Designers: Clayton Helme, Brooklynn Lundberg, Brennon Moncur, Ian Tate

Artists: Stefanie Gustafsson (Aeon’s End: The Void, Aeon’s End: War Eternal, Coup, Fickle, Runika and the Six-sided Spellbooks, Whistle Stop), Alex Hanson (Assemblage of Eternity), Hector Sevilla Lujan, Rhett Mason, Jon Troy Nickel

Publisher: Succubus Publishing (Cartography, ILIOS, King’s Ransom)

Genre/Mechanisms: action point allowance system, cooperative play, dice rolling, grid movement, hand management, miniatures, modular board, storytelling, variable player powers

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Pret-a-Porter is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total more than 56x the initial funding goal, with 5 days left to go on the campaign!

Player Count: 1-4

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: heavy

Risk: medium-high

What It’s About:  A re-printing of Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1, along with two big expansions for Acts 2 and 3. This story-focused dungeon crawler also boasts several types of smaller expansions, including: Pirates of Elenia Adventure Pack, The Cave Sickle Queen Bounty Pack Expansion, The Pit Boss Bounty Pack Expansions, Trail of a Princess Micro Adventure, the Alternate Antagonists Variant Pack, a Promo Pack, the Silvia Dark Mother Figure Promo Figure, Resin Kits for each of the 4 main characters, playmats, extra dice, art books, and an Update Pack for backers of the original Kickstarter.

How It Works: Middara is somewhere between a narrative, story-telling game and a dungeon-crawler. However, there are no classes; each of the 4 main characters are customizable and can grow, level up, and gain attributed based on player choice. The art style also bucks typical fantasy standards, and of populating their world with goblins, trolls, and the like, they’ve created original monsters pulling from both from anime and western Ameritrash. Players can choose from Crawl Mode (one-off scenarios) or Adventure Mode, which plays through the narrative story in campaign form.

Comparisons:  Folklore may be a good comparison, although the art style and the feel of the world is very different. But Folklore is another gigantic, expensive narrative/dungeon-crawler hybrid, although it may lean a little closer to D&D than dungeon-crawler. Games like Batman: Gotham City Chronicles probably don’t have enough narrative story in their scenarios to really compare, and even Gloomhaven is lighter on story than Middara. Middara has a storyline that spans 100+ hours, and in that sense, The 7th Continent and presumably Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, may also bear a heavier comparison, although those games may lean a little too far into the storytelling side of things vs. Middara’s focus on fighting, dungeoning, and crawling.

What Should I Pledge?:
$115 Through the Portal: the core game, Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1, with all free daily unlocks and free stretch goals.
$175 Returning to the Portal: for those who already have the previous printing of the core game, this includes the 1.1 Update Pack, Middara: Unintentional Malum Acts 2 & 3, Trail of a Princess Micro-Adventure, and all free daily unlocks and free stretch goals.
$275 All 3 Acts: the core game, Middara: Unintentional Malum Acts 1-3, with all free daily unlocks and free stretch goals.
$300 Returning to the Portal (with Swag): the Returning to the Portal pledge, plus the Bounty Pack: Cave Sickle Queen, all Resin Kits, extra dice, and all paid stretch goals.
$500 Through the Portal (with Swag): the All 3 Acts pledge, plus Trail of a Princess Micro-Adventure, KS1 Promo Pack, Adventure Pack: Pirates of Elenia – Hunt for the Mother, Bounty Pack: Cave Sickle Queen, Alternate Antagonists Pack, all Resin Kits, extra dice, Set of Playmats (4), and all paid stretch goals.

Add-Ons:
$50 Adventure Pack: Pirates of Elenia – Hunt for the Mother
$35 Bounty Pack: Cave Sickle Queen
$35 Bounty Pack: The Pit Boss
$35 Bounty Pack: The Collector
$30 1.1 Update Pack
$15 Trail of a Princess Micro-Adventure
$30 KS1 Promo Pack
$15 Alternate Antagonists Variant Pack
$15 Sylvia, Dark Mother Cultist Promo Figure
$20 Casual Nightingale Resin Kit
$20 Casual Room Resin Kit
$20 Casual Remi Resin Kit
$20 Casual Zeke Resin Kit
$20 Girtiya, The Imprisoned Witch, Dark Gate Cross-Promotion Resin Kit
$20 The Coven Mother, Green Briar Games Cross-Promotion Resin Kit
$20 Dreamwalker Lymn, Lvl99 Cross-Promotion Resin Kit
$10 The Sexiest Sleeves (pack of 100 large sleeves)
$15 1.1 Rulebook
$25 Extra Dice Set
$30 Set of 4 Playmats
$30 Art Book Volume 1
$30 Art Book Volume 2

KS Exclusives:
None listed, but there’s so much stuff here that I’d be shocked if a lot of it was not included with any eventual retail release.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S. you’re looking at $500 for the Through the Portal (with Swag), $15 for the early backer Silvia Dark Mother Cultist Promo Figure if you missed it, and $70 in shipping for a total of $585. If you want the Art Books, add another $60. The only sleeves currently offered through the campaign are for the Custom cards, which make up 91 of the 909 different cards in Act 1. There is no estimate yet for Acts 2 and 3, but if we’re to assume a similar amount, you’d need $30 worth of The Sexiest Sleeves to cover the Custom/Large cards only for all 3 Acts. The Art Books and sleeves for the Custom-sized cards would then bring your total to $675.

Middara: Unintentional Malum – The Complete Trilogy completes its Kickstarter on Wednesday, July 24th and tentatively ships in December 2021 (May 2020 for the Act 1 base game, Update Pack if applicable, Rulebook, Promo Pack, Resin Kits, Art Book 1, Playmats & Extra Dice).