First thing first, I did not build an insert for this box for the first four months and I regretted every single one of those months. Once I finally caved and got a proper organizer, setup dropped from something like forty five minutes of digging through baggies to under fifteen, and the game genuinely got better as a result, which feels like it shouldn’t be true of a board game but absolutely is here. If you’re on the fence about the insert investment, don’t be on the fence, just do it.

Teaching this to new players is its own project. The card based action selection, pick two cards, one for top, one for bottom, initiative determined by the numbers you picked, took our group a solid two hours across the first two scenarios before it actually clicked for everyone at the table, and even then somebody forgot the loss-of-hand-size-equals-exhaustion rule three sessions running. Once it clicks though, it clicks hard, and that’s really the whole pitch of this game. The engine, the combo of card timing, positioning, and the slow attrition of your own hand as a resource, is one of the most satisfying things I’ve felt in a cooperative game, that exact moment mid scenario where your whole plan of attack lines up and fires in the right order.

The thing that doesn’t get said enough in the five-star reviews is how the character retirement system quietly does more balancing work than almost anything else in the box. You retire a character at a personal goal and unlock a new class, and it staggers the power curve across a long campaign in a way a lot of legacy games never manage, no late-campaign slog where everyone’s overpowered and bored. We did feel the length though, ninety-plus scenarios is a genuine commitment, and there was a stretch around scenario forty where “go kill the thing in this room” started to blur together across missions, exactly the complaint a chunk of other groups land on too.

Five stars from me, four and a half if I’m being strict about the mid-campaign lull. My advice, get the insert on day one, don’t wait like we did, and expect to lose an entire dining table to this for a year plus. It’s worth it.