Over the past few years I've traveled the WW2 landscape with the Order of Battle series from The Artistocrats, and seen some exotic locales. The series, which started in the Pacific, eventually visited such rarely gamed battlefields as Burma, China, and a hypothetical expanded Battle of the Atlantic. However, the biggest, most popular battlefields cannot be ignored forever. The series from kicked off a multi-part German grand campaign with the Blitzkrieg pack a few releases back, which featured the early war conflicts in Europe and ended at the gates of Moscow. Now with the latest DLC, Panzerkrieg, we rejoin the Germans as the bitter winter of '41 sets in.

Although one might expect to play Blitzkrieg before Panzerkrieg, it isn't required. You can customize your starting force to a certain extent, or take the default army. I went with the latter option, and quickly realized it might be best to come into Panzerkrieg with a top notch army formed during a successful play through of the Blitzkrieg campaign. Which is to say that Panzerkrieg is probably among the most difficult campaigns available for Order of Battle, at least for me. I haven't played all of them, but I have finished several and rarely had much difficulty on the default settings. The challenge of the game usually came more from trying to complete all of the bonus objectives rather than winning the scenario, which was a given.

Your forces in Panzerkrieg, much like their real-world counterparts, are up against the ropes as soon as things kick off. The first few missions have you fending off Soviet offensives from multiple directions while also attempting to achieve various objectives, usually trying to save isolated German forces. Attrition will become a key concern in your campaign, just as in the real battles. While your troops are deadly, they can only fight so many battles before needing repair, but the Soviets have a seemingly endless supply of fresh units to throw at your lines. You will also have to deal with their far more effective T-34 and KV-1 tank units. I found that as the campaign wore on I simply did not have enough resource points to keep all of my units topped off and fully upgraded, as I would expect based on past campaigns for Order of Battle. About half-way through the campaign I realized my forces were just too worn out to continue, there was no way I could win the scenario I was up against.

Surprisingly, I found this to be quite refreshing. I had always considered this series to be just a little too easy on the default setting, and it fell into that trap of similar games where things snowball and tend to get easier the better you perform. I know there are several higher difficulty settings, but I personally prefer to play most games at the default setting to get the experience that the developers intended for the average player.

I had to stop and ask myself what went wrong here. Why did I lose the campaign when I have played this game quite a bit and felt very confident going through each mission? (At first). I thought back on my play and realized that I had been sending my troops out to fight battles that were unnecessary. Instead of simply accomplishing the objectives set out for each scenario, I had rather impetuously sent units out looking for fights when they should have stayed put at their post. Many of the early scenarios include numerous Soviet units that are beyond your area of operations, and don't need to be engaged. Seeking to rack up kills, and not considering the long war ahead, I had sent full strength units off to find trouble by attacking these enemy forces. Sure, I crushed them, but then I needed to spend resources repairing those units, resources that should have been saved for other units fighting to win the scenario. I also raced to complete my objectives as fast as possible, to my own detriment. Given 30 turns to complete a scenario, I had put the pedal to the metal and tried to finish it off in 20. This usually led to far higher casualties from units getting overextended or ambushed.

This is a campaign that needs to be approached with a bit more forethought than most. You need to accomplish your objectives in the present scenario, but also be looking to build up your forces, or at least maintain them, rather than grind them down in reckless battles. My defeat actually made me want to go back and purchase the Blitzkrieg DLC so that I could control my core units from the very beginning of the war and have a greater familiarity with them heading into the harsher (for the Germans) years of the conflict. Carrying a single force through what will eventually be three linked campaigns, expanding and upgrading it with better units and leaders, should be quite the experience. I can only imagine how much more difficult the scenarios could potentially be towards the end of the war.

I haven't gone into the details of exactly how the game works in this review, since I've covered that ground in previous reviews and not much has changed here on a fundamental level. All the units you would expect to see on the Eastern Front are present, from Russian conscripts to Panzer III's and Flak 88's. You'll need a balanced force to deal with all of the threats you will face on the ground as well as in the air. Losing control of the skies can make your day that much harder. In my failed campaign I simply could not afford to keep more than a couple of fighter units in the air, and the Soviet bombers took full advantage of it.

Although Panzerkrieg covers more familiar ground than most of its fellow Order of Battle campaigns, it offers up a fresh challenge to even veteran players. Of course, many players may have been looking forward to fighting through some of the most iconic battles of the war, like Sevastopol, Kharkov, and Stalingrad within the Order of Battle system. The series continues to deliver one of the best, most polished versions of the tried and true Panzer General flavor of wargaming to date. I recommend this campaign DLC for anyone who enjoys the game, just be prepared for some stiff resistance from the Soviets!


Available directly from Matrix/Slitherine through this link or on Steam.


 - Joe Beard

TO THE LAST MAN

From the modern world of Urban Operations, the most recent simulation from Nuts Publishing, we 're moving back to one of their earlier products, To The Last Man.    Unlike their recent game of tactical warfare with its significant innovations and a fair degree of complexity, To The Last Man features WWI on the Western Front and paints its canvas at the strategic level with simple broad brush rules.

The box art which is continued on the rule and scenario booklets is stylised in an appropriate poster artwork for the historical period without being hugely eye-catching.  But I have to say that for me the immediate impression of the map was one of drabness.  

I liked the area movement style, but the effect made me think that the mud of Flander's fields had been too liberally applied to the map's palate of colours.  The outlines of each area are easier to see here in my photograph than when viewing them on the gaming table.  Fortunately there is only a small amount of essential information printed on it, as I found what there is even harder to discern.  Added to that, the Army counters [the triangular shapes] are equally dark and too close in colour for comfort.

By contrast the tracks that border the edges are very serviceable and clear, though maintaining the overall dour effect.  However, just as I have found strange some gamers' criticism of maps that I have thought excellent, I know that others have praised this one.  The physical element I've most enjoyed has been the hidden Army displays, though once again the colours are very severe

The camera shot of the counters above doesn't do justice to the quality of their visual features.  Whereas these taken while still in their sheets are much more accurate.

Note how the counters have no numbers on, as each represents a single unit point.  The bottom rows of units are all infantry while the top rows hold assets such as the ones in the picture: cavalry, artillery and siege guns.  Later in the war, a very, very limited number of tank and aircraft assets start to trickle in, while some German infantry can be converted to strosstruppen. 

However, I challenge anyone to not find the cards some of the finest pictorially - in full colour, every card [54 in all] has a unique illustration.

Just a few of the quality cards

Glorious and visually individual though these cards are, do not expect a wide range of effects from them nor the historical insight that we tend to expect from the Events playable in most, if not all, CDG games.  The reason being that these cards are all generic in effect.  Many are either Offensive cards allowing you to move and attack with all units or Limited Offensive cards allowing you to move with all units but initiate only a single attack.  In fact, except for a few individual card plays, there are only two choices of Action on your turn: play one of these two types of Offensive card or Pass.

This simplicity is a keynote of the game.  Movement is almost exclusively a single area, except for cavalry that can move two areas.  Both sides have a minimal rail movement capacity - it's worth mentioning that there are no rail lines, as at the scale represented all areas are considered rail capable - which allows three areas to be traversed.  In addition, only the Entente player can move a couple of units any distance from one friendly Supply source to another.  In itself this doesn't sound much, but bear in mind that potentially this can happen every time you play an Offensive/Limited Offensive card in a turn and that the "unit" could be an Army containing up to six individual pieces!  Suddenly that opens up some interesting prospects both for attack and defense.

Combat too is a very easy process - mainly a question of rolling one die per individual unit.  As the rules themselves proclaim, it's the BOD [buckets of dice] method and they do offer an optional rule for a method to average out results in case you're the type that can't cope with rare swings of luck!  But as most units only score a hit on a 1 roll on a D6, many results are misses.

Mixed in are a few nice variations: cavalry only fire on defense, siege guns can only attack forts and forts themselves are the most powerful hitting on 1-3 [though the latter benefit is balanced by the fact that they cannot receive replacement points, as they are reduced by hits]. 

The sequence of an attack is interesting as the Attacker's artillery fires first, then all the Defender's units and then all the Attacker's units [including the artillery that have already fired!].  Beyond this and the occasional ability to play a card such as Poison Gas, it is remarkable easy.  Personally, I did find that the many rolls with limited numbers of hits over the course of playing the whole war did become a little tedious. 

Taking the lead from many block games, hits have to be taken from the strongest unit and if that is an Army then from the most numerous type of unit in that Army.  Inevitably the infantry naturally takes the brunt of this. 

However, a fine idea is the inclusion and use of Ersatz cards [as illustrated above].  These may be played as a form of taking hits.  So, an Ersatz 2 card will replace 2 hits and an even neater touch is that any card may be used as if it were an Ersatz 1 card.  Talk about a rock and a hard place!  It's rare that you can afford to spend one of your cards in this way, but the option is there and just sometimes it may be what you've got to grit your teeth and do.

A more familiar element is the use of Build Points - again another very well handled aspect providing difficult choices.  Especially taxing is the demand to replace eliminated units or buy cards.  At the beginning of a scenario each player gets a set number, but from then on any further cards have to be bought and without cards you can't acquire those essential Offensive ones.  The strangest item you can spend build points on is Entrenching.  I'm not sure that I can conceive of any convincing rational for this other than that it adds to the agony of choice, especially as an entrenched unit when it moves must be flipped back to its mobile side and so lose its entrenched status.

The rule book is short and the rules are easy to understand and few enough to largely hold in your head.  I strongly recommend the main two Advanced rules: Hidden Army Templates and Bidding for Initiative that appear in the Theatre rulebook.

This is another very good part of the package.  It adds a range of small historical rule elements and scenario variants, a very good section providing set up for scenarios starting in each individual year of the war and a section I particularly like that contains four pages of variant historical German and French plans, two pages of Examples of Play and sadly only a brief side bar of Designer's Notes.

Ultimately for me it is just this side of too simple, but as an intro level simulation it fits the bill, unlike GMT's Fields of Despair on the identical topic which registers on the opposite end of the complexity scale.  There are so many good ideas drawing both on tried and trusted measures and fresh ones too.  There is much that I like and I received this game to review with much excitement. Yet for me somehow the gaming experience falls short of the sum of its parts.  I will continue to play it, but not with the zeal that I pick up Nuts Publishing's most recent offering, Urban Operations.

{Apologies for the weird gremlin in the system that simply wont produce the correct consistent font size, whatever measures I take to correct it!}

NavTac: Coronal and Falklands

World War I Naval Miniatures Rules

by

Minden Games

 This is a set of naval miniatures rules for naval tactics (NavTac), and combat in the first years of World War I. The gun size goes up to 13.5" so the games ships will be preDreadnoughts and Dreadnoughts, but no super-Dreadnoughts.
 

  For play you will need two six-sided die, a ruler/tape measure, and paper and pencil. The turns represent five minutes of time. The game was setup to represent 500 yards to the inch. For those with a smaller area (in the first instance ships 22,000 yards apart would be 44 inches away from each other), you can use one centimeter to 500 yards. You will also need ship miniatures, or you can copy the eleven pages of top down ship pictures in the manual. Minden Games also sells  'NacTac Ship set A'. These are sheets of heavy paper with the ship pictures on them. These make it a breeze to make your own counters. Minden Games graciously sent me a copy of the ship set.

 The basic rules are only nineteen pages long, and have two additional pages of optional rules. The advanced rules bring into play ammunition usage, end on damage, and weather, etc. The rest of the rule book is filled with the various tables and charts needed along with play examples.

 The players can decide to use IGOUGO or WEGO  for each move. Ship movement is 1/2" (or 1/2 centimeter) for every three knots. So a ship making eighteen knots would move 3". Ships can turn 22.5 degrees for each 1/2" moved. Ships cannot turn more than 90 degrees during one turn.

 The rules for fire combat at first seemed a bit daunting. This is coming from a gamer who had limited exposure to miniature gaming many years ago. Just as in the real world you have to do ranging fire in the game before regular fire. This means that once you have straddled your enemy with a broadside you can then open up with more sustained and faster fire.

 The game comes with eight scenarios, but the player is only limited by his imagination with creating more. 

 This will be a few moves of the "Escape of the Goeben" scenario. Before World War I, England was building a few capital ships for the Ottoman Empire. When war broke out they were seized by the British government for the Royal Navy. The German battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau were cruising the Mediterranean right before the war. In an effort to sway the Ottomans to the Central powers, Germany offered her to them. In reality the Goeben was only half-heartedly pursued by the Entente naval forces. She made it to Istanbul where she was renamed the Yavuz Sultan Selim and became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy. This scenario represents an encounter during her flight through the Mediterranean. 

 Historically the Goeben and Breslau just really evaded encounters on their way to Istanbul. In this scenario I have chosen to have the Goeben fight it out with four armored cruisers that are stalking her. The Goeben is more heavily armed (10X11" compared to 6X9.2" guns), and the Goeben is .5 faster than the armored cruisers. We start with the Goeben and enemies moving, and then fire from both sides will take place simultaneously. The Goeben stays on course to be able to deliver a broadside with four of her five double gunned turrets. The British cruisers will only be ably to reply with three of their six guns. We start with the Goeben getting one hit on the Duke of Edinburgh. This is just ranging fire until the different ships get the range. The Goeben strikes for a damage of 2750 points, but because it is ranging fire, and because they are German, they only hit for one-third of the damage. The Duke of Edinburgh hits for two out of three, but because she is English and it is still ranging fire she only actually inflicts one-tenth of the 200 damage points.

 I inflicted a large amount of damage on two of the British cruisers, but my unlucky die rolls were matched by a lot of lucky British ones. It ended up as a marginal British victory because they inflicted enough damage to lower the Goeben's speed to three.

 The rules are easy to follow, and with all of the optional rules to add in to make the game more of a simulation, the game to me is a winner. I am even looking to buy some 1/3000 ships for use in more games. The counters work fine, but I believe it will add to the immersion factor. For my first foray into miniatures after so many years, I am very impressed. When I first looked at the rules they seemed a bit intimidating, and I was worried that the game might actually be a snooze fest. Thank you, Minden Games for showing me the error of my thinking. This opens up a whole new genre of gaming for me.


Robert

Today I am reviewing not a game, but a box containing all the bits and pieces and knowledge to get you started on creating a game of your very own. As many of our readers probably know, board gaming is going through a new golden age. Literally thousands of new games are being created by hundreds of developers all over the world every year. Many of these developers are regular people with regular jobs, who tinker with ideas in their spare time. It's not a stretch to think that some of you reading this have had an idea for a cool game at some point and thought about making it yourself. But where to begin with such a project? 

The White Box wants to be the answer. It contains a treasure trove of various pieces that you can use to create a prototype of your vision without needing to raid other game boxes or go out to a hobby store to buy odds and ends. I'll cover all of those in detail later.  Besides the physical components, you also get The White Box Essays, a 200 page collection of essays covering just about every angle of board game development that you could think of, and probably several that you haven't. Let's take a closer look at it first.

The White Box Essays consists of 25 chapters, each covering a specific topic like theme vs mechanics, playtesting, pitching your game to publishers, randomness, writing rules, marketing, and so on. There is a lot of ground covered here, especially on the business side of things. It should be noted, this book is not presenting as a step by step guide for how to create a board game. In fact, many of the chapters are presented out of order from how one might expect to read them. It really is a collection of essays, and not so much an instruction book. 

While the book does cover a lot of different topics, most are presented only on a basic level. Enough to make you aware of the concept, but not much more. For example, the chapter on probability and randomness, a topic which could fill an entire textbook, is only five pages long. I was a bit disappointed to find most of the chapters on actual game design to be very light. You will want to seek out another book on this topic if you serious about developing a game and want some guidance on the theory and process of game design. While I'm not aware of any specifically for board games, there are plenty about video game prototyping and the process is essentially the same on a conceptual level.

That said, this book does have a ton of useful information about everything else you will need to know to actually put a board game on the shelf. Topics like coming up with a sales pitch for your game, what to think about when designing the box, how to get started marketing your game, how to handle distribution, or how to demo your game at a convention are all touched upon. These are the sort of things that a budding game designer might not consider at all when starting out, and it's better to learn from someone who has already run the gauntlet than learning these lessons the hard way yourself. This is where the book really shines and shows its value.

Now, let's take a look at the bits!

The inside of The White Box contains a nice variety of stuff to get you started with prototyping. While it's all things that you could get at a craft store (except maybe the meeples), it's nice to have a little starter kit that someone more experienced put a lot of time and thought into creating. There are also a bunch of plastic baggies included for your sorting needs once you get going with your game design. 

Like any good board game, The White Box includes some cardboard pieces to be punched out. As you can see, these are generic by design, but provide you with a lot of starting points for designing your own components and basic mechanisms. There are pieces with different colors, shapes, numbers, and symbols that could represent any number of things. There is also an entire sheet of blank pieces which you can use to create your own customized components.

Here you can see a closer look at the bits and pieces included. There are plastic disks, meeples, small wooden cubes, dice of various color (all d6's), and a large cube of each color. While these pieces are nothing too exciting, they are exactly the sort of thing you need to create a prototype of your game design. Once you have the mechanics working on an abstract level, you can replace the cubes with barbarian warriors or spaceships or, well, maybe leave them as cubes if you're making a Euro. 

Again, while you could go out and buy all this stuff individually and probably spend a bit less, it is a nice starter kit that has everything you need in one box.

You may be thinking that there is one very common component of many games that is missing here: cards. The Box does address that with the inclusion of a voucher good for $5 worth of custom printed cards from www.DriveThruCards.com and another $5 voucher for www.TheGameCrafter.com which can be used for custom cards or many other components. There was a note I remember reading on the Kickstarter page which detailed why they didn't include blank cards in the box, it would simply add to the cost with something that could be easily replaced with a deck of playing cards, some card sleeves, and regular paper. I think this makes sense and the box is not lesser for not including them. A regular deck of playing cards, which I imagine any gamer should already own, can be very versatile and fill in the gap here. 

While the White Box doesn't contain every single thing you might need to design, develop and publish a board game, it does make for an excellent jumping off point. The Essays will give you plenty to think about, especially if you have not done much research on your own already. The bits and pieces are perfect for your initial prototype and tinkering with ideas until you figure out something that works. I think this is a good buy for anyone curious about taking on the endeavor of designing their own board game. It would also make a great gift if you have someone like that in your life.  

You can find The White Box here: http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG2903.php

- Joe Beard

There is only one truly important component which you won't find in the box, but must provide yourself: Imagination!

GLOOM OF KILFORTH

Fantasy quest games have a good, solid lineage and, if you haven't read my recent interview with Tristan Hall, the designer & producer of Gloom of Kilforth, then have a quick look there to see some of the classics that inspired and to some extent influenced his design.  

In terms of narrative and theme, it is difficult for any treatment to be original.  In some form or other, it's going to involve questers journeying through a fantasy world, encountering strange creatures, gaining skills, powers and artefacts usually in order to attain some final goal.  In that respect,  Gloom [for short] perhaps inevitably can be little different. 

For many designs and designers, it is the underground route that is taken; the route of trolls and orcs, goblins and the undead through dark and noisome passages and echoing vaults with treasure chests and pitfalls, traps and poisoned stakes, locked and unlocked doors. The tendency of these examples of the genre is for them to be played out on game boards or large tiles that are drawn and laid down to form ever changing locations.  They are usually handsomely fleshed out with miniatures, structures and furnishings. They are mainly designed for cooperative play, often against one member of a gaming group who takes on the role of dungeon master, who either plays a neutral role overseeing all the action and die rolls or in a more aggressive role as the Evil One.  For some groups this can be a stumbling block when there are few players or simply because everyone wants to be an exploring Hero!

For many gamers, part of the pleasure of these games is the painting of the plastic and the tactile and visual appeal.  Cards may play some part, but rarely a major one.  Where cards do dominate, it tends to be in the more confrontational games set in fantasy/sci-fi worlds; probably the best known and earliest is Magic: The Gathering and its infinite new decks.  This flourishing and major sub-sector; LCGs [Living Card Games]has seen  a huge expansion in recent years, often driven by derivations from cult classics, from the cross-fertilised worlds of literature and graphic novels, film and T.V. such as Lord of The Rings and Game of Thrones, or Arkham Horror and Android: Netrunner [itself spawned from the original board game Android, with its loose connection to the work of Robert Heinlein].

Tristan Hall has chosen to take the latter path of the card-centred world, though largely in a non-combative direction or at least not in combat against another game player.  Whether through solo, cooperative or mildly competitive play, the real opponent is the game system and I make no bones about saying that it is solitaire play that occupies and absorbs my time with this game.

From the moment I saw the box art and then the many cards that form the game, I had one thought in mind; eerily seductive - what better quality could a fantasy quest game possess. Though I may be following in the path of others before me,  I think that it's almost impossible not to start with the art work of this game. It is stunning!  It has a huge impact on how you perceive this game!  So, hats off here to Ania Kryczowska and to Tristan's willingness to entrust so much to one person.  There is a blend of the fey and the brutal that caused a quotation from Keats' poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" immediately to spring to mind,
            "O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
             Alone and palely loitering?"
The result is a consummately consistent vision for this fantasy world, whose backstory is outlined on the back of the box.

A game begins with the following three steps -all of which can be done by random draw or personal choice: [1] select one of four quests [2] select a Race for their Hero [3] select a Class.  If more than one person is playing, then each follows the same process separately.  Your Hero is represented by a cardboard standee according to the Race you have chosen - a good touch is that each one has a male/female side.  

Your game board is a five x five landscape of cards - the eponymous Kilforth that will slowly succumb day by day to the GLOOM part of the title.  As night falls on the land one more of its locations will fall into not just the ordinary darkness at the end of a day, but the everlasting darkness of evil.  This is signified by turning over the randomly selected location card, thus providing a neat and handy game timer too.  When all 25 locations have fallen to the Gloom, you've lost!

Here you can see the whole game set out ready to play with the 5x5 grid at its heart. 

In the very middle is Sprawl City, where your chosen Hero [or Heroes] will begin the quest.

Each location is separately named and at the beginning of every game the grid of cards is randomly laid out, with only Sprawl City always being located at the centre [though even this could be changed, if you wanted to].  In this way, we are introduced to one of the many variables that make Gloom highly replayable.

Though each location is individually named - in the photo above you can just see the edge of the Blessed Grove and the Grand Plains - the terrain types are limited to four: Plains, Mountains, Forest and Badlands.

The four decks, one for each type of terrain, are called the Encounter Decks, so-called because as you enter you will turn one of the appropriate cards up and encounter whatever is revealed on the card.  Successful encounters will possibly lead to drawing from one of the four Reward Decks: Spells, Items, Titles and Allies.

Just one of the four Reward Decks

A very minor criticism has been that the illustrations for the backs of these decks are drawn from some of the many superb individual pictures on the reverse.  Considering the hundreds of cards in total, all with highly individual and highly detailed art work on the reverse side, I certainly don't have any problems myself with this.

Below is just a small sample to demonstrate the variety and detail each card displays.

These as you might guess are Items, while the next are potential Allies.

And please don't tell me that there are too many males with droopy moustaches and beards or over made-up and underclad females! 

Apart from the eight decks already mentioned there are several more.  Each Class of Hero has a corresponding Skill Deck.  The quests themselves are called Sagas [lending a Nordic or Icelandic feel to the atmosphere] and come in sets of three cards that take you through four Chapters [i.e. four separate mini-quests] and then the Finale where you take on the supreme Evil Being [think "boss monster" from computer gaming].  These latter are called Ancients and each comes with his/her small deck of Plot cards. 

Here in the top two cards you can see one of the potential Ancients you may be up against and the specific abilities linked with her, while below is one set of Saga cards.

Finally, there is the Night Deck, one of which will be revealed at the end of each day turn.  These contain information as to which location is turned to its Gloom side and usually brings with it some further hindrance for your Heroes!

Among all the many cards, the single significant problem has been with the Location cards in distinguishing the starting side from its reverse when it has been flipped to show that it is now in Gloom.  The response from Tristan Hall has been absolutely typical of all his attention to and concern for players of this game.  In the soon to be released 2nd edition, this has been addressed through constant dialogue with  the gaming community both online and off and ultimately via a democratic vote on the varying ideas of improvement suggested by those gamers.  

Along with the cards come a substantial number of cardboard tokens, 142 in all,  that make up the Gold and Loot that may come your way when an Encounter is successfully won.  

Just some of the Loot 

The final tokens are wooden ones that denote such things as Health, Action pts, Hidden status and Obstacles.  Some have queried their aesthetic appeal and appropriateness,  but personally, I really like these and find their nice chunky quality useful.

As always, binding all the components together and creating harmony out of the many pieces is the rule book.  Like everything else in this game, it is a lavish, quality production of 32 glossy A4 pages in full colour.  Besides reproductions of the cards to help illustrate the explanations of how to use them and what the various symbols mean, there are many additional illustrations there purely to maintain the immersive atmosphere of the game. 

For a game that works almost entirely with cards, it's no surprise that five pages alone are taken up with explaining them.  Be careful how you approach this learning process.  I would suggest that a skim through is best without trying to memorise details will pay dividends. 

Briefly the rule book takes you through
[1] Set Up
[2] Card Anatomy [i.e. the explanations mentioned above]
[3] Actions - the various things you can do and how to do them, each of which costs an Action Point
[4] Deeds - these are supplements to your Actions, often granted by cards or items that you've acquired and most importantly they do not cost Action points.
[5] The Night Phase
[6] Four separate sections that act as very substantial reference material.

Just a few more nasties to contemplate!

Central to play is the Confront Action as this is the main way in which you will garner the necessary gold, loot, assets and cards to accomplish the Sagas and finally take on and hopefully defeat the Ancient One. As with most fantasy games, this involves tests where your Hero chooses one of their abilities to pit against the ability/quality of what you have encountered.  As you might expect encountering enemies is usually the toughest nut to crack.

The hope is that you will be able to test using your strongest ability, but that ability may not necessarily be possessed by your target and so you're forced into using one of your lesser abilities.  Even when this does work in your favour, things do not always go to plan, as when I encountered a weak enemy who needed multiple hits on his health to be overcome!

The other major concept is Keywords, as the completion of each Saga entails a set of keywords to be acquired.  When winning an encounter, the card you have overcome will contain one or more keywords that can be immediately traded in for a reward or the card can be kept to help you later complete the current Saga.  This is one of the more agonising choices you will frequently face: an immediate benefit set against a long-term essential goal. 

Sometimes the current situation will pressingly influence your decision, but too often it doesn't.  As you gain insight through playing the game, you will learn which locations are most likely to generate certain types of Keyword.  If you wish, you can learn these directly from the rules and this certainly will help your progress.  But I must confess that I couldn't resist ignoring that readily available knowledge, so that the experience became much more [for me] genuine and engaging as I truly discovered the nature of this realm of Kilforth.   

There is a great deal to learn, but I found playing even a single game brought most things fairly smoothly into play and understanding.  As a gamer for whom fantasy games are going to be on the periphery,  Gloom of Kilforth has provided an excellent slot.  It combines an aesthetically highly pleasing and immersive world with a reasonable physical footprint for my gaming table.

Set up is very quick and there is no myriad outpouring of plastic pieces to be sorted and later stored - never mind their plaintive waiting to be painted.  As indicated it is the solitaire experience I have found most valuable, especially as it greatly enhances the feeling of exploring and being in a fantasy world.

As mentioned, a 2nd edition will soon be available and for those of you in need of a French edition, these can be bought direct from Nuts Publishing.  Also soon to appear is Tristan Hall's 2nd game Tears To Many Mothers on the topic of The Battle of Hastings.

So, plenty of goodies to get your hands on!