The Kinfire Delve series is an interesting beast. Each game in the series is its own standalone card game of delving and… firing kin(?) for 1 or 2 players; but, when combined, characters and bosses from each set can be mixed and matched as desired, and the game can be taken up to 4 players. This approach makes the series cheaper to get into, but also more intimidating to figure out where to start and which entries to avoid.
Fellow BGQ reviewer Tony Mastrangeli reviewed Vainglory’s Grotto, the first entry in the series, and had a great time with it. Is the follow-up, Scorn’s Stockade, able to stand on its own?
Kinfire Delve: Scorn’s Stockade is a cooperative dungeon-delving card game for 1-2 players (1-4 with an additional Kinfire Delve product), that takes about 30-60 minutes to play. It plays best with 2-3 players.
Gameplay Overview:
Kinfire Delve has a simple set-up. A deck of 57 cards forms the well, and players must work together to fight their way through the well and defeat the Master before running out of health. Only four well cards are face-up at a time, and each turn a player must either resolve a face-up event (usually discarding it afterward) or attempt an available challenge.
When you attempt a challenge, you may first play an action card from your hand, provided it matches the color of the challenge. Action cards have a base value and may have additional abilities depending on when or how it is played. If you choose to play an action, other players may then contribute their own cards, contributing the boost value at the bottom of the card rather than the action at the top. Whether cards are played or not, you then roll the four dice, which may or may not contribute additional progress.
If the total progress on the challenge meets or exceeds its difficulty, that challenge is completed, and players earn the listed benefit–usually discarding cards off the top of the well deck. Otherwise, the challenge is failed; existing progress stays on the challenge, but players must resolve the failure penalty, like discarding cards from hand or taking damage.
Once players make it through the entire deck, they reveal the well Master and their four gauntlet cards, which prevent the Master from being attempted with specific color actions. Players win if they can defeat the Master before losing all their health.
Game Experience:
Kinfire Delve is a very lightweight, stripped-down experience. Roughly 95 percent of the game follows the identical loop of attempting a challenge, playing some cards, and rolling the dice. Lucky, then, that the loop is so mechanically interesting and satisfying.
Every turn in Kinfire Delve presents a choice of balancing short-term risk with long-term survivability. Theoretically, you want to succeed on every challenge on the first attempt to avoid the failure penalty, but in practice, it’s rarely that simple. You never draw more cards unless you take a fatigue card (which is an alternate loss condition), so every card becomes a precious resource to hold onto.
The boosting mechanism also leads to a lot of table talk and cooperation. You’re unlikely to succeed at a challenge on your own, so every turn generates discussion between players about which cards they want to spend or keep for a better opportunity. Even though the turns are similar, that tension and interaction prevent the game from feeling grindy or repetitive.
Kinfire Delve also squeezes a lot of replay value out of its minimal components. The two characters in the box play very differently, and even though you go through the same deck each game, the eponymous delving mechanism prevents you from seeing the same cards. Cards are sloughed off the deck unseen when you succeed at challenges, so you only see around a third of the cards on each playthrough. Some challenge interactions won’t show up, and entire card types may go invisible for several games, which makes the deck feel much bigger than it is. Considering its price point and gorgeous art, Kinfire Delve is fantastic value for money.
However, while Kinfire Delve does a lot to keep its turns interesting, you are still running the exact same procedure, over and over, for up to an hour, and that kind of experience isn’t for everyone. Moreover, while the game wears the trappings of a dungeon crawl, the play feels much more like a game of knife-edge survival. Your heroes only get weaker and more damaged as you get closer to the end, which feels more desperate and suffocating than most games in the genre.
Additionally, while Kinfire Delve gets a lot of replay value out of its meager deck, the same can’t be said of the final confrontation. There are minor variations of the Well Master you face, but the four gauntlet cards protecting it are always the same, which leads to a disappointingly inflexible endgame. This isn’t as important in the context of a survival game, but it further distances Kinfire Delve from its dungeon-crawler trappings, which will be frustrating for some.
Final Thoughts:
As a standalone product, Scorn’s Stockade is a great cooperative filler, filled with tense moments, interesting decisions, and meaningful cooperation. And, as the sophomore entry in the Kinfire Delve series, Scorn’s Stockade is also excellent, preserving the game’s enjoyable core while adding enough wrinkles to differentiate it from its predecessor. I would recommend Vainglory’s Grotto as your first purchase, due to its simpler characters and less punishing challenges—but Scorn’s Stockade is perfect for those hungry for more, and a great card game in its own right.
Final Score: 4 Stars – A tense, satisfying, and occasionally frustrating survival card game.
Hits:
• Beautiful production values
• Tremendous replay value for the cost
• Satisfying gameplay loop
Misses:
• Prone to repetition
• Underwhelming endgame
• Not an ideal entry point to the series
