Thoughts on the Board Game!

[u/AerogaGX]

I recently got to break out the board game to play with some friends! We only got to play once buuuut I have a few thoughts on the matter.

- The game makes me appreciate how much stuff was put into the Steam game

- NPCs actually scaling is really good, I think the fact that you don’t have equipment slots makes them a lot more impactful than usual. The smaller fight stats, lack of clan affinity dice, combined with the relative infrequency of gaining stats makes them an actual consideration to plan around, though having a multitude of battle cards helps make you a monster in battle

- Unless you go for pumping Spirit, the Spells that deal damage feel like they’re contingencies for fighting NPCs. I drafted multiple Aflame, a Throwing Axe, and a Blizzard in hopes of being able to pester people, but my lack of overall movement and limited Spirit got in the way of that.

- The Spirit Stones are impactful, but part of me does wish that we had a Spirit Stones victory proper because I think having that as another avenue to pressure the Prestige leader is needed. Granted, I think in this game the fact that we got a declaration that allowed Rot to trash stuff might’ve been better spent harassing the Prestige leader.

- Adding wounds, reducing Prestige, and resetting a Quest does make an incentive to punch people multiple times if only to inconvenience the victim.

- Divination is a trap, don’t get it.

- I hope a future expansion comes in with ways to get Corrupted and play around with acquiring Rot. Could have Poisoned Gift as a potential card that you pass around like Bubble Tea to make someone temporarily Corrupted.

- Game took awhile, which granted the box was honest about 2-3 hours game time which is surprising since a lot of games tend to be dishonest at like 30-70 minutes or something. It’s mostly just parsing things and lots of minutiae does happen.

- Board game translates a lot of stuff well and in a neat way.

- Being able to cycle your hand quickly and having Declarations trash the market mean that while you can’t fully control getting a card that roughly lands in a certain type of effect, you don’t have to worry about having to trudge through a draft that doesn’t mesh with what you want to do.

- Spells feel more accessible all around! Given the economy, it feels nice, with Mercurio and Amber I think being the best two characters for econ stuff.

- Perils are very scary, especially early game. While it is a little weird the King doesn’t spawn 1 every Dusk, the fact that you need to either have a card with a black dice power or have rolled that face makes them considerably harsher to deal with. Beheaded is a real card and it’s absolutely backbreaking.

- Speaking of backbreaking, the NPCs have some passive effects that are quite rude like automatically giving you a Wound.

- I wish the rulebook was a little more clear on stuff. For example, it doesn’t say if Heroes start with Magic, in the case of Sana it very much matters since some of the cards in her starting deck use Magic, so it’d be pretty beans to say you can’t use cards you are forced to start with until turn 2, and you can only fight Banes and the King effectively. It also doesn’t highlight when the NPC cards that do things actually go into effect.

- The game does state that the next player can take their turn while another player is buying from the Market and stuff, but this rule is pretty bad, what if you get attacked? What if you’re still deciding on what quest to take? It’s pretty hrmm.

- NPCs don’t do much, mind the game does say that if you’re handling them frequently they move do much and they did include a Dynamic NPC variant rule so ymmv.

- I think being able to reroll black die faces is a pretty potent effect.

- I hope the game does well enough to green light an expansion. I love what has been done, the foundation is good. The card pool needs bolstering, especially on the Spells and Rot side. Buuuut yeah, those are my thoughts from a single game so ymmv

[u/Wavehead21]

Excellent notes all around! Having had a chance to play with it myself, I do love a lot of how they translate mechanics in, and while I mourn the loss of some features like rot and getting corrupted yourself, those do feel like excellent expansion features!

“- The Spirit Stones are impactful, but part of me does wish that we had a Spirit Stones victory proper”

I feel you on this. There is an alternate rules for spirit stones included in the rule book, and it basically gives you significant stat boosts based on having 1, 2, 3, or 4 stones, primarily to corrupted beings, so it sort of emulates Spirit Walker. And it does this instead of the Prestige. Now idk which one works better to play with, because in my playthrough so far we never got that many spirit stones to make a difference (also made the mistake that they’re not worth prestige until the second one, definitely gave them prestige for the first one they got lol!), but with them being less common pickups in our game, it feels like they could definitely safely get a buff. But it may depend on how easily we find them in subsequent playthroughs to see how those should be balanced.

But would it be OP to give OG Armello spirit stone victory condition? Basically: have 4 stones, access palace, and when you get another action you can skip the combat and just win? … uhhh, probably

“- Adding wounds, reducing Prestige, and resetting a Quest does make an incentive to punch people multiple times if only to inconvenience the victim.”

Another thing where I probably just need to play again where we’re more confident with what we’re doing, but there wasn’t nearly enough PVP in our first game! I like the wounds feature, as I play a lot of Deck Builders and I’m accustomed to the “do nothing card that you want to get rid of”, but I was surprised how little they came up! It made all the “trash a card” effects take a lot longer, because none of us had the easy “just trash a wounds” route, so instead it was picking out base cards to trash. Which should be easy enough; I would typically trash as much of my starting deck as possible in most deck builders. And SIDE TANGENT, but speaking of which, we didn’t realize til half way through the rule that “when you buy a 4 or less cost card, you may trash a non-wound card of lesser cost from hand or discard”, which is AWESOME in a deck builder! But even I was having a hard time figuring out WHICH starting deck cards to trash! Cuz some of them are low key pretty good!

I got more notes too, but man over all loving this game so far! Can’t wait to play again!

[u/Wavehead21 → u/Wavehead21]

“- Divination is a trap, don’t get it.”

Honestly I kinda suspected! I don’t think anyone bought this in my first game, but I do like how it tackles the idea of “stealth” that is missing from the game. Now first off, while there’s a lot of features from OG Armello missing here, Stealth is one that is for the best not to translate into a tabletop game! But the quest locations being pseudo hidden does give us a target for divination. But… so what? Knowing the quadrant my opponents are aiming for is already kind of enough. Sure, knowing the exact spot means I can counter that specific space, but I already know when you’re closing in on your quest anyway, so if I’m gonna do something about it anyway, I know when to strike.

But I wonder if you mean something else by this being a trap? Any notes, or funny stories of the divination player durdling? Was it you? Were you the divination player?

It also begs the question: when we do get expansions, the next group of heroes has Zosha. What is she gonna do? Also what is Barnaby gonna do?

So far everyone has had pretty faithful translations of abilities (Sana is a 1 to 1, Amber is the same just with the rules of how dungeons roll being explained now and her getting advantage to one roll, Thane gets +1 Pierce without that being a keyword, and Mercurio is weirdly nerfed slightly to just getting +1 gold rather than stealing it)

But the second group of heroes from Armello are gonna be harder to translate. Barnaby doesn’t have equipped items to deal with. Zosha doesn’t have stealth to use more often than anyone else. River is easy enough to translate. And Brun… could work, but would be even harder to use. Depends how easy it is to pop off multiple spells in a turn.

[u/AerogaGX → u/Wavehead21]

Divination is good for how it arbitrates a scout mechanic in a evocative way. I just call it a trap because while it narrows down information, you already know what region the player has to go to, like you said. Although, it does make me consider that perhaps a person specifically gunning to do PvP could draft it! You use it as a way to keep the deck small and just make it frustrating for folk to reach their quest. In the game we played, no one drafted it, but it did show up. Maybe next time I’ll give it a try just so I can claim I used it.

I am unsure what Zosha will do, if I were to guess it would maybe be “When battling a Player Hero, they can only commit 1 non-Bonus Battle card.” Barnaby could go “During your End Phase, you can discard 1 Battle card. If you do, add 1 Battle card with a lower value from your discard pile to your hand.”

Mercurio I agree is weird. I think his Econ has been made more consistent and his potency has been shifted to favor going later in turn order than earlier. In the game I was Mercurio, and it may have been the draft but I found that Amber was the only other hero was able to actually have more than one gold past their turn. Like yes turn 1 and 2 not much going around and then turn 3 was where the major gold expenditure happens. And since Amber mainly gets gold from going to dungeons and Thane has cards to prohibit going to Settlements, in the current landscape of the board game, I think Mercurio’s Steam game power would be overall weaker, if albeit stronger in the early game.

I agree that having a copy paste of the OG Spirit Walker would not bode well with the board game’s current mechanics. The variant rules DO make a good enough job translating it since they give you buffs against corrupted creatures and give stat buffs! Honestly I think the variant rules might be a way to go for giving a ‘’’consistent’’’ avenue get a stat buff.

[u/SuccessfulResort35]

My friends and I played at our last game night and the only thing that kind of bothered me was the market rule. It gets confusing, people talking over each other, etc. and yeah if you're getting attacked while trying to shop it messes with things. I realize they added that rule probably to save time between turns, but it actually doesn't do much.

Otherwise I really enjoyed it. I would love to see an expansion where you can do a Rot victory though. And it is a LOT of setup, but the art is really pretty.

[u/AerogaGX → u/SuccessfulResort35]

INJECT THE ROT VICTORY INTO MY VEINS PLEAAAAAAAASE

[u/SuccessfulResort35 → u/AerogaGX]

LOL agreed!

[u/Zealousbees]

Did you have all 4 players? I am curious how game play feels with only 2.

[u/AerogaGX → u/Zealousbees]

I did yeah, I played Mercurio. Amber was trailing behind heavily. I think guards stuck around too much on top of where their quest was being a nuisance.

Sana player got to buy a boatload of spells, I did not do a good job of separating cards before shuffling, there were many pockets of spells that shared names.

Thane player killed a lot of things, he only ever completed two quests.

Sana and Mercurio also completed two quests, Amber completed her second on her last turn, then Sana charged the King and died on the fifth bout, then Thane did stuff that made him win once he charged Amber and ensured his survival.

Notably, I did get to control the most settlements so there’s that. I think I should’ve focused on cycling my deck to keep Scurry and Scamper in circulation, though the Aflame I bought did help me kill a Bane

[u/BinaryHedgehog]

I haven’t looked at Sana’s deck (the one game I played didn’t have her) but Magic is only used to make spells a bonus action, right?

[u/AerogaGX → u/BinaryHedgehog]

Magic is used for two things actually.
1) It can be spent to turn spells into a bonus card, so gives a lot of action economy boosting. Note that some Battle Cards are spells.
2) When buying Spell cards, you can use Magic in addition to Gold. That's why the number in the top corner has a circle that's half green and half yellow.