I love how well this game captures the meta-ness of playing a CCG. It just nails its theme dead on. For new players I usually tell them to find a cool card, keep as many cards that make the cool card better, and cobble together a collection to pawn off with the excess. That's more of a general plan than a detailed strategy but it gives them something to work with. From there you can do whatever and actually compete. Thank goodness you only have to do the assembly once though, otherwise it'd be a no-go. Keeping a shop deck ready to go in the box and only tweaking it if you really want to will save you a ton of time.
One correction about the Meta Cards: You don't get 15 points for every card showing the right Type/Element. You get a _one time_ bonus of 15 points per Meta Card, if at least one of your cards corresponds to the respective Type/Element.
Tip: Don't sort the store deck after playing. Just keep it assembled, play a few games with that particular store deck, and then eventually replace a few of the expansions.
Oh hey I remember recommending this like a year ago. Cool stuff! I do agree, it's definitely something to experience, but it can be a hard sell to new players.
I'm happy to see that you're willing to talk about more involved games like this, it's very refreshing, to me personally.(I don't know if I'm allowed to make requests, but I would love to hear your thoughts on Gloomhaven. Also Mystic Vale, it takes a really fresh approach to Deck-Building mechanics and is a lot of fun.)
Hey have you heard of/had a chance to try that new game from Jon D. Claire? It has Darkness in the title...the whole deal was when he pitched it to AEG, they thought the public were not ready for it, so they stripped out the card crafting aspect and put out Mystic Vale. Anyway. .. Not a lot of people know that, so I thought you might like to know about it. I disliked Mystic Vale because there was very little a player could do to interact with others around the table, but Edge of Darkness(?) Looks cool.
This game is a lot of fun, but definitely not new-player friendly. It's a game for a VERY specific audience of gamers. But within that audience, it's a friggin' blast.
Love Millennium blades! One thing I wanted to point out that I didn't see in the comments, is that for players who are more strategy-oriented and the timed live deck-building system is too overwhelming but still want to play the game, there are rules for a turn-based mode where the deckbuilding and tournament phases are combined and players take turns doing one specific thing (buying a card, selling a card, playing a single, or triggering a scoring phase), and once you trigger 3 scoring phases you're done playing. Obviously it's not the recommended way, but it is an option!
This seems way up my alley...but could I really find people to play it with? :( But if I bought it and tried to run a game I would fluff it as self-aware characters in an actual card game anime in a contest with each other that they came up with to decide who gets to be the main character. Oh man, if I could actually do that and get people to like, roleplay as different card-game anime archetype characters THAT WOULD BE SO MUCH FUN!
soapie's cameos are one of my favorite things about your board game videos. my regular board game group would not be patient with me explaining this game 😩 i need friends who're willing to sit through this kinda shit.
Don't tear down the store deck between games. There's enough variety within any given store configuration that you won't need to do it for at least a few games. It also lets your group sort of develop a "meta" around it, making it easier to trade (since you'll have a better idea of what to trade for) and even make use of card effects that call for naming other cards. Also please just get your games in order and read the rules before you bust them out for game night. Like it's fine for simple games with like 2-page manuals like Carcassonne but you have to actually prepare for heavier games beforehand. I've legit seen people bring brand-new still-in-shrink games to game night and take like 2 hours to get started up. That's 2 hours that they could've spent playing something someone was prepared to teach.
As with Among The Stars, definitely a game where it's better to make and shuffle the deck in advance, use the same deck for a few games, and then change it up between sessions.
It is also worth mentioning that the updated rules (from the upcoming Collusion expansion), says to keep the Core cards in a pile separate from the store deck with the expansion-, premium- and master-sets. You can always buy the top card of the core-deck. This make set up significantly easier since you now only have the mix and shuffle about 150 cards, instead 400 into one pile.
Sounds like it wouldn't be my type of game at all--I'm an anxious person with focus problems, so the real time element would be rough--but I also see a lot to like in the game. Great review!
It's such a time investment! You might want to join the Level 99 discord, though, there's people from all time zones who would play on Tabletop Simulator. I'd play with you but I'm on the other side of the world, haha
That's what people with no friends say. You can play video games alone, so...no need to clean up and act respectable long enough to trick them into spending time with you.
I didn't mean this in a "I have no friends" kind of way, I meant "this game has a lot of rules that would be better of being automated so my friends eyes don't glaze over and we end up playing Catan for the thousandth time because it's what everyone already knows"
Holy crap this game. So I love the concept but I work at my public library. We've recently added many modern card and board games to our collection for patrons to check out. Once they're returned, we make sure all the pieces are accounted for. I HATE this game only for the reason of making sure all 600 some odd cards are there and that they are in their respective expansions/sets. If you check out a game from your library, please bring it back better than you found it!!
Neat. Been curious about this game, thanks man for the info. Especially about set up & clean up. For me personally, I can't stand a game that takes longer to set up than it does to play. (now to dream about getting my own game reviewed on here someday...)
Has to be said that's the most cat thing that a cat can do Get in your way when you're trying to record something get in your way when you're trying to play a video game or run across your keyboard when you're working on something Or just sits on the keyboard or sits on your hands while you're holding the controller
That game is 30 years old now. They have been making games since then, learning from what others have done before them, and improving it. There are Catan-esque games out there that out Catan Catan.
I played this once, and I was concerned that custom-made decks were no more effective than the starter deck, and some strategies are completely non-functional (cards that reward flipping your own cards, but if you flip your cards then you knock yourself out of any meta bonuses).
@@Valtharr if you flipped all your cards that matched the meta, yeah you would. The trade-off is basically "would flipping this card gain me more than the 15 points from the meta?"
"I played (a game with like 18 vectors of decisions to be made) ONCE and now I cab declare it's broken because I wasn't great at it the first time through." So...basically just making stuff up.
Maybe. But this simulates the meta of the actual collecting. It's not so much about the card game...the card game is IN the board game. It's about collecting and trading.
