Grimcoven review: "One of the best boss battlers I've ever played, hands-down"

When it comes to board games with table presence, few studios manage to deliver a spectacle of plastic miniatures and cardboard goodies quite like Awakened Realms. Games like their Alien-inspired Nemesis series or their premium rereleases such as Castles of Burgundy are all wonders and easy to marvel at. One of their brand new releases takes that same quality the studio is known for and injects the bloody and visceral creepiness of FromSoftware's beloved Bloodborne series, resulting in the massive Grimcoven boss battler game.

Having run through the gauntlet a few times now with friends and on my own, Grimcoven may just be my favorite boss battler I have played, though it unfortunately still has some annoyances that prevent it from reaching some of the loftiest heights of the best board games.

Grimcoven features & design

• Set in a dark Victorian universe
• A boss-battler rather than a dungeon crawler
• Gorgeous miniatures available separately/in premium editions

In Grimcoven, players take up the mantle of Hunters dispatched to deal with Griefbounds – the vicious and deadly prey that serve as your goal for victory. In order to successfully complete your missions, Hunters need to rely on Lament, a special resource that allows you to evolve and strengthen your Hunter, but at the risk of corrupting them to the point where you may turn into a Griefbound yourself, requiring your former teammates to put you out of your misery too. All this is done through a deceptively simple yet tactically rich gameplay rotation of slotting dice you’ve rolled into set actions, letting you take actions such as moving, attacking, or helping others. Despite its appearance and the sheer size Grimcoven can take up on your table, actually playing it is surprisingly quick to grasp, which my friends and I were pleasantly taken aback by.

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Playing through Grimcoven reminds me a lot of my time with CMON’s – well, now Asmodee’s – Cthulhu: Death May Die series of games, being a heavily modular game, allowing for massive amounts of ways to enjoy it. But in place of working to complete objectives as you do in Death May Die, Grimcoven is strictly focused on combat and surviving until you can defeat the boss. This modularity stems from three core pillars: your character, the enemies, and the level. You can then add to the experience with numerous expansion packs featuring extra foes, Hunters, or even gorgeous miniatures. (While they're not featured in the standard version, deluxe editions and miniature add-ons do exist.)

However, it is in all this content that my two biggest issues reside – the setup and the storage of it all.

For my friends and me, the most annoying aspect of Grimcoven wasn’t the attacks that killed multiples of us at once, or the unfortunate events that spawned monsters; it was the actual setup of the game. While playing the game itself is surprisingly smooth, getting the game going is where the worst pain we felt came from. Picking specific cards from the various decks, finding the correct tiles, placing them correctly, laying everything out, and trying not to jostle anything out of place is a hassle. This half-hour to 45-minute-long setup (though I could see more intricate layouts taking easily up to the hour mark and beyond) is by far the biggest detractor for me to actually bust out Grimcoven and play it. Which is a real shame because, right now, all I want to do is have my friends over, test out our new character build ideas, and see how well we do. But every time I look at the looming pile of boxes in the corner of my room, leering at me, that excitement drains out, knowing that the setup comes before the fun part.

Speaking of the boxes, my current setup is as follows – the main box containing most of the miniatures, tokens, rulebooks, and player boards; a second, smaller box containing all of the map tiles and some expansion miniatures; and a third box (the one that the card sleeves came in) containing all the cards. While admittedly I do have all of the content for the game, even trying to fit just the base game’s content back in the box once punched proved to be too cramped and a hassle of an endeavor, with no space set for the tiles. The cards will also not fit in the provided space, period, if sleeved.

Awakened Realms isn’t known for having fantastic storage solutions, and I understand that with so much stuff, you can only fit so much safely, but the prospect of lugging all my necessary boxes to my friend’s place is almost as uninviting as the thought of actually setting up the game. Almost. Even the geniuses over on the Grimcoven page forum on BoardGameGeek are still trying to work out and design the best way to store the game. For as gorgeous as all the components are – from the intricately detailed miniatures, dual-layered playboards, and the other high-quality bits – it’s just a shame that the solution to store them is lacking, though I do appreciate the guide they include in the box on how to put things back.

Gameplay

• Huge variety in Hunter gameplay
• 'Lament' corruption is a thrilling feature
• A staggering amount of variation to fight through

The various Hunters that you can pick from all feel completely unique and behave vastly differently from each other, and every game I played with a new character, I found myself having to approach it from a new angle and mindset. The Gunslinger, for example, I loved for its ability to enhance its attacks using bullets I had crafted in previous turns to unload a bunch of hits all in one go. Or, if I felt more like channeling my FF14 character and wanted to go the tank route, I could play as the Keeper and their giant sword. What is extra fun is that each Hunter comes complete with an assortment of weapons and armor you pick from before each game, further letting you tailor and adjust your playstyle to whatever you are feeling for that game. Keeping on the Keeper as an example, one set of gear is more tailored to that tank role, while another gives you more options to dish out the hurt instead of taking it, letting you be more of a frontline fighter instead.

As you battle enemies, you will gather Lament, which will serve as Grimcoven’s experience points that you will use to level up your Hunter, unlocking new abilities from your respective evolution deck or receiving other beneficial boons. Leveling is by far one of my favorite parts of Grimcoven, with every opportunity my friends and I had to pull from our decks of goodies accompanied by a wave of "ooooo"s and "oh damn"s as we read through what new toys we could pick from to add to our arsenals. However, that power doesn’t come free, and there was always a delicious bit of danger in using the Lament, watching our corruption tracks rise. The higher it rose, not only would we get to swap out our awesome Hunter miniatures for even more epic and wild monstrous corrupted versions, but we also would begin risking turning into a Pretender – a wild creation, part Griefbound and part Hunter – resulting in our dear friends turning into just another boss we would need to put down to win. Thankfully, we never reached that point, but simply looking at the various Pretender stat sheets sends shivers down my spine.

Encounters with the Griefbounds offer even more options for players, too. Each of the bosses comes complete with their own booklets featuring increasing levels of challenge that you and your friends are able to attempt to tackle at higher levels. One of the more clever mechanics of Grimcoven that impressed me is how you actually defeat these bosses. The Griefbounds themselves don’t have a health pool per se that you are ticking down with your attacks. Instead, your goal is to deal enough damage to the individual attack cards that compose their attack decks (built from a randomly drawn assortment of possible cards) to destroy them, thus removing them from the rotation, potentially being drawn again.

These attacks hurt. A lot. And unless you manage to deal enough damage to that card, additional, extra painful effects will trigger—and trust me, you do not want those to happen. Single-target attacks can be boosted to deal damage to all players in an area, for example. To help balance things, however, you will always have advance warning as to what attacks will be coming up in the following round, giving you and your team of Hunters time to plan and act accordingly. This advanced notice alleviates nearly all feelings of "cheap draws" that suddenly result in a loss.

Despite your goal being to tackle the boss, that doesn’t mean they are the lone adversary you will be contending with. Smaller minion enemies will be spawning across the map that will further stand in your way, but thankfully are (usually) quick to dispatch, along with more challenging Elites that prove more troublesome. Depending on the challenge of Griefbound you select, different minions and Elites will be picked from the roster of options, with special "named" Elites available for even more of a challenge if you really want to get a swift kick to the shins.

Even at the lowest difficulty levels, which add in some restrictions in terms of what attack cards can be added into the Griefbound’s deck, Grimcoven still manages to deliver a challenge that pushed my friends and me hard, making those rare victories sweet and each loss a hard-fought lesson learned.

When it comes to the battlefields themselves, the layouts are composed of hex-based tiles whose main configuration is set by the boss and challenge you are fighting against, along with some randomized elements such as events and special tiles mixed in. Each Griefbound boss comes with its own book and multiple difficulty levels that dictate different abilities they may have and the specific map setup that you will be doing battle on, composed of various hex tiles that you will need to construct. A smarter person than I would be able to do all the math involved to get the exact number, but all of this culminates in Grimcoven providing what I will simply refer to as "a crap-ton" of possible variations in which to fight through, saying nothing of the additional expansions that add even more Hunters and Griefbounds to pick from.

Should you buy Grimcoven?

When I have managed to push through those thick barriers, with the game set up and my friends and I sat at the table, Grimcoven is an action-packed adventure where nothing is for certain until the final strike lands. This is a game that we gladly take the hits and ask for more, just to keep playing, with bloody smiles on our faces.

It’s unfortunate that the storage and setup are so frustrating, but thankfully, the smoother flow and relatively easy-to-play nature of the rest of the game, on top of just how many options it lets you explore as you play, make this by far one of the best boss-battling board games I have ever played. Setup be damned, I am already chomping at the bit like a ravenous Pretender, waiting for more.

Ratings

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How we tested Grimcoven

As with all of our board game reviews, the reviewer made sure they were intimately familiar with the rules before running multiple sessions with a variety of player-counts to get the most in-depth experience possible.

To find out more about our process, don't miss this guide to how we test board games or the full GamesRadar+ review policy.

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