How To Play Schotten Totten

Schotten Totten is a lane control game for two players. In this game you want to either win three adjacent locations or five total locations. You win locations by playing better sets of three cards on your side than your opponent can on their side.

So What Wins?

In this game you are playing “poker” type of hands. At least you can think of that for rankings. If you play a straight flush (of three cards), that is the best, then three of a kind, flush, straight, and total value of the cards. So you can see the order is pretty similar to poker. But there is no pair options.

And when you win, for example, I play a straight flush of 9, 8, 7 – in any order, that can’t be beat. Even if my opponent plays the same thing, I did it first. So when I complete that, the token comes to my side. And at that point in time my opponent can no longer play there.

Note: The game calls them color and runs for flush and straight.

Playing Cards

So I already mentioned how you can get locked out of playing in some spots. It is also important to know that you must always play. So as you play out cards or figure out what cards are left in your hand, you need to think about where you might play in the future. And the more your opponent wins the fewer options you get.

You also need to think about the cards available in the deck. Because there are six colors 1 through 9 in each color. What is the likelihood that you are going to get a card from a middle of a run that you are trying to create? Better if it isn’t a straight flush but not great. So it is possible that you might find your opponent or you win a location simply because they are no longer able to beat what you placed down. For example, if they need a six to beat your run and you play that six, you lock them out.

What Doesn’t Work

There is a level of luck to this game. And that is needed. If it were a zero sum game, by that a mean a game where you know all the information, a player with a better starting hand would win. There is no need to play it out. But depending on your preferences for games, it might feel like too much luck. But that is kind of the point of the game.

What Works

This game is simple to learn and play. It is just laying out the tiles, which don’t matter what order they go in just that they are in a line. And then you shuffle up and deal cards. I think that I could get a new player playing Schotten Totten in less than five minutes.

Hand Management

And there is a nice strategy to knowing when to pivot from a location or when to invest more at a location. That is where the meat of the game is, so to speak. You need to know when you can still dig for a card. And you need to play out cards onto locations you might not win.

Why, because you need to manage your hand of cards. You might get stuck with three ones that don’t go anywhere, and now those are dead cards in your hand if you wait too long. And three dead cards or cards you don’t want to play isn’t that bad. What happens when it is the majority of your hand? Can you figure out which spot to maybe throw a card and lose, or do you keep everything alive.

Tension

The final thing I want to talk about is tension. The tension of that choice when you decide to give up on a location. The tension of when you want to show that you’re strong at a location and when you want to hold back. Or even when it gets down to it, the tension of the draw to see if you can get the one card you need to keep your opponent from winning three adjacent locations. The game always feels tense at some point in time.

Who is Schotten Totten For?

This is a two player only game. So I think this is a good game for couples in an evening when they don’t have a ton of time. I put it in that range of a game like Lost Cities where it’s easy to get to the table and play. But it is not going to be your whole evening. That is probably a sweet spot for two player games most of the time, and where most of the ones I play on BGA land. But that is who that is for, you do need to like that bit of luck and very head to head game play.

My Final Thoughts and Grade on Schotten Totten

I like Schotten Totten a lot. I think the games in the two player realm that I’d compare it to most are Lost Cities and Hanamikoji. It is less thinky than Hanamikoji for sure. So it is more on par with Lost Cities in terms of weight. But I like the fact it is just win locations, not see if you can get points like Lost Cities. I think that is easier to learn and teach than the somewhat complex rules for Lost Cities in terms of points. Mainly the negative points. So I appreciate that ease to the table when teaching a new player.

I personally think I like it better than Lost Cities. But it is not up there with Hanamikoji which is one of my favorite two player only games. I think that one just adds in enough more puzzle that it’s more interesting. That said, I think that Schotten Totten is likely to end up in my collection. Why, because it is a small game and one that is easier to teach and play than Hanamikoji. And I really like it for that.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: A-
Strategy (out of 10): 6
Luck (out of 10): 4

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How to Play Captain Tsubasa

Captain Tsubasa The Card Game is a back and forth card playing game where players take turns being on the attack or defending to score goals. Determining if you score a goal or not comes down to comparing numbers. But how do you get those numbers?

Creating Your Hand

At the start of each round players draft cards from a center row. These are your first half strategies or second half adjustments as you look at them. So it can be things like a yellow card or a coaching decision of some sort. Starting with the defending player they select a card to add to four cards from their deck. And each deck is one of the teams of the Captain Tsubasa anime. Then the attacking player selects a card to add to their hand.

Card Play

Then starting with the attacking player they play out a card and activate abilities. Cards generally have a few different things on them. Shooting, passing, and defending are the main stats on the card. And those will help determine how well you do your action, passing or shooting when you are the attacker, or defending when you are the defender.

Cards also have special powers. Some of these are play an extra card or draw a card. Or you maybe remove that card from your deck. Some cards also let you get tokens. These tokens persist and you use them throughout the game when you want to alter the value of your action.

Resolving Actions

Once nine cards have been played or both players pass players then total up their value for their action. Tokens can be spent to increase the value by one per token. And finally, both players roll a die and add that to their value. Whomever is higher is the winner and in the case of the tie the attacking player wins.

The attacker does have a choice. When they select their action they pick either pass or shoot. If they succeed or fail when shooting the ball the opponent becomes the attacking player. But if they choose to pass and successfully pass, then they maintain the ball and are the attacker.

Special Cards

Some cards do have special abilities. Some of these can be one time use. It is the anime-esque special shots where players pick a card and compare. If you select the same card the shot is blocked if not the shot is saved.

There are other cards that are one time use as well such as yellow card. That card is going to give a player negative one to all their values until they can deal with it. This comes in form of a card that you can draft which is going to be eliminated but thematically is substituting a player off the pitch who has that card. And there are more of these special cards an powers as well to learn as you play.

Winning

There are six rounds per half. So twelve total rounds in the match with the possibility of overtime if the game ends in a tie. Once overtime is done if the game is still tied players share the victory. Otherwise the winner is determined by who scored the most goals in the game.

What Doesn’t Work

The game is limited in variety, now that is just the base way of playing the game. It is possible to play in other ways where you play with a bench and can substitute your players. That is going to provide some variety. But for me, I wish there was a touch more variety in the cards that you pick for your extra cards for first half or second half. Second half cards are generally better but often times the same for the most part.

What Works

Game Length

The game play is nice and tight in this game. The decisions are more impactful than I actually expected them to be. And you need to think about what cards make sense. The fact that it is only nine cards total per round means that you can create situations where you play six of those nine cards. But is it going to be enough?

The game is also the right length. I think in person it is not going to be too terribly long. The rounds go quickly and while there is a bit to do, because of the low scoring nature of the game, you feel invested the whole time.

The Dice

I like the little bit of randomness for the game as well. There is a card you can select that lets you reroll that die. But that little bit of randomness, a random bounce in a game of soccer keeps the scores more soccer like. And that helps with the tension of the game. Sports games are often hard to do because you lose the pace and tension, but that die roll that happens a few times a game helps keep the tension in the game.

Shooting or Passing

The choice of shooting or passing works as well. Sometimes you feel like you might be able to get a shot through but you need the die to do the right thing for you. But your passing score is higher, in which case, you might want to just pass the ball. Or late game, can you maintain the ball as the attacking player if you are in the lead. That is truly thematic to soccer so I love that element for the game.

Card Play

Finally, I think that the card play works well. Nothing is too much on the cards and if often makes you think about what you want to do. One strategy I haven’t messed around with too much is thinning out your deck of cards. But I think that is a very viable strategy. There are players who are maybe a one for everything, shooting, passing, and defending, but also let you draw a card and then lose that card from your deck. So it is a strategy to clear out some of those cards if you’ve built a different or better deck.

Who is Captain Tsubasa The Card Game For?

This is maybe the most challenging question. Captain Tsubasa is not a new anime so I don’t think it’s for anime fans. Not a ton of people will go back and check it out. So maybe for people who already love that anime or already love soccer. But sports games generally find a more limited appeal for board gamers. I think it is good enough of a game that people who want a different feeling two player game should check it out, but the theme might be a harder sell.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Captain Tsubasa

I love trying new two player games on Board Game Arena. And I honestly went into this game with low expectations. A lot of anime based games are not that great. Though, I think that is an area that if it can be opened up to a larger publishing front it can improve. But Captain Tsubasa really works as a game and while it isn’t a perfect one to one with soccer, I think it hits some key elements.

The biggest being that the score is almost always low. That is going to be what gives it that best soccer feel. And even when you set yourself up for a great opportunity to score, you still might not. Again that is that soccer feel.

When I rated it on BGG (Board Game Geek), I looked to see if there is going to be an English version. Right now the only way to play it in English is to play it on BGA. And yes, one is coming. So I think I want to pick it up because it is that enjoyable a game and something that to me feels different in the space of a two player game. Yes, it is that normal two player back and forth thing, but it works really well.

My Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B-
Casual Grade: C
Strategy (out of 10): 7
Luck (out of 10): 5

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Catch up on my Top 100 Games (of all Time) 2023 Edition:

100 through 91
90 through 81
80 through 71
70 through 61
60 through 51
50 through 41
40 through 31
30 through 21
20 through 11

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 10 through 1

10. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

Let’s start off with Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game at #10 this year. Detective is deduction game where you and your teammates are trying to solve cases. The base box comes with five cases that take about 2-3 hours each. And you’re up against the clock, in the game, to solve everything and figure out what answers you need as you get quizzed on what happened and the who, what, and why of the case at the end. Plus little details that you might have missed or you can piece together.

This is like a crime television drama. I don’t love watching those, but playing in one is amazing. You actually get to put together deduction skills and piece together what happened. Sometimes it’s easy, and other times it is hard, but it’s always worth it.

And this game does a good job using technology as you play. Part of how you get information is interacting with a computer and a database to pull up details that might already exist on the case. Or it might be details that already exist on people in the case. It really helps make Detective into a great immersive experience.

Buy Detective

9. The Great Split

Next up we have The Great Split, a new game to the list and one that does a single thing well. In The Great Split, it is primarily an “I split, you choose” game. What does that mean? It means that I have a group of cards and I put them into two groups. You pick one of those groups and I get the other one back. Then we both use them for scoring, which is what everyone is doing at the same time. So, I love the simplicity and simultaneous nature of the game play.

Plus the scoring is nice in the game as well as it isn’t too difficult or too easy. What it mainly is, is pushing up on on tracks for artwork, literature, gems, and money. And each of them is going to score in a different way. Some of them score with how well you are doing against a market or against a scoring track. Others score, the gems, with your lowest of the two gem tracks. So it’s figuring out what you want to go for, because that’s not all the scoring.

There is also contracts in the game. Those are on the tracks as well, but you have other tracks that you want to push up on. Because they make the contracts you have, loaning your art pieces out to museums and stuff like that, worth more. But if you’re pushing up on those tracks, you aren’t on the main scoring tracks, so it’s a really good balance. And all of that with very simple rules teach and very simple game play.

Buy The Great Split

8. Floriferous

Now we have Floriferous, a game that has made it’s way higher up on the list from last year. And some of that is what I redid how I thought about the list, some. I now put more stock into the games that I want to play all the time and do play often, as well as the ones that give me a great experience when I play them. Which is why there are fewer campaign games in the Top 10, though, don’t worry, their are still several.

But Floriferous is a drafting game of building up your best bouquet of flowers. But how you draft and how you know what you are scoring is what I love about the game. You lay out the cards to be drafted from at the start of the round. And then players take turns drafting from the first column of cards. Where you draft in that column then determines your drafting order for the next column. It makes for great decisions as decide to take a less ideal card to make sure you get the perfect card next column.

And then there is the scoring. A little of the scoring just exists at the start of the game. Most of what you score you need to draft. So I need to draft a card that says “2 points for all purple flowers”, for example. And I can do that, but the scoring cards are always at the bottom of the column. That means when I take a scoring card I’m going to be going last next round which is a choice, as I said above, that I really love.

Buy Floriferous

7. Planet Unknown

Next up we have Planet Unknown a terraforming, polyomino laying game. And it’s one that is not that hard to teach, if you have the game in front of you. But it does some very cool things, which I’ll get to in a second here. But the game is about filling up your planet with tiles, clearing out meteors that have hit your planet, and building up on various tracks of nature, water, technology, rover mobility, and civilization.

The game is able to be played in two ways. The first way is a simple generic way where everyone has the exact same thing. I think it is a solid system if everyone is learning the game, and you have new to gaming people in there. But once people know the system at all, flip over the boards and the groups going to the planets. That is when the fun begins as everyone is working a little bit differently and has their own ways and timings as they go up the tracks while still playing the same game.

And the one thing I haven’t touched on yet is how you pick your tiles. There is a lazy susan in the middle with all of the tiles on it. And on your turn, you turn the lazy susan to the side you want facing you so you get the tile that you want. It’s a tough decision, and then everyone else takes from the side facing them. Or at least kind of facing them, because they’ll have a marker, placed at the start of the game, that determines where they take from. I love that mechanism as I can get what I want, or I might choose to mess with you.

Late Pledge Planet Unknown

6. Lost Ruins of Arnak

Then we have Lost Ruins of Arnak. And this one I do want to specify that it is a top 10 game for me with the first expansion. The second expansion definitely keeps it up this high as well, but the first one is needed, in my opinion. It takes Lost Ruins of Arnak from a fun game to one of my top games of all time.

So how does it play, and why do I like the expansion so much. Well, at it’s heart, The Lost Ruins of Arnak is a resource management game of going out, collecting resources and turning them in to move up a research track. But there are a number of twists with it as well. Because I also am building up a deck of cards that let me do more actions or power up the actions that I do take. And I love that aspect to it.

So let’s talk about what the expansion adds and why I think Expedition Leaders is very important to the game. In Lost Ruins of Arnak, base game, everyone has the same camp, same workers, and same starting deck of cards. And there are two tracks which you can go up on. It’s fun. But Expedition Leaders says your camp, your cards, how many workers you have, all of that can be unique now. Because you have a leader that makes you unique and I really love that.

Buy The Lost Ruins of Arnak

5. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is the next game on the list coming in at #5. And it is one that I haven’t played in probably eight months. I really need to get it back to the the table. But I love this engine building game and another game about terraforming a planet, but this time, I’d say, it’s way more about building up that engine to generate more resources and points.

The game, like I said, is about building up that engine and determining when to activate everything, and when to pick an action to do based off of what you think your opponent is going to do. How does that work? Well, the game has five actions and the actions that are played out by the players that round are the ones that are going to happen.

The actions also fire off in a particular order. So if I pick research it’s action #5, so it’ll go last. Someone else might pick activating actions, and that’s #3, so it goes in that order. Which ever one you pick, you get a special bonus for it, while your opponents get whatever the basic action is (which you do as well). So it’s about trying to not match with your opponents to get more actions done and to figure out what benefits you the most. Of course, if everyone is doing that, well, then no one might pick that one action everyone wants.

Buy Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

4. Stars of Akarios

Now we’re onto one of the big campaign games. And you can see game play for this one on Malts and Meeples. Stars of Akarios is a game that I absolutely enjoyed all that I did. Some parts are better than others, but as a whole, I think the game is a ton of fun. It’s a big space adventure that gives me vibes from Enders Game and Space Dandy, two really different things, but it works for this game.

The game is split into three parts, but we’re going to talk about two of them. First part is planetary exploration. This has a 7th Continent type feel to it with flipping over locations and interacting with places. Plus there is a lot of story that you can find as well for the different planets. There are skill checks and things like that, but a lot of it is story and the choices you make in that story unlocks new things that you can do.

The main part of the game is tactical space combat. It’s about using your dice to flank and out maneuver the enemies so that you are in the right spot for a big hit and they can’t hit you back. I adore the puzzle that this game provides in this space combat. It is good enough to just be a game by itself, but the story and the world/universe that is being built in the game is just amazing. I can’t wait to get back to it, and maybe it’ll be a campaign game that I come back to and try and play through solo sometime.

Buy Stars of Akarios

Note the 1.5 version of Stars of Akarios is coming out. There should be a late pledge available soon.

3. Dice Throne

Next up is Dice Throne. I believe that my #2 and #3 flipped spots from last year. Dice Throne is a battling game of taking characters up against each other and rolling dice, Yahtzee style, to deal damage. You get a better roll, like a large straight or all sixes and you get to do more damage.

The game really shines in two areas. The first is how they manage to make all of the characters feel different. I have Marvel Dice Throne pictured here, but in the video I have Dice Throne Season 1 and I figured out coming soon there will be 35 different characters. And all of the characters do feel different. They come with different tokens that change up how they interact with the enemies or how they ramp up to deal more damage themselves.

And then there is the card play in this game. What doesn’t make it just pure dice chucking are these cards. Some of them are upgrades to your attacks that offer better results and more damage when you roll them. Other times, and I’d say most often this, it’s about getting better results on your dice. You don’t want to end up being stuck doing nothing if you try and shoot the moon and go for all sixes. So you keep cards to manipulate the dice. It’s a great system that offers more depth than you’d think from the initial description.

Buy Dice Throne

2. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon

Now we have Tainted Grail at #2. This one moved up, I think, because I made it through all three campaigns, wrapping up the third one this year. And all of them offer something unique and fun that is really enjoyable to play. I love how you start in the middle with the first campaign and then the second takes place 500 years later and the first 500 years before it. It offers a lot of interesting storytelling, which the writer really takes advantage of.

The game play is also pretty slick once you get into it. The combat and diplomacy checks are done through card play. And while that is an important part of the game, it’s not too hard to build up something that is powerful enough. Or players with specialize in different areas. One element about the combat that I really like is that you need to pay attention is to the enemies attack. How much damage you deal determines the enemies attack. If you aren’t careful, you’re going to take a lot of damage.

But the game really shines around the exploration and survival aspects of the game. I think it’s best on story mode because the story is so good. But you always need to be keeping track of the menhir that you have lit. Because if they go out, then you start to lose parts of the map as the wyrdness takes over. And that limits where you can explore. And as I said, exploration is the best part of the game. It is a chance to dive into that story. So it’s a balance of story, resource gathering, and then just surviving that makes Tainted Grail work so well.

Buy Tainted Grail

1. Gloomhaven

My #1 hasn’t changed, it’s still Gloomhaven. Though, you can say that it is Gloomhaven, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, and Frosthaven all rolled into one. Jaws of the Lion might be a game that I show off here on Malts and Meeples. And I’m now playing through a campaign of Frosthaven.

This is a classic dungeon crawling game where you go into a scenario and need to tactically move around and kill all the bad guys. Or at least that’s the objective in a lot of base Gloomhaven’s scenarios. The other ones offer more variety. But it’s also a game of leveling up your characters, unlocking more abilities, and then eventually retiring and getting a whole new character to play with.

And getting those abilities and playing them out is where the game is amazing. You play out two cards from your hand each turn. They have abilities on the top and bottom. And you’ll activate one of the top abilities and one of the bottom ones. Plus you need to figure out where in initiative that you want to go as well.

And the variety in them and how different the characters are is impressive. It’s like a lot of the games in my Top 10, I like the variable player powers and variability in what you are doing. Gloomhaven and all the following games offer a ton of that. And it’s sad to lose a character to retirement that you’ve spent time with, but exciting to unlock something new. This is just an amazing game that deserves the love it gets.

Buy Gloomhaven

Thanks for Joining Me

Thank you for joining me as I went through all of the games on this list. I really have fun doing this every year. And I hope that you have fun watching along. I appreciate everyone who has been in the chats and watched the videos. It means a lot to me to see that people are enjoying it. Let me know what some of your favorite games are.

Upcoming Streaming

And join me for future upcoming streams. I made a comment that my Monday streams might be changing. We’ll have to see on that, it might just be less often, or it might move to a different night, it depends on some variables as I look at the new year. Right now, though, that it’s changing. I plan on streaming Monday nights at 9 PM Central. I won’t have some on the 25th of December, I will be around next week.

Then on Wednesday, I generally stream a campaign game. I won’t be doing that this upcoming week. And I’ll be missing the following week. But as I start 2024, I plan to stream Rogue Angels. A game that I think will be in my Top 100 starting next year. One of my rules was that I needed to have played a physical copy. And thus far I only have played it digitally. Now I’ll be able to play it in person, which I’m really excited for. So join me for that starting in 2024. And Wednesday streams start at 8 PM Central time.

But the best way, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

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Since I have only played on TTS (TableTopSimulator), I am not going to do a full breakdown of how the game works. Plus, it’s a prototype so things are subject to change, though the module on TTS is very solid. And the rules, hopefully shared immediately at launch are pretty good. So instead I’m going to jump into what did and didn’t work. I do talk about that some in a video below, though.

Edgeguard Preview Video

What Didn’t Work?

This is going to be a massive box game. Now that’s not a massive negative for me. Granted, I’d likely need to find more space on my Kallax by clearing out even more games. But when I see a big campaign game, I fully expect that it is going to take up a lot of space. For some people, who maybe don’t have a dedicated gaming space, that might make this harder to get.

Also, this is going to be a game where there is a fair amount of housekeeping to it. Set-up of finding the tiles will take time, finding the enemy tokens, minis and cards, and pulling out everything for your character. I am waiting on the Kickstarter to see how much of a big deal I think that will be. Mainly because I hope they are thinking about storage and how to make it as fast to the table as possible. Because, compared to other dungeon crawl games, this one can get you into and through a scenario pretty quickly.

Neither of these things are a big red flag for me though. In fact, both are issues that I expect for most campaign games. Especially if a game is going to have minis. And I don’t know, maybe there will be a standee version, but I suspect that most people would go with minis anyways.

What Works?

The Characters

Let’s start with the characters, the characters are very generic, and now that sounds like a negative. I actually maybe should mention that in there, but I’ll say it here now, they could be more exciting. But how the characters play, and I’ve only messed around with the different ones while I’ve played true solo, is different. The warrior does what they are supposed, same with the caster, the healer, the rogue and the ranger. Everyone plays in their archetype.

And to make that work, each class is going to have their own cards that build out your hand. What I really like about the cards is that they are powerful. For a caster, for example, you play a card that uses resources to blast everyone in a row, column, or diagonal from where you are. That is a great ability, but it costs when you do that, it costs to get it back and it costs to use it again. That is very fun, and when you level up, you unlock new card abilities to add to your hand. And you have to pass on others, though you can pay to swap them in.

The last with with the characters that is fun is that you can multiclass. In a lot of dungeon crawl games, or RPG like board games, you pick and class and go with it. In Edgeguard, you can change up the class you are playing. Granted, they can never overtake your main class, but it allows you to customize your character more so. The only other one I can think of off the top of my head is a light boss battler or dungeon crawler in Adventure Tactics. This one gives you more than that seems to.

The Enemies

I also really like how simple the enemies are to operate. There are campaign games where it takes a lot of work to get the enemies up and running. And while you do need to find the minis, place out tokens, find the cards for the enemies, their actual turns are pretty simple. And the enemy AI doesn’t change that much, except for when it does.

The enemies, like the players, have a chance to get a critical success. For the players that just means more damage, but for the enemies, that changes their behavior. The Shadow, Assassin, for example, if you get it’s third critical hit option has a shot to immediately take a character down to one hit point. Granted, that takes a little bit of luck. But if you are being swarmed by a number of bad guys and get hit by that, you are in big trouble.

Combat

As for combat itself, I appreciated how fast it went. When I play solo, some games can bog down in combat and set-up. Now, the game is going to take a chunk of time to set-up. And I’ll miss being able to click a button on TTS and have it do that for me. But at the same time, the combat itself is nice and straightforward. The game is simple to play, but has depth in the decision making space it gives you. So a nice sweet spot for me.

Mainly, going back to the cards, I appreciate how good the decisions are for what you do with the cards. The resources that you need to spend to do a more powerful spell or attack off of a card, that is a good choice. I know when I play RPG’s on the computer, I try not to be the person who just hordes every ability or potion just in case there’s a time I need it more. This game could run into that issue, but only because of players, with the cards that you play. But you can get them back, it just costs. So you don’t use them randomly, but also, you don’t want to horde them.

Who Is It For?

Edgeguard is going to be a game for people who love their campaign games. If that is what you play, and you have a dedicated space for it, it’d be a nice one to keep on the table for a while. I think that most people know if they are that, especially if they are looking to back a game on crowdfunding.

From my time with the game, and remember it’s been on TTS, I think that Edgeguard is probably more accessible than some dungeon crawlers. Yes, there is a fair amount going on with all the different stats that make it feel like more, but overall it was easy to follow what was going on. For that reason another group it’d be good for is the person introducing new people to dungeon crawlers. There will be some RPG elements that take a bit to learn, but the core dungeon crawl game play should be easy to pick-up.

My Thoughts On Edgeguard

I always like to finish up a little bit with my opinion. When I do what I don’t like and what I do like, I try and give detailed reasons for that or explain more of it. My thoughts, on the other hand, are going to be more of my opinion.

Edgeguard is hitting a pretty crowded market, and a crowd of games that are on my shelf. Now, that isn’t a bad thing, because I know I love the campaign genre of board games. And I know that I get to playing them. Whether it’s on Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel or with friends.

What drew me to Edgeguard is the epic look at that it had. But that isn’t always going to be enough to keep me looking at it. What is going to keep me checking this one out on Kickstarter is the simplicity of the game in the dungeon crawl. I know what groups I play campaigns with, and a little bit simpler one will be better for some groups. And even for groups who might not play campaign games with me normally.

So is it one for you? Well, if the card play sounds interesting and you are looking for your next big epic adventure, join me in checking out Edgeguard on Kickstarter.

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Downforce

Downforce is a racing and bidding game where players are bidding for ownership of cars, and then betting on those cars, or any of the cars to win the race. The game has three different points as the cars move along the track where players bet.

Cars move around the track as players play down cards in turn order. Each card will have the cars moving some amount, and it might not just be your car that moves. A card might move the blue, green, and red cars, 4, 2, and 1 spaces respectively in that order. The trick is that the track can bottle neck in some places, and cars can’t go through other cars, so the order cars moves matters, either to block some cars or to get them through.

The winner is the player who has the most money at the end of the race. You lose money for how much you paid for your cars. You get money if they place and for your bets. We had people in the negatives in the first game and in the second game someone had $28 million. So massive range in scores.

What Doesn’t Work?

I like this game, let’s start with that, but I think out of the base box there is one thing that doesn’t work too well. And that is the car powers. The car powers are cool and something to keep track of. So players forgot them. But the issue I have with them is less remembering them more so the fact that there are six of them and six cars. That means that every power is going to get used. I want more powers, I want there to be eight to ten in the base box. If you use all, you can wait to bid on your favorite power. With ten, there would be question to which would show up.

What Works

This is a very light and fast game. I know there are bigger ones out there, but I like that this is a racing game that wants to feel like a race. A lot of racing games give you moments of adrenaline rush but this one, everything that happens matters and is fun to play around with. So I could see pulling this out, auctioning off the cars and then doing a few races, almost NASCAR style, see who wins the most money but also who does best overall in the races in an evening.

I also really like the card play in this game. The fact that you do every movement on the cards is great. And they have to go in a certain order makes it a puzzle. There are cards that only move one car 5, or the special card that allows for a movement of 8. But then there are cards that move all six cars from six spots down to one spot. So you can create traffic jams if the order is right.

I also really like the powers in the game. I just said that they didn’t work for me, but really, it is just the number of them that doesn’t work. What I want is more of them. So I will probably get the expansions, if they add them, but also for the added in tracks. But something that makes you feel unique is great.

Who Is Downforce For?

Honestly, this is a game for everyone. The game play is simple and fast. People who don’t get gaming will likely get this. The trickiest thing to understand is that you don’t only think about your own cars. In fact, I rarely bid on my own cars. But even when you are done racing, you still care about all the cars on the board. So this is just a great game in my opinion for families, or as a filler for gamers.

In fact, I think the idea of turning it into a cup, or series, is great for gamers. Add some more to the game, play on all the tracks and just enjoy it. It falls into that category of with Formula D and Pitchcar where since they are racing games, might as well do them a bunch. But Downforce is the most accessible of all of them because Formula D adds in more to keep track of Pitchcar is dexterity.

Final Thoughts

This is such a fun game and I had such a fun time playing it. I am going to be getting the expansions, I just want more maps and more fun for this game. I don’t think you need more maps, but I want to do a 6 race series just because that’s going to be fun. And really, my negative item for this game is barely a negative. It’s just, like I said, I want more. I wouldn’t even mind if the different color cars had a special ability, so a car ability and a driver ability or something like that, though, that might make the game more complex than it should be.

Last thing I’ll say is that Downforce isn’t so much a racing game as a betting game. Or maybe more it’s equal racing and bidding. And the bidding, especially early on is just luck. But maybe there is more than luck to what you are doing.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: B+

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The Game

This game has you racing to raise the temperature, oxygen levels, and flip over ocean tiles to score the most points. To do this you are playing down cards, in two different ways. The first is to select the action you are going to take. You can develop, construct, activate actions, produce income or draw cards. And they activate in that particular order. But only the ones which had cards played down activate. But on develop and construct, you are playing cards from your hand that do different things. Development cards will improve your production. The other cards can give you a one time benefit or help you build up an engine to get more cards, resources, or points.

As players you build out that engine to raise those two tracks and flip tiles. In the end, you want to play out the most points possible. But if you only focus on driving those three end game conditions, all which need to be completed, early in the game, you can end up without an engine built later. So it is a balancing act of getting points consistently versus a lot at the end.

What Doesn’t Work

Some of the pieces don’t work well in this game. Let’s run through all of them. The ocean tiles are dumb, it’s kind of a carry over from Terraforming Mars. Now, don’t get me wrong, the rewards on the tiles are nice, but the fact they are tiles is dumb. This is a card game, those tiles are just fiddly and annoying. To get to the middle ones you need to push the rest out of the way. Just give me a small deck of cards to put on the scoring board and let me flip one from the top each time to determine the rewards.

Then there are the cubes in this game. Cubes are used to track the oxygen, temperature, scores, production levels and supplies. This isn’t bad, but I have the Target version, so in the Kickstarter version on the player board for production and supplies they have a dual layer board. The Target version is flimsy cardboard. Now, that is me not spending on the Kickstarter, but I will need to upgrade my version later. And the score track and oxygen and temperature tracks, the cubes just don’t fit on them, and that I’d call bad design.

I also already want more cards in the game. I haven’t played it a ton of times, but we ran through all the cards in the first game and had to reshuffle. Now, not a major issue, but I wouldn’t mind a few more cards already. There are some cards dependent upon temperature or oxygen levels, so those aren’t played as often.

What Works

Engine Building

For me the engine building works really well. Being able to produce so much and really target different types of production to either play more cards, or make points somehow is a lot of fun. And it is a tactical engine building game. There is enough randomness in the cards that you get that you need to be able to pivot. Maybe you are getting a lot of planets to start but then draw cards that need heat, you’ll need to pivot. I like that style of engine building because I can’t go in with a single set strategy, like say Dominion.

Corporations

I also like the corporations. Any game where you start out different from everyone else, that’s fun. And I like the different types of corporations. I have played with one where I got a ton of credits but not that great a secondary power. I also have gone with one that gave me starting production in plants but way fewer credits and a solid power. So you can really decide between a wide variety of corporations when you start to tailor your game play.

Simultaneous Play

So, one thing I didn’t talk about was t hat each phase, the ones that are activated anyways, everyone does. So if I do development and you do research, we both get to do both of them. But when you play down a phase you get an extra benefit. So if I am the one who played down development, we can all play a development card, at the same time, but I get to play mine for three less cost wise. This simultaneous play really keeps the game moving. Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition isn’t the fastest game, but there is never downtime.

Is This Game Good?

I really like this game. I covered some issues but they are generally production issues. And the thing with cards, I don’t know all the cards, and I haven’t played all of them myself in my plays. I just can see myself picking a strategy and fishing for my favorite cards eventually. But the game itself is a ton of fun. I like engine building a lot, and this gives me that. I like games with little to no downtime, and I get that. And I like games that make me think about what my opponent is doing.

Going back to the picking of actions. I can decide to trigger another phase if I think you will trigger the one I want. If you need money and I need money, maybe I do research to get more cards because I’ll get money when you trigger production. So there isn’t player interaction of a negative variety, but if I’m smart I can leverage what you are doing or likely to do, to my advantage.

My Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C

I think some gamers will want this game to be more like Terraforming Mars was. It’s not bad that it isn’t, but that’ll be the complaint. And for casual gamers, there is still a lot going on. It’s really fun though, and I’d recommend it for someone who is looking to take a step into some more complex games.

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The format is going to go along the lines of this:

• Company Overview
• Highlight The Feel
• Game Spotlights
• Final Thoughts

Let’s get to Mythic Games.

Publisher Portraits: Mythic Games

Mythic Games was founded in 2015 by Benoit Vogt and Leonidas Vesperini. Generally, Mythic Games has made very big immersive games, like their first game, Joan of Arc. This kind of set the tone for their company for a while as they have followed that up with massive games like Solomon Kane, Reichbusters: Projekt Vril, and a less story driven but still big game Super Fantasy Brawl. Recently, as of 2020, they announced a smaller line of games, their Phoenix Line, which started out with the game Enchanters. They have a few games, including one based off of a popular IP, Darkest Dungeon, still in the pipeline of Kickstarter having been funded and waiting to fulfill.

What Are Their Games Like?

The general feel I get from Mythic Games is that they generally produce epic and memorable games. Now, their Phoenix Line is a bit different from that. From what I can tell, the Phoenix Line was meant to bring in smaller and more accessible games versus their larger style of game.

Immersive and Experience Driven

With the larger games, though, they are extremely immersive, sometimes to a point where the rules don’t always work perfectly. That has been a knock on Mythic Games in the past, they make really interesting games, but he rules for those games can be a bit rough the first time around and generally they end up releasing either a 1.5 version of the game or just a new rules book. This is obviously a negative, but if you make it into the game, the experiences do hold up to the effort that was put into learning the game.

Board Game Spotlights

Super Fantasy Brawl

Normally I am not a big fan of skirmish games. Skirmish games tend to lend themselves to one person getting lucky in a lot of them. And because they tend to be 1 vs 1 battling, I find them harder to get to the table. Super Fantasy Brawl does a good job of giving more options than just to beat someone up. In Super Fantasy Brawl you are taking a team of three champions up against another team of three champions, so nothing that unique. What works so well for me, though, is the game play.

In Super Fantasy Brawl, you complete you actions by playing cards. Each card matches a color and a hero, you can play each color once per turn and that’ll activate the champion shown on it. The play is super simple, but gives you a lot of choices. And you aren’t just trying to knock out your opponent, though that is part of the strategy. You are going for five trophies, and you can do that by completing goals or knocking out your opponent. I find that you need to do both to be able to win. This is longer than how the game normally goes, but that is because GloryHoundd is talking with the chat which slows things down.

Reichbusters: Projekt Vril

You are the Allied Forces going on missions into Germany to stop the horrible experiments that are going on and the new soldiers that are being created. Honestly, this feels like you are taking the Howling Commandos from Captain America, and going up against Hydra and the Red Skull, to be honest. And I love that about the game.

I also like for a campaign style game with dungeon crawl, you don’t always just kick down the door and throw in a grenade. Most dungeon crawl games give you that option, but Reichbusters, it’ll go sideways fast if you do that as the more noise you make, the more bad guys can show up. I also like that even though this can be played campaign, it can also be played as a one off scenario. Gloryhoundd again takes on the game, so check out their playthrough below.

Solomon Kane

Another campaign game with dungeon crawling feel to it, Solomon Kane strives to be more than that. Solmon Kane has you playing through the story adventures of the Solomon Kane short stories and books but in a not so normal way. Normally in a board game you play directly as the heroes. In Solomon Kane, it is a bit different.

Instead, you are all playing a virtues, Courage, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice, all of which influence Solomon Kane on his journey. This makes it so that no one player is playing the main hero. This game also leans heavily into the narrative element as well. You can see me unbox everything for it over on Malts and Meeples below. Plus some solo game play from Rolling Solo.

Joan of Arc

Final one I’m going to be talking about as I’m still waiting for my copy to come in, Joan of Arc. I do also have HEL: The Last Saga, but no one has received that yet, so I don’t have any videos for it. Joan of Arc is not a game that I thought I was going to love. Mainly because it is a minis game, and who knows, I still might not. But it is a scenario based game that doesn’t just have you taking two armies up against each other.

Plus, I love the setting for Joan of Arc. It is the historical world, but it pulls from the history of that time and adds in fantastical elements that were presented in the history. So if something was eating sheep, it might have been werewolves, or some unexplained sighting, maybe a dragon. It takes those accounts from real history and adds it into the actual events that we know happened. The setting is just really interesting to me. And over on the Dice Tower they played through a scenario.

Final Thoughts on Mythic Games

I’m a big fan of theirs and their games. Mainly because they tend to have a great experience behind them, which you can see in the game plays that I have highlighted. Even something like Super Fantasy Brawl that doesn’t have an epic story behind it, it still has memorable moments and the game play is so light and fun that it works really well.

Have you played a Mythic Games game before? What is your favorite, do you have any that you want to try?

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Pros

• Proven game
• Proven company
• More content not complexity

Cons

• Limited Kickstarter exclusivity

The Page

Mythic games is a proven company and they know how to make a good Kickstarter page. I have a few games by them, Riechbusters and Super Fantasy Brawl thus far, and eventually Hel: The Last Saga and Time of Legends: Joan of Arc will be coming in. They also put out Solomon Kane which is fulfilling now which I would love to back sometime. I hope that Mythic Games will do a 1.5 version of that, and they tend to be pretty good about offering their games again on Kickstarter.

But back to the page itself. I think it’s a solid page. They do a great job of laying out what all the levels are, but unfortunately what the original game was, that part is a bit hidden. It feels like the page is made for the second time backers, which I think is the case. But if I were a new backer or someone who didn’t know about the game, it is obvious that this is an expansion, but how does the game work. Thankfully, there is a ton of content on it, but it’s not as easy or obvious to find. The fans of the game are going to find this page and you don’t need to sell them on backing, just make it obvious what they need to back. The new people, they need to make it more obvious what the game is.

The Game

Now, I’ll be talking more about the game itself in a post later today. Super Fantasy Brawl in a nutshell is an arena battle game where you are trying to knock down your opponents characters for points or complete objectives. The first person to five points wins. You do all of this through three activations per turn which can be basic actions or card actions. Ideally you want to use only card actions because they are better.

The expansion, what does it add. It adds in more characters that you can play. I really have liked my three play throughs of the base game, which all happened yesterday. And I think with the 12 characters that I have in my original game, that is a lot. However, would it be fun to have more? I think so. These looks interesting and unique characters, which is something that the original has as well. It could have been just standard fantasy characters, but Mythic did a good job of creating really interesting groups of three characters.

Back or Brick

So, I won’t leave any suspense, this is a Back for me. I think that these new characters are going to be great for this game. This is one of those games that I can imagine doing a tournament for, and I know that Mythic has already done that. But more characters, more things going on, and it’s not that expensive for 9 new heroes and all their cards plus a few other things. The only thing I wish that they’d offered was an at cost or just shipping cost only improvement for their horribly done storage solution for the big box from the original Kickstarter.

How about for you, is this game a back or a brick?

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There are a number of things really that got me interested, the IP is interesting in that Fantasy Flight is making a non-Marvel/Star Wars/Game of Thrones/Lord of the Rings game, and making one that is based off of their own properties that isn’t Arkham Horror. That is fairly rare for them, so to have them go back into the world of Terrinoth, super fantasy name activate, was a lot of fun and interesting to see that they are keeping up some of their own lines. The app integration was also interesting as well as the game play and the cooperative nature. In Descent 2nd Edition, that game was a one versus all game. One person played as the “overlord” who ran all of the bad guys in the scenarios against the players. This is fully cooperative because of the app, and while Descent 2nd Edition had an app that gave it a cooperative campaign, that was not how it had been built to play.

So why am I talking about this now, well, because of these two things.

Fantasy Flight had a big kind of trailer kickoff and announcement for the game. So there is now a whole lot more known about the game, in fact, there is a ton more known about the game. If you are interested in knowing a whole lot more, watch the second video, if you want to read my recap and have a trailer, watch the first video and then read my recap, it won’t cover everything, but I am going to talk about some highlights.

First off, highlight wise, this is an app assisted game along the lines of Mansions of Madness or Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth. Fantasy Flight has been doing app assisted games for quite a while, and for some people that has been a turnoff, they want to get away from technology while playing board games, which I can understand, but I don’t mind an app assist when playing a game, as long as I’m not doing everything on the app, and I don’t feel like I have been with Journeys in Middle Earth or Mansions of Madness. But there’s even more with this app, and I’m going to get into some details, but first, I do want to say that this app was built from the ground up for this game, in previous games they have leveraged their old app design and framework in order to make it faster to market, and that has some limits built in, such as it being really hard to have an undo button if you clicked the wrong thing, this has an undo button. This is also important because that means that this is going to have a different feel and probably a more modern feel to the app.

But let’s talk about features in the game, because that’s what people are going to care about more, than me nerding out over an undo button or the fact that they have built a new framework. There are a lot of cool things they talked about with the app, and I’m just going to highlight a few of them, the first because of how the app is built and because it’s their own IP, they are able to have really big branching storyline changes in it. They’ve done that to some extent in something like Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth, but obviously you source material to that requires the world be left in a certain state, in this, it’s their world, they can do a lot. Next were two things about the bad guys in the game. That was tactics and weaknesses. Weaknesses are what they sound like, something that a bad guy is weak to, a bandit might be weak to slashing damage, but as players, you get to find that out in the game. As you try different weapons, it might tell you something like “You swing with your sword, and it did more damage than you thought it would as it slashes through the bandit.” Now you know swords are good, so next time you see a bandit you’d want to remember to use a sword, and the game keeps track of that you know it for you, so you don’t have to remember because forgetting and discovering the game thing over again wouldn’t be as fun. With tactics, certain bad guys are going to be apt to do certain things that are foreshadowed. For example, again, at the end of a round a bandit might be eyeing a chest, that the game narrates, you don’t know what is going to happen the first time, but after you see them grab a chest from the map and run away, you’ll know that you will want to stop a bandit from doing that again, basically, you have a round to kill them. Another thing that the app helps handle is downtime. Now with this I don’t mean downtime in the set-up or between turns, I’m talking about between missions, what your heroes are doing. A character might decide to do a side quest and they can pick between two, one might give you valor and one might give you honor. You have to decide which one to do, and the game will remember and make decisions about how people react based off of what you’ve done before. And there are more examples of the game remembering or knowing who you are, one person might get a different reaction and conversation based off of their character type and who they are than someone else would. Or the game might know that you are a big fan of using your war hammer in combat or opening chests, and it can tailor challenges and rewards to your style of play.

That’s a lot on the app, so let’s talk about some other things, like the heroes, the bad guys, and the terrain (some might still tie back tot he app).

Let’s actually start with the terrain and the components. The minis themselves are a harder plastic than Fantasy Flight has used before, though the ones in the video are resin, the reason for that is that they are still very strong, but because it’s harder plastic, they are able to get more detail in, and the detail on the minis looks really good in the resin prints. Resin is going to be closer to a hard plastic in the detail that you can get. But enough weird nerding out about that, because the terrain is awesome as well. The terrain is not only just flat map tiles and maybe some tokens to represent objects, it is cardboard 3D terrain where you build up your maps and put items on them. So a map could have multiple levels and some abilities might move bad guys, so you can maybe push them off the edges of things, which seems important. But not only can you interact with the height, you can interact with the objects, if there are trees, you can climb a tree, a well, you can hid inside it, that sort of thing. And how one character can interact with a thing might be different than another character. The reason I added in the app caveat is that this would be really hard to do without the app, so the app keeps track of who is doing that action.

Next we have the monsters, I don’t have a ton to say about them, except that there are 11 different types of monsters. But really, there are more than that, there are 11 different types of monster minis. Because they introduce a concept of factions. If a group of bandits are off by themselves, they are just bandits. If they are working with the Uthuk, the evil magic users or those corrupted by evil, they would be Uthuk bandits and behave differently.

But finally, let’s talk about characters, because really, a game like this is all about playing the heroes and how you play them. Descent: Legends of the Dark, has both cards and dice used in the game, so it’s kind of a hybrid between a few different games, but dice chucking is mainly going to be where it is at for combat and for taking actions. But you’ll use the cards, and their fatigue in an interesting way. A lot of things causes fatigue which is bad, in Descent 1st Edition, there were just turns of resting and doing nothing because you were fatigued in order to be able to do something again. In this, they’ve changed that up. You place fatigue on your character or your card, if that card hits it’s limit, you have a choice, you could leave it there, or you can flip it. Flip it gives you a different ability and you can use that one and start to put fatigue on that side since the fatigue clears off on a flip. It creates an interesting puzzle of a character. They have also made it so that you change up your character very easily. You have your unlocked skills and you have an XP budget, you can try whatever build you want with that XP budget, so a card might be 2 XP and another 1 XP and you have 3 XP so you take those two into battle with you, then the next one you decide to try three 1 XP cards, you can do that. Thematically, does it make sense, probably not, but game wise, it makes it a lot of fun, because you aren’t stuck playing a build you don’t like, in fact, if a character just isn’t your style period, you can swap in a new one, overall, an awesome idea to make sure the game is fun.

Now, in that hour and forty minute video, there is a whole lot more that they talk about, and they show off minis and things like that. If you want to know more, check it out, though, I cover some of the bigger highlights for me of things that are really interesting. But let’s also talk about the price tag here, before we wrap up, this is a $175 game, that is expensive. Now what you get is a lot, they were asked about game play and said probably 50 hours if not more in the base box. But compared to some other games, though with less minis, Gloomhaven you can find around $100 now and I probably have 200 hours into base Gloomhaven. So does that mean that this is too expensive, I’d say no. Gloomhaven doesn’t have an app built specifically for it, this does, and it is a brand new app, there was a ton of story work put into this game, and if you play through the whole game, that’s probably way more time than most people would put into a single game that costs $60. Plus there is the experience factor as well, I realize that the price will turn some people away because they just can’t afford it, and that’s a shame, if you have a group, make it a group buy if you can, but I get that it is a hefty price tag and why it is. It is still one that I’ll want to pick up, just for the cool factor if nothing else.

So, what do you think of Descent: Legends of the Dark? Does the game sound interesting to you? Does the price tag or app worry you?

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Marvel United

Firstly, I love Marvel, if that wasn’t obvious from the fact that I run the 10 Minute Marvel Podcast (check it out), it could probably would be from me going to movies opening night, and previously having done some of the news around Marvel on the website prior to the podcast. So because of the theme, I was immediately interested.

Then what made me more interested was the minis for the game. I know that the chibis aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I feel like for Marvel, it works fine, especially in what turns out to be a fairly light cooperative game that targets less of a hobby or older gaming demographic, it makes sense. While I wouldn’t have minded more realistic minis to at least the comics, I really think they did a good job of capturing the essence of the characters and creating really dynamic minis.

Plus, as I mentioned above, this game is cooperative, and I like cooperative games, and I like cooperative games with a theme and a size that is going to be really easy to get to the table. Now, is Marvel a theme for everyone, probably not, but it s a theme for a lot of people who wouldn’t be interested in high fantasy or trading in the Mediterranean and that’s who would also like this lighter style game. I also like that this is a fast cooperative game. A game should last about 30-45 minutes, and that’s enough to swap out characters and get through two games in a sitting and try out a bunch of the characters when all the expansions for it come out.

Overall, my hype level is pretty high on this one. It’s the type that won’t work for everyone that is going to be great for board game nights for me.

Excitement Meter: 9/10

Frosthaven

The sequel to Gloomhaven, enough said. The biggest Kickstarted board game, enough said. Story driven campaign game, enough said. There’s so much that I’m so excited for with this game.

First, let’s talk about how it’s a follow-up to Gloomhaven, but it adds in even more. There are going to be more puzzles to solve in the game, there’s a town building aspect to the game. New classes, monsters, and new scenarios. Not only that, they are taking what they learned from Gloomhaven and Forgotten Circles and making it better. Better ways to create more interesting and dynamic maps without as much leg work during the game. Plus the Foreteller app for doing the narration and I’m sure the Gloomhaven Helper app (or maybe a Frosthaven helper app) will help manage the monsters as well.

I’ve gone through so much of Frosthaven, talking about the campaign before it was up, and then while it was happening. There’s so much that I’m excited for with this game. I really do think that the new things are going to give the game a fresh feel to it all while keeping a feel that you’d expect from Gloomhaven. The card mechanics, leveling, and things like that don’t seem to have changed, but the stuff they are changing sounds very interesting. I mentioned town building, that’s new, and I really like it as a way that my place and game will be different from yours. Sure there was a little bit of that before with upgrading stickers and a slight branching path at times, but for the most part what you and I did would end up being pretty similar. This seems like we’ll be more apt to end up with really unique board games, which I like the idea of a lot. It makes going to town more meaningful for doing more than just buying new gear.

I also like that they’ve updated the loot. It used to be that you get gold, and gold is fine and nice for buying things. But now you’ll get things for improving your town or crafting items, or gold, depending on who you are fighting. And with that, the crafting supplies or upgrading the town, those are the two same sets of things, so you have to decide, do you need to be able to craft this item now, or can you push the town forward so that you can get better items later? It brings more tension and intentionality to the game that way.

I’m really looking forward to this, but I will say, I wouldn’t be too upset if this was delayed slightly. We have another campaign game we want to play some of before this comes in, with my Gloomhaven group.

Excitement Meter: 10/10

Have you backed either of these games? Which sounds more exciting to you, which would you play more?

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