CMON Talk Design For Bloodborne: The Board Game
March 12, 2019 by brennon
CMON Games have been talking more about the design behind Bloodborne: The Board Game. As well as that they've also shown off some new miniature previews too including the Hunter you will be playing as.
One of the clear design choices they've made so far is to remove the luck from the equation as much as possible. For anyone who has played Bloodborne, they'll know that it is a game all about strategy and precise action where a single misstep might spell your doom.
So, with that in mind, the focus seems to have turned to using deck-building and card play as a means of controlling the action rather than simply trusting in the dice. These cards then play a direct role in combat with Hunters having to work out which Attack and Stat Cards they're going to use for each encounter with modifiers for all sorts like their trick weapon and the trust firearm they have at their side.
They are aiming to make it so that your Hunter truly becomes yours with ways to upgrade your cards and add new ones into the mix using the Blood Echoes you pick up from defeated enemies. There seems to be a lot of depth in there already but you can learn more about it from Part One and Part Two of their article series.
Haunting Foes
As we mentioned, they are also showing off some of the enemies you'll run into when you venture forth. Here we have the terrifying Church Giant.
This is just one of the creatures you'll encounter on the tabletop, stalking the spooky city of Yarnham.
I am fascinated to see what the design team of Shinall & Lang can bring to the tabletop here.
Will you be getting stuck in when this drops?
"I am fascinated to see what the design team of Shinall & Lang can bring to the tabletop here..."
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No new system this year. No new system this year. No new system this year. No new system this year.
Who do you think you’re fooling?
me, myself and I!
I know that feeling I promised myself not to back anything on Kickstarter for the rest of the year but this looks sweet.
Not going into KS is rather easy. Most KS have ridiculously high shipping costs (for me at least) and pledge levels beyond anything I can or would afford event if it were available at my FLGS. I’m over KS hype, especially with most CMON games. Those prices are insane.
There’s an awful lot of year left…
Oh I know but I backed quite the number of KS last year and some in this year and now I have to think about to I want to buy more awesome board games while I’m still waiting for a bunch of games to drop and there still a lot of retail games I’d like to own and how much play time will these games get. Not all KS have the option to get german rules so this lowers the amount of people I can play them with and I’m also using my time for more than boargaming, you know… Read more »
Ok, actually I totally know where you’re coming from. For me, last year I finished painting several of my gaming projects. I think six Kickstarters that I backed should be arriving this year, so I’m about to have tons of painting to do. So at the moment, I’m really not looking for new projects with tons of minis, and I’m very unlikely to get into this one. One a happy side note, I’ve discovered that a lot of CMON games are actually quite nice without the exclusives, so if I do decide that I can’t live without BloodBorne later, I… Read more »
I find it really special that people continue to believe that drawing cards from a deck somehow eliminates luck from the equation.
But people continue to insist that this is the case.
Well, I think the thing here is that once you’ve built your hand of cards you’re going to have mitigated a lot of the luck element and once you choose to do something, your outcome is guaranteed.
When they say deck-building and card combat here with Bloodborne I think they’re doing something a bit different from the standard idea of it – something more akin to Gloomhaven where things are more sure.
So… you’re saying that my luck will be contingent upon my skill at desk building?
If my dabbles in Magic: The Gathering are anything to go by, I’ll be dying over and over and over again haha
No. They’re alluding to the way that people somehow think that Gloomhaven doesn’t have a major luck element because it uses cards rather than dice. I’ve played Gloomhaven quite a lot, and I find this to be completely false. I still love the game, mind, but I don’t think that it has significantly less luck involved than a 2D6/3D6 game with a predictable bell curve (especially with the way that the “lost cards” and “complete miss cards” mechanics combine). Also, I’ve played card based games that had a lot of luck in them before- like Malifaux or Fairy Meat. Maybe… Read more »
Wow love the figures.
Whether I get this depends on the gameplay about which we only have a light overview. Minis alone don’t do it for me anymore.
O look, another kickstarter by CMON. Hard pass.
Did you get burned on a previous Cmon kickstarter?
No, just tired of CMON using Kickstarter as a pre-order system. Pooping out a game, drop it like a hot potato with their “no support” attitude and go on to the next Kickstarter, ad infinitum.
To be fair, CMON have been doing bigger games that go straight to retail. For a while, they just did card games like that, but they’ve started doing ones with bundles of neat minis in them.
I wonder if the days of CMON being all about KS are starting to wind down, or if they’re just choosing an outlet for their different game concepts.