Numenera Thunderstone

[Morrus]

Alderac Entertainment Group and Monte Cook Games are both stoked to be working together to create the Numenera Thunderstone fantasy deck-building game. Well-known game designer Monte Cook’s newly announced science fantasy game, Numenera, is a perfect fit with the exciting, evolving mechanics of AEG’s Thunderstone.

Thunderstone is THE fantasy deck-building game, praised for its rich, dungeon-crawling theme. Players race through dungeons, fighting monsters and overcoming obstacles to retrieve Thunderstones, containers of unfathomable evil. Together, the stones can used to banish their creator, the eternal evil known only as Doom. But each time Doom is driven from one world, he moves to corrupt a new one—and the players must follow. Now, Doom has leapt to the Ninth World, the setting of Numenera.

Numenera is a role-playing game that focuses on character and story with simple, fast-moving mechanics. It is set in the ruins of a far distant future where, as Arthur C. Clarke said, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Characters explore the technological ruins of the past to make discoveries to improve their own future.

Doom corrupts everything he touches… what can he do in a post-apocalyptic world that has already fallen so many times? Plenty.

“I’m super-excited to be working in the story-based world of Numenera,” said Thunderstone project lead, Jeff Quick. “One of the first things I said to Monte when we started discussing this idea was that I didn’t want Numenera to be a coat of paint for Thunderstone. I wanted this world to affect the gameplay, literally change the game to reflect the new, strange future-fantasy of Numenera, while remaining compatible with Thunderstone’s full library of cards.”

“Numenera offers some unique experiences as an rpg. Thunderstone will handle those experiences well. I think Numenera and Thunderstone are a great fit. It’s going to be a really fun game,” said Monte Cook.

Numenera Thunderstone is available now as a bonus for Numenera’s Kickstarter page. For more info, see AEG's page.

 

[kitsune9]

Thunderstone does look to be an interesting game.

 

[MerricB]

Thunderstone does look to be an interesting game.

It's interesting - but unfortunately very clunky. You spend a *lot* of time frustrated by the hands you draw, and the game doesn't play quickly, which is a real flaw in a deck-building game. So, not only do you have a bad hand, you get to stare at it for a long time while everyone else plays.

When it comes to deckbuilding games, I prefer Dominion or Nightfall. Or Mage Knight: the Board Game, which takes deckbuilding to a different place.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It's interesting - but unfortunately very clunky. You spend a *lot* of time frustrated by the hands you draw, and the game doesn't play quickly, which is a real flaw in a deck-building game. So, not only do you have a bad hand, you get to stare at it for a long time while everyone else plays.

When it comes to deckbuilding games, I prefer Dominion or Nightfall. Or Mage Knight: the Board Game, which takes deckbuilding to a different place.

Cheers,
Merric

I will agree and add the tourchlight mechanic makes it toohard to eyeball monsters, witch leads to alot of down time well people do math

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I, personally, find Thunderstone to be my favorite deckbuilding game as it has more depth to it than games like Dominion. Because of this depth, it does take longer to play. But after a couple of games, when people get used to it, it speeds up considerably. My problem has been with new people playing once, having the game take a while and never agreeing to play again.

The new rules in Thunderstone Advance do work to speed up the game. The starting cards in your deck are better, making it easier to defeat monsters early game. As well, you construct the monster deck with a mix of easy and hard monsters now. Lastly, there's a new action called "prepare" that lets you put as many cards as you want on the top of your deck and discard the rest as an entire turn. This lets you quickly get a hand needed to defeat some of the nastier monsters.

Thunderstone is one of my favorite games these days.