Every time this game comes up I get excited, and then try to find it for a reasonable price and become disappointed.
I think so, yeah. Admittedly, I’m really bad with spatial awareness/visualizing things, but we play on my buddy’s big hard-top ottoman type thing regularly and it works fine. When we combo’ed Vol 1 and 2 together, we did bump up to a 6 ft table just to be sure, hah.
I don’t know what you consider a reasonable price? The MSRP is $100, so right off the bat it’s not gonna be cheap. Coolstuffinc has at least one copy of the Forest base set in stock for $72, but none of the expansions.
They had a KS for the third set, which is shipping in Sept/Oct timeframe, and it included getting more copies of the two original sets and their expansions printed. You can still pre-order any/all of that for more reasonable prices, I think, but it won’t ship until then.
I kept hitting sellers wanting 150-170 for just one of the base sets. I forgot that Coolstuffinc was a thing! Thanks, Don_Quixote!
Yeah, I ran into that a bunch, too. Damn scalpers. But even at ~$75 bucks, the game isn’t cheap!
Just finished my first game, on ‘Starter’ difficulty. Killed the Dead King while he was on his way to ransack the 5th city. You guys were right, damn there’s a lot of erasing in this game! Like, constantly. After I finished I did find there a character-tracking app for my tablet, and I’ll probably use that next time- I kept erasing stuff with my hands on accident, and I’d like to not do that. Also, saving a lot of table space.
Otherwise, it was fun. I dual-charactered it, with a Gremlin Scoundrel and an Angelborn Hunter- they both seemed pretty straightforward roles. I feel like I got really lucky on a few draws- the first tile I drew while exploring was the one with two of my quests on it, and I got a quest that let my Scoundrel do his backstab ability on the first attack (normally he’d had to do the Defend action first). By the end he was hitting for 40+1d10 with that, so most combats just opened with him slaughtering the opponents. Still, the DK was reasonably difficult- the Hunter actually died on the turn I killed the boss (and would have been ressurected if the fight went on).
I didn’t have any rules questions, just “if I got lucky to win here, how hard is it going to be on the next level up”?. I’m curious to find out, but I’ll probably run the Forest set on easy, first. I’m not sure I really like the time pressure, but it has to be there, otherwise you’d just get stronger forever before fighting the end guy. I guess I was hoping for something more chill and explore-y?
The review doesn’t seem to justify the 3-star rating. The vibe I got while reading it indicated at least 4.5 stars.
Hi, Pauly. You might be interpreting the ratings by some criteria different from ours. Also, we don’t do half-stars because we believe in committing to a rating. Here’s the guide to our ratings system.
Are you a Hexplore It fan? Have you played the new Forests of Adrimon stuff? I have yet to get that to the table, but I’ve been playing a really godawful overland exploration adventure game* lately, and Forests of Adrimon might be just the palate cleanser I need.
-Tom
* Fantasy Flight’s Fallout, with the new Atomic Bonds add-on, which I would give 1 1/2 stars if we did half-stars
I’m not Pauly, but I’ve played Valley twice now, and Forest once, and liked them enough to pre-order the new set (Desert), that should be shipping any day now (at least on the boat from China). They kept pushing back the cutoff date, and I finally decided to do it right around my birthday. HB to me.
One thing I found while pre-ordering is that they’re doing multi-game campaigns for each set. The Prologue and first Chapter are out for the Valley set. They have some unique rules, and a bunch of choose-your-own-adventure-style paragraphs. Each book is 30 or more pdf pages, so fairly meaty.
Yeah, I’m super pumped to do some campaign runs with my tabletop groups here in Raleigh when we’re finally past COVID-times. We’ve done a half dozen run-throughs of Forest and about half as many of Valley over the last year and a half or so since I got everyone into the games on the back of Tom’s original review, and as fun as that’s been, we’re hankering for new stuff to justify the time-sink. The Desert map and the new campaigns should be just that!
I think the thing that sold me on the Desert expansion was that it’s a lot more sandbox-y and freeform- 4 different ways to win! Looks like it’ll have some good replayability.
I do hope once it’s on the boat, they get back to work on the campaigns (they haven’t been updated in a few months), but they’ve also been working on the next set- looks like a Transylvania/Ravenloft horror thing. It’ll probably go live right after Desert ships, I’m guessing.
I honestly never have played HEXplore it before. It looks good, but I’m on the fence about it. I’ve seen both average and above average reviews for it, and I can’t make up my mind about it. In any case, PLEASE do a review for the Atomic Bonds expansion for Fallout! My gut feeling told me that it would elevate Fallout to new heights by making everything co-op (which for a solo gamer like myself is great). But after seeing that 1.5 rating you would give it, my heart sunk a bit.
Ooh, that desert stuff looks good! I get the sense these guys are learning a lot as the progress from iteration to iteration. I’m tempted to throw some money at the desert version, but there’s no point since I still have so much Hexplore It content yet to be played.
Fallout makes me kind of mad, because Atomic Bonds was Fantasy Flight’s third chance. First the base game, then New California, and now Atomic Bonds, but they’ve done very little to address some of the basic problems with the game, and at this point it’s kind of insulting. I’m torn between giving it a couple more runs, or just packing it in and playing some Hexplore It instead. But, yeah, I should probably write it up considering how much time I’ve spent with the dumb thing.
So what would be your go-to for an overland adventure game, @PaulyD?
-Tom
An “overland adventure game”… I never heard that term before, but I think this one counts as a dungeon crawler/overland adventure game: Descent Journeys in the Dark, 2nd edition. I just recently got into it 2 weeks ago, and I bought everything for it. Cost me close to $1000 (most of it is OOP), and I don’t regret a single cent. It is FABULOUS. Between the Road to Legend companion app (filled with randomly generated quests within full campaigns) and Redjak’s automated monster variant (to play the quests and encounters in the core and expansion manuals), I am extremely addicted. I never felt this addicted to a game since I first started getting into the solo board gaming hobby 3 years ago. It’s just consuming all of my time these days, and there’s no sign of stopping. If I had only 5 games with me to bring on a desert island, this is in my top 5. And I thought Shadows of Brimstone was great…this one blew it away. I actually sold off my entire Brimstone collection to make Descent take its place.
To me dungeon crawls and overland adventure are two very different things, and Descent is firmly in the former camp. But I actually can’t think of too many other games that do the overland adventure thing besides Hexplore It, Mage Knight, Fallout, and I guess probably Runebound would count (but at least prior to 3rd edition, Runebound was really bad - I’m not excited to try 3rd). I guess thematically stuff like Talisman and Prophecy, but I don’t get the same sense of moving across a map with real terrain, etc. Hmm. Maybe Eldritch Horror?
To me the distinction is that in something like Hexplore It you’re moving across big swathes of world with the shape of the terrain mattering, having encounters at least partially based on where you are on the map, etc. Whereas in a dungeon crawl you’re in one very specifically defined small scale space - a dungeon, a town, a spaceship deck, a sewer system and having encounters with monsters where things like tactical positioning matter. Which is definitely the Descent or Gloomhaven or Sword and Sorcery paradigm. Sure, these games might have a map that shows the overall layout of the world, but the travel is abstracted and you don’t actually do stuff on that map. You do it in specific dungeons.
Some off the top of my head:
Legends of Andor, Xidit, Darkest Night, Magic Realm, Shadows of Malice, 7th Continent, Dark Venture, City of Kings.
Hope that gives some more options?
I wouldn’t describe Darkest Night as that at all. 7th Continent is a good shout, though. And although I’ve never played it, Magic Realm is probably as well.
Yeah. But I figure I’m going to be cooped up in here for a while. Plenty of time. Desert of Shurax, then Etherfields a few weeks later, then Sleeping Gods closer to the New Year (it just slipped again). Keep me occupied and from pulling what remains of my hair out over the state of the world.
I’m loving Sands of Shurax, but how many caravan events do you play in a 2-player game? The rulebook confuses me here.
First the rulebook says there are a total of 3 slots, but then it says you deal cards into 2 slots and leave 2 more slots in reserve – a total of 4 slots. Which is it?
Then the rulebook says you play 2 cards in a 2-player game – but the designer’s YouTube video seems to play 3 cards, with no reserved slots at all. Again, I’m confused – which is it?
I’ve posted this (and other) questions over at BGG, but the designer doesn’t seem to answer many questions over there. Anyone here know?
The border board shows how many right next to the slot for the caravan event deck. I think it might be one, but check the board to be sure.