One thing I’ll say about Steamforged Games is that when they commit to a tabletop adaptation, they go all in. In the past I’ve looked at their board game iteration of Monster Hunter World, and the Ruins of Symbaroum Epic Encounters set they put out, alongside their own IPs such as Godtear. There’s never anything half-baked; even in their version of Dark Souls, where they arguably struggled to convey the sense of grim attrition, they put every effort in. In Elden Ring: The Board Game, they’ve taken everything they’ve learned for years into transposing one of the most epic and engaging action RPGs ever made into board game form – and by the Light of the Erdtree, they’ve done it.
I’ve spent the last few weeks diving into this immense box. The Realm of the Grafted King is the base game, although you can also pick up the Weeping Peninsula and Stormveil Castle as separate purchases. In the base game you get everything you need to play multiple campaigns around Limgrave, either alone or with up to three others. It comes with four Tarnished models – Vagabond, Prophet, Samurai, and Astrologer – each with a full set of adventure cards. These include their class starting gear, attributes, traits, personal quests, and profile.
Upon my first delve into the box I’ll admit I was a little overwhelmed, a feeling that persisted through the first few times I set it up and attempted to play through it. For a start it comes with a whopping 51 miniatures, including several huge boss sculpts including the Tree Sentinel, the Stonecutter Troll, and Margit the Fell Omen himself. You’ll also receive dozens of smaller enemies, hundreds of tokens, and hundreds of cards. To round it out there are four character dashboards, a rulebook, a scenario book, and four Encounter Books.
Quite how Steamforged hit upon their solution to turning a vast open world into a tactile tabletop game is anyone’s guess, but the method is genius. You explore by selecting random hex-tiles from a stack, which construct the map as you move around. You then flavour this using cards drawn from Event and Hardship decks, which throw obstacles into your path in true From Software style. The tiles are super detailed and come together to create a unique map each time, which is also unique to each player thanks to you all having your own Encounter Book.
You take it in turns to complete up to three actions from a pool of options. You can move around, explore an area, craft items which you can also trade, interact with the environment or one another, and use your Flask to restore health or mana, which are tracked on a triangular stat wheel. Everything you do is determined by cards not dice, which still has a dangerous element of randomness but feels less down to pure chance.
Pages in the Encounter Books form the arenas in which you’ll fight, while bosses require you to turn to the same page in all four books and form them into a makeshift board. I love this idea, especially the sense of coming together that it creates when you play with others, as though you’re summoning help in the video game version.
Like Monster Hunter World: The Board Game, Elden Ring: The Board Game uses physical miniatures to help you visualise combat. While you’ll determine whose turn it is and which attacks the enemy uses by drawing from a thick Marching Orders deck, your physical proximity to the enemy matters. In MHW this translated to moving around the monster in order to attack different body parts, but in Elden Ring what matters is which row you occupy on the same grid as the enemy. If you’re on the same row, you’ll score critical attacks but so can the enemy; if you’re one row away your attacks will deal normal damage; in the third row from the enemy you’re considered to be defending, which will lessen the incoming damage but also temper yours.
Where I really struggled through playing this with my son was in understanding the multiple complexities of the combat. At a base level it’s straightforward enough, but each enemy has multiple stats and attacks, mostly denoted by intricate symbology that I simply couldn’t commit to memory. Even by the third game, I was constantly consulting the rulebook, which really took us out of the experience. There’s also so, so much to track in terms of cards and effects – and the set-up alone easily added half an hour to each 2-hour session. Elden Ring: The Board Game is, perhaps expectedly, incredibly dense.
Each of you has a deck of cards to manage which hold all of your gear, stats, and abilities, and the enemies have likewise. Add in things like Hardships and Events, the effects of Guidance of Grace Cards, magic spells and persisting effects, and the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style nature of each campaign scenario and your left with a hell of a stack to get your head around, not to mention the sheer number of tokens to remember.
And yet, when it begins to come together it is an incredibly intuitive system. Just as in From Software’s games, you begin to develop a kind of muscle memory. Enemies have relatively small pools of different abilities which you can learn to defend against, and juggling the skills of your own Tarnished to not only deal damage but administer buffs and healing soon becomes easier to understand. Just as in Monster Hunter World, it becomes super immersive, evoking a sense of atmosphere and place that almost defies the fact that it’s a board game at all.
How long it takes you to finish a full campaign will depend on a lot of factors. We still haven’t made it to the end, which itself feels incredibly faithful to the source material, but after half a dozen sessions we’re closer than ever before. Again, this is pretty on-brand. But regardless, this is an incredible creation.
The writing in the Rulebook is clear and concise, while the Scenario Book and Encounter Books positively drip with ambience. And of course, there are the miniatures. Steamforged Games don’t quite produce sculpts to stand shoulder to shoulder with Citadel Miniatures, but their minis are detailed enough and paint very well (based on my experience with MHW: The Board Game; I haven’t dared paint anything from this yet). If you’re a hobbying painter there are several weeks’ worth of painting here to keep you occupied – although I’d say they don’t require it. The Margit and Tree Sentinel sculpts in particular are simply fantastic as they are.
For somewhere between £150 and £200 for just the base Realm of the Grafted King set, and up to £120 for each of the expansions (which come with more Tarnished and boss miniatures) this is by no means an inexpensive investment, but what you get here is truly immense. 50 minis, hundreds of cards and tokens, and potentially endless replayability for solo players or friend groups, Elden Ring: The Board Game is a fantastic translation of one of this generation’s best RPGs that barely drops a stitch – if you can get your head around it, that is.
You can purchase Elden Ring: The Board Game – Realm of the Grafted King or its expansions directly from Steamforged Games here.
