Court of the Dead: Mourners Call

Product Information

Each round players also draw Wallows cards, which give challenges, in return for rewards. Not completing a Wallows card challenge can result in a consequence. The Court of the Dead Wallows cards, Ulterior Motives, and Mourner cards. On The Tabletop You are a Mourner – an allegiant of Death – dedicated to realizing his noble ambition to end the celestial war and restore balance to the universe. However, Death’s purpose includes your own ulterior motives. You and your fellow Mourners must unite and rise, or fall together. But only one Mourner will achieve their particular vision of the Underworld united. Your task will not be easy. While the Underworld is united in its purpose, it is divided in its strategy to achieve that aim. There are three factions in the Land of the Dead: Bone, Flesh, Spirit. Each is a unique path to rise up against Heaven and Hell. I feel that the co-operative element is just bolted on and doesn’t really play out the way it was initially planned for I think. It's more like a random tax you have to pay each round. Resolve Locations– Finally, after all of the above, players gain bonuses from each location and faction they control in terms of majority. These rewards most often come as Etherea or Faction Points which will translate into points at the end of the game. Followers of Flesh thrive in chaos. They’re impulsive, and don’t mind if plans change last minute. As creative creatures, they can bend a situation to their will. Sometimes it’s difficult to discern what they’re truly passionate about, because passion radiates from each of them as they throw themselves headfirst into everything they do. With their emotions constantly fluctuating between strong and uncontrollable, they are the greatest friends as well as the greatest enemies — and sometimes, they’re both.

The miniatures themselves were very lush, but all in all, they aren’t a necessity and could have been another token. Now to my main and really only gripe about the game. Hidden objectives. I feel these should be small additions to the main end game scoring, a couple of little extra points. However, with Court of the Dead your hidden objective can radically swing the scoring, so much so that you have to skip whole swathes of the game because achieving your objective will be far more beneficial. My objective was that I would get double points for unity tokens. All I was doing for the whole game was farming unity. I didn’t buy units, claim locations or any of the other aspects. To be fair, I can't even comment on those aspects.

Welcome to the Underworld

Etherea Distribution– The first player rolls dice to determine the total amount of Etherea, then divides it with an “I split, you choose” mechanic.

Court of the Dead: The Chronicle of the Underworld' by Tom Gilliland, Landry Q. Walker, Corrina Sara Bechko and Sideshow Collectibles is an imaginary tour through the Underworld with an official and unofficial tour guide. I’m currently designing one of the seven different writing systems used by the nobility in my imaginary world that I’d love to see printed and published, but that will never ever happen because I write like an angsty teen and also because much of my imaginary universe is eerily similar to an universe I won’t name but its name sounds somewhat like Smiskworld.” Death, in this book is portrayed as a more tragic character. An entity that is more of a shepherd than a hunter. He is called the Alltaker because that is his divinely appointed task, to take all that lives and guide it toward its afterlife. Death knows of the great injustice that has being inflicted upon the essence of the departed and thusly, the Court of the Dead was born. While there are many stories to be had among the lands of the Underworld, but thus overarching story continues to be among the most compelling. It makes the reader yearn to dive in deeper. If this is truly the fate that awaits a soul that burns particularly bright, the Death’s Court does not seem like such a bad place to end up.

Off The Shelf

Those that look upon me see a form most pleasing to their desires, for it is easier to blind oneself with guile than to bear witness to the truth of our nature.”-Gethsemoni, the Dead Queen In summary, it’s a good game, but other similar games such as Blood Rage do it better and are far less fiddly, even the hidden objectives are far more balanced.