Keep the campfire alight

In Set a Watch you control a team of 4 adventurers on a journey to defeat and seal away the evil Unhallowed. To reach your final destination you have to battle through 8 location cards though.

It is a dice-allocation game. At each location card you have to choose a character that will rest and prepare in the camp and three characters that will stand watch during the night. You use your rolled dice to do camp actions and to use abilities and deal damage during the combat.

The enemies coming in the night form a line and you are only able to see the first few of them, depending on the strength of your campfire. As enemies get revealed or get to the first position their abilities could trigger so you have to use your dice wisely and handle the monsters as efficiently as possible.

I love the enemy design in this game. They are all very exciting and thematic. For example a fire elemental gets stronger the stronger your campfire is. Or the zombie horde gets bonus health according to the top card of the graveyard (discard pile).

There are summoning cards and acolytes which are the most dangerous as they can summon the Unhallowed. These are stronger elite monsters that could spell doom for the party of adventurers.

The different adventurers have multiple abilities that can be useful in different situations. They also have different sets of dice. For example a witch only has D4s but strong abilities, while a barbarian has D12s that decimate enemies.

The way you randomize the locations, monsters, Unhallowed and adventurers make the replayability exceptional. This gets further enhanced by the expansion that is being fulfilled right now: Swords of the Coin. Other than bringing more of everything it introduces a merchant that you can buy items from with coins you gather.

I love this game, I think the theme really shines through. I do think it’s mostly suitable for solo play though.