The devil you know
SANCTUM
Designer: Filip Neduk | Artists: Jakub Politzer, František Sedlaček
Another trip to hell. Haven’t got the right gear for that? No problem, we’ll pick something up on the way. Meet Sanctum, a tabletop attempt to emulate hack-andslash videogames like Diablo II. And it very nearly does it.
This adventure begins as many do. Players take their character boards (depicting different classes with slight variations) and matching coloured minis, and begin their travels across variably placed boards towards the inner realms of Sanctum. The sculpts are nice enough, and the art lavish. Players can, once embarked, decide to move forward – hopping to the front of the queue – and collect some demons, fight said demons already collected, or rest.
The demon collection feels odd at the start, but actually makes more sense as you move on. As you explore, more enemies might spot you, and therefore attack you, seems to be the logic. You choose which pair to take from the board and add to your personal demon punching zone, ready for confrontation. Combat, when it happens, is an attempt to match the dice on the demons, tracking hits with tokens. If you fail, they hit you for what can seem like massive damage. This is where your gear and skills come in. The gear you wear provides modifiers for dice rolls, or ways to absorb attacks. Take your stamina and focus tokens and place them on the matching gear to use their effect. These will need to be cleared by resting or with potions, so it’s mostly about token management.
Your skills are laid out in columns with their gems on, defeating a demon allows matching gems to be moved up. Cleared skills can be used, but this makes the next layer that much harder to clear. It’s an elegant solution to creating an experience curve.
The other thing demons do is give you loot when dispatched. On the back of each demon card is a piece of armour or weaponry that will give you bonuses. Quickly the game becomes ‘that demon has some shoes in it’ rather than ‘fighting the darkness’. The use of enemies as lootbags that you have to cut open is another nod to the hack-and-slash influences in the game.
All these systems interact in a fairly intuitive way, and the game ends up playing quite fast. You will, of course, be using whatever equipment you can get your hands on. So, while you may start off dressed as a barbarian or ranger, you’re going to have to deal with your armour not matching your shoes. But then, this isn’t ‘fashion souls’.
To win the game players must not only survive, but survive by the most. Health is the decider for who did the best at killing the demon lord, which seems a strange way of measuring such feats. It’s also another game that’s competitive presenting as cooperative, without any player engagement. Are we working together thematically? It’s unclear, we certainly can’t help each other along the way.
It’s an attempt at fidelity to some of those videogamey systems that is, at the very least, impressive. The translation loses little for coming to the tabletop, and while we’re well aware that ‘doing dice maths to kill demons’ isn’t necessarily for everyone, for those that it is for, you’re in for a treat.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
WHAT’S IN THE BOX
◗ 3 Double-sided act boards
◗ 1 Hoardes board
◗ 1 Achievements board
◗ 4 Player boards
◗ 4 Health counters
◗ 18 Double-sided potion tiles
◗ 5 Rage tiles
◗ 12 Skill tiles
◗ 24 Skill cards
◗ 12 Achievement tiles
◗ 3 Divine intervention tiles
◗ 6 Starting bonus cards
◗ 84 Demon/item cards
◗ 51 Demon Lord cards
◗ 85+ Round plastic stamina, focus and hits token
◗ 84 Plastic gem tokens
◗ 4 Plastic miniatures
◗ 24 Wooden dice
◗ 4 Quick reference sheets
WE SAY
Fans of the genre will appreciate all the nods, and the retained inelegancies in Sanctum, for those looking for a bit of demon bashing, there may be better options.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… DESCENT
If you’re looking for a dungeon crawl, this is one of the best places to start, with slightly less token shuffling