Brew a pot of tea – or two… This epic board game could take a while! PETER HOSKIN reviews Skyrim: The Adventure Game
Skyrim: The Adventure Game (£139.99 for the core game; expansions range from £39.99 to £109.99)
Verdict: An epic in a box
Rating: 
Skyrim, one of the most popular games ever on PCs, PlayStations, Xboxes, handheld devices and VR headsets, is so ubiquitous that people once joked that it would even be released on to Amazon’s Alexa speakers. So, Skyrim’s developers did their own little counter-joke: they actually made a version for Alexa. Hahaha! All the way to the bank…
Which makes it a little surprising that, in the 12 years since Skyrim first came into being, there hasn’t been a boardgame version. Perhaps the idea of moving an entire world of mountains and dragons, quests and companions, to the tabletop was just too daunting.
Until now. Thanks to the brilliant British company Modiphius, we now have a Skyrim boardgame. It’s called Skyrim: The Adventure Game. And if you have the fortitude and patience for it, it’s terrific.
Skyrim: The Adventure Game (£139.99 for the core game; expansions range from £39.99 to £109.99)
Thanks to the brilliant British company Modiphius, we now have a Skyrim board game
Why do I mention patience? Because this isn’t one of those boardgames you start and finish in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea.
It is, much like the fantasy realm behind it, a titanic thing — an immense box full of cards, tokens, and little plastic heroes. There’s even more if you buy into any of the available expansions.
Just setting this up took me a few cups of tea. Actually playing through one of its story-filled chapters then occupies a couple of hours, although you can join those chapters together to form great, interlocking epics, or even just go free-roaming… forever?
The most impressive part of Skyrim: The Adventure Game is how it uses serried ranks of cards — hundreds of them — to tell these stories. You and, if you choose, up to three others paw through these cards to find out where the quest will take you next.
Succeed in your goals, and you proceed, with shiny rewards in your pack.
Fail, and the cards still manage to keep the whole experience alive. It’s never predictable, even after hours and hours.
Of course, two questions hover over this whole enterprise like a wisp. Why bother with this boxed game when there’s the whole beautiful, digital world of Skyrim to explore on your computer?
And is this one just for the Skyrim nerds, the sorts of people who know what a wisp is?
Skyrim: The Adventure Game – Dawnguard Expansion
The first is easy to answer: Skyrim: The Adventure Game is exhilaratingly different to Skyrim the video game, and not just because its story acts as a sort of prequel. Moving these pieces, doing so alongside friends, makes something real of the fantasy. It’s fun in new ways.
As for the second question, that’s somewhat trickier. I’m sure a boardgame buff would enjoy many of Skyrim: The Adventure Game’s clever mechanics; while general fantasy enthusiasts might be taken with its universe and story.
But those who know Skyrim — those who thrill at the thought of actually holding imperial septims — will get so much more from this box.
Still, that’s not exactly a small marketplace. There are, if the video-game sales are anything to go by, millions of us brave adventurers who have explored these lands before and risked taking an arrow in the knee. So what threat is cardboard?
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