Recent reviews by Snivelling Wretch

I got SoC last year. Of the three SoC content packs now available, I'd rate Ostankya a close second in terms of value and fun. For your money you're getting:

* Some solid units added to your Kislev roster, even if some of them are very dubious in terms of the faction's character (Balewolves, anyone?)

* The Hag Witch hero and Druzhina lord, both of whom are good value

* The Lore of the Hag, which is honestly one of the most unique sorceries in the game. The way its spells flip effects when they're overcharged takes some time to get used to, but it's very rewarding to do so

* Ostankya and her campaign. Baba Yaga herself is a very unusual magic artillery chariot lord who yomps around the battlefield smashing through infantry on her sled while blasting all and sundry with her curses. Lot of fun, but requires a lot of micro. Her main mechanic is basically a take on Grom's Cauldron, so hardly unique, however she also has more significant spells called hexes she can use, and I found her Send to Brazil button so entertaining I could easily forgive that (I strongly advise unlocking that hex as fast as you can). I never found her start position in IE annoying for the simple reason it does at last mean you can fight something other than Chaos as Kislev, and honestly the Kislev-Dark Elf match-up is a lot of fun. I entirely get why some people don't like it though - she is supposed to be the avatar of Kislev's wilds after all - and for those people CA have now provided a split start event, where you can teleport back to the Eastern Oblast very early on instead. Be warned, this is a significantly tougher campaign, because you'll be in the way of every growly tincan from the north who wants a piece of the Old World.

Overall I can recommend Ostankya to Kislev fans and maybe to those who picked them up early on, found them a bit lacking, and have been hoping for an injection of fresh material to try them again. Is this an essential purchase to make Kislev playable? I wouldn't say so - the units give you more options but none of them are Warplock Jezzail-level good. Will it change your mind about the faction if you never liked them? No, not at all. This DLC only compounds my impression that Kislev are a very confused faction that neither GW and CA particularly know what to do with. Still, I think that Stanky's easily their funnest lord to use, thanks to her hexes, split start and bad santa sled.

* The base rework to the Ogres is mostly very good. I've always felt they were a fun army to use on the battlefield, let down by a lot of strategic issues. The ability to pack up camps and redeploy them is a godsend, and with the 5 turn cooldown feels fairly well-balanced. Sending meat to camps - great (although why can't you send it the other way, or between armies?) Remastering for all their heroes - great. Greasus and Skrag were both given new mechanics such that they every Ogre lord now is a unique experience, bringing them in line with the love the Empire got in Thrones of Decay. This is exactly the sort of thing I want to see from CA, and it's only a shame they didn't extend the same courtesy to all of the Greenskin lords. The other caveat I have is that meat feels very unbalanced right now - you're basically always going to be operating with a massive surplus. However that feels similar to how Dwarfen grudges were initially implemented and I'm confident it's just a question of tinkering with the numbers. Overall the Ogres are now a fully fleshed out, full fat option who feel great to play with.

* No complaints about any of the new units. Pigback Riders and Blood Vultures are a very valuable addition for the early game. Love the Paymaster and his support type role. Yhetees feel a little underpowered, but I get the impression they're supposed to be more of a support unit with their freezing attacks. The late game units are all completely ridiculous but that's in line with the general OPness of this DLC (more on that below) and I expect, like the Thunderbarge before it, they'll be given several whacks of the nerf hammer in the months to come. Most important thing to me is that it's all fully voiced, something that was sorely lacking in Thrones of Decay. The Ogres are a funny, characterful bunch so them getting new lines, new voices was great to hear.

* Golgfrog is maybe the most sandbox experience I've gotten out of this game. You basically just hop around the map, fighting whatever wars you want, helping whoever you want, with a single army that quickly becomes completely maxed out and overwhelmingly powerful. If you want to carve out a little empire for yourself somewhere you can, indeed I'd recommend doing so simply to give your other armies something to do. His 'economy' is completely out of control and money/meat rapidly stops being any kind of object. Aside from being very strong in combat - I watched him solo level 40 Archeon without breaking a sweat - Golgfleg also has insane movement range upgrades which makes it very difficult for any enemy to stay away from him. If you've ever wanted to feel more or less completely free to do whatever you wanted in Immortal Empires, well, this is your campaign. I'd argue that the Changeling is *more* restrictive than this.


* It's extremely CA to introduce a serious bug with the very units you're updating, then just leave them like that for several days. For now, it's easy to find a fix to the monsters/monstrous units splash damage bug on the Workshop, and I highly recommend doing that if you're getting this DLC now. If I have any advice to CA off the back of this it's this: DON'T DROP DLC AND BIG UPDATES ON THURSDAYS. You won't have time to do the hotfixes such content inevitably will need, and then you'll have a whole weekend of people complaining about your buggy content! Another very simple and obvious business practice this company seems to constantly struggle with.

* The aimlessness of Golgfriend's campaign hurts it a lot. There's no end goal (and no ending cinematics), no challenge except the ones you manage to create for yourself. You play it until you get tired of having infinite money, a teleporting army and a ridiculously powerful lord. This might not be such of a problem if this wasn't a gathering trend in TWW's DLC. Shadows of Change gave each of its lords a significant goal to accomplish on the Immortal Empires map. Did CA assume that people didn't like that? I assure you, that wasn't the reason why that DLC wasn't well received. Now we get overpowered factions and lords that just... are. This combines with the creaking, barely adequate AI to produce campaigns that are without any challenge whatsoever. After about turn 50 with Golgfrag I just couldn't see the point of continuing to play as him, as much fun as I was having on the battlefield.

This is a serious issue CA need to address if they're interested in the longevity of this game. This DLC is a symptom of certain long term trends in their thinking - absurdly overpowered new factions, prioritising early game sugar rushes over ANY kind of late game - which is producing experiences which are flashy but won't hold long term interest.


I recommend this DLC, but mostly because of the base game updates it helped fund, rather than the campaign it actually contains. The units it adds are good, but I'd recommend using them with Skrag or Greasus if you're interested in playing something with a modicum of challenge. If you don't have access to them, well, I'd only get it if a completely freeform campaign where you can go wherever and do whatever as an utter fat bastard appeals. And maybe it does!

My one major complaint with the game is that there is no option to murder Teddie with a baseball bat.

The easy part: Enjoying a well-balanced card game with slick visuals, strong mechanics and a lot of choice

The hard part: Listening to hours of Tony Stark as written by a Redditor and not punching a hole in your dry wall

Get it if you see it's on sale.

Monster Train is a mish-mash of a deck-builder that cribs the best bits from other games to create a surprisingly cohesive and enjoyable whole. The DLC expands on what I think is its smartest aspect: Offering you bonuses in exchange for making the game tougher. The Pact Shards however affect your whole run, not just a level, with each individual enemy gaining a chance to become significantly more powerful based on how many Shards you've gobbled up. I've had enemies easily smash their way through my defences and blitz my shard thanks to the layers of buffs they got, you need to think carefully before inflicting spell-shielded attack-buffed Marksmen on yourself.

The most interesting Shard bonus is the ability to polymorph two monsters together, carrying all the abilities and upgrades of one onto another. I've already Yu-Gi-Oh'd up some absolutely insane creations doing this. It's one of those features where you feel the devs went "Whatever. Go nuts" where others would try and limit you out of fear of you having too much fun, I really look forward to test-driving it out some more.

As for the new faction: my overriding impression is that they're a little over-complex. They rely on their echo mechanic which is fiddly and doesn't feel as rewarding to get the hang of as for instance Umbra's morsels are. Their design is cool though and it's hard to argue with a whole new box of toys to play with.

Ultimately I think this DLC is acceptably priced for what it contains. It doesn't revolutionise the game, it just adds more onto it, so if you enjoy Monster Train there's no reason not to get this too.