In-Depth Look at Dark Souls the Board Game Retail Mega Boss Expansions

welcome chosen undead to another cynically awesome in-depth look today we're going to be looking at the three retail expansions for dark souls the board game this marks the end of all the dark souls contents currently available and will be available in the foreseeable future unless a new season of content comes out this was everything that was promised in the initial kickstarter announcement and these three expansions were exclusive to retail stores so you have to go out to your local store or buy them online but we're going to find out today whether or not they're worth getting now we're going to look at them in release order which means first up we have the last giant last giant comes with his behavior cards his treasure cards his dial his model and of course his board first let's take a look at the model as you would expect from the last giant this is one of the first if not the first official boss in dark souls 2. and when he came in the box this pillar was a separate piece you had to stick on and glue the model itself it's fine you know again i'm a bit spoiled when it comes to plastic miniatures but it's completely serviceable it looks like what it's supposed to look like and at the end of the day when you paint it you're going to paint it in very dark tones and you know it's not gonna look like the biggest set piece in the world and for a mega boss which this guy is he's surprisingly small which i think is pretty interesting he's got his dow he's got 44 health whatever he's got these treasures which are kind of whatever as well because mega bosses don't really unless you're doing a campaign rather that's the only time these tries would ever come into play but if you're not doing the campaign the mega boss is the last enemy you'll face at the end of a full session or full mini campaign whatever you want to call it because you're supposed to go mini boss main boss mega boss and then game's over congratulations we've got the last giant here and he has his level 4 encounters because he is a proper mega boss and of course his behavior deck now he has like all the other mega bosses out there a bit of a gimmick now i don't say gimmick in a bad context here i say gimmick as in every megaboss behaves a bit differently than just a standard boss encounter because this guy without spoiling it too much if you're familiar with how the game played out this guy when i assume everyone who cares about dark souls the board game has played or at least seen dark souls the video game and this guy when you fight him he's a big lumbering giant he does his big swings with his hands and then midway through the fight he tears off his own hand now the question is is that faithfully recreated in the card game or rather the board game and again without spoiling all the different behavior cards we have five standard behaviors five arm behaviors one two three four five heat up cards and then this special card here a slam card when we set up his deck we take three random standard behavior cards here and three arm behavior cards here these are cards that the giant does because he still has an arm so we put this together to make our first behavior deck now when he heats up as in he gets to half health which is actually depicted here for some reason not half house it's 18 health for him for some reason that's a lot of health to get through yeah right there at 18. he heats up which means we add the slam behavior card in here remove the three arm cards because he no longer has an arm he's going to rip it off and then three heat up cards shuffle this all up and this will be the new behavior deck so as you can imagine without even spoiling the card you can tell what he's gonna do right his attacks might initially be short range swiping at different players and then when he heats up he now has a slam which is a much wider range he tears off his arm which means he has longer reach and that faithfully recreates the fight but not only that he has this icon on some of his behavior cards which is a wind-up when you see this icon any character can span a stamina to move one node you see him winding up for a big swing and you have the opportunity to move out of the way so it's a pretty faithfully recreated fight and something that i personally like and i'm sure someone worked very hard on is the board this here is his boss room and this is actually very faithfully recreated from the video game because you fight him in this kind of like cave room that's not terribly big so i thought this was neat although the level 4 encounter area here this does not look like the area outside of his boss room so kind of disappointed in that then again i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure that's not the area outside his boston pretty sure it's more of a ruinous structure anywho verdict in the last giant the fight itself in terms of the board game it's another mega boss fight if you're really a big fan of dark souls 2 it's a faithful recreation is it the most interesting fight is he the most interesting or cool looking boss the verdict's out on that personally i don't think so um lore arguments aside i mean look at him if you knew nothing about dark souls you see this guy you're kind of like yeah okay he's a big thing you know it's not the coolest thing in the world but other than that i would say put him later on your list of things to get if you're really trying to get all the content but if you're like me you're trying to get all the content you're going to get them anyways who cares if he's cool or not because you got to have i mean am i right or am i right moving right along the next one on our list here is the executioner's chariot also from dark souls 2 and this was a more of an iconic fight but not only does this expansion come with our executioner which is two separate models here and no i don't recommend gluing them together not only is it your standard treasure dial boss and behavior cards and you know level 4 encounters it's also some new monsters in the form of skeletons and black hollow mages if you remember this fight this is what we call a gimmick and an ad fight and i'm talking about in the video game so how does that get recreated here well let me tell you these are the level 4 encounters we can set these aside we got ourselves the executioner's chariot here and on the other side we got ourselves a skeletal horse it's literally the two separate models here or the boss so you fight one in the one stage and the other in the other stage so we've got all these skeletal horse behavior cards and if you notice we've got three heat up cards and all these behaviors okay so that leaves this this is the death race now this will only make sense or at least will be a better visual indication if i show you the board let's check it out now his board is a bit bigger we got ourselves here a death arena now this is pretty freaking cool here's his spawn point which means he'll be here with the horse both of them take off the one space and this isn't a standard fight or at least not a standard boss fight when the fight begins he actually has a megaboss set up here for this room which means you'll also be using these skeletons and place them around the map as well as these hollow mages so just like in the video game this is an ad fight after that's set up instead of setting up the behavior deck you do the executionist chariot which is made up of the four death race cards now when you set this up you set it up with four at the bottom and one at the top so four three two one just like that that will be our starting behavior deck when the fight actually begins you'll set up his real behavior deck which will consist of one two three four standard cards and then one heat up card shuffle this deck put it off to the side you'll need that after you've finished the death race so at the very beginning of the fight we're fighting the executioner's chariot you notice here he's got no health signifier and he's got a special condition when all the black hollow mages and skeletons have been defeated this chariot is removed from the board and the skeletal horse heats up so that means the rider here dies and instead you're fighting the horse once all these guys are said and gone so how does a death race work well it's kind of like the fire breathing mega bosses that we've seen previously where they had a separate deck just like this and when you flipped it they kind of jumped off the map and then breathed fire and specific sections he does a similar thing except if i mean all the context clues are here what do you think he's going to do he's going to run in round in this circle as you can see it'll tell you where to place him so if we're looking at it from this angle we'll place him in this node and then damage these four nodes here damage them for seven damage one dodge so he's going to go around in a circle and it's not really much of a spoiler because i mean it's self-explanatory he's going to keep going around in a circle and that's what the death race cards are and of course once this deck is over he's just going to keep going around in circles going around in circles and the cool thing is you see these little pockets you can actually hide in these pockets just like in the video game i think this is one of the most interesting and faithfully recreated fights that has translated so well into this board game and then like i said once these guys are dead the rider goes away and then you fight the horse with the behavior deck you set aside and then it's like any other boss fight that you've done up to this point instead of fighting the executioner chariot you now fight the skeletal horse and then he has his standard fare abilities so on and so forth and he doesn't heat up after this because that was essentially his heat up i think this is cool but not only that these monsters can be added into other adventures and to do that you simply decide whether or not you want to add these guys at the start of your adventure similar to like how you add the other encounters you simply take their matching level 1 level 2 level 3 encounter cards and add them to whatever pile of encounter cards you're already using i actually didn't bring out the cards here but there is another small stack of level 1 level 2 level 3 encounters which will have these guys on there as monsters that you can now encounter the black hollow mage also introduces a new ability here in the form of this icon which is the raised skeleton behavior when it activates if there are currently fewer enemies in the encounter with the word skeleton in their name than they were at the start of the encounter you choose one of those defeated skeleton enemies and place them on the closest enemy spawn node just like in the video game these guys are a pain to deal with because they're constantly spawning skeletons so in terms of content to the game this one adds a lot not just in the level one two three encounters but also in how unique this boss fight is it's one of my favorites but enough about dark souls 2 because quite frankly dark souls 2 is the worst out of all of them and sorry for those people out there who prefer dark souls 2 over the other ones you're wrong it's okay to be wrong now i wouldn't be so bold to say there is a objective best one however i can objectively say dark souls 2 is the weakest but enough about that let's get to the last expansion and that would be manus father of the abyss this guy is not only the last retail expansion the last expansion for dark souls the board game but he has also the last boss you fight in dark souls 1 with the dlc in the video game he is one of the coolest fights in a sense that a lot happens in that fight i'm not going to spoil it but it's a very unforgettable fight for one reason or another but let's look at what the expansion brings so we've got his treasure cards his character card his behavior cards heat up cards level 4 encounter cards a dial and his board so unfortunately though and i hate to kind of start the in-depth look with and unfortunately but it's a pretty big unfortunately again not to spoil the video game but it's a very cinematic fight and there is a gimmick in that fight that's not recreated here in the board game not that i wanted to because that gimmick kind of sucked but everything that that fight was in the video game is what made up that boss's experience and what a boss he is because look at him he is a big big boy just to kind of put into perspective here this is a skeleton it's about the size of an adventurer yeah he's kind of big he's not the biggest boss definitely not the biggest boss by any means although he does come in the biggest box but i think that's because he's literally one piece one piece uh and i mean that as in like there's no gluing or assembling that needed to be done like there did with say the gaping dragon uh so and he's he's just so damn cool look at him yeah he's gonna be a lot of fun to paint and i might even well i was gonna say i might push him to the top of my painting list but i'm not gonna do that i have other things i want to do but let's let's so let's look at this fight right normally when you look into these books here there's a part where it says setting up the boss and he's gonna talk about any gimmicks that he has and the thing is he doesn't really have any when you set up his fight he's got nine behavior cards and five heat up cards you take five of these behavior cards one two three four five boom and that will be his behavior deck starting off once he heats up you take one heat up card place it on top of the the behavior deck so i guess that's different about him for example let's say you have these five cards and you beat him on say the third card right now normally when a boss heats up you take a heat up card and then you shuffle them all together here you don't do that here instead you take the heat up card put it on top of the deck then take another heat up card and put it face up on the bottom without looking at it and then you keep going there's no reshuffling that happens you've just added two new behavior cards so that's different but i wouldn't say that's interesting you know what i mean another thing we'll see on his cards here is that he has this icon which is the zero range icon which means he can't hit people in zero range because he's a big boy he slams down but whenever he attacks he kind of hits people out of his reach so if you're directly under him he won't hit you and that's what that card is saying so it's it's a it's not a new icon it's one that players have as well when they have uh like spear weapons they can't hit somebody that's in zero range and i think bows have it as well you can't hit somebody that's on your node you have to take a step back then shoot them or hit them another thing his ability here overextended after he activates character may spend one stamina to move one node so it's kind of like how the last giant had the wind up but the wind up was on his behavior cards he just has that throughout his entire fight because his arm here like stretches out like um fantastic four and then it takes time to come back together and also he's you know he's a sorcerer he's got this big catalyst and his spells take time to um charge up and then shoot out and then he recovers so throughout the entire fight you can spin a stamina to move a node so you can use that to get closer although it does cost the stamina but you might recover it at the start of your turn that's it though that that's it that's all there is to his fight it's not the most interesting thing i would say although what i will say as an interesting point of note here his board comes in a different size normally prior to this expansion boards came in two sizes the bigger longer rectangles and then the squares these were the only two sizes and now this comes out and it's smaller it's more compact and if we were to stretch this or unfold this out now you know his fight did take place in a very cramped area so accurate but for it also take a look at this right this is the last giants room same same size so what the hell guys why did you just now discover how to save space what come on what is that about interesting cool accurate although not the most interesting fight and is missing the interesting gimmicky cinematic moments of the video game but i guess you can't win them all even though everything else about this expansion i like honestly i do it's just that it's not totally faithful to the video game and that leaves a a taste in my mouth but i'm sure whatever i say unless i said that he was awful unless i said the model was terrible unless i said it would give you cancer you would still go out and get it because it's freaking madness dude it's madness of the abyss really you're if you're looking for a reason to not get it you're not gonna find it here i'm not telling you to go and get it i'm just not giving you a reason to not get it you get what i'm saying but yeah those are the three retail expansions for dark souls the board game what do you think of these expansions have you found them in your local retailers or are they sold out i'm genuinely curious to know but that's all for now and thanks for your continued support

Channel: CynicallyAwesome

Views: 2,770

Keywords: dark souls, the board game, mega boss, expansion, unboxing, last giant, chariot, manus

Id: 0EA__Rr74v8

Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020