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Nightfall – Martial Law Reviewed – The Danger Grows Larger

Elliott Miller

Jun 5, 2011

Game Name: Nightfall – Martial Law

Publisher: AEG

Designer: David Gregg

Artists: Conceptopolis, Andrew Hepworth, Jake Murray, and Matthew Starbuck

Year: 2011

Players: Two to five players

Ages: 12+

Playing Time: 45 Minutes

Retail Price: $39.93

Martial Law is the first expansion to AEG’s deck building game: Nightfall. This is a stand alone expansion, so you don’t need the base game to play (but then you’d miss out on all the new possible combinations).

The first thing I have to talk about with Martial Law is the box. The original version of Nightfall I reviewed was a streamlined copy, without the card dividers. So when I opened the box for Martial Law, I was pleasantly surprised with the great organization system that is included. For every card you receive a divider card, so that you can organize them in the box making it much easier to set up. Plus they have foam blocks that you can use to section off the types of cards in the box, and allows room for adding future expansions or combining both into one box. Out of all the deck building games I have seen so far, I like this system the best. Organization is important, and any setup time that I can save by being well organized is a plus.

Another design aspect that I appreciate is the draft card setup. Unlike Dominion, where the draft cards are distinguished from the regular card stacks by having the back colored a bit differently, In Nightfall the word “Draft” is written in big letters across the face of the card. It is a lot easier to segregate these cards and not accidentally mix them in together with the regular cards.

These kind of touches, where you know that some thought was put into all aspects of the game’s production are nice and should serve as an example to other publishers. Gamers like this kind of attention to detail.

I’m assuming that the gentle reader knows Nightfall, and so I will concentrate on the expansion in this review. Let me just make a few points.

There are four groups in the game: Vampires, Werewolves (I can’t spell Lycanthropes), Ghouls, and Hunters (humans). There are also six different colors. The colors are very important as they determine what types of combinations you can chain together for various effects. The groups and colors have no correlation, but I am beginning to suspect that there are reasons behind this that has to do with card linkage.

During each player turn there are four phases. Combat, Chain, Claim, and Cleanup. Each phase has its own strategic significance which is improved upon in Martial Law.

The game controlling mechanic is the wound cards. Each game will have include a stack of ten wound cards for each player. So in a three player game there are 30 wound cards. When you run out of wound cards to distribute to the players, the game is over. Whichever player’s deck contains the least wound cards is the winner.

The wound cards have effects that can be played, so they are not completely useless. As hoped for by players, Martial Law adds a new type of wound card effect. Some of the wound cards allow you to discard them during combat to increase the strength of a minion by one. There is also a FEED ability on the card that also allows you to discard all of the wound cards in your hand. We will discuss the new FEED mechanic next.

Martial Law includes the new mechanic FEED. This mechanic is listed on some cards, and allow you to re-trigger a card multiple times by discarding cards. For example, the “All-Out Lunge” card will deal one damage to a target player when played in a chain. This card also has the feed ability, so that you can deal an additional point of damage to a player for every two cards you discard from your hand. The feed ability can pop up in the main card text, in the kicker text, or even on the wound cards as it does in the new wound type in Martial Law. It is a simple mechanic that adds new strategic possibilities. “Bleak Resurrection” lets you place a minion from your discard pile directly into play, and you can feed the card by discarding a single card, so you could possibly put a whole group of minions into play right from your discard pile.

Martial Law also includes several minion cards that have persistence. For example you can prevent “Nian Jiang” from being discarded from play by discarding a card, with a strength of four, she comes in handy to have around. “Grotesque Revenant” and “Brynna & Taylor” also stay in play until they are destroyed. Getting Those into your private archives might me nice eh?

Let’s take a look at a few of the new cards and the specific combinations that are available to them, to try to get a sense of the theme.

“Chan Jiang” has an excellent kicker ability. His red kicker ability allows you to claim one minion from a target archive at no cost. He is a vampire with a strength/health of 3/3. What cards allow you to actually trigger his kicker? “Queen’s Bishop” a 2/2 hunter, and “Headshot”, a card that allows you to Exile a target minion. There is a definite benefit to having “Queen’s Bishop” and “Chan Jiang” in play at the same time, as you can damage a target minion using the hunter’s ability, and force the damage minion to block against the vampire using his special ability, in most cases destroying the unlucky minion. Thematically, it seems a little strange to have a vampire coming in for the assist with the hunter, but strategically it is a nice combo to get rid of one of those pesky powerful minions. If you play your cards right, you can chain “Irresistible Call” onto Chan, and gain three influence while triggering the kicker to allow you to place “Irresistible Call” on top of any target archive. At least if it is your chain that is.

There are a lot more “In Play” abilities on the minions in Martial Law. “Maya Westermann”, the 2/4 Vampire Queen of South Beach, has an excellent in play ability that allows you to gain three influence for every wound you discard. Her kicker also allows you to discard the top card of your deck, and if it is a minion put it directly into play. You can pop this kicker by chaining her with either “Mad Jake”, a 3/3 werewolf that deals one wound directly to the player when it attacks, or “Forlorn Hope”, an action that allows you to deal damage to a player equal to the cost of a card you exile from your discard pile. Interestingly, you can’t chain her with any card from the original game and get the kicker to trigger. This isn’t universal though, as you can chain “Grim Siege” and “Sir John Travail” from the Original onto “Mad Jake” from Martial Law, and the kicker will pop.

So while it is hard to find an overall tying together of the different groups thematically, does it really matter? There is a nice increase in the amount of strategic options available. Direct damage abilities are much more evident in the expansion, so the game actually seems to run a little faster than the original.

Overall, Martial Law adds a lot of good quality cards to expand the base of an already good game. It definitely “Takes it up a notch” as many were hoping for without increasing the complexity too much. If you enjoy the original, then the expansion will be a welcome addition. If you have never tried Nightfall, then this self-contained expansion is your chance to try the game without ever having owned Nightfall.

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