EBR doesn’t feel super similar to Arkham to me, for what it’s worth. only played one game day worth, though. And it apparently takes a few days for the main plot to kick off. Until then you are just kind of wandering around helping people.
Thanks @triggercut for flagging that, Earthborne Rangers sounds really cool. (Or maybe the guy is just really good at getting his enthusiasm across.)
It sounds like the theme of the game is “cozy”, which might be right up our (especially my wife’s) alley. How complex are the rules? Do you think it’s fit for a younger crowd?
Arkham Horror – like Earthborne Rangers – is a game fully driven by cards. Your character(s)? They’re represented by a deck of cards for skills, attributes, etc. Locations? Also cards. Encounters? Cards.No real gameboard, per se, although the way you lay out the cards on the table is specifically plotted out.
A couple of threads:
And a great video of two people who have never played being walked through the first scenario of the first adventure by someone who knows all the rules.
At this point, you’re asking someone who’s read the rules twice and watched ERB’s own “How to play” video series. So I’m not a particularly good judge of things. :D
[deleted potential mild spoilers]
And so far in the rules and presentation of the cards themselves, I don’t see anything that would flag it as non-age appropriate.
You can browse the rulebook here, if that helps!
I love Earthborne Rangers! I suspect it will be divisive because it’s so weird. The lack of win and loss conditions really changes the vibe of the game. It’s so much more about just exploring what you can do. In that respect, it reminds me more of video games like Cultist Simulator or Sunless Sea. Though the writing is a lot more terse than both of those.
I haven’t played Sleeping Gods but that’s not how Earthborne Rangers feels to me. The flavor is definitely in the drivers seat, but I still think the story is conveyed primarily through mechanics rather than writing. The gameplay still feels like the focus. It also often has little tricks you can learn to take advantage of that make the emergent story feel cohesive. For instance, you might have previously explored an area and remember a card in it that lets you travel twice as fast as normal, which you strategically utilize on a subsequent adventure when you’re trying to travel really far in a single day.
They’re quite complex and I don’t think would work for a younger crowd! I’d say this feels a bit meatier than Marvel Champions or Arkham Horror. Not deeper, just more stuff to track. In general, one of the hardest parts is looking through all the stuff that’s out on the board and understanding what you actually want to do and what you could even do to move towards that goal. Neither of those other games have that challenge. It’s simpler than Gloomhaven, but it’s not family weight.
Thanks! What about the complexity of the rules? (Also, if you don’t think you can judge e.g. 8 year old vs 12 year old complexity, no worries. Thanks for bringing the game to my attention!)
Edit: Saw this:
Thank you!
Ha, but that’s not saying too much!
Thanks for the insights!
I really hope that it connects with me like this. I really like tabletop games. And since getting back into the hobby 7 or 8 years ago, I’ve played a lot of games that I really like, where when faced with a challenge I reach for the dice or play a card to specifically interact with that challenge. To kill monsters. Destroy stuff. Etc.
And so I really think I want something odd and different like this.
Keep that in mind with character creation! You can build characters more towards peacefully or violently dealing with situations. Mechanically they’re pretty similar, but the outcomes are different.
Oh, yeah. My intention in my first play is going to be that if we should encounter angry, predatory beasts in the field that we will try to pet them, if that’s an option.
I’ll report back on how maimed that got my rangers. :)
I read and enjoy all these posts about new boardgames and then I desperately resist the urge to go research and/or buy them.
It’s difficult!!
If i wanted to give Arkham Horror a try would I get these products first?
And maybe also the first campaign, The Dunwich Legacy
There is one confusing thing about Dunwich, there are two items for it on that Amazon page. To me the cheaper one looks like it is for people wanting to replay Dunwich, but adds things to make it different? So, if I were to get it I’d need the more expensive one, right?
Thanks
Yep!
There is a revised product line packaging with Arkham LCG. You will definitely still find original packaging on Amazon, which may be the confusing part. It’s the same with LOTR LCG, though non-revised stuff for that is getting harder to find.
Originally, an expansion cycle came as a ‘Deluxe’ set plus several smaller packaged scenarios, all of which had scenario and investigator cards intermixed. But if you missed one and it went out of print, it was hard or pricey to pick up.
Revised packaging basically bundles all of the scenario cards of a complete cycle into one product (Campaign Expansion) and all of the investigator cards into another (Investigator Expansion). This arguably simplifies acquisition of expansion cycles since they are a more ‘complete’ package in two skus instead of being spread accross eight or so.
I believe both packagings are completely interchangeable, gameplay-wise. If you already have revised core, probably easier to stick to the new packaging model to expand.
ie, below, the Revised products together include all of the cards in all the OG products. Only thing not included is he ‘Return to Dunwich’ sku. That’s out of print, but is probably also still on shelves at Amazon et al.
Thanks! Since the Core game has a reduced price now but Dunwich doesn’t, I decided just to get the core set to see if we like the game.
And the “Return to…” stuff for the different campaigns – like Dunwich – is really only for folks and collectors enthralled with a particular setting.
The way the old Arkham LCG model worked was: release a semi-big box at $29.99 USD that contained new investigators (usually 2-4 of them) and then the first scenario – maybe two, in the case of choices available – in the campaign cycle itself.
Then every month or so, they’d release the next scenario in the campaign in a blister pack of cards for $14.99 or so. And you’d have to buy six of those over the course of a year to be able to finish the campaign.
It made sense, I guess, pre-China trade war, pre-Covid, and pre-holy crap, there’s a ton of games out there competing for factory space in China for printing and components. The new method of boxing everything into two separate big boxes makes more sense $-wise, and it’s easier to keep stuff in print and in stock.
I read through this and now I really want to buy it. Hmmm…
I played EBR quite a bit over the weekend and will try to share some impressions when I get out of my meetings this afternoon.
I also just started Arkham card game…loving it so far after a few plays of the base game campaign.
I’ve played now Alien - Fate of the Nostromo a couple of times and I like it a lot. It’s very lightweigth which makes it the perfect game for a quick one at the end of the day and there are downloads for a Director’s Cut by the designer and some fan made expansions on bgg. But for the moment I’m quite happy with the game as is. It took some time to find a copy in Germany for a reasonable price. Although Ravensburger is a German publisher the game was never published in Germany.
The game itself consists of doing several missions (basically fetch quests). After that there is a slightly more complex final mission. All while trying to avoid the alien. There is no player elimination as nobody gets hurt (which clashes with the theme but… I don’t care) but the group loses moral. If moral drops to zero it’s game over. I’m playing it solo and I like it a lot. Some final missions have a timer that is done like the self-destruct set from the movie. I enjoy these little touches. Art design is very well done.
For me there’s a lot to like.