Developed by Darkrose Studios and based on the 2022 Dark Horse graphic novel of the same name, The Winds of Numa Sera is a brand-new strategy game for 2-4 players that is currently finding success on Kickstarter. Darkrose Studios was kind enough to send me a prototype of their upcoming game to check out, so let’s get into things!
What’s in the box:
- 4 Dry-erase Kingdom Mats
- 4 Dry-erase Markers
- 1 Map Board
- 70 coins
- 1 Custom die
- 182 Cards that include:
- 10 Stronghold Cards
- 12 Hero Cards
- 20 Class Cards
- 80 Exploration Cards
- 35 Skill Cards
- 25 World Forge Item Cards (aka equipment)
In Winds of Numa Sera, you and up to three friends vie for control over the fantastical world of Ethera, each player assuming the role of a powerful kingdom, and each kingdom being more tailored to complete one of the game’s four objectives. To win, players will be equipping their heroes, improving their stats, and increasing their income to be the first to complete one of four possible objectives: being the first to slay three enemy heroes, capturing four strongholds, mastering a skill by getting it to level 4, or unlocking all five player classes.
On your turn, you will explore, drawing a card from the exploration deck that contains cards you can use in battle to aid you, events that will help you, hazards that hurt you, and more. From there, you will either choose to build and gain money and upgrade your tech tree, or attack and go after the other players’ heroes or the strongholds. A bit of randomness is thrown in for good measure with a modifying dice roll during combat and powerful battle cards that you can play to tip the odds in your favor (or counter your opponent’s cards). It keeps things exciting, and the outcome is never a sure thing. The whole experience of playing Numa Sera feels like a mix of a tabletop RPG and a strategy game, and I am here for it!
For a more in-depth breakdown of how to play, check out the official how-to-play video featured on the Kickstarter page, made by the great folks at Shelfside.
Here are a couple of suggestions for things you may want to try if you pick up Winds of Numa Sera yourself. I’m not a big fan of using dry-erase markers on my games, as they can stain games after some time and are a bit annoying to deal with. Numa Sera tasks you with writing down your stats and marking the skills you take using said dry-erase markers, but instead I opted to go for using dice. I ticked them up a pip when my stats increased and placing them on the skills I learned,both avoiding staining the prototype I have to send back, and I found it easier. The second tip is to blind-draft the three heroes you get to use. Each kingdom only has access to three; the only option you get is the order in which you stack them up to use. If you find yourself wishing for more options (seriously, I would love it if each kingdom had, say, five choices to pick three from; it would add some fun extra strategy), then simply blind draft or deal out heroes to players instead. Just to spice things up a bit.
Even before you open the box, Winds of Numa Sera shows off its gorgeous art design and that lovely high fantasy aesthetic. These high-quality visuals on the box continued to impress throughout the rest of the game with all the artwork on the various cards and boards. Overall, Winds of Numa Sera has knocked the presentation out of the park. This is all enhanced by the excellent construction of the components that Darkrose Studios has opted for. The player boards and map boards were all sturdy with vivid and bright colors, and the cards felt sturdy and pleasant to shuffle and play with. Granted, the copy I played with was only a prototype, but hopefully, the final release will retain the same quality, if not better.
Perhaps the aspect of Numa Sera that I appreciated the most during my time with it was just how easy the game is to teach. Teaching is a necessary, but my least favorite, part of introducing a new game to my buddies, so I really appreciate it when a game is easy to figure out and introduce to people. Turns are straightforward – activate ability triggers, draw a card, perform the attack or build action, done. There’s enough choice without being overwhelming, meaning analysis paralysis is less likely. By the second or third go around the table, everyone I played with tended to settle in with a solid grasp of how things work. The quick rules reference sheet that is included also helps a bunch, but at least with my prototype, only a single copy was included. Hopefully, the final release will include four of them – one for each possible player. When paired with the game’s impressively small box (Coming in with an 11.5’x 9.5’ x 3’), DarkRose has condensed a lot of play into a very manageable and transportable package that can easily fit into a backpack or on your standard Kallax shelf.
Numa Sera is a lot of game, literally. When set up, it takes a lot of space, and I mean A LOT. Too much space, I think. Using a mid-game scenario as an example, someone with some equipment, skills, and other goodies they would have reasonably earned at that point, a single-player board and accouterments (using the arrangement recommended and shown in the rule book) takes up around 26.5’ x 17.5’ of space. That is the space of a 1.5 Gloomhaven or Twilight Imperium 4th Edition long and just as wide, laid out flat in front of every single player. All of that before even factoring in the main game board, which is 16’ x 11’, before setting out the card decks that grow it even more! For as transportable as the game is, the size of its table presence makes it far less friendly to take with you to a friend’s house, and taking it to the bar or coffee shop for a game night is even less feasible. I think some avenues could be explored that would cut down on this size too: I don’t believe every card needed to be tarot size, or perhaps the playboard could be reduced to only two boards instead of three. The space required to play and the distance that will undoubtedly occur between the players leads to my biggest issue with Numa Sera, and significant regarding the game’s accessibility – the text.
At even a standard distance from my cards – from where I sat in my chair looking down at my cards on the board, it was tough to make out what each one said—between the small text and the odd choices of background colors with the white text, made cards a bit of a chore to decipher without picking them up. In any strategy game, having a good idea of what your opponents have is critical to devising an effective answer to whatever they have cooking, but it’s hard to do that if you can’t tell what their stuff does. Sure, you could ask them to hand you their cards or read them, but that gives them a peek into your thoughts. I would prefer if they leaned more on larger and clearer icons instead of so much text – things the team already has in the game. From an accessibility standpoint, if you have poor eyesight, this will be a real problem for you, and I hope this gets addressed for the final release.
Numa Sera may say on the box that it is for 2 to 4 players, but I wouldn’t recommend this for anything less than 3. At two players, one of the core actions you can take, trading, just fizzles out. When I was playing against only one other person, there simply wasn’t much of an incentive for us to want to trade with the other. I never wanted to give them something that would put them closer to winning, just to put myself closer, too. At three players, you can form alliances to slow the player in the lead down. That’s not to say that the game isn’t fun to play with two players; in fact, most of my plays were between only my wife and me, and we still had a great time, just not as much as when our friends joined us.
For folks who aren’t fans of games with a ton of upkeep or keeping track of game triggers and different effects, Numa Sera may not be the game for you. This game features a number of cards, including some heroes and most strong holds, that have something happen at the beginning of your turn. Usually, this involves putting coins on various cards, which, if things ended there, wouldn’t be too much of an issue. Still, things become a bit more of a challenge considering that each card, especially the strongholds, has specific conditions for using their associated coins, which, when combined with the small font, can make it a hassle to keep track. I would have liked it if they added a passive cost reduction to cards or something instead. Just to keep things a bit easier to deal with.
The Winds of Numa Sera offers a solid strategy experience that provides a good amount of replayability between the different factions you can play with and alternate pathways to victory that you can take. It’s easy to teach, allowing you to quickly get the game going, even with new players. Since the version I played was a prototype, issues like the readability and the space requirements can be addressed before the retail copies reach backers and retail. At the time of this review, the Kickstarter is still live, so check out the page, link down in the description, or try it out yourself, digitally, over on Tabletopia.
Blemishes aside, The Winds of Numa Sera provides a fun balance of strategy and character building, all wrapped up in beautiful art and quality components. I enjoyed my time in Ethera and would be happy to have it on my shelf to bust out for game night when it officially releases next year.
