Can we have a moment to talk about the lighting and color palette of this video...and how Maggie and Amy's shirts coordinate perfectly with the box cover and the games on the shelves behind them? 😍Nice, thorough review!
Thank you so much for this great detailed review ! I absolutely love The Mico's work so I am obviously completely enchanted already by this game. I am not affraid of time investment of setting games (I actually find it quite relaxing) so that is not a problem for me. I do not have a lot of card management games/deck building so the fact that it leans definitely towards this than worker placement (which I have more of) is for sure a plus ! I am just very excited to try it now ! Thanks so much for the very thorough breakdown !
Hi Amy and Maggie, we now have point ratings in reviews, yay 🎉 thank you for the in depth review and sharing your experiences with it. I also appreciate the comparisons to Arnak and Dune towards the end. The review helped me confirm that the game may not suit my gaming tastes currently. I still look forward to trying my friend’s copy and give it a chance! 😂
Oof! This was a great review, but a bit hard to hear as my copy hasn't even arrived yet. I do have all of the expansions coming, so maybe it will be better incorporating some of those. On the flip side, the deck building is what I really wanted out of the game and the worker placement was secondary for me. With both Arnak and Imperium I felt like I wasn't getting enough with the deck building, so I'm glad to hear that there's more of it in Endless Winter. The only other negative is the table space since I don't have a gaming table. YIKES!! I guess I'll be lugging it over to my friend's to play every time. Thanks for the honesty in the review though, it's so important 🙂
You will definitely get more deckbuilding joy out of this one. And a lot of hand management in the trade offs the game forces you to make. I'm glad you'll get the opportunity to try out the expansions. Can't wait to hear what you think!
Thank you for the video. My wife and I have been loving the game at 2 players. I'm always the one setting up and teaching, and with the great organizer in the KS edition, I actually found the setup and teach to be quicker and easier than most games we play. I agree about the lack of replayability of the base game - it was already feeling samey after 3 plays. However, the expansions solve this problem. The alternate tribe cards, alternate animal cards, and alternate chiefs from the Ancestor expansion were all a lot more strategically interesting in my opinion, and I will mostly play with those going forward. We have yet to try the other two expansions, but this is definitely one that will be staying in our collection for the long run.
So glad to hear that the expansions help with the replayability Ryan (not to mention the insert which we are yet to see in our KS edition!) It makes us super happy to read that the game is one that both you and your wife love. It's so wonderful to be able to share in this hobby with someone. Happy gaming and thanks for watching!
I always appreciate your reviews so much. This one caught my eye because the artwork was so impressive, but then when I dug deeper it started to feel like too much of too much, so I held off.
Nice review. thank you. I just received mine last week and pulled it out for a two player practice round with myself so I can teach it to friends sometime soon. Maybe four players is best for the area control and wokrer placement tension.
For the area control, tracks and megalith tension the higher player counts are better. It also makes for a more fun experience in the eclipse card reveal turn order phase. Great idea to practise though as there's a lot of pieces to explain! Hope you get it to the table with your friends soon. Thanks for watching!
I've only watched a few of yoru videos but I think nothing differentiates your world view, and game view, mores than the choice of shirts for this video, lol. Well done. You also took some of the wind out of my sails but honestly once I'd saw a lot of gameplays I thought many of the same things.
Lollllll! Our wardrobes are very different to each other 😂 thank you for watching and I hope you get a chance to play this and decide for yourself. While it didn't fit perfectly with our game preferences there's certainly a lot to discover and experience and we enjoyed our time with it.
Great review, guy! This kind of reminds me of Teotihuacan (which I love) with deck building. All the little modules and different ways of scoring victory points. I’ve been curious about this game for what feels like years - I think your review has settled my curiosity somewhat though so I don’t feel like I need to pick it up straight away.
Ah that's interesting! It feels quite different to Teotihuacan when playing I think - aside from the scarcity in resources conundrum. I would compare it perhaps to a heavier version of Merv or more mini game point salad style games. Teotihuacan is far more punishing I think with more tension in the dice movement. Thanks for watching as always and glad it was helpful!
Really helpful review that made me decide to cancel my preorder. It doesn’t sound like it would make the table very much with my group, especially compared to other games mentioned in the review.
Glad it was helpful Jarred. It definitely feels quite different to those games so maybe it's more about resetting those expectations if you love worker placement! Thanks for watching. 😊
Thanks, you confirmed my strong suspicions even though it is still on my wishlist. Many KS games have this, where they break up core gameplay, replaybility, setup variability and strategic variability between multiple add-ons & expansions. While some amount of this is understandable, some should be built into the core box (at least good for 10 satisfying plays. ) The cost (in money, research time and storage space) to put it all together adds up, requiring me (as the host) to make too many choices before the game even gets to the table. More often than not, the pay-off just isn’t there. :(
It did need a little bit more variability for our taste, only because it became evident that a balanced strategy was always the winning strategy (we tried a lot to specialise). With the size of our collection we don't often get to expansions anymore so I do wish card variation had been included in the base (though I did go all in on the KS!) Thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts.
Thanks for the great overview and review! I didn't back Endless Winter and kind of regretted it, but due to the cost also didn't late pledge. I've watched a lot of reviews but I think yours best addressed some of the concerns I have. Sounds like a game I really want to play before investing in. Thanks 👍
Thanks for the review and overview of all the mechanics. Looks amazing, sounds cool but that set up and potential to go stale a bit too quickly does warn me off
Apologies in advance for this comment being completely off topic… I don’t know if you would ever review this game, but I played Tindaya in solo mode this weekend and really enjoyed it. It’s very heavy, but because the rules make thematic sense, I didn’t have too hard of a time keeping track of them. It basically took me all day to teach myself and play it, but I was doing it while hanging out with my cats, making/eating lunch, and watching Disney+ at the same time. It was a really enjoyable Sunday activity for me… and I’d be curious to see what you think of the game. I think it will get a lot of play for me in solo mode and potentially with my partner, but I don’t think I would ever play it with my friends or at a meetup group (too heavy).
We added the Ancestors and the Cave paintings. The Cave paintings add a whole new action space giving more variety in worker placement and you draw in an animal and get bonuses as you complete parts. The Ancestors animals give set bonuses every eclipse making hunting more appealing. We have not tried the Rivers and Rafts yet. We like the Ancestors and Cave painting so we will always play with those.
I really enjoy this game and all the variability that the modules and expansions provide, plus the art and production is fantastic. I've been saying since the KS campaign, though, that they have set some people up for disappointment by embracing the suggestion that this is a worker placement hybrid. Functionally, since you don't block other players from the spots and you never gain any additional workers, I really think this mechanism is just action selection with a bonus for the first player to select each action per round. Players hoping for worker placement to be a major aspect of the game are going to be disappointed in what they find here, for sure.
Yes I think that's a big part of it too. We are huge worker placement fans and were surprised that it felt much more like a deck builder/hand management game (with the eclipse choice and the labour points). So happy to hear that you're enjoying your time with this one! Thanks for watching.
Excellent review. Now i know to crack open the ancestors exp. on our second play of the game. Glad you two persevered so as to save us the trouble. But, i do wonder why KS publishers shy away from providing a complete experience in their core box. If they knew it was too repetitive, then ancestors should have been fully integrated from the get go.
Yes we wish it was part of the base game too! We haven't played it but since the card play is the most fascinating part of the game it would be good to have more variety. Looking forward to hearing what you think of it once you get a chance to play!
@@ThinkerThemer I absolutely will. Just waiting on our pledges to fulfil here in the UK. Thanks again Amy and Maggie for helping gamers fast forward to where the game shines best.
Hi there. If ancestors was part of the base game we believe the weight of the game would be increase drastically. In order to take this decision we had a series of Playtests with different playgroups evaluating the overall experience and the difficulty of a first time experience. Based on those we kept what felt to the groups essential for a complete experience.
@@fantasiaboardgames808 I am sure you are right, in fact, i hope you are right. As I can't wait to get my hands on your game, so my comments are purely aimed to support this and future projects. I was just remarking on Maggie and Amy's observation (the independent reviewers) that the core deck made gameplay feel repetitive (less exciting) and they think the ancestors expansion fixes that. Personally, I prefer a marginally more complex game on the first two plays, so i am hungry to explore it more, over a repetitive 5 or 6 game card effect. (if that is the case - will see for myself soon, once delivered in the UK) My point was modularity is a new thing. So honestly, if it was 2017 and you had one shot to publish the game, wouldn't you have integrated Ancestors to try and get those Stefen Feld fans to buy your game? 😀 Just some of my general thoughts (with no gameplay experience, just a hunch from reviewers i respect).
Really looking forward to this one and hope I enjoy it! I went all in so hopefully the expansions will wow me. I am a little worried though because I had the similar issue of sameness with Arnak after about 10 plays! Thanks for the great detailed look at it!
The Ancestor expansion is essential in my opinion, since it makes the animals a much more fun an interesting element in the game for both the hunt and usage. More engine and combos 🥰 Also the other parts in that expansion just makes the game better with depth and flexibility. But downtime can be huge with all the combos, but I think it’s one of the best games in a long time 🙏
So glad to hear you are loving this game Kim. We can certainly appreciate it in spite of it not perfectly aligning with our preferences, and we've enjoyed our time with it. I'm so glad to hear the Ancestor expansion helps - as we expected it might! Thanks for watching!
@@ThinkerThemer I agree with you in both the good and what could be better, it’s just that I’m a sucker for big combos and cozy artwork so that compensates hugely 😇 And thanks for the Essen video, grabbed the wonderful Take A Seat thanks too you 😸
Nice review. We have enjoyed the game quite a bit, but have only played the base game twice. I added the Ancestors module on Kickstarter, but skipped some of the other expansions, as we don't always play lots of modules and expansions in the games. Maybe we'll have to re-think that with more plays. Agree that a balanced strategy seems to work better in this one. Fun game so far.
Hi Maggie hi Amy. I love your channel and love your reviews. As native German speaking with school Englisch 🙈😬 i understand you very good. If you could play the expansions and give your thoughts about them it would be very nice. I think the expansions are bringing more variations. Hopefully next time. Thank you for your reviews 😊
Very helpful review! Would love to try this game but yea don’t really feel the need to own it, especially as I’ve yet to get more plays of Rurik from the same designer.
Honest Review. When I saw the campaign, I didn't think this would be one that would be 'Easy to Teach' mostly due to the management of your cards and the puzzle of using the right amount of labor in the 3 turns you have each round. It gets tougher especially if you have a certain plan on using an action but really need the bonus action. This could lead to interesting decisions. Do you do the action without the bonus or 'Rest' and use those cards for the eclipse bonuses. It's an interesting puzzle.
Yes! It definitely requires some forward thinking and active hand management (we also like the eclipse bonus trade off conundrum). Thanks for watching!
My solo only experience pretty much aligns with your 2p experience. I think higher p should tighten the worker placement which makes it more interesting, but solo (which replicates 2p) felt too loose, and it allowed me to do everything, which quickly felt repetitive. I heard that Ancestor expansion adds much more variability/replayability though which I haven't tried myself.
I find that Stan’s games often benefit from adding expansion modules, or the type of expansions that add more cards/objects for drafting and end scoring pathways. His games (I’m thinking Dice Hospital and Shadow Kingdoms for starters) have familiar design beats and a fairly consistent flavour in how they play out. I found after playing Dice Hospital 10 or so times IRL and about 100 times on the app, it was hard to go back to without the expansions. Shadow Kingdoms has plenty of variety in the cards and randomness of the dice.
I agree with this however recently just played his first own published game Resurgence and that's an amazing game all by itself. One of the coolest mechanics i've seen with the draw and assign step. when we read the rules, that seemed like a no brainer but in reality in a 4p game that step is the most brain twisting and critical step of your turn! I highly suggest checking out Resurgence.
Great review! This helped me confirm some of my suspicions about this game. I'm still mildly interested in trying it but I felt it looked a bit disjointed from Paul and Rahdo plays. Pretty art. Seems like too much work for the output
Hahaha hmmm probably more that I think one watch will change my life and then it doesn't so I keep buying them. Lol. After many smart watches I realised I'm more of a just-the-time-thanks kind of watch person but I'm sure I'll keep trying. 😁 how about you?
I am glad to have kickstarted this game with expansions and skipped merchants cove ks as I was looking out for a game with varied mechanisms. While I agree the game needs expansions, so does merchant cove, and this game is a lot cheaper than merchants cove, plus this game comes with really great art and trays. The only problem I see is the lack of variability of recruit cards but I think the expansions sort of solve the problem and yes the cards allow you to focus on a strategy
36:00 Amy, how did you arbitrarily come up with the number 7.4, as opposed to 7.5, for example - and what differentiates a 7.4 from 7.5 or any other .1 point? This is EXACTLY why I refuse to rate my games with numbers. However, I can rank my games against each other, if you asked me!
Well it's not arbitrary as I look at everything I've already rated and compare them to see where it fits (so essentially I am ranking them as we go). Ratings are polarising so please feel free to just ignore them and listen to our critique if they don't sit well with you.
