Godsforge Boardgame Review

Thank you to Atlas Games for providing Scott with a copy of Godsforge and the expansions that were used for this review.

The Godsforge – the final source of the precious Etherium resource – is dwindling and under a constant state of tug-of-war between powerful spellcasters trying to claim it. This is the lore behind the 1-4 player (expandable up to 6 with expansion) dice and card battling game Godsforge, from Atlas Games, designed by Brenden Stern. With no shortage of dice-battling games available for tabletop players to choose from, how does Godsforge -2nd Edition- faire in the struggle for something more sought after than even Etherium – play at your game nights?

Info:

Players: 1-4 (+1 per expansion)
Time: 20-40 min
Age: 14+
Released: 2023 (2nd Edition), 2019 (1st Edition)
Price:

• Core Set (2nd Ed.) $39.95
• Core Set (1st Ed.) $27.95
• Return of the Dragon Gods Expansion $19.95
• Twilight of the Great Houses Expansion $19.95

What’s in the Box

Core Game (2nd Edition)

• Instruction Book (12 pages)
• Round Cardboard life tracker and component organizer
• 4 sets of 4 colored 6-sided dice
• 4 colored markers that match the dice
• 1 Black die
• 1 Deck of Godsforge cards
• 4 Player Aid cards
• 30 crystal Veilstone tokens

Twilight of the Great Houses Expansion

• Instruction pamphlet
• 1 additional set of 4 player dice
• 1 additional colored player marker
• 1 Deck of TotGH Godsforge cards
• 8 double-side Great House cards
• 8 additional crystal Veilstone tokens

Return of the Dragon Gods Expansion

• Instruction pamphlet
• 1 additional set of 4 player dice
• 1 additional colored player marker
• 1 Deck of RotDG Godsforge cards
• 8 additional crystal Veilstone tokens

 

Right away, even before opening the box, I was enthralled by Godsforge’s aesthetic – with its mixture of minimalist color accents contrasting against monochromatic components. The cards themselves feature highly detailed creatures and structures alongside Godsforge’s intricate arcane glyph spells.

Godsforge puts players in the robes of powerful spellcasters whose end goal is to be the last one standing. Using dice, each player will simultaneously roll a set of four six-sided dice, with the ability to reroll a single die twice or two dice once, to meet the card requirements in their hand to play. These cards include spell or creature cards, referred to as “Creations”, that can defend, attack, or provide other benefits. Think Yahtzee meets Magic: The Gathering but without having to worry about buying booster packs or the hassle of building a large deck.

Once each player has selected the cards they wish to use by setting it face down in front of themselves, they will reveal them and pay the cost noted on the card. Examples of these costs include small straights of dice numbered in a roll, dice equaling a certain value or perhaps enough odd or even valued dice. But, there is a twist that makes getting these dice combinations more than just luck-based.

There are two special sides on the dice (new to this Second Edition for clarification sake, the First Edition used colored standard D6s) – the Etherium (or single pip) side counts as a wild, and the Veilstone (or six pip) side which has a variety of uses. When you roll a Veilstone symbol (or a six), it can be used either for its six value or redeemed to gain yourself a special crystal resource, which can be spent to either raise or lower the value of a single other die by as a part of a card’s required play cost.

The game can be further expanded on with Godsforge’s two expansion sets, Twilight of the Great Houses and Return of the Dragon Gods. Both of the expansions use the same, including a new deck of cards that can be mixed in with the core game’s, adding additional types of cards, including the Great House cards, which grant each player a special boon from the start of the game and cards that can improve and upgrade their stats over time. Alternatively, you can opt to play with just those decks on their own.

The additional mechanics added from the expansions are welcome, but I wouldn’t say they made the game more complex or added much depth, just more options. They are nice to include, but I wouldn’t say they are “Must-have” expansions.

When it comes to dishing out damage, Godsforge does something rather unique that I haven’t experienced before in these sorts of battling games – you can only attack the player on your left (and you can only be attacked by the one on your right). I appreciated this “forced enemy” approach as it removed players from ganging up on one person and cut down on potential chaos in a four-person match.

Sometimes, in battling games like Godsforge, especially at higher player counts, being knocked out early on can lead to a lot of sitting around watching others have fun and not playing. Atlas Games addresses this with a special mechanic that kicks in after the first player has been taken out of the game – it increases the damage done to players by 7. In a game where players only have 30 life or less (higher player counts have players start with less life), that is a big deal, and goes a long way to speeding things up. There is very little risk of a person being knocked out early and having to wait a long time while the other players finish.

Teaching Godsforge is a pretty painless endeavor, with its thin rulebook and not overly complex rules. Roll your dice, pick a card you want to try and play, and re-roll if needed – using any wilds or veil stones to adjust the values – and be the last person standing. Explaining the rules, even with a full group of six players, should be quick and pretty painless (for board game standards), taking less than 10 minutes when I taught my friends.

Incorporating Godsforge’s two expansions, Twilight of the Great Houses and Return of the Dragon Gods, doesn’t complicate matters much either. Simply shuffle the respective decks into the one that comes with the core box, or use them on their own. The added mechanics for the expansions (Upgrade cards and card synergy for RotDG and the great houses, life loss, and restriction cards in TotGH) don’t change up the game dramatically enough to require their own explanations outside what is on the card. The biggest addition comes from the eight double-sided great house cards that let players choose a house to play as, granting them a unique bonus. Each expansion’s cards have a unique symbol in the upper left corner to denote where the card came from, making splitting things apart is simple enough to do.

When it comes to Godsforge’s quality, it does a fine enough job but didn’t blow me away. The cards feel sturdy and smooth but have a bit of a sheen to them that I never found made them hard to read. They felt good to play and shuffle. They feel better quality than the dice and plastic tokens, which were deceptively light.. As an avid Dungeons & Dragons player, I have held a lot of dice, and Godsforge’s dice just don’t have that heft that I associate with a D6. Although I do appreciate the almost highlighter-esque color scheme that Atlas Games went with, I don’t think I’ve seen any like it before.

The life tracker token looks and feels like you are holding a single Smarties candy. I would have preferred just a turn dial to keep track of life instead – less of a chance of getting lost (or eaten). The Veilstones are nifty enough, though part of me wishes that this second edition left them the shiny gold in Godsforge’s First Edition instead of the clear yellow you get here.

As I have played more board games, I’ve become increasingly appreciative of games that I can get to the table fast and, even better, teach to new players easily. Godsforge checks both those boxes with a fantastic aesthetic to boot. Games don’t take too long and can easily be played (even at higher player counts) during a lunch period, and if you are particularly crafty, all you really need to play are one of the decks of cards and four dice, and you are good to go! Technically, you don’t even need the Core box to play Godsforge and can opt to buy one of the expansions instead, saving yourself $10 in the process – this is handy if you’re on the fence about the game and the $40 investment of the main set.

Players who prefer games of skill and strategy may be turned off by the heavy luck-based gameplay found in Godsforge. Even with its inclusion of the wild side of the dice and the Veilstone’s ability to augment a value, Godsforge boils down to drawing better cards than your opponent and rolling right to play them. A variant rule exists that lets you start with ten cards and discard down to the standard four, giving the game a slight strategy infusion, but since it is a one-off, it won’t fix the chance-heavy nature of the game.

This may be a more personal gripe, but there is a lot of wasted space in the boxes of Godsforge – the expansions being especially egregious. Each expansion only includes a deck of cards, four dice, one smartie token, a few more Veilstones, and an instruction pamphlet, yet the boxes are a couple of inches deep and the size of half of the core box. They could have easily been half the size and still had room to spare. It is also odd that the core box includes dedicated spaces for the expansions’ decks but not the extra dice or life tokens that the expansions come with.

As an experiment, I put all of the necessary components from the core box of Godsforge in a standard UltraPro deck-box to see how well, if at all, things would fit. With no issue at all, I was able to fit the full deck of cards, all of the Veilstone tokens, and all of the dice for a 4-player game in the box with room to spare. The only parts I had to omit were the rulebook and the circular life tracker disk – both of which could be adjusted for the smaller container. Shrink the rulebook into a foldout rule sheet or booklet, and instead of the disk, just make small dials. With two Ultra Pro boxes, I could include both expansions with me for a fraction of the size as well.

In truth, the idea of shrinking Godsforge down to a small box game like this would make it a lot more appealing to me. It lacks some of the depth and complexity I may look for during a game night with friends, but it’s an almost perfect game to whip out of my bag real quick at the bar or at work during lunch for a quick game. Something that the larger boxes aren’t quite as conducive to. I almost always carry a deck of Magic cards with me, and I could see myself keeping this small-sized Godsforge in my car going forward now.

I hadn’t heard of Godsforge before this review, and after playing several matches of it, I am happy to say that I came away impressed. I really love the artwork and aesthetic, and the general flow and pacing of the game are quick, making Godsforge a good choice when you don’t have much time but still want to play something with your friends. While I wouldn’t mind if a future expansion adds more strategic elements to the game or new variants are devised to shift the game away a bit from being so luck-based, the dice rolling wasn’t as big of a turn-off for me as it may be for others. Regardless, Godsforge is a lovely addition to my game collection that I can see myself coming back to for those quick hits of gaming goodness.