Crusaders Games

Euthia : Torment of Resurrection

Euthia is a fantasy questing adventure game where objective missions are played out over an emerging world, which can be played solo, co-operatively or competitively, and where each game is self contained rather than an ongoing campaign, based over a set number of rounds determined at the start depending on the scenario chosen. The game is a story about your hero where there is a strong progression arc, and where characters are gaining wealth, trading for new items and improving reputation and skills. 

Heroes will traverse across a revealing map, engaging monsters, mining and trading or encountering elementals. It is combat focused with a dice mechanic that has manipulation via gaar tokens. In the solo game there is a deck of combat cards that reveal the dice score plus additional suprises from tokens plus silver and gold cards which form into a resource the enemies use during the game, and this means that each encounter will have varied skills being applied. The strength of the game is developing your hero in a short time frame with different skills, equipment in order to take on stronger enemies or bosses.

Game components are excellent with nice thick hero and equipment tiles, which in the deluxe version slot neatly into your board. There are also great miniatures for heroes and elementals, plus key roaming monsters, although most monster encounters are on cards rather than miniatures. This game takes up a lot of storage and has loads of tokens and tiles, which requires good organisation and can feel overwhelming without a good system, or the deluxe storage solution which really helps, but is a relatively expensive addition.

The game is so much fun to play, and mechanically round by round has easy enough rules for basic actions and combat, and reference sheets are provided. However there is a slightly daunting learning curve early on as you have to learn how equipment, gems, items and elementals will affect your game, but the books are well organised to look things up. Once you start to learn the main game mechanics things do become much easier, but unique items and skills will require looking up as there are so many different ones. This is nothing new to role playing games that want to give you a lot of options and choices.

The game feels best for one or two players which will keep downtime to a minimum, and is extremely strong for a solo gamer, with choices of quests and game lengths, easy mechanics that work really well, and decks of cards to provide enemy attacks and responses. Each adventure mission would also change each time due to random terrain tiles selection and reveals, and changing heroes will make your skills and progress feel very different. Each hero also has choices of upgrade paths too. The game offers a contained adventure that can be completed in a timescale of your choosing depending on the scenario chosen, and competes really well with the likes of Runebound and Mage Knight, being slightly smoother to play is many regards. It is simply one of the best fantasy solo games.

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Expansions

There are large expansions you can add to enhance or change the gameplay (my additions highlighted green = ownblue = part ownedred = not purchased) :

Deluxe Expansion

This helps with the organisation of all your game tiles and cards. It does make the game more expensive but the tile towers are great, and the deluxe layered boards are really recommended for enjoyment of slotting in skills and equipment. Personally i dont use the provided card towers which enables me to store the core game into two boxes. The game does benefit from the organisation options this provides if you are willing to spend on it.

Fierce Powers Expansion

This is a large box expansion that adds a druid hero, new hero tiles for original core heroes, corrupt elementals, and new scenarios including a hydra encounter and a necromancer enemy who also can be used as a hero.  Crawling Shadows adds more depth and challenge to solo and co-operative games. This is a great addition to the core game.

Cruel Frost Expansion

The second and final large expansion box, provides new scenarios with a frozen terrain theme, includes a Spider Queen, Ice Spiders, Keepers and Abominations, new Ice elementals and a chill mechanic which adds a new layer of challenge to encounters. This will not arrive until late 2025 but it looks very cool !