Feel free to ask me anything, played a full game last night.
This is of course the deck building game from the team that brought you Lords of Waterdeeep, and Gale Force 9.
We discussed last night what role GF9 had in this project (we really couldn't figure it out), but our group loves both LOW as well as most GF9 games. I'm a huge fan of Firefly, and we all love Spartacus and others.
As a gamer, I LOVE love love area control games. My fav games are Chaos in the Old World, Blood Rage, Cthulhu Wars. I like games with lots of theme and fighting.
On deck building: I do enjoy deck building. When Dominion first came out, I think I played it 2 billion times, and about burnt myself out of the genre. Since then, I prefer games that use the deck building to compliment game play, and games not JUST deck building. Although I do still play Ascension on my Ipad, so I don't mind playing a straight deck builder without setting it all up.
When Trains came out, I was thrilled that they were moving in the direction of a deckbuilder meets board game. This was a natural progression that I was excited to see develop. I enjoyed my first few games of Trains, then was meh on it, too many other good games. I even enjoyed the LOTR deck builder, although haven't brought it out for a while.
Anyway, all of the background aside, for some reason I knew next to NOTHING about this game, not sure how I missed the buzz on this one, so my buddy <PERSON> brought it out, pitched the game and the designers. So of COURSE we wanted to play it.
What? Deck building with Area Control? With DND theme? Um yes please let's get started.
The board was good quality with great art work. The art is mostly rewashed from previous iterations of the IP, but still work functionally. It's beautiful art, so why not keep using it. Some of it was new I think, but I did recognize some from DND board game I think. (*I could be wrong, this could be all new art, so don't hold me to it)
The cards were a bit on the flimsy cheap side. 304
They would be mostly fine for a normal game, but for a deck building game in 2016 I think we expect to see the BEST quality in cards available. Especially in a $75 MSPR (more on this in a bit).
So of COURSE you're going to sleeve your cards anyway, but especially with the quality of cards you'll need to.
The little plastic bits for the board were functional, nothing amazing. There were lots of them, but they seemed a bit generic and cheap relative to the likes of DND board game and dungeon command. Better bits here would have enhanced the experience, but they did what they were supposed to do I suppose.
The MSRP of $75 is completely ridiculous. I think this is mispriced, and relative to the quality of the bits and contents of the game should be priced at the VERY MOST at $60. From a guy who just paid $75 for Blood Rage, this is grossly off from the value of actual content I'm receiving. I could sort of go on a tangent at this point, but I'll just leave it there for folks to comment and ask questions.
Will I buy this at $49 online? Yes, yes I will. Why?
Gameplay: The gameplay is FANTASTIC
FANTASTIC. Awesome. Very very very very very good.
It sort of blew us all away.
It was easy in the respect that we 'already knew how to play' the deck building part. It used kind of an Ascension engine where there was webs (money) and swords (attack) as currency.
There is a main core deck of cards you always use, and (in base game) 4 expansion decks, that the game instructs you to shuffle 2 of those together with the core. So many iterations to Smash Up for a different game. We used drow and dragons? <PERSON> help me out here.
The deckbuilding by itself was acceptable, but when married with the area control infighting will turn this into an instant classic that will be played A LOT in the months to come.
In brief, there are many different areas on the board. Each area contains spaces for your little army dudes to occupy. There are also starting neutral dudes to occupy. 304