Co-op board game Set a Watch’s first expansion adds money into the mix
Alongside four fresh characters and new locations.
Fight monsters and earn money in the first standalone expansion for co-op game Set a Watch, Swords of the Coin.
An upcoming expansion, Set a Watch: Swords of the Coin sees players setting out to slay all manner of fearsome beasts and villainous individuals in the name of a paycheck. Called the Unhallowed, these creatures threaten The Kingdom and its people with destruction on a near-constant basis, so the Swords of the Coin - a mercenary band that the players will embody - have been hired as to help defend against the hordes.
A co-op game for one to four players, Swords of the Coin challenges players to work together to defeat each wave of monsters and survive long enough to face the next one. Featuring four never-before-seen characters - The Barbarian, The Heretic, The Witch and the Bounty Hunter - Swords of the Coin can be played alongside the original Set a Watch or entirely on its own.
Each new role in Swords of the Coin provides players with a different approach to tackling the various Unhallowed in the game. Whilst the Barbarian offers raw strength and stamina, the Witch exchanges power for utility and additional support from their familiar. The Bounty Hunter class enables players to turn killed monsters into additional abilities, and the Heretic uses their dark past to manipulate the very enemies themselves.
Besides the new characters and locations, Swords of the Coin introduces a new mechanic around earning and spending money. The camp board in this expansion now features actions that give players coin, which can then be spent buying new items from the merchant that visits at the end of every camp phase. These items can be used as powerful sources of protection, healing and damage-dealing, amongst various other abilities.
Swords of the Coin follows the release of the original game, Set a Watch, which came out last year and presented a co-op game where players needed to choose between fighting and recuperating. Each round, players can choose whether to remain at camp or face the incoming Unhallowed, with any monsters left undefeated put aside to await the players in a final stand. In Johnny’s review of Set a Watch, he praised it for providing satisfying moments of player success, despite how unbalanced the game’s difficulty could be.
The designer behind Set a Watch: Swords of the Coin is Todd Walsh, who co-created the original game alongside Mike Gnade, co-designer on the upcoming two-player game Lawyer Up. Swords of the Coin will be published by Rock Manor Games, the company that released the first Set a Watch, as well as co-op adventure game Maximum Apocalypse.
According to artist Boris Stanisic, the Kickstarter campaign for Set a Watch: Swords of the Coin will begin on September 22nd. A pledge of $29 (£22) will get players a copy of the core game that’s set to arrive sometime in September 2021.