hey guys. Great runthrough. You guys have a nice setup for showing gameplays. I have a few comments about Merlin. I actually think that the game is highly re-playable because the variability causes from the interaction with each player and dice rolling. Or if you play with the variant where you gain specific powers, than makes your board more unique. Have you played it without the first queenie? I haven't played with that yet, but it does look like it makes the game more accessible or less tight as it provides more options to gain apples, or staffs and also, it seems like the exp forces you to visit the environs more frequent. I don't know if the game becomes slightly unbalanced because of that? I was interested in knowing your thoughts in case you had played both with and without. I tend to play two player games (mostly with my gf), and on her first play she hated it. She even compared it to A Feast for Odin, in which, based on her rationale, in spite that there are 61 actions to choose upon, that game is easier to her as either because of the objective cards or her strategy she knows what actions work best for her, so there is less AP. Merlin for her was AP prone and I have never seen her struggle so much in a game. The combination of ways in which you can move your dice, etc let her to really take her time to plan, to the point that it was also suffering for her to make up her mind. Granted it was her first play, but even the first time she played a game such as Five Tribes (which I actually hate in spite of how much I wanted to like that game); which I find very AP prone, she had no AP and it's the dice rolling and the numbers that led her to struggle. I personally love this game, and hope my gf gets to like it more :) It's not my fav Feld, but I like the Roundel mechanic and the multiple options to score. Although I've only played one time with the variant, I think it's better with that. I still have to play with any of the two queenies. My two major complains about the game are 1) The Mission cards. Although there are two actions on the board that let you switch them and a Flag that allows you to score 2, quite often I find that luck of draw could really hurt you if opponent gets lucky enough and draws better objective cards (in regards that he already meets the conditions). 2) The insert. I completely agree that it's almost shocking that Queens would put such a mediocre insert for this game. I love the components, the player board is amazing, I do hate stickers but overall everything is solid and the artwork is decent. But as a US backer, I had to pay 76 dollars to get a copy of this game. For the type of game that it is, for it not to have a decent insert is almost like a slap in the face. I mean, there are a plethora of games of $35 or less with way better inserts. Anyways, sorry for the long message and keep up the good videos!
Great Western Trail is not a rondel. It is a point to point movement mechanics. The main difference between the two is that a rondel has a set of actions made in a specific order, whereas the point to point movement allows to choose a path among the different ones you may take. Navegador and Imperial are better examples of rondel games.
Played this game a few times now and enjoy it. I wouldn't play w/o the queenie at this point, but the queenie tiles do make it seem like going to the map is a must, between the points you can get and the tile bonuses.
Isn’t merlin’s stave only able to be used to do 2 moves with merlin, not your own knight. And it looks like you are playing with the queenie mini-expansion, as all your tiles on the manor board have benefits on, which they don’t in the base game. Also, at the end if each scoring you remove any influence >1 than anyone has in any area, which would have changed the end game scoring I think! I would recommend trying it with the “expert setup” which has the board that allows you to trade in mission cards for specific powers for the rest of the game, as they give a lot more flexibility/ options. Despite this being effectively a roll and move, the amount of options there are still made it interesting for us anyway. Thanks as always to you both for another great video, this to,e of a game I’ve actually already played!
