Cursed City Nemesis is a Train-wreck – Why it matters

This was intended to be the final review in my series reviewing the Cursed City Game and its expansions. However I found the narrative ending to the campaign so galling it forced me to alter my review. There will be some spoilers in this review but they will be clearly marked.

+++Spoiler Free Review Section+++

Nemesis Materials, Rules, Etc.
The rules and materials for Nemesis are fine. They add additional difficulty and some small updates on the Haven but not a lot else. The new enemies are more interesting than in Night Wars but that isn’t saying much. If you missed fighting some of the old big bads, they can return in these missions but that is more annoying than anything else. Honestly, there is nothing in here to convince a skeptical person to buy the game, and nothing so bad as to force players who have already bought in to drop it (if you can even find it). If you are looking for a way to push your characters to the limit the final missions in this game will do that.

Review TLDR:

The Mass Effect Problem
I’ll also start by mentioning the Mass Effect Problem (also known as the Game of Thrones Problem) is my term for my untested rule that: The more time people put into a game or setting, the higher their expectations will be for the ending. This isn’t ground breaking. I think people can read a short story, be disappointed about the ending and go on with their lives. However, if a multi-volume series, or some game that requires people to invest a lot of time ends on a sour note people will get angry in proportion to the resources required for them to get to the end.

Cursed City fits this bill as it has proved both difficult and expensive to collect. Playing the game quickly becomes a drag, and you need to grind through a bunch of levels to beat the base game (to say nothing of the expansions).

+++Spoilers and Train-wreck descriptions begin+++

Nemesis Ending
Okay, let’s talk about how the story ends. For those unfamiliar with the narrative thus far, basically the big bad guy is Radukar, a Vampire who launched a coup in the city. He is trying to blow it up to harvest the souls trapped inside. In the base game, the players defeat him only for him to come back in a monstrous form (though his initial plan is thwarted). In the Night Wars expansion, you can bump into him, but you primarily fight three other villains who rise to take his place. Annoyingly, it turns out that by defeating them you actually help Radukar re-consolidate his power.

Going into Nemesis, you learn that the city is going to be destroyed, and it cannot be saved. You spend the initial part of the campaign locating a Realmgate to escape with the survivors. Once you find it, you learn it doesn’t work and that Radukar’s plan to blow up the city and gain enough power to put him at Mortarch status is still on-track. The only way to save the citizens is to defeat Radukar and stop him channeling the magic of the Realmgate. You then proceed through five mire grueling missions (2 of which are solely focused on beating Radukar on the board). Once you finally win, here is how the story ends: Radukar is crippled and the Realmgate opens sending thousands of survivors into Azyr. As you are about to kill him, Big Bone Daddy Nagash shows up. He picks up Radagar, talks about how he has overstepped his bounds and needs to be “re-educated”. He then animates a ton of undead and sends them at the party. The last “heroic” action the party takes is “fumbling at their weapons”

Rocks fall, everyone dies.

The story goes on to mention how the survivors try to keep the Realmgate open as long as possible, but the heroes never return. There is some hand-waving that a few “optimistic” bards believe the party managed to survive and are fighting the undead somewhere, but it is an obvious attempt to soften the blow of this narrative s****show.

Why it Matters

Oh my gosh where to even begin? Should I mention that every player achievement is instantly undermined? (Radukar defeated the 1st time? Nope still alive. Defeat the three vampire villains? Nope they are still alive, and now Radukar is stronger. Defeat Radukar for the final time? Nope he’s still around and now everyone is dead). All this from a game that takes 30+ missions to beat (45 minutes to an hour each) and then unceremoniously kills the entire party without any player agency? Maybe I should start with the complete lack of stakes? (apparently Nagash could have intervened at any time). This has to be the most unceremonious end to a board game I have ever seen and one of the first instances where an expansion actively makes the game worse in retrospect. For a game that costs almost $1000 to play as intended (assuming retail value of all models) I was hoping for a little bit more.

Let’s start breaking it down more. The cruel twist at the end of the story isn’t your characters dying, it’s the revelation that this is, and has always been Radukar’s story. He reads like the pet monster of a jealous and incompetent Dungeon Master. He’s been hyped as this big bad guy, and he appears through the initial campaign to torment players and up the difficulty. Every time he is defeated, the DM brings him back. However the players persist, and the DM finally has to set up a final confrontation, which Radukar loses (to the DM’s annoyance). Butthurt over this misfortune, the DM declares that he is still alive and even more powerful now. Although he does begrudge that the party foiled Radukar’s plot. The players then go about saving the city only to see the DM declare at the end of the campaign that this has all helped Radukar and he is back on track (the level of “Just as Planned” here is worthy of Tzeentch or the Creeds). The players persist beating him again (mission 4) only to have to fight another even more powerful version of him (with Legendary Resistance, and every trick in the DM’s bag). However even this isn’t enough. The DM is now enraged that the players won, and finds a way to save his character through sheer plot armor while also killing off the party in a fit of malice. The absolute railroading of the story cuts against the mechanics that try to give players input and agency in game mechanics.

Additionally, the game’s ending reveals there were never any stakes. Apparently, Nagash knew about the plot the whole time and was letting you do the dirty work. Furthermore, why do we care about if Radukar ascends? It isn’t like Nagash is all that great himself. The margins between the results if you succeed or fail are also very similar. According to the story here is what happens if you win:

• Your heroes are likely dead
• Thousands of civilians are rescued
• Radukar is defeated but will likely be back
• The city is destroyed

And here is the outcome if you lose:

• Your heroes are definitely dead
• All civilians are killed (described as thousands)
• Radukar becomes powerful enough to annoy Nagash, if Nagash doesn’t stop him
• The city is destroyed

So the main difference is in the outcome of the civilian population. Saving thousands of lives is never a bad thing, but the game’s logic starts to break down here. Age of Sigmar’s setting is so huge that the loss of thousands of lives is minuscule in the context of the wider story. Maybe I have been playing too much 40k, but I doubt the Imperium would risk 8 space marines for several thousand lives. We have no indication that these people are particularly useful, valuable or possess any other trait that the loss of 8 demi-god level heroes would justify. Thousands of lives are lost every day in the AoS world and so it seems weird that: A these losses would be a particular tragedy, B: they would be sufficient fodder to elevate a vampire to mortarch status. I know this sounds cold, but it makes it hard to see even the game’s best outcome as nothing more than the team taking a solid “L”.

Counter-Arguments

I do want to be charitable and give some space to counter arguments in defense of the ending. Here are the best ones I could come up with:

• NoT aLl StOrIeS hAvE a HaPpY eNdInGs!
  • This argument is such a canard, but here goes. There is a difference between a “Dark” ending and a “Dark-Stupid” ending. The ending to this story is unearned and actively undermines the narrative by revealing that the players actions have largely been futile this whole time. If the players had sought to have their characters simply fight their way out of the city it would have increased their odds of survivals. At the end of the game you realize that, no matter what you do, you will never defeat Radakur and you were stupid to even try. Furthermore why ever replay this game? There are no different roads or outcomes based on your actions. Just a depressing end to a 40+ hour journey.
• This wasn’t the intended ending. Cursed City was unfortunately cancelled and this is what the writers came up with in the time allotted to them.
  • I am sympathetic to this argument but it fails in one of two ways:
    • A: We don’t know for certain that this wasn’t the way the story was always going to go. That would require us to assume that the story was altered between 2021-2022. I think this was always going to be the ending as it introduces Radukar as a villain while also giving GW an excuse not to make rules for any of the heroes.
    • B: Assuming the story was altered, why the sour note? Why not just give players a better ending as an apology? You could even save Radukar as per the original ending, or give players the choice between saving themselves or the civilians, literally anything else.

Deeper Issues

When people expressed concerns about the Age of Sigmar setting lacking stakes this is exactly what they were worried about. The more you know about the setting the less you will care about the outcome. If you know about Nagash, you know that he isn’t worth supporting, and a power struggle between him and Radukar might be a net positive. If you know how big the setting is, you question how much can even thousands of souls be worth in a setting with untold millions or billions of souls? When a setting is this big you need to draw people in by fleshing out smaller, more personal, stories. Cursed City fails in this too as the game kills the only characters who moderately fleshed out (well except for Radukar and his goons). The fact that you have so little interaction or background on any of the nameless, faceless, civilians you are saving compared to your own characters makes it harder to care about them.

Conclusions:

If Warhammer Quest games are going to have a future they need to massively improve the narrative quality of their games (to say nothing of their distribution and logistics). My faith in these games has been greatly undermined and I honestly haven’t felt this let down since the End Times (whose writing shows eerie parallels to this pile of trash). I got this game as a collaborative game for my family and myself to play which would make the grinding nature more bearable. However, I feel I cannot inflict the intended ending on them in good conscience. There are options, there are some amazing third party add-ons and re-write available which will hopefully provide a more satisfying conclusion.

At the conclusion of its run Cursed City is neither fun to play, fun to experience, or even fun to collect. The sole redeeming feature is its high quality materials which have little purpose other than to be used in superior games.

…anyone want to buy my copy of Nemesis?

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