Covenant

How many combos in a game is too many?

Covenant is a game in which brave dwarves dig tunnels, mine ore, build monuments, and fight monsters.

Tunnel BHK Rules

You don’t need a Mining Safety and Health certificate to play Covenant. The rules of the game are simple, and the only thing that might overwhelm someone is the multitude of different small actions and the number of icons we have to learn. However, we will come back to that in a moment. The most important thing is that each player receives a guide in the form of a small book describing all aspects of the game. Such things are definitely a plus.

Worker Placement

Mechanically, we are dealing with worker placement here. It consists of sending our dwarf workers to perform basic actions on our board.

Our bearded workers will level up during the game, which will make their actions stronger and allow us to do more during our turn. We can also charge our dwarves with beer to temporarily make them stronger. After all, there is a well-known dwarf saying that “beer is my fuel.”

Combo placement

By placing our dwarf, we can trigger many different effects that cascade to increase the potential of a given action. For example, by digging, we get resources, move along the pickaxe track, and reveal a new room tile. Movements on different tracks result in additional bonuses, as does the discovery of the tile itself. Later, we get another bonus from our gem, and so we extend our turn to several minutes.

Sometimes there is so much going on that it was easy to get lost in it all. On the one hand, I love such combos in board games where I can do several other actions with one action. However, in Covenant, it’s not as elegant as, for example, in White Castle. I felt overwhelmed by all these possibilities, and often when we played, I saw that someone forgot something. It’s not that easy to control, considering that these bonuses can branch out in several ways.

A lot of replayability ALE

Covenant definitely provides us with a good dose of replayability, considering the objectives of each round, personal scores, scrolls, and many, many conditions for which we can earn points. However, the core gameplay remains the same, and the actions we can perform do not change much.

12 Angry Dwarves

Covenant is played over 3 rounds, with only 4 worker placements per player per round. With only 12 actions available, each one is worth its weight in gold. We have to plan everything carefully to achieve our goals and manage our resources properly. It’s clear that the actions create various combos and many cascading effects, which makes it similar to White Castle. Only much more complex and combolicious.

The length of the game depends heavily on the number of players. For two experienced dwarves, it took about an hour of solid work. Digging in a larger group definitely extended our daily work time. Unfortunately, we also have to add a fairly long setup, which consisted of placing all the tokens and buildings.

The number of players also greatly affected the situation in our board game Moria. With just two players, we dug up the forgotten halls of the mine more slowly to make room for our buildings. However, with a full squad, we could see the full power of this underground kingdom.

Quality and components

Enrique Fernández Peláez did a fantastic job illustrating Covenant. The graphics are delightful and give our game a cheerful, cartoonish vibe.

We get wooden buildings, plastic tokens, lots of tiles, beer, and monsters. There’s a ton of everything, which definitely makes this game feel lavish. However, the trick is to pack it all in so that everything fits. Flashbacks from Bitoku…

Summary

Covenant thrives on the many combos we can make during our turn. Especially considering the numerous cascading effects that overlap each other. With all this going on, it’s easy to forget about a bonus. Did I really take those points for getting the gem?

On the one hand, it is very satisfying to plan everything carefully and see our possibilities grow from turn to turn. However, it also causes a lot of downtime, which is particularly noticeable when playing with a full squad.

Considering this year’s Essen releases, this is one of the best games I’ve played. Although this year I didn’t feel any particular hype for new titles. In my opinion, Covenant is one of those solid Euro games that work well mechanically, but on the other hand, it doesn’t really impress. I had a good time playing it, but I didn’t feel so excited after the game that my bearded jaw dropped in awe.

Final verdict: Covenant is just another fairly enjoyable title that quickly shows what it can do, only to be forgotten in a moment, like a dwarf forgetting how many beers he drank.

Pros

• Atmosphere and graphics
• Mechanically solid
• High replayability considering the numerous scoring tiles
• Number of cascading effects…

Cons

• which can often be overlooked
• Long player turns
• Some scroll effects are very weak

[Game provided by Devir Games]