Why Go Through This Crowdfunding?

I think that it is interesting, every now and again to look back at what I’ve backed. And there are a number of games out there. But the interest is often tied to how my gaming tastes have changed. What did I back on Kickstarter when I started in 2014 and what am I backing now.

It provides an interesting opportunity to see that growth. Normally, you get a game and it leaves and there is no way to track it. I could go through Amazon, CoolStuffInc, and Miniature Market Purchases, but a lot of those are more recent. Kickstarter and now Gamefound give you a history of what you’ve backed over that longer period of time.

Plus Jesse from Quackalope went through his backing history, shorter, but larger than mine, with Devon from Devon Talks Tabletop. He had something like 225 games to go through and that’s almost a five hour video. I should have known that mine would take longer than it did. I thought probably two hours would be enough, it is not.

The Drink

Last nights drink was a Negroni. Back to a classic for me. I really like the flavor and it is a good summer drink. With how large I made it, I wish I’d started streaming and sipping on it sooner, but the flavor is always good. It’s also a nice mixed drink to make because it’s a 1 to 1 to 1 ratio with gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari.

Upcoming Streams

So, clearly I have some more to talk about here with Kickstarter and Gamefound. My hope is that it’ll be about an hour and a half to finish up with no thunderstorms. So that is going to be on Monday at 8:30. Then on Wednesday, I plan on playing some more Paper Dungeons. Like I said, I want to get through that campaign. While I am working on an idea for a bigger game in the roll and write campaign space, you can see my Designer Diary here, I want to finish off the one that I already have.

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The Reckoners Game Play

The Reckoners is a cooperative team where players take on the roles of the various Reckoners trying to take down epics, the supervillains. This is done in two ways. you either attack or research the epics. When you research an epic completely, that is finding their weakness and makes it easier to kill them.

As you defeat epics, they are trying to take down the population, find your base, and generally mess up your plans. And they are working for Steelheart, the biggest epic. Figuring out his weakness and being able to attack him at all only happens as you defeat the other epics, and he’s messing with you even more than they are.

If you research and damage Steelheart enough to take him down, you win the game. And the population hitting zero causes you to lose the game.

What Doesn’t Work?

The variety in the game is lacking. This is in a few different ways. The epics, while different, don’t feel massively different. It’d make the game more complex, but the game is pretty simple to learn. I hope the expansion gives them more things they can do. Also, Steelheart is the only big bad guy. And while you move from location to location, as does Steelheart, there is nothing unique about them.

Basically, the game does make the characters you play unique in a single way. But opportunities were missed to add in a little complexity, but also make the game more variable. I played with six people, that means every character is in play. So even then, there isn’t variability in a six player game. The expansion does add more Reckoners you can play which will change up the game. Same with more epics, and more bosses to fight.

What Works?

The simple game play is very good. Mainly because everything happens at once. You roll your dice, keeping some Yahtzee style, each time. And the same for using the dice. Once everyone is done rolling, you spend your dice all at once. It’s a bit chaotic, but the only slow moments are going through what the epics do and everyone can help with that.

The actions are simple as well. You can research, deal with henchmen, attack an epic, get money to buy more gear, get a wild card token, or contain an epic. Researching and attacking I’ve already talked about. Money to buy stuff makes sense. The wild card is basically a free action next round. Containing is the trickiest, but not that hard. It means that the epics do less when they activate. And you can do that to any epic or Steelheart, if you are at their location.

The production of the game is also amazing and it helps the game. The artwork is extremely good. The dice are nice and chunky and easy to read. Plus there are many Game Trayz to hold the locations, sliders for the epics and Steelheart, and spots to slot in dice as you keep them and spend them. Is it an over the top production, most certainly, but it is really nice and it is easy to get to the table.

What Do I Want To See In More Plays?

Well, I only have experience at the six player count. I want to try this at a lower player count. The scaling in the game makes sense, so I want to see how well it works. Plus different difficulties. We beat it on easy on the last possible turn before we’d have lost. So it is challenging on easy. Granted, we could optimize our play better. So normal seems like an interesting challenge as well.

I also want to see how different the game feels. Will I do the same things each time? Is the game a limited puzzle with limited shelf life? Is the expansion needed to keep it fresh? I definitely could see if I played the game a lot, it being one that loses steam as time goes by.

The Reckoners Initial Impressions

I like this game a lot. I think after one play I rate it as an 8.5 out of 10. It is a very accessible cooperative game. The packaging, the huge box and all the trays and things, it makes it look way more intimidating than it actually is. I could pull out The Reckoners and play with most people. And while the theme won’t come across that much, it is still a fun theme to work with.

It reminds me a bit of the Dresden Files Cooperative Card game when it comes to theme. If you know the source material, the theme is there. If you don’t, it is still a really good game. This one I think is even more accessible than that one is. And does the theme better, but just slightly. And as you learn the theme, you might want to read the books because of the game.

Have you played the Reckoners? What are you thoughts?

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Pros

• Amazing Theme
• Amazing Components
• Cooperative Game
• Can get Base Game as well as Expansion

Cons

• Expansion
• Price

The Page

This is a company that has run successful Kickstarters before, and you can tell that in this page. They have a really nice blurb at the top to kind of sell you on the idea of the game. They show you how it’s played in a video by Watch It Played and Rodney Smith, they have quotes and their BGG rating for the base game listed.

Then they do a good job of showing you what’s in the expansion and the new things that are added to the game. I think this is a pretty standard Kickstarter page, but that means that it sells the game well.

There are a couple of knocks I have on it, they again do most of their text in and on images. This isn’t accessible, and while they do a great job of keeping the font and text fairly large, it doesn’t scale perfectly for phones. I know it might not be graphic design 101 to not have text on images, but it’s web design 101, and this is on a website. The other thing is that while we have a video on how the base game is played, the information on rule additions or changes from the expansion aren’t laid out.

The Game

Let me start out by saying, I have the base game. So for that reason I’m interested in the expansion.

But I do like what the game does. I like the dice rolling to see what actions you can take and even if an action isn’t ideal you have things to do. I like that the actions are extremely thematic to the books. In them you have to research an epic and that’ll make it easier to defeat them. There’s just a lot of the theme that works for me.

From what I know of the base game, it is extremely challenging but generally a lot of fun. I haven’t played my copy yet. And this expansion helps dial that back a little bit by fixing a few of the extremely tough Epics (superheroes) in the game. Plus I like that the expansion is modular so you don’t need to use all of it if you don’t want.

Back or Brick

For me, when I heard about this a few days before the launch, I knew I was going to be very interested in it because of how much I love the book series and for that fact that this isn’t going to hit retail. Now, there will still be opportunities to get the expansion at conventions or directly from the company, but I wanted to get it this way if I could. So for me this is a Back. I think that the stuff it adds, from what I can tell, seems fun and adds more to the game but isn’t necessarily adding more complexity, in fact might make it easier. And I’m really excited for the new bosses to face because there are three in the series and just to deal with them.

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

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