INTRODUCTION

“Then came the Rending.

As the circular red light continued to grow, and the thrashing, shuddering tone amplified, the earth shook and suddenly snapped hurling upwards huge, city-sized chunks of rock and debris. A depthless chasm ripped the ground asunder as though giant hands had torn the earth apart. Buildings and entire streets buckled and fell into the abyss along with screaming hordes of bodies. The plates of the earth shrieked and shifted, and as the giant mountains of land that had been thrown into the sky descended a fathomless ash cloud filled the air.

And so, the world ended.”

In many ways the premise of Veilwraith, the latest solo exclusive game designed by author Tristan Hall, is quite appropriate given what a colossal train wreck of a year 2021 has proven to be. Maybe my cynicism is rooted in mental exhaustion due to what seems to be an endless pandemic filled with horror and dread, maybe it has to do with the fact that during the winter months darkness reigns supreme as the sun makes but a fleeting appearance before receding beyond the horizon. In either case, the notion of reviewing a board game about the end of the world does seem befitting my rather cantankerous mood.

Full disclosure: a review copy of Veilwraith was kindly provided by publisher Hall or Nothing Productions.

COMPONENTS

Those of you who have read my previous reviews of Shadows of Kilforth and 1565, St. Elmo’s Pay will probably be aware of my fondness for Hall or Nothing Productions when it comes to the publisher’s devotion of producing board games that feature exquisite artwork. Therefore, it saddens me to say that I found the art style in Veilwraith to be nothing short of a disappointment even more so when considering the publisher’s track record. Seeing how the game takes place in the same universe as the Kilforth games, Veilwraith features a blend of both new and old imagery alike which makes sense from a thematic standpoint. But the way these images are presented in an art style that almost resembles rough sketches deprives the source material of its magnificence, at least in my eyes as I honestly thought of the illustrations as placeholders when the game was announced.

I am also not overly fond of the illustrations featured on the Key cards; powerful artefacts that according to the rulebook “can restore light, colour, and life to this broken, blackened world”. In Veilwraith this rather interesting piece of lore translates into card art featuring voluptuous female characters staring suggestively at you as a way to represent these ancient and powerful artefacts, a design choice that although being abstract concepts ends up feeling more than a little bit gratuitous in the context of the lore. To their credit, Hall or Nothing Productions does offer an alternative art expansion which is sold separately and replaces some of the most daring and provocative card art with less revealing alternatives.

GAME PLAY

In Veilwraith you take on the role of the eponymous wraith, an entity sent back through the veil tasked with bringing peace to the trapped and tormented souls that inhabit this bleak hellish landscape. Through a series of interlinked scenarios known as vignettes you will encounter enraged spirits whilst searching for powerful, disparate memories known as Keys which once collected allows you to open up the portal thus progressing to the next vignette. Successfully complete all five included vignettes and you win the game, upon which you have the option to play through the “campaign” again with tweaked difficulty. Each vignette consists of a deck of cards known as the threat deck, the composition of which is dictated by the chosen vignette’s setup instructions where the earlier ones present a more modest challenge which quickly escalates the further you progress. Whether friend or foe, artefact or nemesis, each card of the threat deck presents a challenge that you as the Veilwraith most overcome or run the risk of succumbing to the darkness. These challenges are represented as numerical values corresponding to the main actions you can perform on your turn: explore, fight, or influence. Some threats only have a single value whilst others have several making them a much more difficult and potentially deadly foe to encounter during your travels through the seared lands known as Vana.

The main bulk of the game play is centred around using and manipulating the three action cards and their corresponding numerical value. As the name might suggest, the action power tokens that sit above each of the three cards indicate the power of the given action. It is this numerical value that is used to defeat or overcome the threats presented before you. The interesting thing about this design is how the action cards cycle once activated. Tilting an action card 90 degrees clockwise allows for one of two things, either utilise the card for its current power level in order to defeat a threat or draw a card from your memory deck. The latter represent special abilities the Veilwraith can deploy which will aid in overcoming threats. The basic versions of the memory cards which constitutes your starting deck offer an additional boost to one of the three main actions, allowing you to defeat foes whose threat value exceeds the power tokens. Regardless of how you utilise an action card, once activated it will move to the end of the “que” pushing the other two cards forward one space making them more powerful. This mechanism turns Veilwraith into something resembling a light version of an action programming game, where you are constantly plotting how to best activate the action cards so as to get your ducks in a row in order to overcome the threat values of each foe. There is also the option to tilt an action card 45 degrees thus priming the card which results in adding a power token which all serve to up the ante even further of what foes you are able to overcome.

But by the same token, no pun intended, what initially comes of as a novel puzzle of sorts quickly devolves into a game of numbers. The rulebook really wants to sell you in on the idea of a grand lore, featuring titles like Deja and Anima to describe different type of entities that populate the world of Vana which to their credit author Tristan Hall beautifully describes in what can be considered as the prologue. But in reality, my personal experience of playing the actual game boiled down to looking at the threat values, doing a bit of risk management in regards to what action card(s) to activate and always tilting one card to add an additional power token for future encounters. And although the overall structure makes for a brisk game in terms of play time, personally I feel that there is too little meat on the bone to make Veilwraith a long-term companion in my solo board game collection. This becomes even more true when one considers that the base game only contains five vignettes to play through. There is an expansion titled Absolution which adds fifteen vignettes, the problem being that it is currently out of print. This leaves me with the sensation of playing a light-version of the intended full experience, which I cannot obtain due to the expansion being out of print leaving me with a rather sour taste in my mouth to put it mildly…

FINAL THOUGHTS

In many ways I almost wish that Veilwraith had been themed in a way that did not directly link it to the Kilforth universe. Where Shadows of Kilforth is such an exceptionally efficient vessel for creating a narrative that feels genuinely rich and engaging, Veilwraith despite its best effort feels and plays like an abstract puzzle. Now, I am well aware that from a certain perspective this is me comparing apples with oranges as these are two wildly different beasts both in terms of complexity and designs. But I cannot shake the feeling that Veilwraith could have shined brighter with a different theme and more importantly added content as opposed to the slim offering included in the base game, if anything playing Veilwraith has me longing even more to experience the upcoming and third entry to the series Call of Kilforth.