Designers: Thorbjorn Christensen (Rise of the Necromancers), Christoffer Kyst (Rise of the Necromancers)

Artist: Jonas Springborg (Dead Zone, Kings of War, Rise of the Necromancers)

Publisher: Sore Loser Games (Rise of the Necromancers)

Genre/Mechanisms: area control, cooperative play, dice rolling, variable player powers

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Dawn & Demons is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total more than the initial funding goal with 8 days left to go on the campaign.

Player Count: 1-5

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-light

Risk: medium-high

What It’s About:  An expansion for Rise of the Necromancers, Dawn & Demons can also be played solo or co-op, featuring strategic gameplay and character development in a fantasy-horror setting.

How It Works: While the new expansion adds in solo and cooperative modes, the original game has always been competitive; Dawn & Demons can still be played competitively, with the new expansion adding in the ability for characters to summon demons. Played in competitive mode, on their turns, players execute the following five actions: Play Cards, Raise a Minion, Move, Take an Action, and Place Dominion Counters. During the Play Cards phase, the player can play as many cards from their hands as they’d like. These include Necromancer, Apprentice, Spell, and Item cards. Raising a Minion costs resources, and includes the likes of Zombies, Hell Knights, Ghosts, and Skeletal Dragons. When players Move, they often leave behind Minions to protect their Dominion Counters, fortifying their territories and their area of control. When a Necromancer completes his Move, he must take an action related to the type of space where he finishes. In Land spaces, Necromancers dig for Corpses or collect Resources. In an unguarded Dungeon space, they’ll draw a card from the Dungeon deck that could result in a “Quest-choice.” Libraries reward with Spell cards, and Workshops with Item cards. A player finishing on a City space can attack the City, as long as they don’t already have a Dominion Counter on the space. Landing on an Academy space could result in the player becoming Academy Headmaster, if they have the correctly-colored combination of cards and Minions. Finally, players who played a Spell or Item card during their turn, or have visited a Dungeon, Academy, or City space during their turn, can remove or add a Dominion Counter. The first player to have 13 Dominion Counters placed on the board wins the game.

Comparisons: Obviously the best comparison is to the original game in the series, Rise of the Necromancers. The games are not dungeon crawlers, but rather dudes-on-a-map style gameplay with some additional mechanics added, including combat. Both games play closer to Clash of Cultures and Merchants & Marauders than something like Vindication, while also bearing similarities to Tyrants of the Underdark or Eschaton, without incorporating full-blown deck-building mechanics.

What Should I Pledge?:
$35 Demon: the new game with all applicable stretch goals.
$44 Original Demon: the new game with all applicable stretch goals, plus an upgrade pack for the first edition of Rise of the Necromancers.
$63 Necromancer: a copy of Rise of the Necromancers.
$83 Demon Master: the new game with all applicable stretch goals, plus a copy of Rise of the Necromancers.

Add-Ons:
None.

KS Exclusives:
None.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S. you’re looking at $83 for the Demon Master Pledge plus $15 in shipping for a total of $98.

Dawn & Demons completes its Kickstarter on Friday, September 13th and tentatively ships in July 2020.