Elden Ring: Stormveil Castle review – Great minis, lacking gameplay
Summary
Steamforged Games’ Elden Ring: Stormveil Castle translates the Lands Between to the tabletop with excellent miniatures and faithful boss set-pieces, but the experience is undermined by fiddly components, errors in the rulebook, and a combat system that leans heavily on luck rather than player strategy. Exploration and narrative segments exist, but they’re often thin or poorly written. Boss mechanics add flavour, yet the underlying combat randomness and high downtime drag the game down.
Key Points
- Miniatures are highly detailed and visually impressive — a clear highlight.
- Rulebook and component quality issues: missing examples, grammatical errors and loose pages create a poor first impression.
- Gameplay splits into Narrative, Exploration and Combat; Narrative is the weakest and often feels clunky.
- Exploration uses hex tiles and location tokens, with mechanics to refresh exhausted spots via Sites of Grace; weather decks limit grinding.
- Attribute decks are central to all checks; poor deck variance plus no redraws makes many Hardship tests feel arbitrarily punitive.
- Combat uses a Marching Order and stance/column positioning that’s novel, but the random initiative and card draws make outcomes swingy and can produce severe player downtime or unfair deaths.
- Boss fights introduce interesting individual mechanics, but luck-heavy core systems stop them from consistently delivering satisfying encounters.
- Tarnished can be respecced between scenarios, but some classes get limited benefit from the expansion’s gear.
Why should I read this?
Short take: if you’re after gorgeous Elden Ring minis for the shelf, this will make you grin — but if you want a tight, tactical co-op board game, brace yourself. I’ve read the rules, tested the fights and saved you the faff: great look, frustrating play.
Content summary
The box can function standalone or as an expansion for the Realm of the Grafted King. Rules are generally understandable but contain notable errors (e.g., incorrect memory slot example, missing boss card counts). The physical rulebook was poorly bound in the reviewer’s copy. Exploration offers hex-map play with events, materials, Stakes of Marika and weather decks to stop infinite grinding. Hardships are resolved via customisable Attribute decks; because players tend to specialise, many checks feel impossible without luck. Combat features a marching-order initiative, stance rows and column-based targeting. Players use action cards and Attribute draws for attacks and defence; the Draw action (refilling hand) is crucial, so getting stuffed in the Marching Order often means taking multiple enemy activations with no recourse. Bosses add unique twists, but the pervasive RNG and downtime blunt enjoyment.
Context and relevance
This release is relevant for board-gamers and video-game adaptation watchers: it highlights a common pitfall — excellent production values (licensed minis, art) can’t fully mask design flaws. For fans of Elden Ring lore, the box captures atmosphere and boss spectacle, but designers aiming to adapt tough videogame combat to a tabletop should consider predictable player agency over heavy-handed randomness. The review is useful for people deciding whether to buy for minis/collecting, for groups who tolerate high-randomness co-op, or for those who expect tight tactical combat.