For the first time in history, all Four Horsemen of the Darksiders video games are playable at the same time! You and up to four of your friends can now play Darksiders together. You read that right, this game is for up to five players! Then again, with 61 highly detailed minis, you may just want to put this on your shelf and admire it. We’re not judging.

Darksiders: The Forbidden Land is a co-operative dungeon crawler board game for 1-5 players. Take on the role of your favourite Horseman and battle alongside your fellow Riders through an entirely new storyline set in the Darksiders universe!

With asymmetric player abilities, you can play as War, Death, Fury or Strife and experience the game completely differently each time. Customisable decks of cards for each Rider mean that even multiple games with the same rider will be different!

Manage your cards well, as you will be using them to move, attack enemies and upgrade your rider using Darksiders: The Forbidden Land’s unique new card economy mechanic. Don’t blow through them too quickly though, because once your deck runs out you’ve lost the battle! Fight your way through to the hordes of monsters to defeat The Jailer and vanquish evil forever! …or, you know, until the next Darksiders game.

The included Campaign Book has 19 different levels – grouped into multiple scenarios – to play through. These can be tackled in sequence for an entire campaign play-through, players may choose to focus on a single scenario for a shorter gaming session, or even just play through a single level. With a variety of enemies as well as numerous modular hex-tile game boards included in the game, we also look forward to seeing fan-created custom levels and scenarios!

Wait, we mentioned this game is playable with up to five people, but there are only Four Horsemen. How does that work? One of you can play as the game master, that’s how! Without the game master, there are rules determining how the enemies of the Four Horsemen will behave, but with a game master controlling the monsters an extra level of challenge is added as suddenly they can move tactically.

Oh, and have we mentioned the minis enough? Darksiders: The Forbidden Land includes 61 phenomenally detailed minis. Not only are all Four Horsemen stunningly awesome, but The Jailer and his minions (and Zombies, and Wraiths, and… well, you get it) look ready to jump straight out of the box to devour your soul. So, you know, watch out.

Darksiders: The Forbidden Land is a co-operative dungeon crawler board game for 1-5 players. Take on the role of your favourite Horseman and battle alongside your fellow Riders through an entirely new storyline set in the Darksiders universe! Discover an entirely new environment; the Forbidden Land – former home of the Cherubim – on a brand new quest at the behest of the Charred Council.

With asymmetric player abilities, you can play as War, Death, Fury or Strife and experience the game completely differently each time. Customisable decks of cards for each Rider mean that even multiple games with the same rider will be different!

The included Campaign Book has 19 different levels – broken into multiple scenarios – to play through. Games can take anywhere from 30 minutes for a single Level, 1 ½ – 3 hours for a Scenario comprising of multiple levels, or even an entire epic gaming weekend playing through the entire campaign in order! With a variety of enemies as well as numerous modular hex-tile game boards included in the game, we also look forward to seeing fan-created custom levels and scenarios!

Assets

Rule Book from the Nephilim edition of the board game: Darksiders: The Forbidden Land Rule Book

Campaign Book from the Nephilim edition of the board game: Darksiders: The Forbidden Land Campaign Book

Rule & Errata Handout for the Nephilim edition of the board game: Darksiders: The Forbidden Land Handout

The PDF (RULE & ERRATA HANDOUT V2.0 , March 5th, 2020) contains the special rule „Active Defense“, the clarification for “Inventory & Reserve“ and for “Immolate & Lava Form” and the complete errata. It is optimized to be printed out in black and white.

To submit your own levels for consideration to be featured here, please write to forbiddenland@thqnordic.com

Special Rule:

Active Defense

In Darksiders: The Forbidden Land, enemies automatically deal damage to the Horsemen. To protect themselves from damage, the Horsemen can build up soak points through their hand cards or by destroying spawn fields. The soak points represent actions like dodging and parrying or magic shields. We call this ‚Passive Defense‘. This makes the game much less dice-heavy; it requires fewer rules for fighting and the creature phase comes relatively quickly to an end.

Some fans of Darksiders: The Forbidden Land have asked for an official special rule that allows them to use dice to defend themselves against the enemies‘ attacks. ‚Active Defense‘ has been specially designed for them:

During the player phase, you can put one or more of your hand cards aside and spend the same number of energy souls to get two defense dice (6-sided dice) for each card. Therefore, if you choose to allocate two cards for Active Defense, you lay those two cards to the side, pay two energy souls, and receive four defense dice. If you take damage during the next creature phase, you can roll the defense dice. Each 4, 5 and 6 means that you have fended off a damage point before it deducts a soak point, armor point or life point. At the end of the creature phase, you must put all cards that you have designated for ‚Active Defense‘ on the discard pile. Unused defense dice are lost and cannot be used for the next active defense.

Clarification:

Inventory & Reserve

In the manual it is stated that when you have for example two body armor pieces you can put the one that you have not equipped underneath the equipped armor on your Character Board. We now think that this could cause some irritation with what you have equipped and what is in your Reserve. Instead, place all weapons, armor pieces and talismans not currently equipped on a seperate card pile beside your Character Board.

NOTE: Once a piece of your armor has been destroyed, you still have to discard one of your hand cards during the player phase if you want to put an armor piece in the then vacated slot on your Character Board.

Clarification:

Immolate & Lava Form

When War casts Immolate or Fury casts Lava Form, they automatically deal 1 damage to every adjacent enemy until the beginning of the next player phase. Thanks to your questions, it is apparent that both abilities need more clarification.

Player Phase: all adjacent enemies are ‘hit’ with 1 damage once a Horsemen casts the spell. Same when the Horseman ends their movement, all adjacent enemies are ‘hit’ with 1 damage. This happens each time a Horseman moves and can therefore occur multiple times during the player phase. The Horseman does not deal damage to enemies they are passing.

Creature Phase: 1 damage is dealt to all adjacent enemies once all enemies have finished moving. Likewise, 1 damage is dealt to all enemies once all creatures have spawned for the phase.

NOTE: please keep in mind that if an enemy has at least 1 HP more than the damage dealt, their HP is not reduced.

Game Errata

This game errata refers to issues found in the books or on the cards of the Nephilim edition of the board game.

On Page 27 of the Manual:

The last sentence (‘Repeat this process for each spawn point of the type specified by the event cards’) in the blue IMPORTANT box at the bottom of the page can be a bit confusing, because it should not be included in the box. Meant is: you have to roll the Spawn Dice for each spawn point.

On Page 30 of the Manual:

Under “Spawn Creatures” (fight against the End Boss) it is wrongly stated that frenzied creatures stay in frenzy until end of the round. Correct is: until beginning of the next Boss Phase.

On Page 36 of the Manual:

Under “Destroying Spawn Tiles” it states “The Horseman, who destroys a Spawn Tile receives [2 Soak Markers] at the end of the level.”. This should read “receives [2 Soak Markers] until end of the level.”

On Page 53 of the Manual:

The last FAQ entry (about Graves and Portals) is wrong. The correct rule to handle Graves and Portals for movement and field of view is already stated in the fourth FAQ entry on page 52 of the manual: ‘Every Spawn tile counts as an obstacle to movement and the field of view. Grave and Portal spaces cannot be accessed using abilities like Teleporting or Jumping.’

Strife card “Attack”:

This card applies to ranged attacks, not melee.

Death “Crow Master” armor set:

The card name ‘Feast of Crows’ should be ‘Murder of Crows’.

War card “Warlord Gauntlet”:

This equipment card is wrongly labeled as ‘Shoulder Armor’. The correct type is ‘Gauntlet’.

Strife card “Stealth Boots”:

This equipment card is wrongly labeled as ‘Shoulder Armor’. The correct type is ‘Boots’.

Strife card “Focus”:

The Card Value of this ability card is 3 instead of 6.

Fury card “Inferno”:

The card’s text is misleading. The new text is: ‘The number of yellow souls spent when casting this spell is the number of damage points available to distribute between adjacent Mob and Boss Mob enemies.’

Community

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