This is Sparta! Well, no… The Last Bastion Board Game Review

Reading Time: 7 minutes

What’s up, Chaos Heroes!

Remember Leonidas from the movie 300? Led by him, the Spartans stopped Xerxes’ seemingly endless army at the pass of Thermopylae with nothing but sheer will and some completely unjustified washboard abs.

The Last Bastion board game brings exactly this epic, suicide-mission vibe right to your table!

What do you need to know about the Last Bastion board game?

In this cooperative board game, you play as a team of desperate heroes, the last defenders of an ancient fortress standing against a ruthless, dark warlord and his monstrous horde. Your goal is to hold the line until the Warlord himself steps out of the shadows with his buddies, so you can send him packing in one final, fatal showdown.

If you pull this off, you are the heroes of the day. If not… well, the bastion falls.

This is a hardcore fight for survival. Utilizing your special abilities is absolutely essential, and the dice rolls (because there will be plenty of those!) can seriously twist the outcome of the battle.

Gameplay Experience

We can choose from 8 characters, each with unique abilities that you must use if you don’t want to end up in the obituaries prematurely.

Your turn doesn’t start with a polite cup of tea. Just to make sure you’re not getting too comfortable, Chaos kicks the door in first. The monsters already hanging on your walls hand out a few virtual slaps, and then, guaranteed, a new ugly face shows up (sometimes bringing his even uglier friends).

After the enemy has finished their hooliganism, it’s finally your turn, the hero, to try and clean up this mess.

You have two main options:

1. Combat: You step right into the face of a monster (or two, if you’re feeling exceptionally gutsy) and pray for the mercy of the dice. If your roll matches the symbols on the card, the monster is history. If not, you’ve lost the fight, and the enemy continues to wreak havoc until your next turn—unless another hero turns them into monster mash first. You can use a few tricks to modify your roll, but let’s not get bogged down in the details right now.

2. Using the Bastion: The different locations in the fortress offer life-saving actions: here you can gear up (as seen in the picture above), heal, resurrect fallen comrades, or weaken the horrors with a spell. Of course, this only works if the Evil Grasp hasn’t corrupted that location yet…

After your turn, the next player steps up, and the ruthless struggle for survival starts all over again. This continues until the Warlord appears, leading either to glorious victory or… well, the much more likely, humiliating defeat, which can happen in three different ways. Because losing in just one way would be too boring, right?

Components of Last Bastion Board Game

Visually, the Last Bastion board game delivers a fantastic, colorful, slightly comic-book-style fantasy atmosphere. The box art alone is epic. The component quality is generally great:

• Miniatures: The heroes are represented by cool, highly detailed grey miniatures, which earns them an extra purple Dicepool Magic point! They are unpainted but still look amazing on the table (and in photos, of course!).
• Bastion Tiles: Made of thick cardboard. The illustrations are suitably creepy here and there, perfectly fitting the game’s world.
• Cards: The monster cards are high quality, and their artwork really adds to the atmosphere.
• Custom Dice: Special dice with unique symbols and different colors that act as the soul of the combat. Sure, they could be purple, but that’s just my personal perversion.

The whole thing has a physical weight to it, a serious “we are in deep trouble” vibe that the components faithfully reflect, though it’s not quite as pitch-black dark as Cthulhu: Death May Die.

The Dicepool Magic Scale

The WOW:

• Brutally good cooperative board game: You really have to work together here. No excuses, and you MUST use your special abilities.
• Top-tier challenge, tense gameplay: You are constantly under pressure, and the theme shines through brilliantly. I guarantee your brain will drop a gear; it’s impossible to focus on anything else while playing. If you love heavy, brain-burning tactical co-ops, you will adore this. We can’t really talk about long-term strategy here, because the horde always spits in our soup.
• Cool miniatures and beautiful components: It’s eye candy on the table.
• Variable heroes, warlords, and tiles: The replayability is boosted by facing different bosses with different hero powers, and the randomized placement of the Bastion tiles twists the puzzle every single time.
• Rule system: A relatively straightforward rulebook, but definitely not for beginners.

The MEH…

• Punishing difficulty: This game can be agonizingly hard, not because of the rules, but because losing streaks are frustrating. This is THE game where, when you sit down to play, you send a quick memo to the Man Upstairs to start worrying.
• Heavy luck factor: Because of the dice rolls and card draws, luck plays a massive role. One bad roll can flip the entire board. In these moments, you’ll wish the game to the fiery pits of hell, and rightfully so.
• Alpha gamer syndrome: Like many co-ops, a dominant player might try to quarterback the whole team because “they know best.”

The Dice Mage’s Verdict

Chaos Heroes, this cooperative board game does not surrender easily! You won’t just sweat blood for victory; by the end, you’ll be braiding ropes out of your own nerves. The first few times, you’ll probably feel like you’ve been put through a meat grinder—the monsters keep coming, the horde effects mess with you, and the dice… well, they are dice.

But that is exactly its beauty, and precisely why it’s such a polarizing game. People either love it, or they want to nuke it from orbit just to make sure no one ever plays it again. After all, we all know what happened in Jumanji.

I think it plays best with four characters. That means there’s a defending hero on every side to push back the enemy. We often play it with two players, each controlling two characters, which isn’t overwhelming at all. It stays true to the box playtime, and I believe a clever 12-year-old could easily handle the mechanics.

One crucial tip!

I think Teagen (one of the playable heroes) should always be in the game unless the Bastion tile that removes Evil Grasp is placed right in the middle. Otherwise, those black skulls multiply along the outer walls in seconds. If a tile gets corrupted by Evil Grasp, you can’t use its action anymore. In that scenario, Teagen is the only one whose special ability can cleanse it. Defeating certain enemies gives this as a reward, but they are rare, and there’s no guarantee they’ll show up when you need them.

Now that I’ve written Evil Grasp so many times, I just hope it doesn’t manifest in my living room like Beetlejuice when you say his name three times…

Who do I recommend it for?

It’s a perfect choice if you are looking for a truly memorable, challenging cooperative board game for 1-4 players. The Last Bastion board game is insanely hard, but that makes the taste of victory so much sweeter. If you aren’t deterred by the suffering I just described, love a good fantasy theme, and enjoy the whims of the dice, this game is for you!

Who should steer clear?

However, if you are a hardcore Euro purist who gets frustrated by luck factors and the fact that a game can beat you to a pulp, don’t even go near it. If you ever cross paths with it, you’ll be splashing holy water on the box, I guarantee it.

Chaos Heroes! Have you tried defending the Last Bastion yet? Did you manage to defeat the Warlord? Alright, I’m out, gotta go recharge my mana… and drink a protein shake to prepare for the next battle. Stick around, because the depths of Dicepool Magic always hold something mind-numbing!