 Best Sellers | | Home Thunderstone (AEG) Board Game | |
|  | |  | | | Thunderstone (AEG) Board Game | | | | | SKU:
AEG5012 | | Availability:
Out of stock | | | WARNING:| CHOKING HAZARD -- Small parts. Not for children under 3 yrs. |
| | | For ages the vile Doom Knights have sought to gather the remaining Thunderstones to fulfill a prophecy of corruption over the lands. Now the first Thunderstone has been discovered in the Dungeons of Grimhold and the Doom Knights have sent their minions to claim the relic. The Villagers of Barrowsdale gather brave souls to face the dungeon and keep the Thunderstone out of the hands of the Doom Knights... Thunderstone is a fantasy deck-building game. Fight the evils of the dungeon to prove your worth. Gain powerful weaponry and level into new and mighty hero classes. Claim the best cards and survive to take the Thunderstone. | | | | | |
|
| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 11.63 inches | | Product Width: | 11.63 inches | | Product Height: | 3.38 inches | | Product Weight: | 3.2 pounds | | Package Length: | 11.7 inches | | Package Width: | 11.6 inches | | Package Height: | 2.8 inches | | Package Weight: | 3.25 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 22 reviews |
| |
| | Features | Will you claim the Thunderstone?Build up your character as you playOver 500 Cards for replay valueGame design by Michael ElliottIllustrated by fantasy artist Jason Engle
| |
| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 22 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 found the following review helpful:
 Plays very well with the new rules Feb 12, 2010
By Chris P. Zogheib
"Rylune"
The first thing I will say is what the owner of the game store told me to convince me to buy Thunderstone. It plays like Dominion. If you are a fan of Dominion, chances are you will like this game. In fact I think it is better for a couple of reasons. First, remember how Dominion games tend to end quickly in 2 player or with certain card setups? Everyone grabs 2 or 3 Provinces and it is over. The game ending card in this game, the Thunderstone, is guaranteed to be in the bottom 10 cards of the 31 card monster deck. That means everyone will have a chance to build their deck to work well. Also the victory point cards (monsters) are worth gold when they end up in your hand. In Dominion the victory cards are generally dead cards during the game. So often people ignore the lower point cards and rush straight for the big ones. There are times when you will kill the monster worth 0 or 1 victory points just because it is worth 3 or 4 gold when it is in your hand.
If you have never played Dominion I will try to explain. You can find actual game rules at AEG's (the producer) website or on Board Game Geek. It is a deck building game. That is, you building a deck as you play the game. You can either go to the Village and improve your deck or go the dungeon and kill monsters. Generally monsters are the only source of victory points. There are a few exceptions but you cannot win without killing some monsters.
You start each game with a set hand of 12 cards and start each turn with 6 cards. As you kill monsters, buy cards, or level up heroes you put those new cards into your discard pile. At the end of your turn, discard your hand and draw 6 new cards. When you have no more cards left to draw you shuffle your discard pile and it becomes your deck. So as the game progresses you are adding cards to your deck which will eventually end up as part of your hand.
The goal is to have as many victory points as possible when the game ends. The game ends when a player either gets the Thunderstone (by killing the monster carrying it) or when the Thunderstone makes it to the end of the dungeon. There are 31 monster cards in the monster deck and the Thunderstone is shuffled into the bottom 10. At any given point, only 3 monsters are revealed. So it does take time to play a full game (30 minutes to an hour for most games depending on what cards are in play and how many players).
When building your deck throughout the game remember that your ultimate goal is to get victory points, which means you have to be able to kill monsters, which means you need to have a high attack score when you go to the dungeon and some cards that produce light. You can read how exactly the combat works in the rules but I wanted to explain that to someone that was new to deck building card games.
Every game has 3 random monster types, 4 random heroes, and 8 random village cards. So chances are you will never play the exact same game twice. A strategy that works great one game may not work at all the next. Maybe one game you have a lot of fighter heroes but not much magic. Maybe next game you play with a lot of monsters that are hard to kill without magic. One game you may have heroes that produce light by themselves. Next game you may have to buy cards whose only job is to produce light.
All of this makes the game have great replay value. Since the setups constantly change, your strategies will change, meaning it will not feel like the same exact game over and over again.
The rules that come with the game are a bit of a mess but fortunately AEG produced a new set of rules that lay out turn orders and answer a lot of questions. Find the new rules online. Also there are rules for solo play either at AEG or BoardGame Geek. The solo format is a great way to learn how to build faster decks. and unlike many games that are meant for 2+ but have solo rules, the solo variant plays very well.
The game is for 2-5 players. Unfortunately there is no way to have more than 5 players now. The 12 card decks everyone starts with are the same every game and there are only enough Militia cards for 5 players. If you want to try 6-8 players the game may work, though you might need to tweak some things, but you will need more than one copy of the game.
The cards fit perfectly into standard card sleeves. I have all of my cards in Dragonshield sleeves.
Overall it is a fun game with a lot of variety and is right up there with any other card game. I've played about 30-40 multiplayer games and 10 solo games and still enjoy the challenge every time I pull it out. I would recommend it to anyone that liked Dominion or other deck building games. For someone that never tried a similar game but liked CCGs like Magic, I'd say give it a chance. The style may be different but it is easy to understand for anyone that has played CCGs. It will probably take anywhere from a few turns all the way to a full game or two to realize what is going on. But once you learn the basics you can get fairly good at the game after just a couple of playthroughs.
20 of 21 found the following review helpful:
 Fantastic card game with adventure Sep 14, 2010
By Trent Howell
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RR23PTOLANBWT Our boys have loved Thunderstone. Our 12 year old call it his favorite game so far - and believe me, that's saying a lot considering our game collection is around 140 games.
The game play is so unique in how you build your deck of card with heroes, weapons, and spells so you can go into the dungeons to battle monsters to gain experience and victory points. If you've played a game like Dominion, you'll understand the basics of how to play. But for us, we'll be playing Thunderstone a lot more than Dominion - since there is a lot more purpose in what you put into your card deck and how you gain victory points.
And the artwork on the cards is fabulous. It really helps you get into the adventure theme of the game.
You can read even more about our review on our game review website [...].
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Deck Building Dungeon Crawing Extrordinnaire! Sep 25, 2010
By N. Leonardi
This is an excellent deck-building game, and I'd go so far to say that for me it is better than the game which clearly inspired it, Dominion. I love Dominion, but there's just inherently something more satisfying about gathering a party of heroes and journeying into a dungeon to kill monsters. The wide variety of different heroes, monsters, and village items ensures that no two games are ever identical.
It takes a fair amount of strategy to build an effective deck, and there are many ways to go about it depending on which cards are in the game. I have found that it is ideal to play with 3-4 players. 5 seems a few too many (even adding extra heroes/items, the balance still seems off), and even though you can play with just 2 players (or even solo, really) it cuts down on the overall strategy when you do so. The amount of luck in this game is not all that big; yes, what you draw does determine what you can do but that is one reason you have to be very, very careful about what cards go into your deck and the overall balance.
One of the things that I think makes this game better than Dominion is that there are a lot of ways to destroy cards (remove them from the game) and keep your deck down to a manageable size. In Dominion there's a lot of discard effects but not really a huge number of ways to remove cards and reduce your deck size, and the deck can get unwieldy in longer games. In Thunderstone, your deck at the end of the game is generally around 30-40 cards max if you are careful and keep your deck balanced.
I also like that when released, the game itself and its expansions (one so far, but more in the works) are only $30, which is $15 cheaper than a Dominion expansion when it is first released. If you like Dominion, you will likely really love this game. It's very well balanced, unique, and a lot of fun to play overall. It moves along at a good clip too and usually plays in about 30-45 minutes depending on the number of players and their familiarity with the rules, which aren't all that complicated.
In terms of downsides, the cards are a little bit on the flimsy side, and I have noticed that some of the more common ones that are in use every game are starting to come apart a bit after just a few games of play. It's not a huge problem though, and you can always place proctors around your cards if that sort of thing really bugs you. Also, when playing with new players, it's easy for a more experienced player to really run up the score, which can get discouraging. Although, the rules and strategy are fairly easy to pick up and after a couple of games the experience playing field is a bit more even, so that's nice.
Overall, Thunderstone is a well-designed, well-balanced game that is a lot of fun to play and I highly recommend it.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Deck building and monster fighting fun! Sep 03, 2010
By Rachel E. Gray
"Reg"
Thunderstone is a fun and cool game that is part card game, part deck building game, and part role playing game. My friends and I enjoyed playing Dominion, which is a deck building game, but I was always frustrated by how pointless the game seemed: you don't use your deck for anything except buying more cards for your deck, and the way to win is to buy the most land cards, which are useless until the counting up of them at the end. It all seemed like a futile effort. So I was very excited to hear about Thunderstone (btw, it's fun to shout "Thunderstone!"). Finally, a deck building game in which you get to use your deck! And what better way to use it than to fight monsters in a dungeon? It's Dominion meets D&D!
First there's the setup: you create a village, which is stacks of cards that you all can buy to build your deck, out of heroes and items that you'll need to fight the monsters. Then you create a dungeon, which is a stack of monster cards that you'll all have to fight. This part makes the game very variable, since you'll very rarely have the same village cards and heroes to choose from or the same monsters to fight. So every unique setup creates a truly different game.
Then you play: first you want to start building your deck by buying cards from the village (and later by upgrading heroes to better heroes). When you have more of a deck, if you have a good hand you can flip over a dungeon card and try to defeat a monster. The game will probably last for quite a while.
It might take a few times playing to really get the hang of how best to decide what to buy and how to use what you have, but we had a lot of fun even before we really figured it out. The biggest problem with the game is that the box doesn't contain a way to organize the cards the way Dominion does, which can make setup take longer than it otherwise might. We haven't played TOO many times, so it's possible that other problems might come up, but I hope not (and I'll update this if any do).
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Feb 19, 2010
By Kenneth Porter
If you liked Dominion, you'll enjoy this game. It takes the best of Dominion, and adds a bit of D&D to it, and the result is terrific. Easy randomization of the game card allows for endless variety. Well done.
See all 22 customer reviews on Amazon.com
| |
| |
| |  | |  |
|
Recently Viewed | You may also like ... |
