By Adam Roffel
20 Strong is a fantastic series that Chip Theory Games has managed to condense into small boxes with deep, bite-sized gameplay. With a bunch of 20 Strong games already on the market, a newer trio of games caught my attention. Thanks to Chip Theory Games, we got to take each for a spin and loved each in their own way.
How 20 Strong Works
20 Strong is a series of primarily solo games based on popular stories and IPs. Although I have not played them all, I’ve played through my fair share of experiences. Each game has its own unique mechanic, but all of them share a few basic ideas.
Dice are rolled and used for a variety of things, including doing damage, healing characters, gaining resources to spend, and so much more. How they work specifically varies from game to game, but they are all based on dice management.
See, you are limited to the number of dice you have, and as you use dice, they’ll need to cool down before you can use them again. This is where the strategy lies. How do you get through your game while managing your dice? Spend too many, too quickly and you’ll be left with an empty bag when you need them most. Spend too few, and early game moments might feel insurmountable.
Tainted Grail and Etherfields are expansion decks that require a 20 Strong core set. Nemesis is available as either an expansion deck or a complete core set.
This trio of new experiences brought fresh and unique ideas to the table, and while I prefer the stories of some over others, all three are fun to explore in their own ways.
20 Strong: Tainted Grail and Choosing Your Battles
20 Strong: Tainted Grail makes a compelling case for the versatility of Chip Theory Games’ compact solo system. Drawing on Awaken Realms’ grim Arthurian setting, it breaks down an adventure into a brisk exercise in risk management, tactical combat, and calculated sacrifice. Honestly, it resembles the Tainted Grail games from Awaken Realms quite well. That’s why this was my favourite of the three.
The central pleasure is not simply rolling dice and hoping for the best, but deciding which enemies deserve your attention. Four face-up enemy decks offer different rewards, encouraging players to weigh immediate survival against longer-term development. A rotating colour restriction governs which dice can be used. The result is a system in which the order of your priorities matters almost as much as the numbers you roll.
This is still a dice game, as are the other two. Luck will play a role…roll…role…
The Menhir Stack and Combat Choices
The Menhir Stack provides another interesting wrinkle. Enemies discarded there can return during the final confrontation. That can turn the decision to avoid a difficult encounter into a potential problem for your future self. It’s an attractive option early, but can quickly cause problems later on. It is this type of strategic decision-making that keeps me coming back to this specific 20 Strong release time and time again. Combat cards add further tactical flexibility. They give players ways to mitigate the system’s restrictions and develop a more deliberate approach.
The main limitation here, and one that plagues almost all 20 Strong releases, is the potential for repetition across successive runs. That can happen if the enemy and boss variety proves insufficient over time. Nevertheless, 20 Strong: Tainted Grail demonstrates how a tightly constrained ruleset can generate meaningful decisions without demanding a sprawling setup or a lengthy commitment.
I have played a lot of Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon and Tainted Grail: Kings of Ruin. The sequences here mimic the original games in a very satisfying way. If you love Tainted Grail, this is an easy recommendation.
20 Strong: Nemesis and the Fight to Escape
20 Strong: Nemesis takes the series into science-fiction territory. Players must escape an infested spacecraft before the situation becomes uncontrollable. Like all 20 Strong releases, this one uses the dice-driven focus but puts special emphasis on exploration, hidden objectives, and the threat of alien encounters.
Dice management is the central consideration. Players must decide how many dice to commit to an action. They have to balance the probability of success against the cost of exhausting their available resources. This is nothing new, as it is the core of every 20 Strong release to date. Normally, Critical rolls are a good thing in 20 Strong. In Nemesis, they can increase noise and attract enemies, so even a successful action may carry consequences.
Exploration and Multiplayer Risks
Exploration adds structure to the experience. Rooms must be discovered and activated in the correct sequence before escape becomes possible. Character abilities and secret objectives also give individual runs their own priorities. I enjoyed this navigation, although it did frustrate me at times, leading to quick failure.
Spoiler time! Remember when I said 20 Strong was primarily a solo experience? Not anymore. 20 Strong: Nemesis is the first to provide gameplay for multiple players. In multiplayer, competing objectives introduce the possibility of conflicting agendas, making cooperation a matter of convenience.
Despite my love for this, a combination of dice-driven uncertainty and room discovery can make progress feel erratic. Backtracking and the hunt for specific locations may interrupt the urgency of the premise. Random outcomes can occasionally steer the course of the game more than a player's strategic plans. The result is a game whose atmosphere and survival framework may prove more compelling than the moment-to-moment gameplay.
For fans of the Nemesis universe, this compact adaptation offers an accessible way to revisit its central themes without committing to a full-scale board-game session. For everyone else, its appeal will depend on how much uncertainty they are willing to tolerate in pursuit of escape.
20 Strong: Etherfields and Its Evolving Cards
In Etherfields, players explore outward from a central card, using their health die as a pawn. The nifty gameplay idea here is that cards are double-sided. The first time you play, all the cards start on their “A” side. A variety of things can then flip them over to their “B” side.
This isn’t limited to the map cards either. It applies to all the cards. That means your hand will flip from time to time as well. It sounded interesting before I started on my journey in Etherfields. It was every bit as enjoyable as a mechanic once I began investing time into this.
The real draw, though, isn’t necessarily what happens in the game you are playing. On future plays, cards return to the deck on the same side they were on at the end of your previous play. So in a way, Etherfields is always evolving play after play.
Replayability and Resource Management
This is important, because I’ve found that some 20 Strong experiences lose their lustre after a few plays. I don’t think that will be quite as bad here. Eventually, I’m sure it will become a bit repetitive. I haven’t hit that wall yet, at least not with Etherfields.
What is a bit more refreshing is the cards as resources. You’ll need yellow symbols or dice to move, green to explore, and red to fight. Using cards is attractive as it saves dice for enemies. But if you exhaust your deck and need to shuffle up, there will be consequences.
Deciding when to use dice and when to use cards is a lot of fun and provides a lot of strategic thought.
Although I found Etherfields fun, my lack of knowledge of the game it was based on made this my least favourite of the three I played. This is, however, still a strong experience.
20 Strong Review Summary
Liked
- Tainted Grail's Menhir Stack and combat cards add meaningful strategic decisions.
- Nemesis brings tense exploration and competing objectives in multiplayer.
- Etherfields' double-sided cards change how future games play out.
- All three deliver engaging dice management in compact packages.
Didn't Like
- Tainted Grail and other 20 Strong games can become repetitive over multiple plays.
- Backtracking and searching for rooms can interrupt the pace of Nemesis.
- Random outcomes in Nemesis sometimes outweigh strategic decisions.
Adam Roffel
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