Edge of Darkness

Players lead rival guilds vying for control of a city while collectively fending off monstrous threats. The game combines card-crafting with a shared deck, card-driven worker placement, and a Threat Tower system: players sleeve transparent crafting slips onto shared cards to modify effects and claim allegiance, deploy agents to city locations to generate resources and perform actions, and balance limited workers against advancing upgrades. Threat cards accumulate color-coded cubes and trigger attacks when thresholds are reached, sometimes targeting individual players or everyone. Modular locations and double-sided crafting slips create variable setups and evolving strategic choices over 60–120 minutes for 1–4 players.

Players: 1–4 best 3
Playing time: 120 min
Age: 14+
Complexity: 3.5 / 5

6.2 on LudoyaSolo / Solitaire GameOpen DraftingWorker Placement

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About the game

Design: John D. Clair
Art: Nyra Drakae
Damien Mammoliti
Andre Garcia
Ray Greaves
Guillaume Ducos
Isuardi Therianto
+10
Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group

Expansions

See them in Ludoya

Edge of Darkness: Sands of Dunestar2019

Edge of Darkness: Cliffs of Coldharbor2020

Edge of Darkness: Guilds Power Pack Expansion2020

Edge of Darkness: Emissaries of the Vale2022

On Ludoya's tables

Full stats in Ludoya

34
Plays logged: 49
Players: 2h 33m
Average play: 14
In collections: 6
On wishlists

6.2/10

from 10 Ludoya reviews

Balleflass4.0
I find Edge of Darkness to be really interestning on paper, but the gameplay itself is terrible in practice. I dont regret selling it, but I had my hopes up for some new rules for the new KS. The idea of a shared deck builder and card crafter where everyone can use everybodys cards is fantastic and I love that part, but you get to do so little during the game, and you rarely get to use your own cards combined with a ton of downtime makes it horribly boring, swingy and lengthy. Another problem is that every action you get to do, be it on a card or location feels like nothing. You end up taking a bunch of small actions where none really feels fun or have any weight to them. Hopefully someone makes a great game with the shared card crafting and deck building as I'm convinced that's a great combination of mechanics, but it has to be done in a different fashion than what AEG/D. clair is doing.
Jorge9.0
A lot of replayability. A Solid and Original Game, despite schild user (the only liar about this)
Benjamín Amorín8.0
John D. Clair's fundational card crafting game. Complex and huge!