Sun Rot

What is Sun Rot

Sun Rot is a cooperative adventure game from Smashbash, an indie mini and game publisher in Oakland, CA. It was created and designed by Matt Ross with Dylan Melisko. The pitch on the box is “Roll Dice. Flip Cards. Escape Fate.” A bell tolls, an oracle turns up, and your party has to get out of a city before the dying sun finishes it off.

One player is the GM and drives the tension and pace. Everyone else builds a party from four classes: Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Astrologer. Smashbash pitches it at newcomers to narrative gaming.

It sits somewhere between a light TTRPG and an indie skirmish game. Wargamer called it “a hybrid mashup of dungeon crawler, wargame, and RPG,” and pointed out where it comes from: Smashbash grew out of the Inq28 kitbashing scene.

There are two versions. The first, after a Kickstarter that funded in under 24 hours, was card decks and a rules booklet, and you brought your own dice, minis, and terrain. The big box version puts everything on the table for you.

How it plays

• Roll, then flip. Roll a die to see if you can do the thing. If you can, flip a card to see how it turns out. Smashbash’s line: “the cards decide if it’s a heroic or disastrous end.”
• No min-maxing. Stats don’t guarantee the outcome you wanted. The card does the deciding.
• The clock is real. Every 10 real-life minutes an Event fires, which keeps a game to just under an hour.
• The rules are loose on purpose. Ross: “the rules are suggestions and no matter how much you try and play the ‘perfect’ game, you never can.”
• Scenarios. The box comes with a booklet of 30+ scenarios, and you can write your own.

How to start

1. Read the rules for free. Smashbash lists the core rule book at $0 on its shop.
2. Or buy the box. The big box is $99. It has a reversible hand-painted board, 3D slotted card terrain, standees for every character and monster, 250+ cards, tokens, 12 dice, a rulebook, and the scenario book.
3. Minis are optional. The box has standees. If you want models, Smashbash sells metal ones: a set of four core characters sculpted by Ana Polanšćak (Gardens of Hecate), monster packs that match cards in the game, the Lunar Celebrants by Marcello Rizza, and the Negation Titan by Hannes Rhodin. The first version was built around bringing your own minis, so minis you already own can stand in.
4. Bigger group? The Extra Party Expansion for the card-only version adds a second deck for each class so more people can play.
5. Find people. The Sun Rot Discord is linked from the official page.

More on the site

• Building Sunrot, Miscast, and Gardens of Hecate minis
• Finding Sunrot at the local game store
• The Gardens of Hecate Kickstarter, and why the minis suit Necropolis and Sunrot
• Unboxing Smashbash and moldmoldmold minis
• Building a Necropolis board and where Sunrot first comes up

Reviews

Coverage

📝

Wargamer: the gnarliest, weirdest new board game

First look at both versions and the official minis

📣

Rascal: the grimdark board game that wants you to throw out the rule book

Launch announcement with quotes from Matt Ross