The creatures of nightmare — vampires, werewolves, and ghouls — have begun to appear throughout the world, and they show no sign of hesitation in claiming the dark world as their own!
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The game itself is face paced and the system is relatively easy to grasp. It takes some time to set the game up and draft the pool though.

Before the game even begins there is a draft to determine the pool of cards from which you can buy cards during the game. Each player actually has its own pool (personal archive) of two cards and then there is one common pool.

The whole game is about a chain mechanic. Each card has a main color and two linking colors. After a player plays a card they can link a different card that has a main color matching one of the linking colors of the first card. After the player starting the chain finishes their own chain each other player in clockwise order has the opportunity to add his own cards to the chain. When each player adds a card or passes the chain is resolved in reverse order (in other words: first in, last out).

In the game there are characters and cards with instant effects that are discarded after they resolve. The characters stay in play until the beginning of your turn when they attack and are discarded after the attack.

The instant cards and characters deal damage in form wounds. Wound is a card in Nightfall. When a player gets a wound they takes a Wound card and put it into their deck. The wound cards can be discarded from your hand to draw two cards each time when you draw your next hand. This means that the player having more wounds can go through the deck faster than the other players which gives them the possibility to create longer chains and have a bigger impact on the game.

The player with the least wounds wins the game.

Personally I find both the Chain mechanic and Wound cards' mechanic a nice change from other games. The game overall though feels a bit unfinished. It lacks something that I can't really describe well. During our games we also had some politics game when deciding who to attack which often resulted in conflicts.