Isofarian Guard – Initial Reaction

I think that this is a pretty hard game from what I’ve played thus far. Not in a bad way, but in an interesting way. One that makes me wonder about how to go about leveling up, building out a character, and being able to handle future threats.

This past game of it, there was a lot of story to it. I wondered how much story there might be. The app doesn’t tell you the time all that well, but when you get into it, there is good story. And there is a bunch of story and choices to make. Sometimes you make a choice and that makes it harder for you as well. But I think that’s part of the learning curve of the game.

And let’s talk about the combat itself. I’ve had two combats. One that I won, and another that I most definitely didn’t win. I think that there are some things that I learned over that. Over both of them really, so I like that about them. I also think there are some things, like the stonebound ability that you want to spam. If you can do it, do it. I would guess that with better ones there might be a negative but this is a way to pump damage.

I want to know more of the story. I want to figure out how combat works better. I think there is a learning curve for this game. Not one that is too crazy, but there is a learning curve. And really with most games there are one. But the bigger more epic fantasy games, or really more epic in games in general. So I know that it’ll take a session or two to get it figured out.

Upcoming Stream

So what is coming up. There might be a bonus stream on Saturday. I have the evening free, if there is, I’ll share it in the normal places, Twitter, Facebook, and a couple of discords. If I do stream, it might be opening up some more packs of Magic cards, Lord of the Rings and otherwise.

Monday, at 8:30 PM Central I’ll be playing a new game. I have a few options. And coming up here soon, it’s likely to be Welcome to the Moon, another campaign roll and write game. So look for that, but it might be a different game this week, like Clever 4ever which I also need to learn the rules for, but the rules learning will be faster.

And then Wednesday at 8 PM Central, for a while, I’m going to be tackling The Isofarian Guard. So join me as I play this big game and see how it works. Because The Isofarian Guard is coming back to crowdfunding with a Gamefound campaign coming up soon. So it’s a chance to see if this is a game that is worth backing for you.

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The Isofarian Guard Unboxing

Like I said for a massive game, this is a bigger box than Frosthaven and more weight, there are way less minis. Only five minis in the game, but it gets it’s bulk in a number of different areas. The biggest being that it has a load of chips. Now, we didn’t look at all of them in great detail, but that’s basically the main mechanism for the game.

You build up your bag of chips and what you draw is how you are activating in combat. So it’s leveling up your character which I believe gives you new powers and/or new chips. Those might be specific to those powers, so you might just be manipulating the ratio of offensive to defensive chips in your bag depending on how the character is being built around surviving.

Of course, this game isn’t just about that bag combat. There are other elements in the game as well. Mainly exploring the map, finding the story you need, and interacting with different characters. So it promises a nicely developed RPG like system for a board game while using non-dice mechanics. I feel like while this matches up with Chip Theory Games with the chips, it is pulling from what Gloomhaven did to say that you don’t need to do a dungeon crawler with dice to chuck. A good story driven game can offer different luck.

Upcoming Streams

So, tomorrow, Wednesday, I’ll be streaming my sixth game of ISS Vanguard. You can find that stream over here. Click that notification bell to know when I go live, but if not, it’s at 8 PM Central time. But join me as I continue to dive into the game basically making my first major planetary exploration without the game telling me what to do. Let’s see what horrible things await us on the planet.

Then Monday at 8:30 PM Central time, I plan on doing a game play. It might be back to Planet Unknown, or there are some other games to be played solo that have come in. I picked up Wreckland Run from the Renegade solo line that I want to play.

And my apologies for Saturday. I meant to do the pack opening and chat, but my kid gave me a cold. So I was wiped out that day and evening and took it easy. You can hear plenty of the coughing in this video. Hopefully I’ll have time to stream that oon.

And if you want to know when I go live, checkout the channel page and subscribe. You can get notifications as to whenever I go live which is probably the simplest way to know. That link is here.

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