Qt3 Boardgames Podcast: Deep Space D-6, Aerion, Unicornus Knights

Games
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			    Qt3 Boardgames Podcast: Deep Space D-6, Aerion, Unicornus Knight

This episode takes us out to space, up into the air, and through an anime kingdom.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2019/05/16/qt3-boardgames-podcast-deep-space-d-6-aerion-unicornus-knight/
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Ugh. I bought Aerion on day one on the strength of the previous Oniverses. And now I find out that it sucks. Maybe it just needs some “house rules!”

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I have had Unicornus Knights for a while and the podcast prompted me to go through it. I did a very brief search on Youtube to see if anyone had put together a quick explanation I could listen to while organizing my copy. Well, I didn’t find a good one, has anybody else?

Of the errata in the rule book what are the severe / outright wrong portions?

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There’s not much in the way of tutorials for UK, but Rahdo does have a run-through if you like his style (I don’t). Otherwise, just download the new rulebook here:

The major problems I saw were:

  • setup explanation of tiles unnecessarily complicated
  • explanation of princess combat wrong
  • example of combat wrong

I’m sure there were some other things, so do yourself a favor and ignore it!

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Yeah I can’t stand his videos. He is way, way, too rambling and I can not for the life of me figure out why he’s popular. I’m going to go with it’s just that he’s very prolific.

Thank you for the pointers there.

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I found the new rule book perfectly understandable.

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Ah, Unicornus Knights. Logistics, Battle and Romance. While its mechanics might technically not be new in the same way stuff like Space Alert was new, the application of those mechanics to theme is truly something extraordinary. I feel like I’m one of the people this game was made for.

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Aerion decidedly does not suck.

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Well, that’s heartening, since I haven’t even opened the shrink. Sounds like you need to debate @tomchick!

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I had fun with Unicornus, but it quickly became way too easy. Barring some incredibly unlucky rolls and setup, it became a given to win almost every time.

Your hero selection plays a big part because their balance is all over the place, being definitely broken down into tiers. The best way to tweak the difficulty is just never use the broken heroes, or nothing but the crap ones if you want a challenge.

Starting with the princess, the General and Tactician are definitely the best. Lucky is middle of the road. Social is by far the most difficult.

You can also tweak the board setup instead of going random. Lyla, Pit Fiend, and the Black Drake are the toughest enemies. The Ice Lord and Black Knight are very tough if the board setup forces you through them instead of bypassing. The Twins can be tough, but if you get one of them as an ally then you might as well immediately call the game as a victory because their combo ally power is an auto-win. The Emperor’s daughter makes the game a lot easier if she’s at an early tile.

For heroes, I did a whole post on BGG that breaks down their “tiers”. Basically, anything that lets you win at combat and mitigates the need to get more soldiers and supplies which take up 2/3rds of your actions in the game. Gato the half dragon is ridiculously broken because of this.

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I don’t doubt you, but I still find the puzzle satisfying and there’s plenty of room to make bad decisions.

Have you tried simply reducing the number of event cards (speeding the clock) or including just level 2 and level 3 events in the deck? Or using only 3 heroes but perhaps limiting them to 4 actions/turn each?

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I have not.

I think the only two times we lost was an incredibly unlucky combo that shot the Princess ahead to be killed.

I think it’s the hero selection mostly that determines the difficulty. Elf King, Half-dragon, and Paladin are just too good.

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Bit of a tangent, but…

I like Rahdo, but he annoys my wife to no end because of the rambling nature of his videos. I think he’s popular for a few reasons (some of which are why I like him):

  1. He’s been around for a long time. His first video looks like it was in 2012. There are some that are older, but he was definitely one of the earliest.
  2. He’s all about quantity over quality. When I first got into the hobby, I really wanted to get a taste for everything that was out there. I really enjoyed learning about all the different rulesets. Rahdo had so many videos out already, and was constantly pumping out new ones, that it was almost hard to keep up.
  3. His main goal is to give you an impression as to what it’s like to play the games from different perspectives. He two-hands almost every game he runs through, and the rambling is intentionally done to help you understand his thought process as he works through different approaches to the game.
  4. He shoots most games (especially up to a year or two ago) with a handheld camera, and that’s pretty rare. Some people don’t like it (understandably it can trigger motion sensitive viewers), but he consistently shows cards and other gameplay components up close, whereas most everyone else shoots with a static camera (which he also does simultaneously), and everything is usually so small and unreadable.
  5. His favorite genres tend to be mine as well. He generally likes euro games that are more multiplayer solitaire, and they tend to be my favorites too.
  6. His videos are generally not that long, giving you a feel for how a game plays in usually 20-30 minutes.

There’s a lot of things he does that I can totally understand why people would be turned off by him. He occasionally makes huge rule mistakes (he admits this, and has subtitles to point them out). I don’t see him doing it as often anymore, but he used to do a lot of rollbacks, where he’d try to undo multiple turns and disrupt the flow (and also usually make mistakes in the game state). He’s also an unashamed carebear, and doesn’t like any amount of take that (only important if you watch his final thoughts videos which I usually skip).

None of those things bother me though, and I think he accomplishes what he’s trying to do. If you want more polished runthroughs, there’s a ton of other options now. Slickerdrips (Tom) shoots his videos the same way, but is more thoughtful and does a lot more editing. He actually contacted Rahdo when starting up his channel because he copied parts of his style. He also puts out a fraction of the number of videos.

Any way, not sure if you were really interested in understanding why someone might like his content, but that’s my thoughts.

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It’s frustrating how there’s no real board game review vlogger who doesn’t have some major crippling setback.

Dice Tower (in particular Tom Vassal) are prolific, but overly positive with verdicts and atrocious at explaining mechanics.

SU&SD have the best production values and flow, but their final verdicts are bizarro and they’re quick to slap the scarlet P(roblematic) on games for the most ridiculous reasons (using blue/pink to denote the sexes in Fog of Love).

Rahdo cuts out the wacky skit gristle most reviews suffer from, but he rambles like John Moschitta Jr.