I love this game. I could not agree more re: Arkham Horror. I love that game too, but I always feel like I'm 100% on the clock and if I try to explore something or do something maybe suboptimal I am brutally punished. Where Arkham is a game of squeezing every amount of value out of every action and card, EBR is about doing what you want. Do you want to explore that mountain area? Go for it! Would you rather stay in town and try to meet all the NPCs and see what jobs they may have for you? Sure thing! Do you want to travel to the market and trade piece of gear in your deck for one you had your eye on but maybe didn't qualify for during deck creation? Do it! It is an open world RPG in LCG form and I'm here for it. I really really hope the game catches fire and takes off so that they can continue to expand the card pool with more ranger cards and more campaigns.
Great review Jason. I was chatting to Colin in the comments section of his playthrough about how refreshing it is not to have to fight and kill everything. Dying bear is enraged to fury by the pain and attacks you. No chance to see if you can help the bear. Your point about not being rushed is interesting. It reminds me of the times I've played a RPG video game and you get an urgent task from a NPC with a floating question mark but are aware that I then take time to explore the town before setting off! lol Think I would enjoy Earthborne Rangers, but Mythwind is due fairly soon and I hope it will scratch a similar itch.
Spot on! Not only I agree with your points, I would probably have picked those 4 of those 5 if I were to have tried to review it! I would have added the production process which showed the possibility to produce locally, without plastic, and with respectful material. It’s great.
This is my first game of this type, and definitely, it assumed a lot of knowledge of this style of game and so was a bit tough to learn BUT I would not want to play the others, far too combative and tense for my liking, so I'm really looking forward to all the expansions for this game and hope other designers take note of this style - challenges but not relentless confrontation. Great review. I still watch reviews in the hopes of discovering similar games, but EBR does seem to be unique.
got the game with the doubler prior to the reprint going live on gamefound. wasn't keen on the tutorial for it, but everything else I've seen is amazing. anxious to play it with my friend. insta-backed the new content and some playermats.
Just put my order in. Totally excited about this one due to what you say about the "urgency". I would love a co-op game where I feel like you get to actually explore around a bit. I've played some Mage Knight, and you're always under the gun to do "the best move" every turn to maximize your play to even have a hope of a chance of winning. Looking forward to a game that actually let me enjoy the world a bit.
Really appreciate this take. This game seems so different that it’s hard to wrap my mind around it. I love Arkham horror and I love sleeping gods so this may be a good fit. Plus having a game that is unique enough couldn’t be bad for the collection
Is the game difficult? It just seems weird to not have some sort of timer of enemies swarming me or the doom clock ticking off. Hmmmm the injured bear better give me a +2 dagger for wasting my time to go help him! 🤣 Thanks for the review!
I am currently playing the campaign, it is structured in days, after day 3 (basically after the third session) you will have pressure and a crisis. So far we are in day 11 and there was no chill break since, meaning there is also a main scenario objective to be achieved as quickly as we can. I would more see the first three session to understand the world and mechanics and to have time to do some sideequests to get some neat new cards.
I agree after day 3 things ramp up and there are challenges to overcome and timers, but you never lose, you just have to handle the consequences positive or negative. You also have to prevent humans you meet from being harmed and if you get three harm places on you it immediately ends your day. There’s definitely a challenge, it just does it very differently than any game that I’ve played
Thanks for the review, this one is very intriguing. You mentioned that the prologue is problematic in that it introduces a rule that isn't used later. Do you recommend skipping this to avoid confusion?
There are "best" win conditions. I got one of the best ones :). There are worse win conditions where you get to the end but certain people die, certain parts of the valley feel the effects, etc. If you care about the peoples, then learn to play :).
Thanks for the video! Do you 'lose' anything playing true solo? Some games seem to really shine when you have a two or more players and natural synergies arise between different characters (e.g., the traditional tank, healer, damage dealers, etc.). Would it be worthwhile and/or even viable to play two-handed solo to get any synergies going between two characters?
Thanks! I played true solo all the way and didn’t feel like I was missing anything. I think this is a solo game scaled up, rather than a truly multiplayer game.
I'll presume to add that it's all in the deck you build, something that's taken me two 'half plays' through the campaign and a lot of video watching/learning to do. At the start I would have said yes... it helps to have friends. But once you have a deck that can meet the challenges (& with 3 fitness!) then you will find a fully immersive experience that is so engrossing that you fully appreciate your solo'ing through the Valley.
I'm looking for games to try solo. I like the concept, sounds kinda like the fallout games where you just want check what out what is behind the next hill and then you discover a new story line. You mention this is a hard entry to story games. Any recommendations for lighter story board games?
Mike just featured Distant Skies, which is around the level of complexity but I find that having the board and the bigger presentation helps with immersion. I loved the system in Destinies. I was thinking of that one in particular when I spoke about lighter entry story games.
@@OneStopCoopShop Thanks for all three tips. They're all already a bit on my radar. Not sure if I like the app part. Played LOTR and quit because we didn't like going back and forth to the app. That was with a group though, might work better with solo play. I really like the theme and artwork in Rangers, I just never played a similar game. Played some more complex games though, like gloomhaven en LCG arkham horror. Looking for something to play solo that I can get on the table, play a game and clean up in about 2 hours, with some nice gameplay and a story to motivate me to keep playing. Playing tales of the red dragon inn at the moment.
Hi Jason, which do you prefer, this or Sleeping Gods/ Distant Skies? (Assuming you've played those, they seem to have the same open sandbox adventure vibe going on, but I've played none of them...) Also, is this cerebral, like Spirit Island, or is there just a lot to learn?
I love both! I honestly couldn’t choose between the two. Spirit Island is way more cerebral. I found the card play here fairly easy, once you get into it. At no point do I consider the Spriit Island card play “easy”.
I’ve played both and personally liked this one better. I think it has more interesting mechanics. It also gets more interesting with more players which I don’t think SG does. (Extra players add a lot of extra time in EBR though!) The downside of EBR for me is the randomness of playing through the path deck. SG leaves you more in control.
@@svachalek You're moving from place to place, how much control would you have in real life, over what's there when you get there? Or is there some other kind of randomness going on?
Day to day you’ll have the random card draw spawns and such to keep things varied. In the bigger picture, yes some of the big quests might play out in a similar way, but they have more quests coming (new campaign launched today)
I see that in a lot of games like this (Sleeping Gods for example) but I don’t get that from this one at all. Each player has a full deck of different options, different strengths and weaknesses, and lots of ways to interact, I can take on this predator so you can clear the obstacle and then I can search for our mission etc. Every co-op game can be played solo but some are better than others at creating a sense of a role or a place for different players and I would rate Earthborne Rangers very high on that scale.
I agree with the second responder. A lot of stuff in the game gives me Arkham LCG vibes. Both games have a lot of cooperation in card play and dealing with threats and all of that. It's also great as a solo game, but the cooperation is solid too. - Mike
