Good evening friends! Recently Amanda, Hector, Eddie and myself sat down to enjoy a round of Euthia: Torment of Resurrection, one of the biggest games I’ve ever played. Euthia: Torment of Resurrection is a massive, sandbox style adventure game that gives players a whole lot of freedom to explore and play the game as they see fit. It has a commanding table presence and an ever larger box to hold all of the components, but is it any fun to play? Read on to find out.
Beginning as usual with a report on the components, I will say that they are both numerous and of good quality. The majority of the game is cardboard of some sort, and it’s all pretty solid. The tiles, map tiles, player boards, game boards and the like are all cut from the same type of board and it’s both durable an easy to punch, which is a good thing because you will be punching a lot of it. I don’t normally include waste piles as pictures but I’ll be putting an image of the punched cardboard leftovers because it needs to be seen to be believed.
The art style is also excellent and there are a couple of things that stand out with it, the first being the character boards. Each player has a large board with a prominent image of their character on the background that really pops. The second thing is the art and graphic design for the map tiles. The tiles are not only gorgeous to look at as the map forms, but also extremely well integrated, so the map really pops as it expands throughout the game. I can’t think of another game where separate tiles integrate so well, and it’s not as simple as keeping them all homogenous, the tiles vary in terrain as the more advanced ones get played out, but overall they make a great looking map as the game goes on.
I do have one or two little complaints. Some of the cards, which are otherwise average, appeared to have some minor damage during either production or transport and one of the dice requires stickering. For a production this massive, lavish and expensive there was really no reason to not do a custom die. In addition there are some of the usual kickstarter overproduction issues. There is a complete set of monster tiles, 2 for every monster in the game, that literally serve no purpose. The rulebook, and I kid you not, suggesting playing memory match with them. I don’t know why, in a game that requires a solid hour upon opening the box to prep and sort the components, they would include a couple dozen useless tiles instead of just, I dunno, not printing those tiles, but here we are.
All that aside, onto the gameplay. Euthia: Torment of Resurrection is essentially an adventure sandbox game, in which players are competing to finish with the most reputation points at the end of the game. The game has several scenarios, each of which provides a goal, turn count and possible group-loss condition, but apart from that, players are free to choose how and what they do. A player gets three different action tokens per turn, each of which can be used as either movement points or an action. Players may save one unused token of their choice to carry over to the next round. After all players finish a turn, the round counter goes up, things may happen depending on the scenario and the next round begins.
As in the nature of sandbox games, there are a lot of things to do, so I won’t get into detail but what players accomplish will be divided into a couple specific categories. The first is resource gathering from tiles, encounters etc. The second is powering up, done mainly through purchasing gear, the slots to put it in and unlocking their characters unique list of powers and equipment via reputation increases, which are also victory points. Lastly is the gathering of the aforementioned reputation, which is mainly accomplished through defeating monsters and completing scenario objectives. After the scenario’s listed number of turns is complete, players gain the gold value of any and all equipment and upgrades on their characters, gain an extra reputation for every 5 gold, score for tokens on the board and the highest reputation takes the win.
Euthia: Torment of Resurrection has very little character interaction apart from the combat, with players mainly interacting by sniping away high value hexes and monsters from other players. Most tiles can either only be used once, or require subsequent players to pay a fee to the first player who claimed it in order to use it. Combat, which is the main form of player interaction is handled very well and almost comprises a mini game unto itself, is also not actually between players, but between the active player and one controlling the monsters. Although a fairly simple dice based system, other players not only roll dice for the monster but also may play cards from their hand to power it up in an attempt to defeat the attacking player. The system by which other players take control of the monster (or just the other player using it in a 2 player game) is an excellent way to keep the rest of the table engaged on another players turn. Although similar has been done in other games, this is certainly the best implementation of it I’ve seen. Losing a battle results in a loss of reputation, and most monsters will reward the winning player cards with which to make other player’s combat more difficult, encouraging everyone to engage in every battle.
One of the things that has to be mentioned about Euthia: Torment of Resurrection is the length. the box says that it clocks in at a staggering 1-2 hours per player and I would suggest that it will likely be towards the long end of that. Euthia: Torment of Resurrection handles this generally well with it’s pacing, not making it outstay its welcome, however there are a couple minor issues with the pacing. The main one being that there really isn’t anything to do while one player is sifting through items at the shop. Although there are only a limited number of items available at any given time, the massive table footprint makes it difficult to look at what you want in advance, and since every player can refresh the shop for free once per visit, there is no guarantee what you were thinking of buying will even be available come your next turn. In addition there are simply a few dead turns here and there, which is bound to happen in any game of this size, but they become no less tedious if you’ve been waiting for 5 minutes for someone to mull over which item to buy and all you wanted to do was “move, move, heal, turn end.”
All that being said, Euthia: Torment of Resurrection doesn’t feel like it overstays it’s welcome. There is a continuous sense of escalation throughout the game, and although slow, its certainly noticeable. Every upgrade and piece of gear either makes a noticeable difference or can be sold so that you can buy one which does. As the map expands and more encounters and locations become available it just gets more interesting and exciting to see if you are ready to take on the next challenge. It really is the Skyrim of board games.
As far as player scaling goes, I don’t think I would want to play any of the longer scenarios of Euthia: Torment of Resurrection with more than 2 players. I probably will try it once sometime, but especially with new players involved, it will require setting a whole day aside for the game, Twilight Imperium style. Since player interaction is minimum, there doesn’t seem to be whole lot to be gained from adding more players except perhaps a little tightening of the resources on the board. The scaling works perfectly fine for Amanda and I, since the owlbears just hang out and watch anyhow.
I would give this a very strong recommendation but for the fact that it is likely to be impossible to find at a reasonable price. We timed this playthrough and review so that it could be up and we could make our decision on whether to back the upcoming expansion, however it turns out the company that makes it is not particularly well run. Despite reaching 400% of their funding goal in the first 2 days, they have declared that this isn’t enough to either finish the Gamefound campaign or keep them solvent and they are both cancelling the campaign and ceasing operations. If you see Euthia: Torment of Resurrection for a reasonable price snap it up. It never saw retail release to my knowledge and is likely to become one of those unicorn games soon. Otherwise feel free to hit me up for a game. Even with only what is released, there is a ton of content in the box and each scenario is very repayable, so if you have (a lot of) free time, lets get a game in.
Note from Amanda: I love this game. While it does require a bit of strategy to figure out how you want to try to score the most reputation, it also lends itself pretty well to changing tactics partway through. You’re able to do and try everything at least once without severely messing up any chance of winning, which I think it pretty important with such a very long game. I will say if you buy this set aside an hour or more just to punch out all the cardboard- oy!
Designer: Markéta Bláhová, Tadeáš Spousta
Price: Out of Print, $500 – $1000 on the secondary market
Players: 1-4
2 player Scaling: Excellent, my preferred way to play
Playtime: 1-2 hours per player
Estimated Lifespan: In permanent collection
Estimated Average Play Frequency: Bi-annually
Complexity: 4
Components: 4.5
Bang for Buck: 4.5 at it’s original price, 3 at current prices
Value for Time: 4
Fun Factor: 4.5
Overall: 4
Cardboard for 2 
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