Assassin’s Creed board game adds an open-world campaign, grapple and familiar face from the video games in new expansion - exclusive first look
Apocalypse takes Brotherhood of Venice to the jungles of 16th-century Cambodia.
The next expansion for Assassin’s Creed board game Brotherhood of Venice will introduce an open-world campaign, poisonous enemies and the ability to grapple across its maps - and Dicebreaker has an exclusive first look at its trailer.
Apocalypse was revealed last month as the next major expansion for Brotherhood of Venice, which adapted the Italian chapter of the long-running stealth-action video games series into a co-op board game in 2021.
Its latest expansion will explore the jungles of the Khmer Empire - now Cambodia - during the 16th century, marking a brand new time period and setting for an Assassin’s Creed game on or off the tabletop.
Dicebreaker can reveal that Apocalypse will include a brand new story campaign following the players’ pursuit of renegade assassin Isabel, who can manipulate the minds of her foes using the Apple of Eden in her possession - marking a notable return for the legendary artefact first introduced in the original Assassin’s Creed and referenced since throughout the series. The campaign will see the players’ assassins track Isabel through the Cambodian jungle, overcoming the environmental illusions created by her powers.
The original Brotherhood of Venice included a campaign with light legacy game-like elements, as players opened envelopes to unlock new character skills and cards, and could track their progress using stickers.
As shown in the new trailer, Apocalypse’s campaign will feature expanded open-world elements, as players experience exploration cards with multiple possible narrative paths and travel between locations on a dedicated map between missions. These locations can include viewpoints - allowing the players to reveal new locations by applying stickers to the board - and the ability to recover characters’ health at healers.
Exploration cards and the outcome of events will modify the card decks for future missions across the rest of the campaign, adding new enemies, items and events to the mix.
Apocalypse will introduce fresh enemies who inhabit the jungles of the 16th-century Khmer Empire, replacing the ubiquitous crossbowmen grunts of Brotherhood of Venice with new bow-wielding Stalkers.
Tougher foes will include elite guards in the form of Vipers and Furies. Befitting their name, the Vipers are clad in armour of Portuguese origin and dual-wield poisoned katar daggers. When a player takes poison damage, the life cube removed moves to fill one of their action cube slots, reducing their available abilities on future turns. Poison cubes can be recovered by using an antidote.
Isabel’s Furies, meanwhile, are stealthy infiltrators similar to the players’ own assassins. Rather than moving like other enemies, the sneaky foes can remain hidden before suddenly appearing on the same square as players’ characters - unleashing powerful attacks with their secret blades. While they can be deadly and swift, the Furies only have light armour, making them fairly easy to dispatch if you survive their onslaught.
The jungle itself contains other threats for both friend and foe, with venomous cobras inflicting poison on assassins and enemies - something that the players can use in their favour by directing the snakes towards guards - and crocodiles on tokens.
To help them overcome these new threats, the players’ assassins will gain new equipment, including rope daggers - which can be used to pull guards’ bodies to their square, Scorpion-style - and a grapple, allowing them to swing between trees and the box’s 3D Naga statue without risking detection. Players can also move through the tall grass of the jungle, as represented on map tiles, to avoid danger.
During the campaign, the players will meet with Shao Jun, the assassin star of video game spin-off Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China, who can help the group by using her Deadly Dance ability to eliminate all enemies in a square without raising the alarm.
A Kickstarter campaign for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice - Apocalypse will launch at the end of May, ahead of the expansion’s future release. A release date and pricing are yet to be announced.