I want to be upfront that my first two plays of this were genuinely bad experiences and I almost sold it. The rulebook is split into two separate books, a learn-to-play and a full reference, and I kept flipping between them mid combat trying to remember whether fire block actually stops ice damage or if I needed something else entirely, and by turn six of my first game I was ready to be done with it forever.

Then somewhere around the fifth play, alone, on a Sunday I’d blocked off specifically to give it one more real shot, it clicked, and now Vlaada Chvatil has my whole heart. The hand management is the thing. You are always exactly one movement point or one attack point short of the play you actually wanted, and instead of that being frustrating the way it sounds, it turns every turn into this tight little puzzle where you’re combining cards for mana you don’t quite have enough of, and when it finally works it works so cleanly.

This is a two player game as far as I’m concerned, maybe solo honestly is where it’s best, and I say that as someone who almost never plays solo anything. At four it sprawls and the downtime between turns gets long enough that I start checking my phone, which is the worst thing a game can make me do. Keep it small.

The insert is a disaster out of the box, tiles and cards everywhere with nothing to hold them, so budget for a real organizer if you’re the kind of person this bothers, which I very much am. And yes, I’ve seen the online argument that this is simply the better game than Gloomhaven, full stop, no contest, and I don’t think it’s that simple, they’re doing different things, but I understand why people say it with their whole chest. Five stars, learning curve and all.