Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon | Shelfside Review 

thank you! More stuff coming :) -Ashton

This is the way. -Daniel

Much appreciated!

So stoked to finally be working on vids together too! More big stuff coming out for ya guys :D -Ashton

thanks man! It's just that magic of the mystery that keeps us thinking of the game outside of the game! If it was easier to digest overall this could be one of my favorite thematic games ever. -Ashton

@Simon G Well boy do I have news for you! Did you take a look at the new campaign? :)

@@Maspital oh yes! And update packs for the previous is very interesting 🤔

Appreciate it!

wait its all ds3

bahahaha. When we can get our hands on it of course, Daniel has had his eye on it for years -Ashton

awesome to hear that! The gameplay certainly has some faults, but as Daniel gets close to finishing the game (he's on chapter 14 right now), the story does not disappoint from what he's been telling me. Houserule generously, and just get wrapped in Avalon! -Ashton

ahaha, not blood related, but thanks for this feedback! -Ashton

@@Shelfside huh. I thought there was a mention of that. Ah well. Cheers.

Unfathomable!!!?? YEEESSSSS I'm so hyped :) -Ashton Not sure if we'll get around to etherfields though, perhaps ISS vanguard will be more likely

Tbh that happens to me all the time with long video essay/analysis youtube videos lol -Daniel

don't worry, there's gonna be a second edition later on when they launch Kings of Ruin -Daniel

Thanks so much!

Dang I've heard the grind in the expansions aren't as bad grind-wise because they aren't as focused on menhirs story wise so that sucks to hear -Daniel

@@Shelfside it’s not as bad, but the story feels much slower to start and some other changes I don’t want to spoil. I’ve heard Age of Legends is fantastic though, so there’s hope!

ahaha I see ya with the villainous! It's definitely a little high on the review list right now -Ashton

yeah I don't think the tutorial teaches you nearly enough! Need to read the rulebook still -Ashton

I kept hearing coconuts in my head for the first couple hours playing this no kidding :) But glad you appreciated it! We certainly enjoy the game with the homebrewing, but that is more work for an already expensive game! Our eyes are peeled for the next great story campaign, I heard great things about Sleeping Gods -Ashton

​@@Shelfside If I ever play it I'll make sure to have some coconuts ready for the first traveling sounds. Although this time locations are really just a model. I'm sure the story is great, since its the thing I've heard appreciated the most so I'll make sure to try to read it if anything as dark fantasy when done well is really good. Thank you again at Shelfside for bringing such high quality content to us. I was a bit skeptical when I heard the praise this game got and I can see that was the right way to think of the game, as usual you never know with Kickstarter games. You either get a gem, something that is alright, a laughing stock or a bit of all 3 in one box.

Lmao yea the Arthur in Tainted Grail is super far removed from waifu Fate Arthur, he's described as being a massive hulk of metal and death hahaha -Daniel

I mean, early on there's also the learning curve, but I found that the only reason I ever struggled from combat early on was from bad draws, so if you fix your deck through upgrades, you have an answer for everything. That, or pick up a good weapon and/or combat skill card and just start killing everything turn one. I'd imagine combat would remain decently challenging if you don't have any of these things. -Daniel

Just escape from combat.

Yaass hahaha -Daniel

@@Shelfside Tainted Grail and Etherfields reviews are more of a "create your own game from these totally unrelated modules that were supposed to work together, but no one (including the designers) could figure out how to do it", system. LOL

no plans to cover anytime soon, we'll see! -Ashton

I'd imagine so, but I havn't played it yet so who knows how much the score would go up -Daniel

@@Shelfside fair enough. Query for you if you had enough money to buy tainted grail: fall of avalon 2.0 or similar campaign game which one would you go for. I am getting kings of ruin, oathsworn already

Oh thank you! -Daniel

glad you liked it! Daniel actually picked up Bloodborne: TBG the other day, but unlikely we'll make a review on it. We have covered Bloodborne: The Card Game on the channel though! We've been playing Cthluhu death may die lately, and its been a blast. I've had my eye on Arkham 3E, but never quite pulled the trigger. Wouldn't mind giving it a go one day! -Ashton

@@Shelfside ahhhhh bummer, woulda liked to see your guys's thoughts on it Nice! My bro and I finished the first 2 seasons over the last year, review coming on that? 👀

Very sure on rules here, I've spent way too long checking on rules due to the nature of the rulebook. Exp comes easy from tier 3's, and so when I plan routes I walk through as many random encounter locations as possible, which is massive efficiency. Say on a turn I move move move explore, end up doing two fights and a successful exploration, that can be a turn that made 3 exp. On top of that sometimes you have to spend a day or two grinding food, and those grocery trips usually net 2-3 exp as well. I've never personally done the grind cheese where you camp certain areas to infinite exp, but noted that they exist. Tier 4's aren't common yet for me, they usually do damage to me, but if I spend consumable items they're trivial. At chapter 4 I had Now or Never, 2 courage, 1 practicality, clansword, ornamental armor, and a handful of combat deck upgrades for Maggot. My opening hands typically did at least 10 damage upfront based on what I draw, which can definitely oneshot most enemies and even higher 10's if I'm lucky. Say I open with heroic strike into overhead smash into final blow, which is 13 damage already, 15 if i use the sword. If I open with card draw like from Glimpse of the future, a one shot is all but guaranteed through sheer card spam. I've achieved similar results when I later got runic sword as well, and I tend to interchange between the two weapons based on how I'm feeling (I'll probably eventually get the dual wield skill). Also, even if I don't get the one shot, I can end on cards like defend or thick barkskin and still get the safe two shot. The only keywords I'm actually threatened by are fast (unless im using runic sword) and ambush. Everything else doesn't really matter that much. Diplomacy is a complete joke, if you open art of deduction into rhetoric that alone auto wins most encounters. There's too many good basic cards that do everything from negating enemy response like Staunch Defense or cards that are overstatted like heroic presence and holy verse . But yeah, needless to say now that it's ch 6, I'm way more stacked than from ch4, and this positive feedback loop is never going to end unless I go out of my way to avoid fights, but if it's more energy efficient to walk through locations that start fights, why wouldn't I? Events and Menhirs are on a clock after all, and despite having a lot of reputation, food, wealth, and magic, they're always being drained (not rep) so it's not like it's wise to blast ahead and use up all the supply. I want to be as far away from a death spiral as possible, because like Pandemic, you're always on a clock and falling behind makes it easier to keep on falling, but vice versa if you're ahead. Hope this answers your questions! -Daniel

​@@Shelfside It kinda does. Made me open my box to double check stuff! But yes, it all seems legit. It seems you managed to find some slightly broken stuff. Like you said, on which I agree; skills aren't exactly balanced. First for the weapon as there are only one in the massive item deck. Then for the cards, and then for having both 2 aggression and 2 courage early on ! But it does seems like you found a little "loop" and are able to get through it and "abuse" it, in the kind of a reverse death spiral. Or as you said yourself, "positive feedback loop". But mostly, you got that loop VERY EARLY. Chapter 6 is insanely fast to have all this stuff. May be it's partly due to starting coop and continuing solo ? I had a good time with Arev in Fall of Avalon and even managed to win the toughest encounter in the whole campaign (won't spoil, but it's beefy and I'm not even sure you can win without "the" weapon). Not as a breeze as you seems to be doing right now, but I wouldn't call my run of Fall of Avalon especially hard by any mean. Last Knight absolutely boop'ed my ass around and I was running from most encounter for basically the whole game. EXP also gains other uses that can be quite... essential. Age of Legends outright killed me in the first chapter, which never really happened before. I had the "you are dying" status solo, but I never outright died. It was... a very brutal start. I restarted and did okay, but it was still clutch even knowing my way around. But thanks for taking the time to answer and clear it up. It does seems like you're doing everything right, just have all the pieces together early. Side note, the "whole lot of reputation" thing also probably comes for the ability to easily get through diplomatic encounter. Because avoiding/failing those usually cost (a lot of) rep, which I definitely did A LOT, especially in Last Knight ! Hope you're still having fun through everything ! Tainted Grail is definitely my favorite board gaming experience. The moment where you import your choices from Fall of Avalon into Last Knight is also quite memorable. Can't help but wonder a whole lot about the "what if"' ! As a final note; Don't get disheartened by Chapter 7, it's a... weird one. It gets better :)

@@Amuny666 No worries, I'm having a lot of fun with the game still, but at this point I'm house ruling a ton of combat and menhir rules so I can progress the story faster. Again, I don't find the game mechanically sound, but so far the story has been phenomenal! I realize I may have been lucky with my early items, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch for min-maxers like myself to quickly realize just how strong certain skills, cards, and items are once we understand the combat. When I saw that leveling aggression for maggot was dirt cheap since he has no empathy, and how crazy good aggression skills were for fighting I focused hard on that after my first point in practicality. I also thought I was breaking the rules or doing something wrong until I went to bgg and found a skill guide that ended up confirming my suspicions that the game is trivial if you optimize right. I suppose it just comes with the territory since we review games and also play games with a competitive group. Tryharding a game like Gloomhaven makes much more sense than doing that to Tainted Grail lol -Daniel

Bruh I cant wait for when I get around to that game, I do know a guy here with it lol -Daniel

We have plans to! Daniel has brought the game home to hopefully finish the campaign -Ashton

Plus, I'm colorblind. You know two now.

I ran out of black shirts to wear across the multiple days it took to film this lmao -Daniel

Awesome! There's also a new version in the works that might be up your alley! We may have something to say about it in the future :) -Ashton

Good thing you didn't buy because 2nd edition is coming soon lmao, let's see how much was fixed! But their gamefound page also said some fixes can't be done because they're too inherent to the design, so more drastic changes like proper double sided map cards will be part of the sequel/prequel Kings of Ruin! -Daniel

absolutely, not sure when im gonna get around to it tho -Daniel

@@Shelfside ok

cheers man! Glad you liked it, Daniel here is having a blast going through the campaign still :) -Ashton

THE HYPE

Dark Ring Tainted Souls Elden Grail Edgy Extravaganza bless Miyazaki

Exactly how I feel about the game lol -Daniel

if you're a solo player, I think that is 100% the way to go. In person though, we found it very fun to bounce of ideas while looking at the map, but of course at the cost of downtime when you're not included in a fight. -Ashton

We've heard great things! Hopefully we get around to playing it one day -Ashton

yep! As another comment said really well: It's objectively just not a highly scored game, there's a lot of jankiness and frustration overall. But there's that magic to the story that keeps us immersed despite the long-winded cons! It does definitely help that we both like our dark fantasy, highly thematic games. Hope this helped clear up any confusion :D -Ashton

I want it to be known that if the story and aesthetics sucked this game would easily be somewhere in the 2-4 range. -Daniel

I can never decide if I wanna do full spoiler videos because follow up videos already do worse than the main one and most people who engage with these games are only dipping their toes in anyways. Maybe it's worth it for the people who don't care and never were gonna play in the first place? I've entertained the idea of doing a full spoiler story discussion if I ever beat the full 3 stories since I can't justify it for Fall of Avalon ending on a cliffhanger -Daniel

@@Shelfside that makes sense and i understand it. you could find terms in literacy critic to describe some good values of a narration to entice without spoiling. but just spitballing. i know the problem when i find a good story in any medium and u cant spoil it aahhh. xD

True! Though it's a much bigger problem here because it's so much easier to do, and if anything you're incentivized to do so to counter the grind. In our playthrough, we weren't even trying to minmax at first, we were just playing to try and stay ahead and not fall behind (we're very used to Pandemic as an example), so we were taking every opportunity we could find to get exp and otherwise strengthen ourselves. As we got used to the game and picked up skills that we saw as strong, it caused a domino effect as we started to get even stronger faster as well as better recognize what was powerful. Meanwhile in DnD, there can still be fun to had with min maxing if you're doing a certain kind of campaign, plus the DM can always just tweak whatever they want to their liking to fix balance. -Daniel

@@Shelfside your review and pointers all seem very logical and made sense. If you figure out a sweet spot in house rules. Love to hear it. I was told to do menhirs with +1 range and thats it.

It’s entertaining. I genuinely enjoy this. They even specify the pros and cons in the video tags. So...how long the video is or how to the point you want it is up to you bud. If you don’t have time to watch it, don’t fucking watch it

I really enjoyed this longer review format. I think a mix of different lengths works really well together.

the wyrdness really started setting upon my brain near the end honestly -Ashton

Unfortunately not in America, apparently there's distributors in other languages -Daniel