SANCTUARY: KEEPERS ERA

SANCTUARY: THE KEEPERS ERA (DUSK/DAWN in SOLO MODE review)

If youre into card duel battlers like me, but dont have anyone to play them all the time, dont become depressed! There is a new cool little title on the market, that brings your "MtG itch" some solitary enjoyment...

In my gametesting and this review I decided to concentrate on the non-official solo mode of Sanctuary, provided by a player on BGG (link below), since it simulates a human player, instead of the oficcial mode, where you try to beat an automa with a bit of different set of cards and rules.

The official mode has been reviewed and shown in videos on YouTube, so if youre interested more into that, there you go. I still find the non-oficial one is more fun, but it might be a question of personal preferences.

COMPONENTS

THE CARDS: Art, Theme, Iconography, Fonts, Text

Im always happy to look at the original colorful, very thematic artwork on the cards. They bring their own style to the market, and to be honest – I prefer this kind of visual style before those of the Magic t.G. as we know it today. Its more "alive" somehow.

Also, the iconography is simple, easy to remember, or you just look at the players aid card. Those 7 or 8 icons are nothing to be afraid of, and they look intuitive, so immediately you know what they mean after some plays. Its a whole different story then Volfyirion from the same publisher, where there have been cards with 8 (!) icons on them at once! I couldnt wrap my head around it back then, it was just too much.

Other abilities are written in simple terms (I reviewed the czech version), no problem to play with younger generations. The font is small, but readable, still bigger than in LOTR: LCG, which makes my eyes hurt if I play for more than an hour or so.

THE TOKENS

Paper and crystal like beans, that I call "pearls". Yeah well the pearl tokens are wonderful and shiny. But the paper tokens for attributes, life and so on are just very small, too small for my taste. I prefer my own markings for the sanctuaries for example I use wooden cubes.

THE DECK BOXES

This had to be a hard nut to crack for the publisher. I mean, you have to put about 90+ cards in one box together with a manual and two sets of tokens. AND dividers for the 3 fracions inside. What do you do? You make the box TALLER.

Yes, I believe they used the same trick with Volfyirion... It works just fine. Still I now would have been happier if I would have backed the KS campaign: There the game comes in completion in a bigbox with original playmats and stuff. This way you have two soft paper boxes, which will have to do (until they get destroyed by lot of opening closing, and transport).

GAMEPLAY (NON-OFFICIAL SOLO VARIANT)

LEARNING CURVE

Medium-fast. You actually have two games in one. The main duel system is a classic 1VS1 player and you have to learn those rules first. Then you can switch to the official solo mode, which changes the rules (adds some cards and ignores the enemy sanctuaries). And I tell you honestly, I wasnt impressed by what Ive seen in the previews. I simply prefer to play a duel game like with a human oponent with same rules.

Thats why I was very happy to find in the BGG forums a non-oficial solo variant, which simulates real 2 player games!

It works great: The enemy uses sanctuaries (altough without their specialties), and has a normal deck full of acolytes. Each turn 2 come out and take places according to a priority – diagram. The use 1 slot for both attack and defence.Link to the great working solo variant: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2817155/solo-variant

LUCK

As always with card draw games. You never know what you get next. BUT you can play a bit around cards you dont need in the very moment: At each end phase you might discard whatever you got, and redraw to full 4 cards. Its of course not advised to do too often, because you go into the risk of running out of cards too fast, and that will negatively affect your endgame – the discard pile is not getting reshufled here, instead you destroy 1 sanctuary...

SKILL

Now, since almost each card does something special, you really want to know your deck in forward. At least a little bit. The "sisterhood" I love to play does manipulation tricks with card exhausting/readying. Theyre sorta Bene Gesserit from the Dune, just with a bit Slaanesh flavor added, lol. They look awesome and are awesomely evil, when pumping themselves for each exhausted card. Or exhausting the enemy so it cant defend... Muhaha!

REPLAYABILITY

You have 6 factions in 2 boxes to experiment with, each one very thematic. There is a lot of combinations to experience and discover, which should guarantee a solid replayability. I say solid, because 29 cards in 1 deck (they come in pairs, so its actually 14 cards + 1 master card) is a difference to what we are used from "big" games such as MtG. Still, the game does what it promises: A simplified, yet still very enjoyable card duel.

SPACE REQUIREMENT

Yes, It still fits onto a coffe table of 50x50 cm. It gets a bit tight, but with the solo variant I play (same att/def position for the enemy) its fine. So no high table requirements here.

FUN

The most important question: Is it fun? Hell yeah it is! After you got the rules and get also used to the virtual players priority, you will have the itch play it over and over again, just to try to hit the perfect combo. The situations on the battlefield always vary (even with the low number of cards), so you never know, who is gonna win, even tough your starting hand might be great.

At the moment, Im really enjoying the clashes between the Sisterhood and the Beast fraction (I call them rather than by their original, strange sounding names), even before sleep I was thinking about how to beat the AI next time lol...

So yes, the non-oficial solo is really worth at least a try. Considering in 1 game box (Dusk or Dawn) you get three full fracions (90+ cards) with automa cards, for the price its a very fair deal. And if the game gets under your skin, you can go for the second box.

I can totally recommend the game if you want low time and space investment, fast paced (sometimes too fast) card battler based on thematic combos. Just dont expect a miracle, or another complex huge deckbuilder CCG/LCG/TCG, or youll be disappointed. This does what it is supposed to do, and it does perfectly well.

SCORE 8/10