Game Name: Legions of Darkness
Publisher: Victory Point Games
Designer: Chris Taylor
Year: 2011
Genre: Solitaire fantasy tower defense
Players: One
Ages: 10+
Playing Time: 30 Minutes
MSRP: $23.95
From Victory Point Games:
Legions of Darkness is a solitaire, fantasy States of Siegegame where you must survive the relentless attacks from ghastly creatures and monsters for three days and two nights – when reinforcements arrive.
You are besieged on all sides by dark legions, with limited supplies and even fewer defenders to man the walls of Highmoor Castle. Make decisions wisely where and when to attack, how to marshal your heroes, what spells to cast, and which deadly traps to build at your castle. Pray your decisions will be enough against the hordes of undead skeletal riders, the giant armored orcs, and even the fearsome dragons that you must defeat until help arrives.
With a little luck and plenty of the right decisions, can you withstand the siege? Defend your castle and survive the Legions of Darkness!
I was drawn to Legions of Darkness because for one it is a “States of Siege” game, and two it has a fantasy theme. I’ve enjoyed the States of Siege line, but I like the Fantasy and Science Fiction themes a lot more than the various warfare themes.
Legions of Darkness, designed by Chris Taylor, puts the player in charge of the defenses of a castle besieged by 
monsters. As is standard in the States of Siege line, there are several tracks along which the various evil armies march toward the castle. There are East and West wall tracks, a Gate track, a Sky track, and a Terror track. The Terror track is short, only three spaces, but it is only used at night.
There is also a time track, which is used to measure the progress of the game. If you can survive until the marker passes the last space on the time track, you win the game. Of course, as with any States of Siege game, there are many ways to lose.
There is a magic track that measures how much magical energy you have to spend on spell casting. You have both arcane energy for wizard spells and divine energy for clerical spells. There are about a half-dozen of each type of spell ranging from fireball to raise dead. They can only be used once per game, so you need to use them sparingly.
Completing the tracks on the board are the defender tracks, one each for Men-at-Arms, Archers, and Clerics. These start at the highest spaces when the game begins and keep track of how many melee attacks you can make, how many ranged attacks you can make, and the bonus to your chant roll that you receive (more on that later). As your defenders are killed off, you get to make fewer attacks per turn which can become disastrous if you aren’t careful.
You’ll have heroes on your side to help with the defenses and they each have their own special abilities. There are six in all, but you only get to use three per game. This adds some replayability value, and allows you to mix it up a bit. Your choices include a wizard, cleric, warrior, rogue, paladin, and ranger.
Legions of Darkness comes with two separate scenarios to choose from. The Greenskin Horde pits you against goblins, orcs, trolls and a dragon. The Undead Scourge scenario has skeletal riders, zombies, a wraith, and the dreaded nightmare. The scenarios have both a specific set up to use, and a random set up to shake things up a bit.
Once you set up all of the various tracks and monster armies and choose your heroes, you’ll shuffle the day and night decks of cards separately and you are ready to begin. Each turn, you select a card from the correct pile based on the time of day on the time track. You’ll begin the game on the first dawn space, and move the time counter downward as directed by the card you draw.
Each card shows exactly what you need to do on your turn. The first section shows icons representing the enemy armies that will move. Each icon represents the space on the respective track. If an enemy reaches the zero space on the wall or gate tracks, then the wall or gate is breached. The second time an enemy reaches the zero space; you lose the game as the army of monsters storms into the keep. When the monsters reach zero on the sky or terror tracks, you automatically lose one defender and move the counter on one of your defender tracks down one space. If all three defender tracks ever reach zero, you lose the game.
Next on the card is the event description. Not every card has an event, but for those that do you simply follow the instructions on the card. You’ll usually end up rolling a die and having some positive or negative thing happen. It’s usually negative, but don’t give up.
The next section tells you how many actions and heroic actions you can make that turn, plus any die roll modifiers applicable like +1 to melee attacks or -1 to a rally roll. Speaking of Rally rolls, you also have a morale counter for your troops. If your morale is normal, then nothing happens. If your morale is high, you get +1 action per turn, and if your morale is low you get -1 action per turn. Your morale automatically degrades by one level each morning as the sun rises and your troops see that you are still surrounded by armies. Different events can affect the morale as well.
The actions you can take on your turn are:
Attack: You can attack one monster army. For the close ones you can use a melee attack, for the further ones you will use a ranged attack. The maximum number of attacks depends upon the number of defenders you have remaining. To attack, simply roll the die and if the roll is higher than the defensive value on the monster’s counter you win the attack and push the monsters back one space. If you fail, nothing happens.
Build: You can build one of several available upgrades to slow down the attackers. These are placed on space one of a track. Oil, grease, acid and lava can help you out. You’ll need to roll higher than the number on the token to actually build them and acid and lava will require you to roll a six.
Cast Spell: You may cast one of memorized spells. Once you cast the spell, it is lost and the token is discarded.
Chant: You can have your clerics chant to attempt to increase your available divine energy. If your roll is successful you will add +1 to divine energy on the energy track.
Memorize or Pray: You can memorize or pray to pull a random spell from the stack of spell tokens. You use memorize for an arcane spell or pray for a divine spell but you won’t know what it is specifically until you flip it over.
Quest: Some of the cards have quests listed on them that will give you a benefit if completed. You sacrifice actions to get die roll modifiers then roll to see if you complete the quest. My first game I received a magic bow that allowed me to save up a +2 ranged attack which came in really handy later.
That’s all of your available actions. There are also heroic actions that your heroes can launch, like leading an attack, casting a heroic spell, rallying the troops to increase morale, or moving from track to track. Each spell also has a heroic effect that will occur if you use a hero to cast it, and they can really help you out. You’ll need the wizard to cast the arcane spells and the cleric to cast the divine spells. If you don’t have them, then no heroic spells for you.
There is some flavor text on the card, and the bottom section will either show you how many spaces to advance the time marker, or tell you where to place the bloody battle marker. If you attack an enemy that has the bloody battle marker, you will automatically lose one defender in the attack. Some cards show nothing at the bottom, so the time track will not advance each turn. It took me three cards to finally win one game and every time I pulled a new card I had to figure out how to keep it together for one more turn as the monsters killed defender after defender.
You continue pulling cards until you either lose the game or win by advancing past the last space on the time track, that’s all there is to it. I found Legions of Darkness a very simple game to learn. It is not as complex as a lot of the other States of Siege games, so if you are interested in this series, I highly recommend picking this one up first as an introduction to the line of games. It’s like getting yourself a gateway solitaire game.
The game was fun, and it can get a bit desperate at the end, which I like a lot. It only takes about a half hour to play and I appreciated the portability of the game. It would easily fit on an airplane food tray. My only complaint is that there is no way to track used actions, and I can forget this easily during a turn. If they added a card with an action and heroic action track on it, plus two tokens to track them, it would have helped me out. Legions of Darkness definitely gets a recommendation from me for introducing yourself to the States of Siege line, or if you enjoy a good fantasy theme.
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