Kickstarter Tabletop Alert: Battle Fae Monsters to Save the Lady of ‘Weirdwood Manor’

Weirdwood Manor lies at the nexus of the everyday world and the mysterious realm of the Fae. An evil monster from the Fae, along with its insidious clockwork minions, has invaded Weirdwood Manor. You must battle against both your foes and time itself to rescue Lady Weirdwood.

What Is Weirdwood Manor?

Weirdwood Manor is a cooperative adventure game for 1-5 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 90-120 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of CA$88 (approximately $65 USD) for a standard copy of the game, or CA$120 (approximately $89 USD) for the deluxe edition pledge.

Weirdwood Manor was designed by Mike Cassie and published by Greyridge Games, with illustrations by Anna Earley and Sean Richardson.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Weirdwood Manor Components

Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.

I was sent a prototype of the deluxe edition of the game, which includes several upgraded components, but has the same gameplay content as the standard edition.

Here’s what was in the box:

• 2 folding game board halves
• 4 day corridor ring pieces
• Time of day corridor ring
• 11 outer room tiles
• 11 middle room tiles
• 5 inner room tiles
• 6 character boards
• 6 character action card decks (13 cards per deck)
• 6 character standees
• 5 player aids
• 3 Fae monster boards
• 3 Fae monster card decks (20 cards per deck)
• 3 Fae monster standees
• 18 Chaos Ogre health cubes
• Lady Weirdwood standee
• 20 warden tactics cards
• 15 companion cards
• 5 rubble/fire tokens
• 27 tracking cubes
• 14 attack die cubes
• 15 balanced die cubes
• 10 defense die cubes
• 8 balanced dice
• 10 attack dice
• 6 defense dice
• 2 room dice
• 1 Min Wraith die
• 25 power tokens
• 30 knowledge tokens
• 30 Min tokens
• 50 clockwork scarab tokens
• block battle tracker token, hit battle tracker token, and group XP tracker token

The quality of the components was overall very high in the prototype. While there will may be some additional refinement before production, I was very happy overall with the look and feel of the boards, cards, and tokens.

The two halves of the folding gameboard went together easily, and have a very pleasing graphical appearance. There are four permanent rooms on the board, set in three different rings. The throne room sits at the center of the board. While the locations of these rooms will never change, the placement of all the other rooms is completely random.

There are several sturdy room tiles, which will get placed around the board randomly during setup. Each of these tiles has different actions that can be taken when a player enters the room, as indicated by the icons on each tile. Each tile conveniently has a notch on the side, as multiple scarabs will cause the room to be “blighted,” and you will need to flip the tile to its other side.

The rooms are separated by two different rings. The larger ring will track which day it is, while the smaller ring will show the progress from morning through to night. The rings also act as hallways, and their rotation will cause some rooms to open up, and others to become closed off.

There are six different double-layered character boards. Each character has unique abilities, and three different tracks that the player can spend experience points to progress on. There are also tracks for health and combat dice.

The backs of each of the player boards repeat the character’s powers, but additionally give advice on how to play that particular character and describes how to use each of their powers. Each character also has a complexity rating, so that players can better select a character for their skill level.

Each character has a matching standee. In the standard edition of the game they are cardboard, but in the deluxe edition, they are acrylic as seen below.

Each character gets their own deck of 13 action cards. While some cards are the same between characters, others are unique to each deck.

Similar to the player boards, the Fae monsters have their own boards. Each of the three monsters has different mechanics and win conditions, so each board is unique.

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By the same token, the Fae monsters also each have their own deck of action cards, as well as standee.

There are several different tokens used during the game as resources. The scarabs are minions of the Fae monsters, and therefore enemies, but can also be used to gain experience points or be used as resources to pay for companions or powers.

The tokens shown below are prototypes from the deluxe edition; in the standard edition, they will be cardboard.

There are a ton of custom dice in the game as well. There are three different types of battle dice: balanced, attack, and defense. Characters start with just a single balanced die, but may “forge” additional dice to be used in combat throughout the game. Fae monsters each start with a certain number of battle dice, which will increase as the game progresses and their moods worsen. Conversely, clockwork scarabs always roll just one blue balanced die.

There are also two room dice: a standard 12-sided die, and a custom 6-sided die which has three different ring sizes to reflect the 3 rings of rooms in the mansion. These are rolled to determine which room something, like a scarab, is placed into.

One of the enemies, the Min Wraith, even has its own die for movement, as it’s a foe that can ignore walls as it moves.

How to Play Weirdwood Manor

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to reduce the health of the Fae monster you’re fighting to zero, before the monster can defeat Lady Weirdwood or time runs out.

Setup

Board Setup

Assemble the two halves of the main board and place it in the middle of the table. Randomly place all of the largest room tiles in the outer ring.

Put together the four pieces of the day corridor ring and place it between the outer and middle rings, with Day 1 at the gold Entrance Hall room. Then randomly place all of the medium-sized room tiles in the middle ring.

Place the time of day ring under the middle ring rooms, with the first morning position in line with the gold rooms. Then randomly place the smallest room tiles in the inner ring.

Shuffle and place the companion cards near the board and deal out 4 face-up. Shuffle the warden tactics cards and create a face-down deck near the board.

Place the scarabs, Min, knowledge, power tokens, and battle die cubes near the board. Also place the battle dice and room dice near the board.

Place 6 scarabs in their indicated spots in the Throne Room at the center of the board. Then place 1 scarab in each of the rooms in the inner ring.

Add 3 additional scarabs around the board using the room dice, re-rolling if you would place a scarab in a room where one already exists.

Player Setup

Each player chooses a character they want to play and takes the matching board and places it in front of them. They take four of the translucent tracking cubes, and place one on the starting health space, and the rest on the start spaces of each of the XP tracks. Note: Wally, a complex character, has different setup rules, which I won’t be covering here but can be found in the rulebook. Place one blue balanced die cube on the bottom space of the Battle Dice track.

Place the character’s standee in the Entrance Hall on the main game board.

Take any starting power or resource tokens as indicated by the player board and place them in your personal supply.

Grab the matching deck of action cards for the character. Set aside the Shadow Steps card, then shuffle the deck and draw two additional cards to form your starting hand of three cards. Place the deck face-down to the left of your player board.

Fae Monster setup

Select which monster you would like to play, and then follow the individual setup instructions for that particular monster as found on the back of the board and in the rulebook. Here’s what the Chaos Ogre setup looks like when completed:

Gameplay

Determine who will go first. Play then will proceed clockwise for the rest of the game.

On a player’s turn, you have one mandatory action that you must do, and multiple optional actions which may be taken. These actions may be taken in any order.

Mandatory Action

You must play one action card on your turn, but it may be played at any point during the turn.

To play an action card, you choose one from your hand. Some cards may have a resource cost that needs to be paid to play it; these are indicated by red icons on the card.

Place the action card above an empty time of day slot above the player board or recruited companion. Cards may be placed face-up or face-down.

After placing the card, you must immediately advance the time of day ring to a space matching the time of day you placed you placed the action card. The time of day ring must always be advanced by at least one space. If advancing the time of day ring moves the ring to a new day, then you must also advance the day corridor ring by one.

Finally you will resolve the action for the card. A face-up card allows you the choice to take some or all of the actions indicated on the card, while a face-down card gives you either a move action, an attack action, or grants you 1 resource of your choice. Some action cards will provide effects that persist while the card remains in play.

Action cards also have bonus icons in the upper right and left corners that show half of a resource, or half of a wild symbol. When you are able to place cards so that symbols match up (any symbol may match with a wild), then while the cards are in play you will either get additional hits or blocks in battle, or reduction in resource costs, depending on the completed symbols. If two wild symbols match, then for as long as the cards remain in play, you can choose a different benefit every time you battle something or pay resources.

Player Actions

These come mostly from playing an action card, but also can be the result from using room actions, character powers, companion abilities, and warden tactic cards.

Attacking

You may only attack enemies in your current location, unless another action or power says otherwise. If there are both scarabs and the Fae monster in the location, only the scarabs may be targeted as they defend the monster.

1. Add any blocks and hits from action cards played in front of you, matched bonus icons, currently played warden tactic cards, recruited companions, and XP track bonuses.
2. Add any hits from Lady Weirdwood if she is assisting in battle.
3. Roll battle dice. These may include ones as indicated on your player board, from warden tactic cards, from powers, from action cards, or even by stealing which is an ability of Wally’s. Add to the dice result the blocks and hits from step 1.
4. Add any blocks or hits that powers grant after battle.

Have another player roll the indicated dice for the monster, and compare results. Scarabs will each only roll one blue balanced die. Blocks cancel hits. Note: if the scarab rolls a burst symbol on their die, they will escape the room unless the passage is blocked.

When a character takes damage, you may remove it from any combination of the health or forged battle dice tracks, or from power tokens in your supply. You never fall lower than the bottom space on either track.

Scarabs can each only take one hit to defeat. Upon defeat, you may either keep it as a resource, gaining 1 XP, or return it to the supply, gaining 2 XP. Each Fae monster handles combat differently; see their individual rules for details.

If there are no longer any foes left in the room after the battle, you may then take the room action.

Moving

• You may move from the room you are currently in to another room.
• You may move as far as you want, as long as the rooms and corridors are connected.
• You must end your movement if you enter a room with scarabs or the Fae monster inside. If you have an additional movement symbol, you may use it to then leave that room.
• You may use the action of a room you have stopped in, as long as the room does not have any monsters.

Portaling

A portal action allows you to move to any other room of the mansion.

Using Room Actions

• Can be taken when ending a move as long as no monsters are within.
• Can be taken after a battle, as long as no enemies remain in the room.
• Can be taken when certain powers or action cards specify.

Forging Battle Dice

When an action indicates you can forge a battle die, then you would pay the resources indicated in the next open spot on the battle dice track on your player board. You then have your choice of placing either a balanced, attack, or defensive die cube in that spot, which will grant you that same die in future battles.

When you forge your last battle die, you gain 4 XP. If you lose your last battle die and re-forge it, you will again gain another 4 XP.

Recruiting Companions

When an action card, power, or room action allows you to recruit a companion, you can choose one of the four face-up companions, pay their indicated resources, and place them to the right of your player board. As you recruit more companions, the cost will increase by 2 additional resources of your choosing per companion previously recruited.

Acquiring Warden Tactic Cards

Acquire the top warden tactic card from the deck. Place it in your player area; you may play it onto in action card in the future as an optional action.

Clearing Room Blight

When a room is blighted, you cannot use its action. If you are in a blighted room with no enemies, you may pay the resource printed on the blighted side of the room tile to flip it back to its normal side. You will gain the XP shown on the room, and may also use the room action after clearing the blight.

Healing and Hand Limit

The position on the health track is also the player’s hand size. A character’s health may never go above 6, or drop below 1. If your health ever reaches 6, you gain 2 XP. You may draw cards above your hand limit, but must discard to your limit at the end of the turn.

Gaining and Spending XP

You may gain XP from multiple sources. When you do, you must spend it as part of the action or event that granted the XP. You may spend XP in any combination across the power, battle, and tactics tracks.

If you land on or move past a resource icon on a track, you gain that particular one-time bonus. If you land on or move past a sword or shield icon, you permanently gain an additional hit or block when battling.

Reaching the end of an XP track grants an immediate bonus unique to each track.

Optional Actions

All optional actions are available to players on their turn, as long as they have the available resources or cards.

Using Character Power

Each character has its own set of 3 unique powers. At any time on a player’s turn, they may each be used once per turn. To use a power, pay the resources listed, then perform the action described. Character powers also require the expenditure of power tokens.

Using Companion Abilities

Companions each offer unique abilities that may be used at any time on your turn. Some may require you to exhaust the card; the companion’s ability will then be unusable until you reset all of your action cards.

Playing Warden Tactic Cards

When you play an action card you may choose to play one of your acquired warden tactic cards on top of the action card. You gain the benefit of the warden tactic card, and the card icon bonuses on those cards are always wild so will always create a bonus icon.

Ending Your Turn

After finishing the mandatory and optional actions, you must end your turn following these steps:

1. Resolve Monster Cards. This is based on the particular Fae monster’s unique rules. In general, to resolve a monster card, you take the top card of the Fae monster deck, and first follow the steps on the front of the card, and then turn it over and resolve the back. There are four different types of monster cards, but all of them will have you advancing the time of day by a certain number of spaces.

   

2. Reset Action Cards. If all of the time of day slots above your player board and companions are full, then this step is mandatory. You will perform a scarab phase (see below), discard any warden tactic cards, discard any played action cards, and refresh any exhausted companions. This step may be optionally taken before those slots are completely filled.
3. Check your hand of action cards. If it is greater than your current health, then discard to that number. If it is smaller than your current health, then draw cards until you reach that number.

Scarab Phase

Whenever you reset your action cards, you must perform a scarab phase. This involves moving scarabs out of their current rooms, and spawning new scarabs.

Should two or more scarabs end up in the same room, then the room is blighted. Flip the room tile to its blighted side. The action for the room is now unusable unless a character comes into the room and pays the indicated resources to flip it back over to its regular side.

Game End

Players win if they are able to reduce the Fae monster’s health to zero before any losing conditions are met. Players lose if A) the players must move the Day Corridor Ring from day 12 back to day 1, or B) the Fae monster achieves its specific win condition.

Why You Should Play Weirdwood Manor

Weirdwood Manor is the freshman game from Greyridge Games, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at it and playing it. It’s always a delight getting a polished prototype from a game company, and this one certainly falls in that category. While there may still be small tweaks made to the final product, a lot of time and care has obviously been put into this project already. According to the Kickstarter campaign, Weirdwood Manor has been in development for the last 2 1/2 years.

Even though this will be their first published board game, this is not Greyridge Games’ first foray into the world of Weirdwood Manor. Greyridge Games’ team, and their parent company Relish Studios, created the Weirdwood Manor universe back in 2015 as an interactive iOS app, followed by the Weirdwood Manor book trilogy, which began publication in 2020. While I was unfamiliar with those projects prior to this review, playing the game has certainly sparked my interest in the world.

Weirdwood Manor can probably best be described as a Pandemic-style game. Instead of diseases, you’ll be working together with your fellow players to defeat a Fae monster, playing characters with unique abilities. And instead of outbreaks, you’ll have clockwork scarabs multiplying and moving through the manor. Those scarabs don’t pose much of a personal threat to the characters, but they will interfere with players’ plans and generally gum up the works.

However, as opposed to Pandemic, Weirdwood Manor functions as much more of an adventure game. You’ll be running around, gathering resources, battling enemies, and leveling up your character to become stronger. Companions provide permanent new abilities as well.

One of the most unique aspects of the game is its use of time as a mechanism. You’ll have to consider carefully where to place your action cards on your player board, as you could inadvertently end up advancing a day much quicker than you’d like. And you’re constantly battling against the clock. While there are some powers that will allow you to reverse time, more often than not the clock is ticking down as you race to defeat the monster before the end of the 12th day.

Additionally, the layout of the manor is constantly shifting, thanks to the use of the two rings which not only track the day and time of day, but function as hallways. But not all doors in the mansion are always open, and you may end up blocking a path for a room that a player may want to enter. Or potentially worse, a character may become trapped in a room. Each time of day has three different positions that you can choose from when moving that ring, so communication and planning between the players can hopefully avoid those situations.

Besides the time mechanics of the game, there are a lot of other things I like about Weirdwood Manor. On a surface note, the artwork is evocative, and there’s a lot of great humor to be found. Look no further then a unique player power called, “Abraca-Stab-Ra” to see what I mean.

The game plays very smoothly, though some of the turns can take a little long as you can really string together combos of cards and actions, which can be very satisfying from a gameplay standpoint. There’s also a high replayability factor, between the six very different included characters, the three very different Fae monsters, and the random placement of the rooms during setup. And that’s not even taking into account the stretch goals from the Kickstarter campaign, which will add even more variety and ensure that each game plays out very differently from the last.

This can be a challenging co-op, and the rolling of dice in combat can lead to some big swings occasionally. However, the choices a player makes while building up their characters during the game can certainly help mitigate the dice rolls quite a bit. I also appreciate that even though characters can take damage, there is no player elimination. Rather, the damage will decrease a character’s effectiveness until and unless a player takes actions to restore that character.

While it seems like there’s a lot going on in the game, it’s actually pretty easy to learn. It’s also helpful that there are 5 player aids included, as well as guides to the rooms and iconography in the back of the rulebook. Additionally, there’s a Group XP variant, which simplifies character leveling and is perfect for both inexperienced gamers, and for children younger than the suggested age of 14 and up.

Weirdwood Manor is a fun, challenging co-op game that will have you constantly involved, even when it’s not your turn. You won’t always get those super big turns where your actions domino into letting you take several other actions, but when you do, it’s really satisfying. And even on turns where you may not be able to accomplish as much, you’ll still be growing your character and helping set up other players to take their actions. I’m definitely looking forward to getting the game to my table.

For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Weirdwood Manor Kickstarter page!

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.