This is a bit of a late post considering it has been months since I received the second wave of expansions for the Dark Souls board game from Steamforged games, but I've wanted to do this for a while and finally got myself to sit down and write this post. I wasn't able to acquire the kickstarter exclusive expansions that came out, Old Iron King, Guardian Dragon, and Four Kings, who I hoped I would be able to get and play with but sadly they were too expensive on Ebay, so I'm only ranking the general release items of wave 2. I've had a blast playing with all of them, and they have me excited for the future of the game so let's talk about how much fun I had with each expansion piece.
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4. Asylum demon
As far as bosses in the game go, the Asylum demon is a pretty standard encounter with nothing too special and isn't too challenging, which is also how this expansions felt. While the model is of course beautiful, playing the boss fight didn't feel all too special aside from the "pillar" gimmick which isn't hard to avoid. There is a difficulty spike when you use the model as the "Stray Demon" but it is still a straight forward fight with an enemy so slow that some attacks give you a chance to roll out of bounds if you can. I didn't have a bad time with this expansion, but it didn't excel to the thrills the others did, and I also find it a major missed opportunity that more cards were added to create the "Stray Demon" but the same wasn't done for the "Firesage Demon", and this one expansion could have had a mini, main, and mega boss potentially.
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3. Gaping dragon
The model and design work on this resin piece is superb and looks absolutely incredible with mass and detailing the match the in-game creature. As with some of the other buildable model in wave 2, pieces were hard to assemble but nothing that couldn't be resolved by taking an exacto-knife to the extra chunks of plastic. This mega boss brings the power to go along with the size, with acidic spray and a devastating charge attack that many times left me reeling. My brother and I debated countless times over whether or not we even wanted to get close to the boss because of the damage that could be done, which goes to show how much planning and skill must go into some of these encounters. That's a win in my book.
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2. Kalameet
I was honestly surprised to put this one so high on my list. I didn't remember Kalameet all that well from the game and figured he would just be a dragon we would have to fight in a standard fight, but I was wrong. This bosses gimmick, where it blazes fire across the board, was a very cool new mechanic that I was actually excited for every time it popped up. It was unique, tense, and added a new factor to the game that we had to watch out for. I had a blast playing against this boss due to this new ability, and I was glad we saved him for the closing of our campaign.
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1. Darkroot basin
As fun and amazing as mega-boss expansions can be, I knew from the start that this add-on was going to be my number one pick. Several new minis with varying enemies and cool new models to play through in the fodder rounds of the game leading up to the bosses, with new attacks and stats to watch out for, as well as just having such a sheer amount of new pieces to utilize. There is so much that can be done, and along with all of the grunt enemies the add-on includes two whole bosses as well in Sif and Artorius who are both fluid, fast, dangerous fights to be had. This expansions brings a plentiful swell of new product and newness to the game that cannot be ignored, as I found myself using Darkroot enemies in every encounter I had leading up to the bosses. Expansions like this are what I want to be the focus from now on, rather than mega-boss expansions, because while I love all of the other wave 2 expansions there's no way to top an expansion that gives you multiple bosses with several new types of enemies.
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