We live in an golden age for board games and more and more interesting games get released week after week. So how to keep track of all them? Boardgamegeek is an invaluable tool, collecting lots of information and reviews about all sorts of games. But even BGG has a hard time to keep up with all the new games, so it happens more and more that games arrive in shops with not much known about them and no reviews or videos available. This leads to the problem that some games fall through the cracks and get ignored, despite being interesting and in hindsight quite good games.
That’s where my new weekly blog post called Games you might have missed comes in: each week I’m planning to point out a game that has been released in the last couple of months but went a bit under the radar. I will try to focus on games that I think will be interesting for most of my customers.
Without further ado, I will start with the first game: Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage from Nice Game Publishing.
In Vampire The Masquerade – Heritage, you play the role of an ancient vampire. You shape seven hundred years of vampiric and human history in pursuit of ancient secrets while trying to evade the inquisition and attempting to save what’s left of your humanity.
Vampire The Masquerade – Heritage is a quick-playing legacy game. Each game, players gather characters from a common pool for their bloodlines. These characters influence different vampiric “battlegrounds” and help in fulfilling history-based missions. For example, a noble-born warrior might support Joan of Arc in ending the siege of Orleans, while at the same time changing the balance of an internal vampiric power struggle or attracting the unwanted attention of the inquisition. Aside from collecting characters in their bloodline, players can also use the unique intrigue cards of the clan they are playing — changing the rules of the game in ways that fit the character of that particular clan.
After any individual game, the players get to collect their achievements in their timeline, which serves as a chronicle of their actions throughout the seven hundred years of history and also influences the final outcome of the campaign.
Eventually, the seven hundred years will end with a climactic conclusion as players scramble to unravel ancient mysteries using the clues, allies, and power they have gathered throughout the campaign.
(Source: Publisher description)
Like the description say, Vampire: Heritage is a legacy game that lets you control your bloodline for centuries in different missions. But it also offers a one-off mode so you can also play the game outside of the campaign mode.
With more and more people now having received their game. the ratings on BGG are getting more reliable and are at the moment at 7.8 (based on 159 ratings):
| Game Details | |
|---|---|
| Name | Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage (2020) |
| Complexity | Medium [3.16] |
| BGG Rank | 3697 [7.13] |
| Player Count (Recommended) | 2-4 (3-4) |
If you would like to take a closer look at the components, here is an unboxing video of the game (the video is based on the Kickstarter Edition which we have in stock at the moment) from the end of November:
And a brand new video from yesterday, shows how the core game works (without showing any of the legacy components, so no spoilers):
All in all a very interesting looking Legacy game, that should be especially interesting for fans of the Vampire: The Masquerade universe. But a word of warning: according to the comments on BGG this game is not for the faint-hearted. It involves a lot of backstabbing and nastiness between the Vampire clans, so definitely not something for players who prefer to peacefully develop their own engine.
That’s all for the first week. Next week I will take a look at Polynesia, the latest game from Peer Sylvester.
PS: If you have any suggestions what I can do different or what I can add to the Games you might have missed posts, please let me know in the comments
I’ve played several basic games of this and the first three in the campaign (collectively comprising the first era). I’m finding a really nice thinky puzzle of a card game where each acquisition to your bloodline needs to be carefully considered in light of the current state of the 3 battlefields in play at any one time, and of the various “scheme” cards you hold which vary by clan (and of course the cards you want may not be available but certain of the clans can bypass such trifles). From my admittedly basic knowledge of Vampire the Masquerade, the clan characteristics seem faithfully implemented. Christoph is correct in terms of back stabbing, but that doesn’t bother me since I’m a solo player who likes this sort of thing. Having said that, the mechanic in this is that players may change their clans from game to game, so that makes it a little more awkward to control as a soloist, but certainly not impossible. I’m not scrapping any cards, so I reckon to have two full plays of the campaign, albeit the second run will have a few of the ancillae slightly more powerful.
I think it would appeal to fans of the franchise, those who like puzzle based card games (Etherfields, Mage Knight, the new Bloodborne come immediately to mind), and maybe also fans of The King’s Dilemma, albeit gameplay is very different.
Suggestions (very difficult given availability, tastes etc)
Very difficult. The Hexplore Series (currently Valley of the Dead King and Forest of Adrimon with Sands of Shurex stuck somewhere in the distribution centre), are criminally overlooked and absolutely brilliant for 1-2 players.
Dark Domains also ignored but it’s the finest “take that” game I’ve played (it did get a belated review in Tabletop Gaming)
Tales of Evil – much better than I thought it would be, good family game but can also be soloed with some replayability.