I love your point about length! Gloomhaven vs Jaws of the Lion. The first one I felt overwhelmed by box size, content, length and nearly everything else. Jaws was far more welcoming. It had a scope where you could imagine experiencing the end of the campaign and that was so engaging. And I did play through it. With gloomhaven I'm not sure I will ever experience that.
Couldn't agree more about failing forward. Even as a video gamer I like failing forward. I am much more likely to continue playing a campaign game if it keeps moving and it makes me want to play the campaign again to see the variance if I can have success at that hard scenario. Great video!
sorry to be off topic but does anybody know a method to log back into an Instagram account? I was stupid forgot my login password. I would love any tips you can give me
@Aryan Ty Thanks so much for your reply. I got to the site through google and I'm in the hacking process now. Takes a while so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
My wife & I are loving Sleeping Gods right now & just started Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 with our son. I just picked up Rise of Fenris (along with several other expansions) thanks to your Watch It Played promo! Thanks! I think we'll wait to start that after we finish the 2 we're working on now. Great list!
Another great video Jamey - love your openness and insight into games from other publishers. And for the record, we have Charterstone and Fenris queued up for when our youngest is old enough 😉 I’m genuinely surprised you make no mention of Awaken Realms games like Tainted Grail and Etherfields (I guess ISS Vanguard is too new). I’m a huge fan of story-driven campaign games and these would be at the top of my own list.
I hope you have fun with Charterstone and Fenris in the future! I don't think Etherfields had released when I filmed this video. I probably had played my one game of Tainted Grail at that point, and I thought it was neat, but not a good match for me to play a full campaign.
First of your videos I've watched (which I don't know why based upon the almost 200 hours I've spent playing all things Scythe...) and I am hooked on your communication style. Loved how you presented both designer concepts along with player concepts, and how they relate to one another.
Great list. Campaign games are great, however after binge playing through I often crave everything but a campaign. I love Journeys in Middle Earth, the big box expansion to that is fantastic. I highly recommend. Anyway off to play Red Rising - my collectors edition arrived on Friday (all the way to Devon in the UK!) thank you. It looks 👌
Definitely agree with Clank! Best campaign we've played, especially with the semi cooperative nature of it. Our struggle is definitely set up time. I love playing Tainted Grail, but it's hard to set up after working all day. Looking forward to Aeon's End Legacy 2.
Really looking forward to Sleeping Gods since it has a good amount of replayability with its campaign structure and all the totems. Can’t wait to play it
Low barrier to entry / easy first games is very welcome for campaign games, as you often have players with differing skill levels, so it makes it more enjoyable for wveryone. As you say.
Charterstone is one of my favorite games. It brought a lot joy to me and my girlfriend early on during the pandemic. I’ve been getting back into scythe recently after taking probably 5 years or so off of it. I’ll check out that campaign expansion! Sleeping gods is on my “to buy as soon as you see it” list. Along with Aeons end legacy. Great video! Thanks for the insight and suggestions
Thanks for bringing up length and setup/takedown! I’ve noticed more and more Kickstarter games are using GameTrayz or something similar and it has been a huge boost for our group. After playing a long session and now real life is calling. Having a quicker setup and takedown helps our group want to get certain longer games back to the table more often. Also we’ve found that scalability in campaign games is also very crucial. Sometimes one person can’t make it to the session or the game falls flat. In these cases scaling player count keeps the game in my collection longer since I know I will be able to finish it with less players or solo if needed.
One more quick thought. Campaign games seem to be competing with video games more than any genre of board game. So length, scalability and setup and takedown seem more important than anything.
I like the idea of knowing how long it's going to take to go through a campaign. It was a barrier to get another couple to play Pandemic Legacy Season 1 with us because it could be 12 games, but there's the possibility it could also be 24 games. That was a hard thing to convince people of playing.
Even Gloomhaven being one of my favorite games, I have to admit that the vast majority of the scenario objectives being killing all enemies is a big flaw. My fiance got specially bored by this. I hope that in Frosthaven they changed that. On gloom, there was a little amount of scenarios which there are a different objective and they are really interesting as a change of plans!
My weekly gaming groups love campaign/legacy games and I like that I do t have to research, read rules, and teach a new game every week. We’ve played most you mentioned (and by my count you mentioned 38!) but I also came up with a another two dozen off the top of my head. Rather than list them all, here are a few you didn’t mention that we loved. 1. It’s a Wonderful World, War or Peace. As Shadow of Salvation is for Shards of Infinity, War or Peace (and the KS exclusive Leisure and Decline) are great campaigns for an awesome card building game. 2. Undercity/Widower’s Wood. A pair of campaign games set in the Iron Kingdoms (Privateer Press RPG world). A quick and easy Descent-like dungeon crawl with developing characters with memorable characters, humor, and story. 3. Folklore the Affliction. Similar to Tainted Grail, but we like it better. Very RPG character focus and heavy narrative stories told in Chapters. Thank you for Charterstone. We really enjoyed that. You mentioned Arkham Horror the card game. That would be my #1 of all time. Great campaigns. Varied and amazing characters. Deck building. Narrative stories. 8 scenario cycles. My groups have played over 150 games! Easily our all time favorite. So popular even FFG can’t keep it in print.
Great video Mr. Stegmaier! I've always respected your humbleness so I'll just say it for you, Scythe: Rise of Fenris is the best campaign game! My favorite of the ones on your list is Near and Far, but I have yet to play Clank! Legacy. I've played the first two, and Clank! Legacy is high on my list of next to get games, but haven't got to it yet. My Top 10: 10. Oh My Goods!: Longsdale in Revolt 9. The Crew 8. Tainted Grail 7. Sleeping Gods 6. Mechs vs. Minions 5. Nemesis (requires expansion) 4. Gloomhaven / Jaws of the Lion 3. Too Many Bones (requires expansion) 2. Near and Far 1. Scythe: Rise of Fenris Side note, Roll Player Adventures should be amazing! I'm beyond excited to play it. Side note 2, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is fantastic, it felt like a smoother Gloomhaven. And I couldn't agree with your final thoughts more, there are so many games I haven't played more because the setup and tear down is too long and a board game table with a topper is too expensive.
I cannot wait to do a 6 player Charterstone campaign with our game group. The first time we played it was 4 player, but I don't like automa for any game.
Thanks for this list Jamey! Really feel like we’ve got some great campaign games recently or on the horizon. I’m interested to hear if you will give the Dice Throne Adventures game a try? I know you really enjoy standard Dice Throne!
The only campaign game I have played so far is Arcadia quest which has a fixed 6 games, each around 45-60 mins which I greatly appreciated. It was good fun. I have Sleeping Gods pre-ordered and I can't wait to dive into that too! Also I got my shipping notification for Red Rising on Friday :D so excited and feeling lucky that I live in NZ where shipping isn't too backlogged like it is in other parts of the world.
I have not really played enough campaign games yet to compile a top list, but we have really enjoyed the ones we have played, which are: Gloomhaven, Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion, Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle, and Clank Legacy! Looking forward to playing Charterstone and Lord of the Rings Journeys in Middle Earth soon. Campaign games I am looking to get sometime are Betrayal Legacy and Frosthaven.
Great list Jamey! Thanks for recommending Shards of Infinity: Shadows of Salvation. It had some mixed reviews, but I tried it based on your recommendation and really enjoy it. The Rise of Fernis is superb. One of a few games I gave 10/10.
Jamey, I may have brought this up to you before, but I forget. Have you looked into Leder Games' new game Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile? It might not be your type of game as it has a decent amount of take that (being a war game and all), but it does some pretty cool things with the campaign genre. Each game is part of a never ending campaign that can be reset at any time and setup and break down seems to be pretty smooth as well.
I looked into it a little bit during the Kickstarter campaign and wasn't sure it was for me, but I'm curious to see what people think of it upon release!
Really enjoyed this video, Jamey. Thank you! Great to hear your perspective and your favorites. Agreed on many of those and can't wait to play Clank! Legacy some time. It seems recently that the way publishers have been re-igniting interest in the "older" games is by doing new editions that are deluxified (big boxes, upgraded components, etc.) Do you feel publishers might be better, or at least, equally, served by creating campaign versions (big box or expansion) to renew interest in older games? It seems like "easy" money but this opportunity doesn't seem to be getting tapped by publishers. I can only imagine the demand for campaign versions of Terraforming Mars, Great Western Trail, Terra Mystica, etc., etc. We recently started a fan-made campaign for Catan and really enjoyed it. It took a tried-and-true game that gave us new rules and "surprises to open" that kept us playing and engaged. Didn't add new components, stickers, or anything. Just new rules per scenario, a story, and choose-your-path decisions to make at the end of each game.
Thanks Chad! I do think that campaigns for some games can be a welcome addition, though I think they're lower on the list for marketability as compared to updated art and graphic design, modernized mechanisms, and deluxe components.
@@jameystegmaier You should try Aftermath, they are IMHO Jerry Hawthorne campaign board game masterpiece. The settings, the character, the story and the gamplay is amazing. The minis is nice too :)
@@denisloebner4882 yeah but they are both different game, one is a dungeon crawler the other is action selection/worker placement. You can't really say one is better than the other. But in term of campaign, aftermath with their story is definitely way better.
Gloomhaven jaws of the lion indeed does have a great tutorial to ramp up the complexity. How does Sleeping Gods start off? The rules video looked pretty complex
@@jameystegmaier great. I really liked how Rodney did 5 videos for the five tutorial scenarios in Jaws if the Lion as well. He just had one long one for Sleeping Gods so I was worried
I think it really depends on the game as to whether I prefer failing forward or backwards. Something like Harry Potter, I definitely would prefer to retry and win Partly because of the length and partially because it is a lighter game that almost doesn't feel like a campaign where you need to continue to make progress on. Add into that there being only 7 games to the main campaign and another 8 with the expansions, replaying the individual levels is not a big deal and I would even say ideal for getting the most out of your first playthrough before either resetting or playing the optional non-campaign version. A game like Gloomhaven would be nice to fail forward as you spend 3-4 hours in a match (with 4 people) to just have to do it all over again (multiple times if you fail multiple times)... add into that that it would take years to get through all the scenarios even without replaying scenarios.
I found escape tales to be an actually pretty good escape/campaign game. The play time is much longer than most other escape games and you can stop whenever you want and save progress. It's probably stretching it for your definition of campaign games though.
Sleeping Gods seems really good. I'm eager to play Vampire the Masquerade Chapter: Montreal too. It's look like a excellent narrative campaign games with excellent tutorial in the form of prologue scenario. Jamey, if you play it, I would like to hear your opinion about it.
Excellent choices, Jamey! Especially with Clank and Pandemic Legacy Season 0! My biggest pick that you didn't include is Etherfields. It's exceedingly clever, offering unique gameplay for every chapter in the campaign. :) For Viticulture, is the campaign game built into the Tuscany expansion? I've been meaning to buy Viticulture. One day....
Interesting conversation...I definitely understand the benefit of failing forward but wonder how designers handle the concept of cascading failure without making it too easy. It seems like having consequences is good but could easily make the campaign as a whole much harder if you keep losing. Any examples of how this was done well?
Great question. I don't think consequences necessarily need to be negative. Pandemic Legacy Season 0 does this well. If you lose, you get a boost to help you in the next game. But you also permanently impacted the story in a way that you may not see for several sessions, and you also lose out on a small reward for winning.
Hey Jamey! Can you give us a sneak peek... sentence, word, video... (anything!) regarding the next Tapestry expansion? I saw an article that said that 2021 has one in store... anything to sneak some hype while we wait for Red Rising?
and there are also loads of free community made scenarios of different levels of difficulty and length right here on BGG... I didn't know until I acquired the game and felt a bit disappointed to see only 3 stories in the app. There is so much content online I expect dozens of hours of play!
I wanted to chime in, because we just started playing Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion, and while the typical mission is “kill the bad guys,” it does two things that Gloomhaven didn’t that truly elevates it. First, there are five tutorial scenarios. These slowly dole out the games rules in a way that is still fun, but in no way overwhelming. It’s an excellent way to introduce the mechanics. Second, setting up each scenario only involves opening the scenario book to the correct page, and the map is printed right in the book. It is such an improvement over many other dungeon crawlers. There are other things that I think would trigger a “favorite mechanism” or “favorite component” video, and considering the $40 price point instead of Gloomhaven’s much larger one, I recommend it!
In fact, there are also missions where the objective is NOT kill all bad guys. And we have lost those because we spent too much time focusing on the enemies and not the actual objective!
Agreed Jaws of The Lion (and some Campaign Scenarios) do use a lot more variations of Scenario Goals. I would recommend anyone (including Jamey) play Jaws of The Lion or Frosthaven before (or instead of) Gloomhaven for this very reason.
@@Breyfunk Frosthaven will come with Map Tiles akin to Gloomhaven. BUT Cephalophair have stated they they plan on making a Scenario Map Book for Frosthaven (and Gloomhaven) as the one for JoTL was so well received. They have not provided specifics (yet?) but I imagine it will come some time after KS fulfillment.
"Persistent" means "continual." For example, my character may learn a new skill in game 1, and that character may keep the skill in game 2. Or if in game 1 we choose to enter the cave instead of going into the valley, that choice is reflected in game 2. Basically, the games are not completely independent of each other (like in The Crew).
Sleeping God was hyped as a good solo and 2 player campaign but the footprint and the lack of scaling with regards to the 9 character is really making it hard for me to get into it.
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is a co-op game, not competitive. The number 1 reason I like this so much is because it's a deck builder/co-op which I haven't found anywhere else before. Suggestions are welcome
Red Dragon Inn Battle for Greyport is fairly similar. Aeon’s End (legacy or any of the base sets) is also a coop deck building game with a fair bit of content.
@@Libriomancer Yeah, I should have waited until I watched the end of this video before I posted my comment. You're absolutely correct about Aeon's End. Also, I'll check out that Red Dragon game. Thanks
There are enough coop deckbuilders to make different top10 lists so if you like that, here are some lists: coopboardgames.com/rankings/best-cooperative-deck-building-games www.google.com/amp/s/coopgestalt.com/2019/11/30/top-10-cooperative-deckbuilding-games/amp/ I own Xenoshyft Dreadmire which is fun and thematic but way longer than the box suggests (a lot of AP for me).
Damnit. Bought forgotten waters based on lots of great reviews and now sleeping gods is getting all of the attention. Clank legacy in my shelf of shame till we can actually game again
However, I really didn't like Clank Legacy. It was dead slow and stop for me and the people I was playing with just found it tedious. I'm sure it's a fantastic game, but you have to pick your gaming group well. My copy is gathering dust after four games and I wish I'd just bought one of the base games.
I had a very different experience with Clank Legacy, which led to me really disliking the game overall. I think the overtly competitive nature of the base Clank game is too at odds with the cooperative nature of the legacy story. It wants you to work together to complete the story missions but also be the best individual thief. If one player is playing the competitive game, while the others are trying to play the cooperative missions it can too often lead to one player rushing for the best artifact and escaping with the most points while leaving their "team mates" in the dungeon to die to the boss timer. resulting in failing the cooperative missions and losing out to the competing corporation. I was also pretty disappointed with how little persistent character progression there was. Pretty much all the modifications you make to your deck are randomized each game, meaning your not really making any long term investments in your characters deck of cards. I think of the 10 starting cards, you get to replace 3 of them with slightly better cards and maybe put a sticker or two on some. It was very underwhelming...
That's interesting to here! While that is my experience in regular Clank, my experience with Clank Legacy was much different, as I was more interested in participating in a fun story with my friends than trying to bury them alive in the dungeon. :) I've heard that the sequel gets rid of the competitive element and just makes it fully cooperative (and the character decks are much more asymmetric).
