Game Reviews, Strategy Articles, and More

7th Sea : City of Five Sails Gamehole Con 2023

Pine Box Entertainment hosted a tournament at Gamehole Con in Madison recently 10/21/23, and I was happily able to attend and represent Eisen! Got to the tournament right at the start time and found out the only other Eisen player switched to them right before the tournament started, because no one else was playing them. The breakdown was incredibly balanced amongst the factions after that though:

Eisen – 2
Vodacce – 2
Castille – 3
Ussura – 3
Montaigne – 3

It was 4 rounds of swiss followed by a cut to top 4. I ran my Eisen list explained in my breakdown trying out Precision over Iron Reply. (Precision also underwhelmed me.) I stuck with Rena over Uwe. (Worked out as I never mustered Daniella, and only Rena once.) Below is a recap of the games as best as I can remember them. (I’ll have to start taking pictures of board states at the end of each day.)

Game 1 vs Montaigne

Day 1: Both get a Renwon. Relatively unmemorable.

Day 2: Focused around a contest to claim the 5 Renown on the Forums thanks to Guillen + Odette. Overall my engage-efficient combat was working out very poorly for me. I greeded some early gambles with bad results, I greeded an early trigger on Let the Sword Decide to cancel a Riposte, and I ultimately ended up trading a character (maybe Terrell) to A Heroic End gamble that I was very sad I could no longer cancel. [This may have happened on day 1 with a merc, I don’t quite remember.]

After that we piled almost every character we had, both sides with Mercs, into the Forums to contest the Renown. I was down by an influence with just 4 cards in hand and only 1 prepared character with Influence to my opponent’s 2. In desperation, I pay full price to equip a Polished Flintlock to a character, going down to 1 card in hand, and shoot the En Garde Takama (who had survived some earlier violence but was currently at full health). This was my opponent’s second game of 7th Sea ever, and the Montaigne player was immediately suspicious of my final card in hand, openly wondering why I wanted to Engage Takama and what my last card in hand had to do with it. After considering it for a bit, my opponent ultimately decided to Engage Takama instead of taking the wound which would have brought her to 2 Resolve left. After the pass, I use my final card Last Word to push Takama off the location, since she is now engaged and no longer able to return. I claim the location, get the 5 Renown and gain control of the game I certainly would have lost otherwise.

Day 3: I choose The Song of Eisen because I know if I clear the City I’m guaranteed the win (assuming Kaspar doesn’t die and I don’t get Dominated). However, my opponent chose Epee Sanglante, which put the possibility of Montaigne stealing a Renown on the table to disrupt my plans. The two mercs on the table were Carmella and Maryam though, so I had to maintain 4 cards in hand to recruit both to trigger Song.

We go to the Forums, I recruit Carmella and my opponent challenges Kaspar sending 3 threat. Carmella intervenes with a parry 3 thrust 1. Opponent is only able to return 2 threat (since Riposte couldn’t reflect more than what exists). I gamble into a 2 parry 3 thrust. Opponent Ripostes 3 wounds back at me with the help of Henri, and I pay for Well-Equipped from hand to block the 3 and send back 4 which looks like it is going to punch through and secure me the win. However, Mastercrafted Rapier saves the day, pushes 4 threat back, and I fail to gamble into Kaspar’s Panzerhand. Renown stolen, The Song of Eisen plan thwarted.

Time is getting close to being called, so opponent concedes a bit before the end of day 3 since Montaigne could not win at that point. It was 5 Renown to 2 with a possible 2 Renown likely claimable from the Forums by me. Incredibly good game and I look forward to having to play perfectly next time to win, when my Last Word play won’t be a surprise (…will likely bring a different faction next time to have new surprises…huge fan of the potential of Pull + Predatory Pursuit in Ussura).

Game 2 vs Eisen

Not a matchup I was particularly familiar with. It is incredibly thrust-heavy, leading to trading characters instead of picking off characters and surviving, unlike what I’m used to facing. Specifically, we had one or two duels where we both traded characters with an overwhelming thrust card (Fight Through the Pain or Matchlock Musket). I started the duel, played my card representing unpreventable death, then I stared down return unpreventable death. Taught me what that feels like.

Over the first 2 days, I end up incidentally picking up Object of Wonder and Crystal Eye on Kaspar in part thanks to Let’s Haggle, bringing him up to 4 Influence while opponent gets Smuggled Item but trades it for Kaspar’s Panzerhand. Normally I don’t value these City Cards too highly, but they were there, basically free, and I had cards to pitch, so I grabbed them. It is a very good thing I did too.

Day 3 has 1 renown on each the Grand Bazaar and Forums, 2 on the Docks. I initially focus on the Docks and claim it while opponent takes the other 2, both of us with over 6 cards in hand. I Regroup engaged 4-Influence Kaspar over to the Forums, so I can claim that away from opponent. In response, my opponent Strateges over two En Garde characters to the docks. I claim the Forums with Phillip Hase who still has Reaction available, opponent claims the Docks. I play Dark Gift on Kaspar to then move him over. Opponent has both En Garde characters remaining at the location while I have En Garde, full-health Otto and a 1 influence lead (due to my opponent trading away the Smuggled Item, meaning I didn’t need to equip an attachment to Phillip Hase to move him over as well). Opponent challenges Kaspar in the hopes of Assassination, but I refuse and claim location with Otto. (If opponent tried to kill Otto instead, Otto‘s 4 Resolve would have still allowed me to refuse and Claim. Then the second character would have had to finish off Otto instead of claiming.)

Once again, time is close to being called, so opponent concedes to my 5 to 4 Renown lead at the end of day 3, as that is the first tiebreaker. Another very close game against another very strong, new-to-7th Seas player. Eisen scary.

Game 3 vs Vodacce

Vodacce was the only faction I played against multiple times, and the games somewhat bleed together in my mind, so the recaps might be a bit jumbled.

Pacifist Vodacce was also the deck I was most worried about because I know it is strong, and I haven’t had much chance to play against it. So, when I sat against the two Vodacce players, I assumed they were on pacifist Vodacce (they weren’t), and I initiated some intended-to-be lighthearted teasing about Vodacce, but it was also somewhat fear-tinged by the threat of day 1 Domination thanks to Pack Tactics. **Edit: Heard back from both Vodacce players, and apparently I was just being overly critical of myself as neither of them felt I was being a dick. Left the rest of this paragraph in anyway./Edit** I want to apologize to both Vodacce players, as I feel like my comments came out more shaming them for playing a faction with really interesting cards/mechanisms before even seeing what they chose to play, and then it had the effect of making them feel bad for not playing it the “meta” way. I think everyone should play whatever faction in whatever way they want to without having to justify or be “teased” about their choice. My pathological-desire to play off-meta isn’t any more or less valid than anyone else’s reasons to play whatever they want, especially since this is just for fun with no money on line; there is no reason to be dicks to each other whether intentionally or unintentionally. Hopefully, this is just my overwhelming worry about making people uncomfortable coming through, but it is how I feel, and I am sorry, will do better going forward.

This game started out with violence. Day 1, no mercs in the city, but Syrneth Hand on the Docks. For the first time I can remember, I forsake Otto and Muster Terrell day one. My greed demanded a 4-Com Terrell I could cackle over incessantly (internally … mostly) as he cut down everything while protecting himself with his recurring attachment combat cards. So I paired him with Midnight Shipment and flipped into a mustered Servo. I was surprised but still daydreaming about the unstoppable force of Terrell. Day starts, I grab the Hand on Terrell and eventually he ends up in front of Servo. I challenge Servo, I send unpreventable death with my first combat card, and then confused, I see Servo serving back unpreventable death to Terrell? Shocked, I see my investment into Terrell, Hand , and skipping Otto‘s day one card draw vanish.

I don’t quite remember what happened after that, but I vaguely recall slapping a Langschwert on Kaspar and letting out a bellowing roar that shook the building and rallied the nearby boffer knights to my side as Kaspar charged the Don. When the haze cleared, Constanzo was consigned to the locker, Kaspar was heavily bloodied, and all was right in the world. Day 1 or 2 Assassination victory where Kaspar‘s big booty saves the day (9-Resolve).

Midnight Shipment being able to send a character to any City location without spending a card or engage is incredibly powerful. After the strength it displayed at Gen Con, I always made sure to point it out at the start of each day to make sure my opponent at least knew of its existence (whether or not they remembered to take it into account throughout the day being another thing). Some point after getting the Hand on Terrell, I realized that in order to make use of my Terrell muster, Midnight Shipment, and Syrneth Hand purchase, I would have to expose myself to a potential Day 1 Domination loss if my opponent had Pack Tactics in hand. The Don was at the Grand Bazaar, Alcee was at the Forums, and Kaspar was at the Docks with Terrell (Servo was at Home?). If I sent Terrell to the Grand Bazaar, my opponent could

  1. Claim the Grand Bazaar with the Don
  2. Refuse or parry-out my 4 Restricted Hostilities (5 threat) challenge to the Don either hoping I didn’t have a way to En Garde/Issue a fresh challenge and/or utilize Servo to intervene if I did
  3. Claim the Forums with Alcee
  4. Use Pack Tactics to move the engaged Alcee over to the Docks and claim it with her base 1 Influence, +1 Influence from the Don‘s Passive, and +1 influence from Alcee moving with Pack Tactics. 3 Influence vs Kaspar’s 2.

I was too stubborn to lose all of my Day 1 value so I went for it, forcing my opponent to have Pack Tactics in hand.  No Pack Tactics was played, but I still traded all of my Day 1 value for Servo, to be fair a lynchpin in my opponent’s plan as well.

Of my 6 cards I started the day with, none of them would have prevented a Day 1 Domination loss at this point if I sent Terrell off of Kaspar‘s Location or allowed me to retake any city location if this happened. I do not remember if Kaspar was engaged at this point (I may have recruited a Midnight Shipment flipped Adelheide to enable the movement City Action?), but here are all of the ways I could have theoretically handled this at this point:

If Kaspar is En Garde or capable of En Garding with a card:

  • Use Stratege/Regroup/Dark Gift to move over to the Forums and then claim it, if Vodacce can’t get Alcee or the Don over to contest. (2 movement cards could have let Kaspar move to the Grand Bazaar to attempt to Assassinate the Don, but that would rely on having already got 4 damage in with Terrell and then getting another 3 with Kaspar, which would have been preventable with parry-outs etc)
  • Press the Advantage or Move Along on Alcee to kill or move home without engaging Kaspar, enabling the claim at 2 Influence afterwards
  • Use Kaspar‘s City Action and hope to get a Merc with 1 or more Influence

I could have also played Day 1 safer with 2 Influence Otto (although 3 Influence Don Constanzo can still claim over him without fear of a Com challenge). I could also run Come Hither (maybe this takes the Iron Reply/Precision slot?) as another potential out to Day 1 Domination. In general, Day 1 Vodacce Domination is very hard to prevent if they draw Pack Tactics, and to play around it, I would have to make decisions that potentially hurt me in the long game, assuming I draw any of my cards that can rebuff it. (For the Family, Unyielding Loyalty, Bravos, The Pressure is On, Objection, and Plans within Plans grabbing a second Thug and providing an En Garding Reaction can also make the Day 1 Domination easier to achieve/harder to prevent.) All of that being said, if the Vodacce player does go for Day 1 Domination, and you are able to prevent it, they could expend quite a few, very powerful resources that they will have less access to as the game progresses. This is definitely a deck I need more interaction with and against.

Game 4 vs Castille

This was the first game where I was able to bring to bear the engage-efficient, overwhelming-combat of Eisen. Castille is a strong faction because they can mess with the board state in unexpected ways in addition to having strong countering, engaging, and flexible abilities. However, Eisen has more straightforward, brute force powerful cards, namely 5 Resolve fighters with Langschwert, Move Along, Fight Through the Pain, and of course Otto which can (and did) make it very challenging for Castille (especially with Castille having the worst RPT in the game).

Day 1 opened with Kalla at the Forums and Captain’s Coat at the Grand Bazaar. I go to recruit Kalla, and then I bait Makepeace over to the Grand Bazaar with Otto. I have no intention of paying 3 (or 4) to equip the coat, but as long as I am the First Player, to dodge an Adaptable Domination win (in addition to playing carefully), I am not too scared of Castille spending 3 for the Coat. Opponent had an Opulence so only spent 2, but I’m still happy, especially as an Improvising was spent to do so. (I was wrecked by Improvising at Gen Con 2023, so I fear it.) Makepeace also equipped a Matchlock Musket to start chipping away at a character at the forum. These two things give me a card advantage going into Day 2.

Throughout the rest of the game, Kalla helps me to negate the cost increase on Makepeace. For instance, I equip her with the 0-cost Langschwert to keep it free and then pass it over to the fighter. Kalla continues to impress me when I recruit her, and she is the only reason I attach Breastplates.

Another card that impressed me this game was the card that made me fall in love with Eisen originally, Unsavory Salve. I’ve generally found it to be a pretty weak card, but it stays in the deck to be fetched by Otto with okay RPT. One thing that I had not considered, however, is its interaction with Phillip Hase. Being able to equip Unsavory Salve onto a Langschwert-equipped Hase, to trigger his movement reaction, without having to override his weapon or use 2 cards on a Breastplate/Uppman’s Jacket etc, is pretty great and unexpected. I was then even able to use its technique with my Appealing to the People to save Hase, while pushing through the last lethal wound, and preventing a final strike back, fantastic. While I still do not expect to equip Salve often, I will definitely be watching to use it as a 1-card movement for Hase going forward.

Aside from that, Otto managed to keep my handsize up enough to block Sanjay even with Castille recruiting Gustavo. (Only 1 Otto whiff the whole tournament was a nice change too.) Move Along was devastatingly effective, and I was very lucky that my opponent’s Night of Drinkings did not make any appearances (since the Move Alongs were critical for keeping the game under control).

Ultimately, my opponent’s Soline was Assassinated as they tried to intervene to save Madre, after I had cleared out most other Castillian characters/mercs.

Game 5 vs Vodacce

Game 2 against Vodacce piloted by another strong player, and I have never feared more for Kaspar‘s life than I have in this game. With my mind hyper-focused on surviving the turn 1 Domination Victory, the Don just casually walked up and used the effect on Veronica’s Guile I completely forgot existed: I was challenged to a duel but with Influence, and it was incredibly painful. In response, I actually had to be the one to parry-out (very luckily finding one of my two copies of Regroup, the only ones in my 40 card deck), and I was so scared of Kaspar dying, that I noticed the maneuver on Regroup and used that, for the first time ever, to flee to an adjacent location.

My opponent used cards like Veronica’s Guile, Servo, Sibella, Rough ‘Em Up, Buratino, and Bravos (probably Ambush in there too) to threaten an early victory , but a day 1 Assassination victory instead of Domination. If it weren’t for being able to Regroup away, I likely would have been knocked out of top 4 instantly.

Day 2 culminated at the Forums. Kaspar and Terrell were there expended against a prepared Don and a Sibella with a wound on her. I play Move Along with Terrell with his +1 thrust against one of them, and the Don accepts the duel. Some amount of damage spills through from the challenge. The Don sends back enough to finish Terrell, but my return Matchlock Musket is able to output exactly enough damage to claim the Don‘s life, due to him not gambling into a 3-defense card. If my desperation Move Along failed, Veronica’s Guile #2 almost certainly claims Kaspar‘s life.

Game 6 vs Vodacce

My luck against Vodacce continued into the finals with 3 Days of triple mercenary flops. I don’t remember exactly which ones they were, but my opponent got Sigurd and I picked up two mercs on both day 1 and day 2.

I remember trying to set up a scenario where I could Press the Advantage Sigurd Home to expose characters to the Eisen assault, but my opponent never gave me the opportunity. That being said, Eisen Eisened and generated a massive character advantage by one-sided killing my opponent’s characters with Eisen characters and trading off Mercs 1 for 1 to not exceed my crew cap.

All that being said, my opponent kept the Renown count close through the entire game, and I never felt entirely comfortable that Vodacce wouldn’t secure the victory anyway by exploiting a potential blunder. Eventually though, on day 4, Eisen grinded my opponent down to only a wounded Don in play, with no cards hand, against my 4 Eisen characters, and a 4+ card hand. I believe I had a guaranteed Economic win on the table, but I was so hyper-fixated on assassinating the Don, if my opponent hadn’t conceded, I could have potentially thrown the game to some very unfavorable gambling luck.

Non-Specific Game Notes

Well-Equipped was a stand-out card used exclusively as a combat card throughout the tournament, both from gambling and from hand. 3 Defense 4 Offense did work.

Phillip Hase consistently felt great.

Terrell ended up trading on multiple occasions and underperformed. I greeded him out early too many times before drawing into Kaspar’s Panzerhand.

Only whiffed with Otto once in my 18 attachment deck, many 1 attachment on 3rd flip though, thank you Corpse Speak (in my deck that didn’t Muster a single Sorcerer)!

Dark Gift continues to be a solid glue-card.

Last Word City Action so good. Didn’t end up having to, but really wanted to push an Engaged character into my En Garde bruisers with it.

Daniella never came out, but she is not in danger of being replaced.

Still figuring out what I want in the Precision/Iron Reply slot. Additional high thrust cards would be nice for increasing the likelihood of day 2 overwhelming threat kills, but 4 thrust is definitely not the same as 5. Lethal on a 4 thrust card is basically only relevant if Otto or a 0/1 Com Merc of mine gets challenged. Would be fun in that situation, but not terribly likely. Probably Come Hither (especially since I already run double Opulence) for even more density of defense against possible Day 1 Vodacce Domination Win, frequently will be discard fodder though.

All of the schemes continue to be great. The 2 highest initiative cards in the game, both with one-sided advantages for myself, and 3 toolbox cards with one-sided effects for me as well.

I am not currently planning on attending Pax Unplugged after all, but I will likely be playing a different faction next tournament. Most likely Ussura or Castille.

It was a pleasure getting to interact with everyone at the tournament. I look forward to eventual rematches against everyone I played against, and I am eager to show off the sick acrylic tokens I got for making top 2. (I have an excellent excuse to play another combat heavy faction thanks to them.) Finally, excited to see how my boy Otto shows up in the lore.

My Board Game Collection + Games I am Looking to Try

Below is my current board game collection:

For the games I own, I have included the BGG community player counts, link to my content on here if any, link to BGG entry, link to Dice Tower/Shut Up and Sit Down/etc. Youtube review [many of these Youtube reviews are over a decade old and not as good of quality as their current content]

If you see anything you would like to try and are anywhere near the Minneapolis area, I would love if you reached out and we could set up a time to play at a Friendly Local Game Store or similar. Always thrilled to meet and play games with other board gamers.

Games I own that…

I’ve played multiple times, enjoy, and actively want to play

  • 7th Sea: City of Five Sails 2 player card game with pirates, musketeers, dueling, 3 locations to fight over, alternating actions, and card costs paid for by discarding other cards[2] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Alchemists App-assisted deduction worker placement [2-4, best 4] [BGG] [Dice Tower][~2 hours]
  • Baseball Highlights: 2045 [1, 2, 4, best 2]
  • Crokinole [2, 4] (currently replacing my board)
  • Dixit Party game with large, full-art cards, try to get at least one person but not all people to guess your card by coming up with a clever clue (multiple expansions) [4-6, best 5-6] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower] [~30min?]
  • Dominion Original Deck Building game (Core Set, Dark Ages, Hinterlands, Intrigue) I actively want to play Dark Ages expansion [2-4, best 3] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Dune Imperium Deck Building + Worker Placement game with majority based conflicts(+ Rise of Ix expansion) [1-4, best 3-4] [BGG] [Dice Tower][~1-2 hours]
  • Dvonn Abstract strategy game [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Earth Tableau building game where a player picks an action and everyone else also gets a minor effect while all players trigger all relevant cards [1-5] [BGG] [Dice Tower] [~45-90min]
  • Eldritch Horror Sprawling thematic cooperative lovecraftian game [1-6, best 4 – I want to try with 8] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Galaxy Trucker Ridiculous real-time space ship building followed by watching everyone’s ships blow up [2-4, best 4] [BGG] [Dice Tower][~1 hour]
  • Game of Thrones The Board Game Card based combat war game with a lot of political intrigue to work together against the game and your opponents/allies [4-6, best 6] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Hanamikoji Mind-bendingly elegant area control card game with only 4 actions involving picking, discarding, and creating piles of cards for your opponent to choose between [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Jaipur Incredible, elegant 2-player trading game [2] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Just One Party game where you try to get someone to guess a word, everyone writes down a clue secretly, if 2 people wrote the same clue, discard that clue [4-7, best 6-7] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Kahuna [2]
  • Lost Ruins of Arnak Exploration, deck building, resource management game that feels amazing (only played solo so far) [1-4] [BGG] [Dice Tower][30 min – 2 hours]
  • Mandala 2 Player Area Majority interesting scoring [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Mindbug Elegant card game where you play simple creatures to attack your opponent, but you each have 2 Mindbugs that can steal an opponent’s creature when played (+expansions) [2] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Push Fight Elegant Jiu-Jitsu inspiried abstract game [2] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [PennyArcade]
  • Race for the Galaxy Engine building card game where you pay the cost of cards by discarding other cards (Base, 1st expansion) [2-4] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower][~30-60 min]
  • Radlands Beautifully neon 2 player card game where you try to destroy your opponent’s bases with interesting/efficient combos [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Skull Super simple, exhilirating bluffing game [3-6, best 5-6] [BGG] [SuSD]
  • So Clover Word association cooperative party game [2-6, best 3-4] [BGG] [Dice Tower] [~30 min]
  • Specter Ops Hidden movement game with character and one-time use abilities [2-5, best 2 or 3] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Tzaar 2-player abstract strategy game [2] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Widget Ridge Steampunk deckbuilding game with incredible flavor [2+, best 2] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower: paid preview]

I’ve played very little if at all that I am excited about and actively want to play (don’t yet know how much I like them)

  • Air, Land, & Sea 2 player win 2 of 3 locations with small identical card pool [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Beer and Bread 2 Player drafting resource management [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Beyond the Sun Tech Tree based game [2-4, best 3] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Blitzkrieg!: World War Two in 20 Minutes 2-player tug of war game with multiple tracks and rewards to balance [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Caper: Europe 2-player area majority set collection [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Concordia [2-5, best 4]
  • Deus Engine building game [2-4, best 3] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • (The) Duke Chess-like where the units have a variety of movement options and you can randomly pull extra units into play [2] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Evolution Evolution based survival of the fittest; Use traits to make your species thrive in the shared environment of traited species [2-6, best 4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • (The) Fox in the Forest 2-player trick taking game [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Frosthaven Massive campaign game with elegant card based combat [1-4, best 3 – I want to try 4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Fury of Dracula Hidden movement game trying to hunt down and kill Dracula before he kills you[2-5, best 3 or 5] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Gosu X Combo-based card game where you try to win 2 of 3 rounds by having more power in play than your opponent[2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Heat: Pedal to the Metal Card-driven racing game [1-6, best 5-6] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Incan Gold [3-8, best 6-8]
  • Oceans Sea based Evolution game with tons of unique “Deep” traits [2-4, best 3] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Onitama Abstract strategy game where there are 5 move options on cards that rotate between the 2 players as they are used[2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Puerto Rico Classic [2?-5, best 4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Ready Set Bet Realtime Horse betting game that introduces asymetric bonuses [3-9, best 6-8] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Res Arcana Engine building game [2-4, best 2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Seasons Dice Drafting tableau building game (decent number of intro games, but not enough full drafting starts) [2-3, best 2] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Shogun Cube based war game? [3-5, best 4-5] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Spy x Family: Mission for Peanuts Spy Family themed Love Letter-esque game [3-5] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Suburbia Suburb (Tableau) building game with tile market [1-4, best 3] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Wavelength Party game about giving a clue on a spectrum to guess where it lands [4-12, best 6, 8]

I have loved, but I have grown a bit tired of, whose spark could be reignited

  • Arkham Horror LCG Campaign based co-op lovecraftian card game where you build your deck and upgrade it after each scenario [1-4] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Epic Card Game (everything) My forger card game obsession, dueling card game where every card cost 1-gold or 0-gold. Timing is everything, the strategic depth is deep, and great 2-player limited formats [2] [TomSEpicGaming, most of this blog] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Heroscape (couple core sets + a bit more) Miniature and dice based asymetrical combat game with multi-dimensional terrain [2-4, best 2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]

I’ve played multiple times and would happily play if someone wanted to

  • 52-card deck games (Cribbage, Euchre, Hearts, etc.)
  • Agricola Punishing Classic worker placement game[1-5, best 3-4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Axis and Allies Sprawling war game with about 13 different units split between ground, air, and sea. Country specific objectives to increase income, dice based combat (1940 Europe, 1940 Pacific, WWI 1914) [2-5, best not 3] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Geek&Sundry sponsored 1941 edition]
  • Century: Golem Edition [2-5, best 3-4]
  • Dilbert: the Board Game Silly Dilbert themed board game that implements short term restrictions on specific talking patterns or other goofy things [4-6, best 4] [BGG] [mostly a nostalgia game for me, couldn’t find a review]
  • Firefly: The Game Pick up and deliver game with a strong Firefly feel (Base, Kalidasa, Blue Sun) [1-4, best 3] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Great Western Trail: Second Edition Deck building, hand management, game where you can build locations to give you access to better actions [1-4, best 3] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Hero Realms Heads up deck building game with fantasy theme and optional asymmetrical starting decks (character packs and initial co-op campaign) [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Kemet Card based combat game with large amounts of upgrades to choose from that reward attacking [3-5, best 4-5] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition App-assisted cooperative lovecraftian game[1-5, best 3-4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Risk 2210 A.D. Nostalgic upgrade on risk that includes moon and underwater territories and purchasable action cards specific to purchasable commanders [3-5, best 4-5] [BGG] [older game with no reviews from creators I watch]
  • Solforge Fusion Lane-based 2 player battling card games where your cards upgrade when you play them, play 2 cards per turn and redraw to 5 at end of turn [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Star Wars Rebellion Star Wars in a box. Large Rebels vs Empire where the rebels try to gain enough influence in the galaxy before their base is found and eliminated [2] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Under Falling Skies Puzzley Dice-based alien invaders solo game [1] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Wingspan Engine building game with fantastic theme [1-5, best 3] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Zombies!!! I don’t really remember, but I had a lot of fun playing, unlike the other 3 players [2-5, best 4] [BGG] [Another nostalgia game with no reviews from creators I watch]

I’ve played very little if at all, that I want to play to see if I enjoy them, but that I am not “excited” about

  • Android Don’t remember [2-4, best 3] [BGG] [don’t remember anything about the game, no review from a creator I watch]
  • Asgard’s Chosen Don’t know [1-4, best 3] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Cockroach Poker Royal Bluffing game [3-6, best 4-5] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Favor of the Pharaoh Yahtzee-esque game where you purchase upgrades that let you manipulate your dice[2-4, best 2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Heroes of Terrinoth Dungeon crawler maybe? [1-4, best 4] [BGG] [OneStopCoOpShop didn’t watch this fully]
  • Isle of Skye Tile-placement game where all players get random tiles to put up for sale for the others to buy. Any they don’t you pay that price to take them yourself [2-5, best 3-4] [TomSEpicGaming] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Jab Realtime Boxing Realtime card game with a boxing theme [2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Lords of Xidit Programmed movement area majority game? [4-5] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Niagara [3-5, best 4-5] [BGG] [cool looking game, but not thought to be very good, didn’t watch creators I don’t watch to see the review]
  • Nostra City Don’t know [3-5, best 4] [BGG] [don’t know anything about this game, no review]
  • Panzer General Allied Assault/Russian Assault Some kind of war game [1-2, best 2] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Rise of the Runelord Card based rpg style game where your deck levels up [1-4+, best 3-4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Samurai Spirit Cooperative game [1-7, best 1 or 5] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • World of Tanks Rush Don’t know [2-5, best 3] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Zooloretto Zoo-buildign game where you assemble busses worth of animals to take into your zoo, or something like that [3-5, 4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]

I am neutral to, the company is much more important than the game itself

  • 5 Minute Marvel
  • Black Fleet
  • Boomo
  • (The) Downfall of Pompeii
  • Look Who’s Purging Now
  • Lovecraft Letter
  • Mission Red Planet
  • No Thanks
  • Pirates of the Spanish Main
  • Quacks of Quedlinburg
  • Smash Up (Multiple Expansions)
  • Star Wars Imperial Assault

I’ve played multiple times and am a bit tired of, would play, but not excited to

  • Android Netrunner LCG
  • Biblios
  • Friday
  • Magic: The Gathering (Got a couple Chronozoa decks, and I do love Cube Draft)
  • Munchkin Fu/Munchkin Adventure Time
  • Rise of Augustus (good gateway game though)
  • Star Wars Xwing (a few scum/villainy ships)
  • Targi
  • Unmatched (Cobble and Fog, Jurassic Park, Bruce Lee)
  • Warhammer 40k (some Astra Militarum [Imperial Guard] and a Tyranid Codex)

I wouldn’t play unless someone else really wanted to

  • Adventure Time Card Wars Finn vs Jake
  • Escape the Dark Castle
  • Finance (more of a collectors item)
  • Flux the Board Game
  • Game of Thrones LCG Core Set
  • Get Lucky
  • Hanabi
  • Legend of the Five Rings LCG Core Set
  • Princess Jing
  • Resident Evil Deck Building Game
  • Star Wars LCG Core Set

Games I don’t Physically Have with me that I’ve played and

Enjoy/actively want to play again

  • Abyss [2-4, best 4]
  • Clank! In! Space! [2-4, best 3]
  • Gloomhaven [1-4, best 3]
  • Mechs vs Minions [2-4, best 4]
  • Merchants & Marauders [2-4, best 4]
  • Mystic Vale (Love the concept of building cards, but the execution felt lacking) [2-4, best 2]
  • Power Grid Economic game of bidding on power plants to expand your grid of cities to make money to recur the above [3-6, best 4-5] [BGG] [SUSD ‘funny quote I don’t want to spoil’]
  • Ra [2-5, best 3-4]
  • Shobu [2]
  • Twilight Imperium 4th Edition Massive 4X Space game with asymetrical player factions, ship combat, action selection, negotiation, etc [3-6, best 6] [BGG] [SUSD]

Enjoy and would happily play again

  • 7 Wonders: Architects [2-7, best 4]
  • Camel Up {2nd edition} [3-8, best 5-6]
  • Cartographers Flip and write game of creating a map with shared random shapes to achieve rotating objectives [1-100, Best 3-4?] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Caverna [1-5 best 4]
  • (The) Crew [3-5, best 4]
  • Elysium [2-4, best 3]
  • Feast for Odin [1-4, best 3]
  • Khora: Rise of an Empire [2-4, best 4]
  • Paperback [2-4, best 2]
  • Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age [1-4, best 2?]
  • Samurai [2-4, best 3]
  • Star Realms [2]

Enjoyed but am tired of

  • Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game [4-6, best 5]
  • Coup [3-6, best 5]
  • Medieval Academy [3-5, best 4-5]
  • Ninjato [2-4, best 4]
  • Risk Legacy [4-5, best 5]

am Neutral towards

  • Bark Avenue [1-5, best 3]
  • Cathedral [2]
  • Dinner in Paris [2-4, best 2]
  • Everdell [1-4, best 3]
  • Meadow [1-3, best 2]
  • Pandemic [1-4, best 4]
  • Star Wars: Outer Rim [1-4, best 3]

Did not particularly enjoy the first time but am curious to try again

  • 7 Wonders
  • Architects of the West Kingdom [1-5, best 4]
  • Dominant Species (willing to play at least once more)

Actively don’t want to play again

  • Most (primarily) Social Deduction Games
  • Cosmic Encounter
  • Keyforge
  • Machi Koro
  • One Night Ultimate Werewolf
  • Rising Sun
  • Roll for the Galaxy

Games I’ve Never Played that…

If you have any of these games and enjoy/love them, I would love to play them with you. Or if you want to meet up at a Friendly Local Game Store with one of these in their open play library.

I actively want to try

  • 51st State [1-4, best 2]
  • Aeon’s End Legacy [1-4, best]
  • Among the Stars [2-4, best 4]
  • Aquatica [2-4, best 3]
  • Ark Nova [1-3, best 2]
  • Ascension: Deckbuilding Game [2-4, best 2]
  • AuZtralia [1-4, best 3]
  • (The) Bloody Inn [1-4, best 4]
  • Blue Moon Legends [2]
  • Brass: Birmingham [2-4, best 3-4]
  • Broom Service [2-5, best 4]
  • Captain Sonar Real-time 4v4 submarine combat, fairly simple rules [6-8, best 8] [BGG] [SUSD]
  • Clank! Catacombs [1-4, best 3]
  • Dinosaur Island [1-4, best 3]
  • Distilled [1-4, best 3]
  • Draftosaurus [2-5, best 4]
  • Dune/Rex: Final Days of an Empire [5-6, best 6]
  • Eminent Domain [2-4, best 3]
  • Ethnos [2-6, best 4]
  • Fairy Tale [2-5, best 4]
  • Food Chain Magnate [2-5, best 3-4]
  • Fort [2-4, best 3]
  • Furnace [2-4, best 3-4]
  • GIPF [2]
  • Golem [1-4, best 2-3]
  • Guildhall [2-4, best 2]
  • Hadrian’s Wall [1-6 game, 1-3 BGG community, best 1?]
  • Hive [2]
  • Innovation [2-3, best 2]
  • Istanbul [2-5, best 4]
  • Jambo [2]
  • Jump Drive [1-4, best 3]
  • La Havre [1-4, best 3]
  • Maglev Metro [2-4, best 3]
  • Manhattan Project [2-5, best 4]
  • Merchant of Venus [2-4, best 3]
  • Mind MGMT [1-5, best 2-3]
  • Near and Far (etc) [2-4, best 3]
  • Nova Luna [1-4, best 2]
  • One Deck Dungeon [1-2, best 1]
  • Paleo [1-4, best 2-3]
  • Paperback Adventures [1-2, best 1]
  • (The) Quest for El Dorado [2-4, best 2, 4]
  • Roll Player [1-4, best 3]
  • Root [3-4, best 4]
  • Sleeping Gods [1-3, best 2]
  • Smartphone Inc. [3-5, best 5]
  • Space Station Phoenix [2-4 best 3]
  • Spirit Island [1-4, best 2]
  • Steampunk Rally (Fusion) Engine Building (literally) racing game [1-8, best 4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Stella: Dixit Universe [3-6, best 5-6]
  • Stone Age [2-4, best 4]
  • Terraforming Mars [1-4, best 3]
  • Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition [1-4, best 3]
  • Through the Ages [2-4, best 3]
  • Tigris & Euphrates [2-4, best 4]
  • Twilight Struggle [2]
  • Tzolk’in [2-4, best 4]
  • Undaunted [2]
  • Vagrantsong [1-3, best 2]
  • War of the Ring: Second Edition [2]
  • Warp’s Edge [1]
  • Welcome To… [1-100, best 3-4]
  • XCom: The Board Game [2-4, best4]
  • Yamatai [2-4, best 2]
  • Yinsh [2]
  • Zertz [2]

I would happily try

  • Asante [2]
  • Bad Company [1-6, best 3-4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Barrage [2-4, best 4]
  • Blood Rage [3-4, best 4]
  • Bruges [2-4, best 3]
  • Castles of Burgundy [2-4, best 2]
  • Chocolate Factory [1-4, best 3]
  • Conspiracy: Abyss Universe [2-4, best 2-3]
  • Cryptid [3-5, best 4]
  • Dog Park [1-4, best 3-4]
  • El Grande [3-5, best 5]
  • Fields of Arle [1-2, best 2]
  • Fire Tower [2-4, best 4]
  • Five Tribes [2-4, best 2]
  • Gaia Project [1-4, best 3-4]
  • Garden Dice [2-4, best 2, 4]
  • Gizmos [2-4, best 3]
  • Imperial Settlers [1-4, best 2]
  • Inis [2-4, best 4]
  • It’s a Wonderful World Drafting engine building game [1-5, best 4] {1-7, best 3-5 with expansion} [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Keyflower [2-6, best 4]
  • Lacuna [2]
  • Last Aurora [2-4, best 4]
  • Letter Jam [2-6, best 6]
  • (The) Loop [1-4, best 2]
  • Lords of Waterdeep [2-5, best 3-4]
  • Mage Knight [1-3, best 1-2]
  • Oath [3-5, best 4]
  • Obsession [1-4, best 2]
  • Oh My Goods [2-4, best 2]
  • Orleans [2-4, best 4]
  • Paladins of the West Kingdom [1-3, best 2]
  • Pax Pamir [3-5, best 4]
  • Port Royal [2-5, best 3-4]
  • Raccoon Tycoon [3-5, best 4]
  • Raiders of the North Sea [2-4, best 3]
  • Red Rising [1-4, best 3]
  • Reef [2-4, best 2]
  • Roll Player Adventures [1-4, best 1-2]
  • Royal Visit [2]
  • Scoville Pepper planting/breeding game [2-5?, best 4] [BGG] [Dice Tower]
  • Search for Planet X [1-4, best 2-3]
  • Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game [2]
  • Summer Camp [2-4, best 3]
  • Tenpenny Parks [1-4, best 3]
  • Terra Mystica [2-5, best 4]
  • Tokaido [2-5, best 4]
  • Troyes [2-4, best 3]
  • Viticulture [2-5, best 3-4]
  • Whistle Mountain [2-4, best 3]
  • Xia: Legends of a Drift System [2-4, best 3]

Call to Action

I absolutely love tabletop games, and I actively want to play much more often with a greater number of players. These are the games I own and/or am happy to play. In addition, I am always up for trying a game I have never played before (except primarily Social Deduction games). So I am 100% serious when I say I will happily meet up with anyone at a public place to play board games with you. Any player count.

Eisen Full Strategic Breakdown

Now that I have played significantly more games of 7th Sea : City of Five Sails, I can say for sure that I love the game. Briefly, I love the distribution model (expandable, not-CCG letting me experiment with everything easily), love how every card is playable turn 1, and love how the city deck randomizes each game in an interesting, not feels bad way (with the rare exception). In addition, I have a much better understanding of how the game plays now (or at the very least, how I play it, which is almost never the same as the accepted meta). So, here is exactly how I play the Eisen deck I plan on running in the online Salon from 9/20 – 11/1 (https://pineboxentertainment.com/2023/09/12/new-in-town-a-five-sails-online-league/).

Feel free to reach out through discord if you would like to set up either a teaching game or an official game (or an unofficial game). I would love to have you play, I am happy to answer as many questions as you have, and I can give you as much or as little strategy advice as we play that you want. Discord: tomsepicgaming (the Eisen District Captain)

Eisen is the most straight-forward/honest faction. They want to recruit Mercenaries, reduce their opponent’s numbers through efficient combat/finish them off with ranged weapons, and utilize strategic movement (at least this deck does). Eisen has no ability to move around Renown on locations during High Drama, they can’t claim a location without initiating an Influence challenge, and none of their characters (including Kaspar) have a base Influence above 2. (Edeline Trinken can get above 2.)

Approach

Faction

Attachments (18)

Non-Attachments (22)

General Strategy

Generally speaking, your primary win condition is creating an extreme character advantage by prioritizing recruiting the best/all the Mercenaries and killing your opponent’s characters. From there, you can win with whatever method your opponent presents: Assassination, Renown (Economic), Domination, or the loss of the will to continue fighting (Concession/Surrender?).

City Deck Rankings For Eisen

Eisen wants Mercenaries, both in lore and in game (good stuff). In general, dueling Mercenaries are your preferred choice to help with creating that character advantage, but most mercenaries are valuable to you, sometimes just to prevent your opponent from getting them.

#1: Maryam Benu Pleroma

5 Resolve, 4 Combat, at least 1 finesse (3!), in addition to a Risk canceling Forced effect (which will cancel your own risk if you target her with it first), and a Technique that can be played first round (no thank you Veronica’s Guile). 6 Cost is less damaging to Kaspar as well with his 4 Influence on Parley.

#2: Angeline Demone

Leader level stats (aside from Resolve) with a 3 Combat. Her ability to move without engaging is also great, as is her Technique. There are not a lot of characters that she doesn’t have at least equivalent Combat and Influence to, but watch out for attachments that can push those characters out of range. While she is incredible in her own right as a card, she also has the best artwork in the game which absolutely influences her ranking. I would love a signed, full-size print of this artwork to frame…I’ll also be at Gamehole Con and likely Pax Unplugged…just saying.

#Sigurd: Sigurd Ulfsen

Against Ussura, Sigurd is the 3rd best city card for you. Not better than Maryam because Maryam can help you hunt the boar, and not better than Angeline because we don’t tolerate that kind of slander. Sigurd walks into Yevgeni‘s location, says “Sup” and stands there as your other fighters pile in behind to initiate the duels without being initiated on. Strong against Montaigne and other Eisen players as well, but almost meaningless against pacifist Vodacce/Castille (unless they get him which is annoying for you). Also, the fact that duels can’t be initiated against other characters means you’re guarded against unintervenable challenges as well.

#3-7 (these are similar in ranking):

Adelheide Schmidt is great because she is a reasonable fighter at 2 Com, 2 Finesse, 4 Resolve, but she can also turn your abundance of attachments into unpreventable damage (many of the attachments included purely to be grabbed by Otto anyway).

Carmella Vanessa Salvaggi is great because of her ability to challenge/intervene twice a day with 3 Combat (and 2 Finesse). She even has an influence if she needs to claim a location.

Kalla Forsberg is great because Eisen has so many attachments they want to attach, even from the City Deck. Reasonable offensive stats too, since Eisen frequently wants the first combat card played from hand and the 2nd as a gamble that hopefully reduces damage taken from the opponent’s final strike.

Ravenna Destine is great because card draw. She can also claim a location.

#Reasonable Mercs (similar in ranking):

Leja Juska is the best of these but not quite as good as the 4 above. Reasonable offensive stats, but not great. No other power, but the 1 influence is relevant.

Eko Sorridi 3 resolve is so low and easy to kill. If it weren’t for that, he would be great with his combat stats and City Reaction. Don’t forget it can hit a character fleeing with Not Today.

Vladislav Novikoff isn’t as good as Sigurd, but a reasonable card against Ussura/Montaigne/Eisen. Very weak against Vodacce/Castille, but annoying for us to play against.

#Valuable City Attachments

Syrneth Hand, Eager Blade, Burnished Cuirass, Sorte Deck

Fairly unimpressive Day 1 unless you can get them on a fighting Merc you recruited. Not bad on Kaspar to enable him to do some fighting, but he would much rather be recruiting Mercs. Day 2 onwards these are great on your fighting characters to either make them hit harder or stay alive longer. +1 combat is a big deal because it makes your 3 Com characters send 4 threat/Restricted Hostilities on challenge which is usually enough to outright kill a character, preventing them from just refusing. These attachments also enable effects that rely on having an attachment.

#Lower Tier Mercs (for Eisen)

Non-fighting, mostly 3-Resolve, mostly 0-Combat mercs. They can definitely help prevent us from losing to opponents taking control of locations though as they all have 2 Influence.

Claude De La Roche: is a solid Merc that can certainly help not lose against Renown/Domination decks. But, at 6 cost, we would much rather have an opponent pay 6 for him and then kill him.

Giacinto: 3 health is easy for us to kill and, while his effect isn’t weak, we are much more interested in fighting than engaging/moving a character for the turn, generally speaking. Wins games though.

Gustavo (Luis de Martinez de Ladera): 3 Resolve, so easy for us to kill. At 18 attachments in our deck, it isn’t as unlikely as I would like that we whiff and don’t get a card draw from his effect.

Kaj Kousei: Syrneth Hand is the only artifact we actively care about in the city deck.

Takama Siad: Has been better for me than I anticipated when I begrudgingly recruited her, but she can’t protect herself, has to be in the same location of the duel, and the dueler has to still be alive.

#Everything Else

Most of these are fairly unimpactful to our gameplan.

Captain’s Coat scares me with its ability to help enable an early Domination victory against us before we overwhelm the city.

Duckfoot Pistol is another way to finish off a non-Leader, but we have a bunch.

Crystal Eye, Object of Wonder, Smuggled Item‘s +1 influence is nice, especially for recruiting 5 cost characters but mostly a luxury for us.

Penya Shows the Way, Point of Opportunity, Risky Undertaking, Siren’s Song, and So It Begins all have noticeable effects which can be huge but aren’t usually.

Guild Triskelion is scary for some opposing characters to get, and to be fair, it is pretty great on Daniella and even reasonable on Otto.

Efficient Eisen Combat

Background (Knowledge Gained)

When I first started playing 7th Sea : City of Five Sails, I was enthralled by 3 defense (Riposte+Parry) cards as a way to keep my characters alive in duels, in addition to pure-parry or “parry-out” combat cards which are fairly rare for the factions I was looking at first. My thought was that as long as my character survives, I can eventually win the duel. That approach did not work for me, at all.

The biggest demonstration of that for me was when my high defense Ussura deck went against the strong overall RPT cards of Montaigne. Yevgeni challenged Odette and left the duel having taken 3 wounds and inflicting none (to be fair, I think I forgot to add the +1 Thrust to Yevgeni combat cards). I was very confused. It seemed like combat wasn’t very effective, Finesse was everything, and luck played a large role. So I built my Gen Con Eisen list with Unsavory Salve and other ways to get out of combat while still mitigating damage.

It wasn’t until playing with the eventual Ussuran District Captain and my life-changing friend/Epic Card Game pro Tom Dixon, that we came up with a different approach. My Ussura deck at the time was focused on churning through my deck with Vedma + Matsushka’s Sight, Devotion, A New Strategy, etc. to find Grandfather’s Hammer. The idea was that initiating a challenge with +2 thrust for 6 outbound thrust was really strong because even if a 4-Resolve character played a 2-defense card like a parry-out, that 4-Resolve character still instantly dies. In addition, with Yevgeni‘s base 4 Combat, they also can’t just refuse the duel, because death. That being said, I thought after that initial challenge, the longer the duel goes, the worse it is for Yevgeni as he will wrack up wounds since Ussura doesn’t have a ton of 3-defense cards. Tom Dixon wanted to duel though and didn’t want to just focus on big initial challenges. (I also had Boon‘s to try to make my challenges more scary. I have since come to view Boon as rather mediocre, as most people seem to).

Eventually, after we slept on it, we both came to the conclusion of: bring more combat cards that send more threat! If it is strong to send 6 threat on a challenge because it overwhelms defenses: 2 being common, 3 not-uncommon, 4 rare (Not Today being effectively 4 since it causes you to take a wound), or ultra-rare 5+ with stacked effects, why not try focusing on using Matchlock Musket, or other 4 offense (Riposte + Thrust) cards [in combination with Yevgeni‘s bonus +1 thrust] to consistently send 5+ threat to practically guarantee inflicting wounds early?! Even if these cards have little to no defense, it is much better to take the Restricted Hostilities 2 or 3 wounds on your 12 health character and then follow up by inflicting 3 or 4 wounds on their 4 health character. By making this change, we still want to minimize the amount of wounds we take, but we do that not by defending, but by killing our opponent as quickly as possible.

Strategy

Eisen follows this same idea as well, overwhelming Threat. Langschwert is one of the best cards in our deck. It lets us send 4 threat on the initial challenge which still enables us to push maximum Restricted Hostilities damage of 3 against a 1-parry parry-out. We can then follow up with a gun or Bleed Out to kill the opposing 4-Resolve character with only needing to initiate that single challenge (engage).

Further, if our opponent doesn’t parry-out or refuse, Langschwert gives us another bonus Thrust for our first combat card, which will ideally be a Fight Through the Pain or Matchwork Musket from hand, resulting in 6 threat, which our opponent is likely only able to block 3 of. Sure we took 2 or 3 damage to do it, but our opponent is probably dead, and our 5 Resolve character can probably defend enough of their Final Strike to not die. Also, sure we played a card from hand instead of a free one from Gambling, but that card effectively read 0-cost inflict 3 wounds (incredible).

Simple as that.

Fight Through the Pain is another of Eisen’s best cards for this reason, especially since (as long as your character isn’t dead), it shaves off 1 damage from your opponent’s Restricted Hostilities damage (no matter how much Threat they sent). You can effectively ignore the Action on Fight Through the Pain unless you are desperate.

Day 1

Goal

Day 1 our goal is to not lose to Domination (or Assassination for all you Yevgeni‘s out there), recruit a (good) Merc, and start growing an advantage to go into Day 2.

Muster

Otto is always our Muster day 1 to start (hopefully) drawing extra cards.

Scheme

Midnight Shipment or Let’s Haggle are basically always our scheme. If there is an incredible Merc we definitely want, Midnight Shipment to guarantee we go first (since I don’t think I have ever seen anyone else run this scheme). If there is nothing we want, still Midnight Shipment to try to get a Merc from the extra city card. Let’s Haggle can be used if there is a strong attachment on the Grand Bazaar we want for cheap or to scam.

To scam with Let’s Haggle, send Kaspar to the non-Grand Bazaar location with a Merc you want to Recruit. After your opponent moves into the Bazaar to take the Attachment, activate the City Action on Let’s Haggle. Kaspar gets to equip the Attachment from his location, since only the discount requires you to be at the Bazaar.

Action Order

1st action (assuming you won the initiative) is always to send Kaspar to location of the Merc you want to recruit.

2nd action could be the Let’s Haggle scam.
Or, if your opponent didn’t move into your location and you are not doing the Let’s Haggle scam, it could be equipping an Uppman’s Jacket in preparation for recruiting a 5+ cost Merc. Otherwise, it is probably just Recruit.

If your opponent is planning on doing some fighting, especially with Yevgeni, you probably wait until they move out of home before bringing Otto out as far away as possible to draw you a card. This can include passing if both characters are still at Home. If lucky, maybe Otto claims you a location for a Renown or 2, likely not though.

If your opponent is not fighting or is Vodacce/Castille with the potential of turn 1 Domination Victory, Otto‘s 2 influence can make that harder for them to achieve. Against Vodacce, you probably want to get Otto to an unclaimed location to contest the claim as reclaiming a location might fail due to Objection. Against Castille, it maybe is better to wait until they burn through their shenanigans? Thankfully, since we will almost always be going first in the first couple days, we have to worry less about Adaptable stealing a location where we have an Influence-advantage with only engaged characters.

Most of your cards in hand are not worth playing Day 1, unless you need to prevent yourself from losing to Domination Victory. If you get Syrneth Hand on Kaspar and no other Mercs, you could equip him with a Langschert and start challenging characters, even using Well-Equipped to go again. Day 1 Assassination Victories are possible against unsuspecting opponents. Otherwise, playing 1 equipment to get under 6 handsize is all you really want to do. Playing the guns to start pushing that damage is tempting, especially if sitting on a Last Word, but usually better to save it if under handsize. If you’ve got an Opulence to get it out, maybe, but your cards in hand are very valuable. Going into day 2 with a 12 card hand is quite nice for executing tactics, especially since there is likely more Renown in play.

Kaspar’s Panzerhand should never be played as it is too important of a combat card for later Days, and it is very expensive.

Also, do not forget the City Action on Midnight Shipment because clearing the location of City cards is pretty easy for Eisen, the non-engaging movement action is incredible, and your opponent might forget about it enabling big plays.

Day 2

Goal

Start whittling down your opponent’s characters, don’t lose to Domination/Assassination, and ideally don’t let your opponent get to 5+ Renown.

Muster

Now we have diverging paths dependent on what we have leftover in our hand from day 1, who (if anyone) we recruited, and which faction our opponent is playing.

The highest power-level-ceiling character in our deck is Terrell Brandt, and ideally we want to get him out as soon as possible. However, his power comes from being able to play ridiculously strong RPT attachments every single combat (since they return to hand if he doesn’t die regardless of if played from hand or gambled into). If you drew into Kaspar’s Panzerhand, you should muster Terrell. If you also drew into a Matchlock Musket, you should absolutely muster Terrell. With both of these cards you can issue a challenge with his +1 Thrust technique to send 4 Threat, follow up with Matchlock Musket to take the opponent’s Restricted Hostilities (1 to 3) and send 5 threat, and finish off with Kaspar’s Panzerhand to block 4 of the likely final strike. Rinse and repeat. If you haven’t drawn Kaspar’s Panzerhand yet, hold off on mustering him. If it entered your discard pile somehow, you could muster him with Armed and Marshaled to get it back for him, unless there is a high priority Merc to recruit (requiring a higher initiative scheme).

On the off-chance that you got to Recruit Maryam and/or you will have 2 fighting Mercs, Daniella Dietrich is a strong Muster choice. Being able to throw a Langschwert on Maryam and let her attack twice (or intervene + attack) is huge. Having 2 fighters gives you more flexibility since it takes multiple actions to get into position for her to use her City Action. You could use Stratege to move both Daniella and a fighting Merc into place with one action (since Stratege doesn’t target the performing characters), but I have not done it yet. If you don’t have reliable access to fighting Mercs, don’t recruit Daniella. Her technique is fantastic for protecting her as well, almost effectively turning any card into a defense-out.

If you are going up against Vodacce or Castille, Phillip Hase‘s 2 influence and movement City Reaction are both excellent for blocking/punishing tricksy Domination/Renown gathering shenanigans (with his 3 Combat too of course).

Otherwise, if you have a Langschwert in hand Rena Klingenhalter is a solid choice. If against Montaigne and their plethora of challenges she might be even better, as long as you have at least a Throwing Knife to get her powered up. Be Aware: if her weapon gets Sundered or Robbed in a duel (or if you throw your knife), she will immediately go back down to 2 Com/2 Restricted Hostilities for the threat currently sent at your opponent (likely not the end of the world though as it is terribly common to be able to push more than 2 damage, although we definitely try to).

Scheme

If there is a high-value Merc in the city, use whichever of Let’s Haggle/Midnight Shipment you have left to maximize your chance of getting it.

On the off chance there is a strong Merc in the city discard pile (possibly because your opponent used Shifting Tides to justifiably fear-discard Maryam), you can use The Song of Eisen to put that Merc on top of the City Deck. Then, you can use Kaspar‘s City Action to recruit the Merc off the top of the deck.

If Kaspar’s Panzerhand is in your discard pile, you can use Armed and Marshaled to get it back to enable you to Muster Terrell.

Otherwise, now that we will have at minimum a strong Mustered fighting character, Let the Sword Decide is an excellent card likely to draw a card and can cancel a nasty Manuever/Technique YOU JUST HAVE TO REMEMBER TO USE IT TOM!!! (Cancelling Broken Time is so cruel…so deliciously cruel.)

Action Order

Once again, assuming you go first and there is a Merc you want, immediately send Kaspar there. (I frequently forget to even draw my new cards before doing so.)

Otherwise, if there is high-value fighting attachment, send one of your fighters there.

Don’t forget about the Let’s Haggle scam as an option as well, nor the actual discount if Syrneth Hand or something drops on the Grand Bazaar.

If there are no City Cards you care about, you might have selected a lower initiative scheme, therefore not be going first, so you react to your opponent.

Day 2 is when we start primarily hunting characters. The juiciest targets are ones that die instantly to a single challenge. 3 Resolve characters are prime targets and 4 Resolve characters are reasonable as well (since we are packing ways to push that last point of damage outside of combat). We can push some wounds to our opponent’s leader if that is the best challenge we get, but ultimately our goal is to eliminate entire characters first and foremost. We can always Assassinate an unguarded leader on a future day, and we aren’t able to necessarily initiate enough bonus challenges to kill off a leader outright early.

Sequencing of actions at this point becomes incredibly important and is incredibly tactical. I think this skill is largely gained by playing the game, but here are a few good examples:

  • Opponent played Marooned while you have a strong fighting Merc in play. If you send your fighting Merc to a location that has an opposing character, they get to act next and engage down (or finish off) your Merc, not good. However, if you send your Merc to an unopposed location that you expect your opponent will want to go to, if they move there, you get the first action and can challenge that character before getting engaged. They could counter this by sending a character they don’t care as much about getting challenged. If they do, you get the choice of either challenging or letting them spend cards to trigger Marooned. If they don’t go to that location, that is likely good for you too, as you can probably collect its Renown.
  • Opponent is Yevgeni and you have Sigurd. Wait until Yevgeni moves out. Move Sigurd on top of him. Then move your challengers in afterwards, protected.
  • When hunting characters, wait until your prey moves out, then move on top of them. However, if they move to a location that doesn’t make a ton of sense for them to be at, they might be planning on using an effect to move to where they actually want to go, after you commit your free move to get on top of them. Phillip and Angeline can punish that nonsense.
  • Terrell equipped with a Langschwert is going up against an Ussuran/Castillian controlled character, activate your Langschwert technique before your Terrell technique in case your weapon gets removed.
  • Wait to bring out your vulnerable characters until the scarier opposing characters are Engaged.
  • Wait to initiate claims until your opponent isn’t likely to reclaim it from you
  • Immediately initiate claims if you think your character is likely to die soon if you think your opponent isn’t likely to reclaim it from you
  • Equip weapons at home so there is only a 1-action gap between moving an issuing a challenge
  • Equip a weapon, at a location, that your opponent wasn’t counting on, after their character engaged

If your opponent is playing very cautiously and avoiding your challenges that could whittle their characters down, you can always win with Renown. If you send a strong fighter with at least 1 influence to an outer location with 2+ renown, and then they don’t send anyone to contest while engaging all of their characters elsewhere, just claim your location. You don’t have to force a challenge. Basically, if they are too worried about losing to actually advance their win condition, you can shift into it yourself.

Don’t forget about Otto either. He isn’t a fighter, so he is a great follow up character to reclaim a location, possibly after you killed the high influence character that was originally there for instance. There is generally little rush to get that card draw because it is frequently just discard fodder for your other effects like Well-Equipped, Move Along, etc. Maybe you could have drawn into a Langschwert, but the reserve-claimer/reclaimer is solid.

Day 3+

At this point, you are mostly just iterating on your Day 2 options. You likely won’t have your high initiative schemes to snipe Mercs anymore, but you have 3 high-effect schemes to convert into kills/strength.

Usually, the longer the game goes, the more favored Eisen seems to become, as long as Otto is actually staying alive and drawing cards, and as long as Eisen isn’t spending cards unnecessarily for minimally impactful effects. In earlier Days, you can definitely let your opponent pick up some uncontested Renown if it means you kill or heavily injure a character. At this point though, you have to be careful that they can’t convert the board into a win before they are crushed beneath you.

Miscellaneous Eisen Points

Kaspar‘s greatest strengths as a leader are his 4 Influence on Parley and his big butt (9 Resolve). His 9 Resolve lets him Refuse early challenges if he wants, effectively wasting a 3 or less Combat character’s engage. You don’t want to refuse a Yevgeni challenge, but aside from that, Kaspar doesn’t need to get his hands dirty. He absolutely can though, leveraging his 9 health to take out a character, but you need to be careful of Lethal and unintervenable challenges after that point. Getting within a few wounds of death could also prevent Kaspar from leaving home, which is a big loss for you; however, if your opponent poured tons of resources into that, we can likely finish up the game with our other accumulated resources.

Kaspar‘s City action is unreliable. I generally avoid using it unless in combination with The Song of Eisen. The main reason is I scarred myself in my loss in Gen Con top 8 where I activated his ability to greed out an additional Merc instead of claiming my location, knowing it could potentially lose me the game. I got the no-Influence, worthless-against-pacifist-Castille Vladislav and lost the game (of course there were a lot of factors to the games conclusion, but that one left a mark). That being said, I just played a game where my opponent hit Angeline into Maryam, so it certainly can be ridiculously powerful. Primarily though, I would much rather take the Merc my opponent has the option of recruiting than rolling the dice on a random Merc.

Last Word is incredible. A 0-cost (after the initial investment of playing a ranged weapon which can include Throwing Knives) move your opponent’s character is incredible for messing with their Influence math on claims, getting potential interveners out of the way, moving an engaged character into a location with your fighters, etc. It theoretically could be used in a duel to finish off a character preventing them from sending a final round of threat, but my fighters usually aren’t equipped with Ranged Weapons (possibly Throwing Knives though).

Unsavory Salve, Breastplate, Corpse Speak, and Uppman’s Jacket are included almost exclusively for Otto to fetch with his City Action, so you can discard them to pay for your better cards. It is hard to imagine a scenario where you actively want to play Unsavory Salve, especially since getting your weapon destroyed also destroys the Salve. Breastplate is overkill for your 5 Resolve characters in addition to being too expensive; its 3 parry is reasonable as your protection from your opponent’s Final Strike. Corpse Speak can be used by Daniella, and you do have some strong targets for it, but it is a lot of setup. Uppman’s Jacket could be played turn 1 to pay for itself over 2 Recruits, or it could be used to break a claiming stalemate, but I usually just discard it when recruiting as opposed to spending an extra card to Equip it.

Press the Advantage is great if you have plenty of cards in hand for its City Action at a critical moment; its Maneuver feels too expensive though. Well-Equipped City action is incredible, as is the Maneuver if you gamble into it while equipped with a Weapon. Dark Gift does work, primarily with its movement ability, but it can keep your fighters away from the dangerous 1 Resolve remaining state (Bleed Out, Razrushitel, etc.).

For some highlights from games at Gen Con with a similar list, check out my initial Gen Con tournament report/deck tech.

Conclusion

I want to play more 7th Sea, and I am happy to keep repping the honest Eisen! Now that you know my decklist and strategy, come at me. Let’s see if you can surpass my tactics.

If I get the motivation, I’m hoping to get a similar article out for Ussura, probably my favorite faction currently (because they are much less honest and I utilize a more balanced playstyle instead of ultra heavy combat). I do not have a strong enough understanding of Castille yet, and I don’t like Montaigne as much so I will likely do a much less detailed post on my decks I have ready for each. I will not defile my hands with the villainous treachery of Vodacce. (I actually just don’t want to disrupt the communities “The Family doesn’t fight [itself]” since I actively want to play as many games as possible while not taking away from others’ enjoyment.)

7th Sea – Gen Con 2023 – Top Eisen Retrospective/Deck Tech

My most anticipated event at Gen Con 2023 was the 7th Sea : City of Five Sails World Championship. I heard about the game while looking through the Gen Con event list for tournaments, and I had managed to get about 10 games in before Gen Con and another 3 Friday night. Posted a bit about the game here.

I went into the tournament wanting to play a Castille/Soline deck because it seemed like the weakest faction so I felt challenged to make it work. Played some games against my good friend Tom Dixon the night before the event, and it just felt frustratingly underpowered. So, I switched to Eisen/Kaspar because I was super excited about exploiting Unsavory Salve, and Eisen seemed reasonably powerful overall. Was a bit worried that everyone was going to be playing Eisen, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it was tied for the least represented faction (with Vodacce/The Don) for my hipster self. I was also very surprised with how underwhelming Unsavory Salve turned out to be.

Gen Con 2023 Top Eisen Decklist

This is the list I ran for the tournament. (There are 6 changes I made after the event):

Kaspar Dietrich (Gen Con 2023) [Chip Damage]

Approach

Faction

Attachments (15)

Non-Attachments (25)

Initial Deck Idea

Generally speaking, I intended this to be a midrange deck that could win with any of the three victory conditions. The major idea I wanted to experiment with was shrugging off challenges while pushing through small amounts of damage at a time, not necessarily focusing on initiating challenges myself. I wanted only-parry cards (ex. Regroup) to end duels (if you send no threat back, the duel ends), and I wanted to use the guns (ex. Polished Flintlock) to whittle down characters.

Unsavory Salve’s ability to erase a threat and turn it into a wound had me salivating over the idea of achieving both of those goals at the same time. Specifically, it could turn Appealing to the People, Breastplate, and Kaspar’s Panzerhand into 3 or 4 parry cards, that inflicted an unblockable wound and ended the duel, effectively erasing the value of my opponent’s Engage Action (challenge). Even getting an unlucky Opulence Gamble could at least end the duel and deal a wound. Important remainder though, you can only trigger one Technique per combat round, so you can’t use 2 Unsavory Salves to cancel 2 Thrust (ex. Tending the Wounded). In addition, if your weapon is destroyed or stolen, you lose the Salve.

Lastly, we packed 15 attachments into the deck to have an attachment density greater than 1/3 to make Otto likely to draw a card off his ability. Throwing Knives were primarily included to hit that threshold and to help enable Last Word.

World Championship Games

A brief account of each of the games (as well as I can remember). Putting these in show/hide blocks to artificially deflate the length of the post.

Game 1: Eisen vs Vodacce

Game 2: Eisen vs Castille (On Stream)

Game 3: Eisen vs Vodacce

Game 4: Eisen vs Vodacce

Game 5: Eisen vs Ussura

Game 6 (Top 16): Opponent Didn’t Show

Unfortunate as I would rather play than get a free win, but it happens. Got some sweet promos.

Interesting to note the top 5 was all Vodacce (with only 9 Vodacce players) except for me as Eisen in 3rd. I was also the only Eisen in top 16 (only 9 Eisen players as well). Overall a very balanced distribution of factions which surprised me.

Disqualification “Win” 5*-1

Game 7 (Top 8): Eisen vs Castille

Post-Tournament Deck Thoughts/Card Analysis

Major takeaways from the event were

  1. Always going first with Midnight Shipment and Let’s Haggle in addition to occasionally the others was incredibly powerful for getting to all of the Mercs/attachments from the City Deck I wanted
  2. The City Action on each of those and Armed and Marshalled were all incredible/unexpected by my opponents
  3. Turn 1 Domination is real and scary especially as I’m a value deck
  4. Whiffed 8 times trying for an attachment with Otto, want more attachments
  5. Rena did work, although Langshwert was the true hero
  6. Fight Through the Pain is one of the best cards in the game, supports overwhelming-force combat ideaology (briefly send as much threat as possible, ideally 2 or 3 above your restricted hostilities)

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the game, and the distribution model lets me mess around with whatever deck I feel like without having to chase down cards etc. Really enjoying the game, the festival/judges were great, story is a definite plus with a cool writer, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the overwhelming force doctrine maps onto the other factions.

7th Sea : City of Five Sails

or My New Epic-Replacing Obsession (hopefully)

Overview

7th Sea : City of Five Sails is a 2-player, expandable (non-collectible) dueling card game with Pirates, Musketeers, and Sorcerers (with multiplayer formats).
Your goal is either

  • Assassination: Kill your opponent’s Leader
  • Domination: Control all 3 core locations in the city at the end of the day
  • Renown: Control locations in the city over 5 days to collect 7 (or the most) Renown

To accomplish this, each Day you choose 1 of your 5 pre-selected Characters to add to the fray and 1 of your 5 pre-selected Schemes to shape it. These are supported by your randomized 40-card Faction deck. However, before you make your choices, a neutral card is added to each location that players can race to Recruit, Equip, or exploit that Day from a randomized 30-card City deck. (This City deck is defined by Pine Box Entertainment, and they plan to rotate it, in part based on the actions taken in Organized Play events/tournaments).

Cards in your Faction deck can be

  • Played for their primary effect (equipping characters or performing one-time effects)
  • Played for their combat values in a duel (regardless of their primary effect)
  • Discarded to pay the cost of other powerful Faction and/or City cards
    (Race for the Galaxy style [one of my favorite game mechanisms])

Players alternate taking a single action until all players pass consecutively.

Initiating back and forth Duels and Claiming a Location are the primary two actions the game is built around (in addition to playing cards, character movement, and Passing).

Current Thoughts

As of this point, I have played about 10 games, half of which with decks I’ve built. I am still in the exploration phase as I feel out everything this game has to offer, but so far, I have been enjoying it and actively want to continue experimenting.

During the third game, the flow of play clicked and now actions can go pretty snappy back and forth, especially since you’ll want to be thinking multiple moves into the future. I actively enjoy the combination of City cards coming out, and then deciding which Scheme card to respond with, to determine where Renown gets put, what bonus effect to gain, your likelihood of going first each day, and whether you’ll draw more of less cards than normal. That feels great, especially since you can only use each of your 5 schemes once for the up to 5 days.

Card management also feels good. As mentioned above, I love the discard cards from hand to pay for other cards mechanism. It also synergizes well with deckbuilding enabling you to include situational cards, cards you actively want to play, and cards you actively want for dueling (especially if flipped in gambling). The tension between Gambling in duels and playing from hand is also a satisfying choice; Gambling has certainly screwed me, but not in a way that turns me off from the game, since “Gambling” is a very apt name for the mechanism.

My one disappointment so far is that deck building feels very limited at this point, with seemingly only one way to take each faction, for now. As additional expansions come out with new cards and characters for each faction, I expect/hope this will improve. For now, it mostly feels like optimization as opposed to exploration.

Faction Overview

Each of the 5 factions feel different and interesting to play. Currently, my vague feeling for each is

  • Castille: Try to deprive your opponent of as many actions and choices as possible, weak dueling, Renown primary win condition
  • Eisen: Bruteforce overwhelm your opponents by ending duels (refusing or returning no threat) and pushing unpreventable damage, Any win condition
  • Montaigne: Best duelists, force your opponents into duels and extend them, Any win condition
  • Ussura: Combo deck, find the hammer and/or buff Yevgeni to issue one-shot challenges, kill opponent in a duel as soon as possible, Domination/Assassination win conditions
  • Vodacce: Take as many actions as possible, everyone outside The Family is expendable towards your Renown win condition (or surprise Assassination)

I plan to do individual write ups on the deck I built for each of these factions.

Theme/Art/Lore

If I can buy this playmat at GenCon, I will, love it. Would buy a framed print of it too.

I’ve recently discovered that good Theming/Art/Lore can really draw me into a game (much more than I expected), and I have been drawn in to 7th Sea : City of Five Sails.

I learned about the game while looking for tournaments in the Gen Con 2023 event catalogue, and as a non-collectible, 2-player card game, I was obviously immediately intrigued. There is a World Championship Festival Saturday starting at 10am, and it will have a story-based game augmentation in 3 of the rounds (28 open spots remaining as of today).

So I looked into it further and saw they had Chanteys with lore on their website and in their rulebook. All of the stories have been interesting and have actively made me want to explore the world. Apparently, the setting is based off a 7th Sea Role Playing Game and there was a previous collectible version of the game in the late 90s.

Going in to the World Championship, for gameplay reasons I think I am leaning towards playing Eisen, but for thematic reasons, I will likely pick a different faction so I can usurp them. That being said, I see that Ussura won the 6-week salon (and Eisen won the initial 2022 Gen Con tournament), so my personality is pushing me away from those. Ahhh, so many fun considerations to agonize over for what I want to play! Ultimately, I need (and want) to get more games in to feel out the factions more, and I need (and want) to pour through all of the lore to come to a compromise of the two.

Closing

For anyone looking to play, there is an official Tabletop Simulator mod and Pinebox Entertainment discord. I am looking to get as many games in as possible, so if interested you can reach out through discord, username: tomsepicgaming

**Edit: I have really been enjoying this game. Here is a link to my tournament report from Gen Con 2023, my more in depth Eisen Deck Tech, and my tournament report from Gamehole con 2023.

Mindbug Beyond Evolution Review

Base Game

Mindbug is a 2-player card game where you play creatures to attack your opponent. You only get 10 creatures, but the deliciously intriguing part is you also get 2 mindbugs which let you steal an opponent’s creature as if you had played it.

Elegant and beautiful.

Trying to figure out how to sequence your plays to navigate your opponent’s mindbugs, while agonizing over when to use yours is just so good. So, so good.

Beyond Evolution

Mindbug Beyond Evolution is the first stand-alone expansion and second expansion overall for Mindbug. It contains 44 new playable cards (16 unique and 14 with two copies). Beyond Evolution also introduces two new keywords: Action and Evolve.

Action is an effect you can trigger on a creature that started your turn in play, instead of Attacking or Playing a card for your turn. For example, if you start your turn with Infernostrich in play, you can use its action to Defeat an enemy creature with power 7 or more, and then your opponent takes their turn.

Evolve lets you upgrade a creature to a stronger version of itself going from stage I to stage II to finally stage III.

Beyond Evolution Review

I actively do not recommend this new stand alone product as a starting point into Mindbug, one of my favorite games literally included in a tattoo on my arm.

As is frequently the case with expansions, this adds a level of complexity and nebulousness Beyond what you find in the base game. If you already love Mindbug and both you and your opponents want an added challenge, this expansion definitely delivers that. There are interesting new cards that lead to significantly more complicated board states and “discovered” attacks as the board states shift due to dying creatures (love you Coach Panda), but the counter play is much less obvious, less forgiving, and feels worse/more unfair than the base game (even though the balance seems on point when you adjust to it).

One of the major culprits for this is the increased amount of Tough, especially on creatures with incredibly powerful effects like difficult to prevent damage. Robopup is the prime example, a 1 power Sneaky, Tough. If you play a Robopup on an empty board, whoever gets it is likely to be able to make at least one and likely two unblocked attacks before it can either be destroyed twice, or a hunter can be played to attack it twice. (In this stand alone expansion, there are only 2 copies of a sneaky card bigger than this, and two copies of a card that stops sneakies from attacking.) Knowing this, you do not want to play a Robopup unless you already have a hunter in play or one of the few immediate answers to it available, or conversely you want to mindbug it if your opponent plays it. However, if you do not know this and you let it resolve for your opponent, or they mindbug the one you played, you are going to have a serious problem. Even playing against better than average strategic-gamers, they repeatedly made the mistake of playing this and other similar cards only for me to mindbug it and make them feel helpless. Other culprits include Dragon Inn, Mole Machine, and the frog and penguin levelers. (To be fair, The Experiment and Octocopter are two additional answers to these powerful Tough creatures.)

In addition to these, cards like Dr. Orange U. Tan (which lets you lose a life to return all opposing creatures to hand) and Westside Monster feel oppressive while Chuckling Chimporg feels too narrow.

All that being said, when I got a chance to play against one of the best Mindbug players in the world, everything felt reasonable and interesting; however, even I still made an objective misplay into a board state that my opponent insisted we rewind (allowing reasonable rewinding being my preferred way to play for all games).

Conclusion

Overall, I would be legitimately thrilled to play in a Mindbug tournament with this set included or even by itself, but I can’t see myself ever breaking it out outside of that, unless I run into another voracious Mindbug fanatic like myself who craves more content.

Board Game Strategy Book?!

I have been wanting to write a book for a long time. I want a book to introduce anyone to board game strategy to exist. And, I enjoy talking about board games and strategy. So let’s do it, finally! (This is where I would insert a picture of my Gillian tattoo, but I have to wait until 5/17/23 before I’ll actually have it.)

So, there is content out there that talks about board games from a design perspective and plenty of content with game specific strategy, but what I want to create is a book that draws upon my moderate array of board gaming experience, to define the overarching strategy concepts that I bring to any game I play. As I have done with Epic, I want to level the playing field as much as I can to enable other people to actually compete with me (not that I’m overconfident or anything and don’t frequently lament my downfall at the hands of my own hubris).

My favorite part of board/card gaming is the face to face social interaction between two+ people actively competing to win (without being jerks about it) and having a great time while doing it. Gen Con 2022 I competed in (and won) both a Jaipur tournament and a sealed SolForge Fusion tournament, and while both were fun, the Jaipur tournament with the casual, banter-filled atmosphere, subjected to my aggressive heavy camel-taking strategy that caught everyone by surprise, was far superior. Having opponents who actively knew how to play at the highest level forced me to see new devious tactics (such as heavily manipulating the market by taking a bunch of leather with camels to fill my hand to 7, triggering my opponent to think it was safe to take all of the camels, only for them to pop up 3 luxury goods to the table with a smirk on their face, for me to counter-smirk by dropping my leather right back to the table to take the luxury, *sigh* so beautiful *sigh*)…where was I again?

Right, I want MORE. More gamers who see the beauty in high level competitive play for its own sake (without feeling the need to cheat or maliciously angle-shoot etc.). I want to provide a groundwork for the average person to truly experience what I believe to be the heights of strategic gaming, ideally in an amusing to consume format without needing to devote the thousands of hours I’ve accumulated (which still is not where near enough).

Call for Assistance

In order to actually progress towards this goal of a board game strategy book, I need motivation, more gaming experience, and the collective knowledge of all of you to challenge my ideas (so they can grow) and to inform me of similar content I can standardize against. My plan is to complete a first draft without looking around too much to lower the possibility of accidental plagiarism, but after that, if there are established terms already in use, I might adopt those while also providing references/links to other high caliber content.

Roadmap

First, I want to develop a list strategic concepts that are present across a wide range of games. In order to do that, I am creating quick summaries of the games I know well including Goal of the Game, Game-specific Tactics to achieve that goal, and strategic concepts that inform why those tactics are valuable. So, when I have the motivation to work on this, I plan on filling out this summary for at least one more game.

Once I have filled out most of the games below, I want to identify the strategic concepts I want to talk about the most. (In addition, I plan on seeing if any of those are concepts you all want to see explored first.)

Then, when I have the motivation, I will try to go one concept at a time. First a definition of the concept. Followed by an in-depth explanation, likely ending with examples from the list of games below. In addition, to providing references/links to others who have discussed this topic, such as the “Who’s the Beatdown” article by Mike Flores … although reading this article, it seems incredibly unapproachable to anyone without a background in Magic which I actively will want to avoid to keep this book more generically approachable. (I’m also not entirely sure how I’ll have these transfer over into the book.)

Progress So Far (as of 4/29/23)

I took a week off of work to begin working on this book which I’ve had the idea to work on for a long time. This is as far I’ve gotten so far. I am hoping blogging my progress going forward will be able to help maintain my motivation to keep going (since I haven’t worked on it since 3/19/23). But phew, I’m beat, will come back to later.

Book Goal

Casually explain high-level board game strategy so readers can develop their own game-specific tactics.

Jaipur

Goals of the game is to get the most victory points

  • Early discs for the low value
  • Big as possible sets
  • As much luxury as possible

Tactics

  • Turn in your non-luxury goods if you see your opponent take them at start of game
  • Turn in non-luxury so as not to flip more cards
  • Avoiding taking camels to avoid flipping luxury cards for opponent
  • Taking camels to gain handsize advantage
  • Swapping out non-luxury goods for luxury to also stifle market
  • Taking a bunch of camels when your opponent has none or a nearly full hand
  • Turn in cards to clear up space in your hand for more cards

Strategy

  • Pay attention to what opponent has and minimize their potential points
  • Limit opponents’ potential plays
  • Focus on maximizing assets for self in comparison to opponent (opportunity cost)
    • Taking the Ruby instead of your 5th Leather
  • Card Advantage
  • Risk Management

Mindbug 

Goal of the game is to reduce your opponent to 0 life

  • Have an uncontested attacker
  • Finish off opponent
  • Get your opponent to only Mindbug cards you can deal with

Tactics

  • Offer a card you have a counter to in hand
  • Mindbug a card you don’t have a counter to in hand
  • Attack when your opponent can’t stop it, otherwise don’t without reason
  • Only play as many cards as are needed (advance towards goal)
  • Don’t chumpblock unless necessary
  • Know the possible cards, especially finishers
  • Play cards that are great for you that are actively mediocre for your opponent to steal
  • Play support cards before their value is apparent
  • Learn your opponent’s playstyle and card preferences to counter them
    • Bluff and/or change it up once your opponent learns yours
    • Read body language
  • Card economy have your cards gain more value than the cards needed to stop them
    • Kangasaurus Rex multiple creatures, Plated Scorpion kills two, Strage Barrel
  • Know when to break your own rules
  • Tempo
    • Know what needs to be answered immediately and what can wait
  • Mindbug decision depends on
    • Board state
    • Both Players’ health totals
    • Cards in both players hands
    • Potentially cards in both players’ discard piles
    • Remaining Mindbugs
  • Playing cards you don’t need to buy time/chump blocking

Strategy 

  • Read your opponent react to body language and anticipate plays
  • Think multiple moves in advance
  • Preserve resources/timing
  • Card Economy
  • Tempo
  • Stay Focused

Arkham Horror LCG

Goal of the game is ultimately to win the final scenario

Each individual scenario progress the Act Deck usually by getting clues and surviving

Make your character stronger by maximizing victory points and avoiding trauma

Tactics

  • Maximize action economy by getting multiple clues/doing multiple damage in one action
    • Kill vs evade
  • Card efficiency (how much value per card per resource)
  • Specializing vs Generalizing (Clue vs Kill), evade/will
  • Teamwork (countering their weaknesses and relying on their strengths)
  • Getting permanent buffs out as early as possible to maximize use
  • Maximizing character powers
  • Risk management (token bag)
  • Split or stay together
  • Search effects especially for finding experience cards
  • Clearing off more clues than needed to get VP, Hunting down VP enemies
  • Negating doom to give extra actions
  • Prepare for known treachery cards (blind vs returning)
  • Cycling skills

Strategy

  • Action and Card Economy
  • Teamwork (countering weaknesses and relying on strengths)
  • Maximizing buffs (value) as early as possible
  • Anticipate Treachery
  • Risk Management
  • Card Advantage
  • Card Quality (experience cards, getting out key pieces, cycling)

Dominion

Goal of the game is to have the most VP in deck at end of the game

Usually by getting more provinces (or colonies) faster than your opponent(s)

Exploiting other VP gaining strategies to subvert province rush

Tactics

  • Thinning deck to improve card quality (trashing cards)
  • Get card draw to gain access to more and better cards sooner
  • Buy high value cards
  • Disrupt opponents strategy (buy their cards, play targeted attacks)
  • Maximizing the value of your cards/turns
    • Spending all of your money
    • Playing towards the strengths of your cards, away from their weaknesses
    • Prioritize synergy though
  • Plan strategy ahead of time
  • Adapt as your plan sputters
  • Don’t buy non-synergistic cards just because you can (curses, moat)
  • Don’t buy more actions than you can play (Card Quality)
  • Be careful about buying VP before your deck is ready (Provinces/Gardens)
  • Pay attention to remaining VP and have a general idea what opponent’s have
  • Watch out for inadvertently helping opponents (Trade Route, Council Room)

Strategy

  • Plan your strategy at the start of the game
  • Card Quality
  • Maximize card value
  • Adapt (Anticipate Treachery)
  • Tempo
  • Stay Focused
  • Card Advantage

Star Realms

Goal of the game is to reduce your opponent to 0 health

Tactics

  • Buy cards of the same faction to trigger ally effects
  • Thin your deck to get to your better cards sooner
  • Add card draw to get to your better cards sooner
  • Counter what your opponent is doing by buying cards that are incredible for them, but still reasonable for you
  • Buy counter cards (destroy target base if base heavy)
  • Gain cards that give more money early, more damage late
  • Discard is decent early game to disrupt buying
  • Discard is good late game if opponent’s deck is thinned or you have a lot
  • Health Gain is good if your deck is bigger (costs) more than your opponent’s and/or your deck is more thinned than theirs
  • Damage is more important early if your opponent gets bases (bases are better if your opponent doesn’t have/can’t get damage)
  • Explorers are good early to help get more expensive cards, and should be scrapped to thin deck later
  • Everything is better with a thinned deck, but prioritizing a thinned deck without the ability to survive opponent’s aggression or get high value/synergistic cards isn’t good
  • Scrap your economy and Scrapping cards late game if they don’t provide efficient additional effects
  • Rush to get highest value cards (Brainworld) before your opponent can
  • Adapt based on trade row (if it shows a lot of efficient, inexpensive damage, maybe don’t go minor economy + scrap)
  • Card Quality (some cards are just better than others for the same purchase cost)
  • Kill bases unless you can win, best bases first
  • Buying cards that are less than you can afford that you know your opponent will want and can afford

Strategy

  • Card Quality
  • Maximize card value (ally triggers)
  • Anticipate and Perform Treachery
  • Tempo
  • Card Advantage
  • Maximizing value as soon as possible (bigger ships earlier give more chance for value)

Widget Ridge

Goal of the game is to generate the most spark

Tactics

  • Prioritize money cards early to get high value cards (card quality)
  • Pay attention to connections (maximizing value of cards)
  • Focus on getting a great full-construct and/or reusing connect abilities 
  • Draw cards and thin deck good (Card quality)
  • Timing/sequencing of effects, play cards that want you to have less spark first
  • Keeping cards in your workshop vs letting them hit discard pile
  • Buying cards that are less than you can afford that you know your opponent will want and can afford
  • Buy Accessory/Augments with the only connection(s) opponent’s devices can use

Strategy

  • Card Quality
  • Maximizing value of cards
  • Minor Anticipate/Perform Treachery
  • Timing/Sequencing of effects

Radlands

Goal of the game is to destroy all of your opponent’s bases

Tactics

  • Develop efficient ways to deal damage, ideal 1 water for 1 damage
  • Avoid relying on 2 water for 1 damage as it is less efficient
  • Protect your key cards with characters in front of them
  • Protect your damaged bases
  • Target the most disruptive cards of your opponent
  • Draw cards to have more option for both junk effects and play effects
  • Choose synergistic bases with a reasonable starting hand size (Don’t pick all 0 starting hand bases)
  • Spend all of your water every turn
  • Don’t underestimate spending 2 water to draw a card
  • Take your time
  • Time your effects for the biggest impact (events as 0, get a bunch of punks then return everything to hand, etc.)
  • Muse is bonus water every turn
  • It is largely an efficiency puzzle
  • Play to your bases/cards strengths/synergies

Axis and Allies (2nd edition 1940)

Goal of the game is to get your opponent to surrender by making it practically impossible to achieve their win condition

Tactics

  • As the axis, be aggressive, plan your first 3 turns thoroughly
  • As allies, react to what your opponent does, but don’t let them bait you too hard
  • As the soviets, planes are great at disrupting a fragmented advance
  • Overwhelming force to preserve your units
  • Infantry to take hits protecting your higher value units that deal hits
  • Can opening with other nations to make way for haymakers (Italy for Germany, Britain for US)
  • Income taken from opponents compound for you, but stretching yourself too thin leaves you open to counter attack
  • Every turn you spend building up is a turn your opponent’s spend building up
  • Tempo is incredibly important for Axis while Allies largely have to delay to give time for their economy to crush
  • Generally don’t leave territories with units outside of the borders
  • Don’t free France, use their production instead?
  • Axis need to focus on taking as much territory as possible so needs units that can
  • Don’t let highly valuable units and or territory be taken for little cost

Strategy

  • Maximize economy while minimizing opponent’s economy
  • Axis need to win as quickly as possible

Great Western Trail 2nd Edition

Goal

Epic Card Game

Goal of the game is to either reduce your opponent to 0 hit points or draw from an empty deck

Tactics

  • Play burn to finish off opponent, if they spend their gold on their turn, you get 2 gold in a row before they can spend another
  • Combine 0s with specific ones to do all of the damage at once and force a response
  • Pace your 0’s to stay ahead and make your opponent’s removal inefficient
  • Play the most powerful cards
  • Play cards your opponents aren’t expecting in powerful ways
  • Include enough cards to reliably hit loyalty effects
  • Provide continual pressure that your opponent can’t keep up with
  • Heal to get out of range of your opponent finishing you off with burn
  • Pay attention to your opponent’s likely drafted cards or common included cards in deck archetypes to either counter them in draft/deck building or play around the most devastating blowouts
  • Play to your outs, play to win, not to just not lose, unless that is how you win (delaying your loss for a couple turns if you that makes it so you can’t win is guaranteed to lose)
  • Take your time to think through all of your lines
  • Card advantage, have more cards in hand to have more options and to get to your best options faster
  • Card filtering to find your best cards (MGH, Zannos)
  • Maximize the value of your cards by including cards that support them
  • Preserve your gold until after your opponent spends theirs, bait/force opponent to spend first
  • Know when to cycle vs hold onto a card for value
  • Ideally never have a turn where your opponent spends their gold and you do not
  • High risk plays can win games, but can also lose them
  • Overload your opponent’s answers
  • Mindgames are a thing
  • Attack alone and early if your opponent has no good answers in play
  • Have a plan to beat the most common cards/decks/strategies
  • Don’t reveal new cards to loyalty if you don’t have to/don’t always reveal all cards you can
  • Practice/test
  • Match threats to answers
  • Hold off on your free mass discard pile removal to bait opponent into making bad plays, prioritize getting one otherwise have an aggressive enough deck to not need one
  • Recycle your best cards first/strategically to get to what you expect you will need in order
  • Play to your strengths playstyle wise

Strategy

Magic: The Gathering

Goal

Netrunner LCG

Goal

Rise of Augustus

Goal

Battlestar Galactica

Goal

Agricola (Worker Placement)

Goal

Hanamikoji

Goal

Ticket to Ride

Goal

Catan

Goal

7 Wonders Duel

Goal

Wingspan

Goal

Race for the Galaxy

Goal

Trekking Games

Goal

Alchemists

Goal

Splendor

Goal

Carcassonne

Goal

Under Falling Skies

Goal

Sushi Go

Goal

Camel Up

Goal

Dixit

Goal

Specter Ops

Goal

Tikal

Goal

Ninjato

Goal

Acquire

Goal

Takenoko

Goal

Mandala

Goal

Thurn and Taxis

Goal

Paperback

Goal of the game is to have the most victory points in your deck by game end

Tactics

  • Prioritize cards that have more value to you
    • If you can come up with long words to snag the common letters, emphasize card draw and multi-character cards
    • If you struggle to think of long words, emphasize high buying power individual letters
  • Generally avoid wilds/VP early, unless you can get card draw and big words, as they can dilute your buying power
  • Minor filtering
  • Have a large vocabulary (outside knowledge)
  • Get the double/triple word scores to get the highest value VP cards
  • Focus on using your most powerful effects to get even more powerful effects

Strategy

  • Play to your strengths
  • Maximize value

Smash Up

Goal

7 Wonders Architects

Goal

Kahuna

Goal of the game is to have the most victory points by controlling islands at 3 points

Tactics

  • Build up cards in hand to make a devastating sequence of plays
  • Hold onto or play island cards to manipulate what gets shuffled
  • Place bridges on opponent’s controlled islands that they can’t kick off
  • Solidify your own islands to protect against losing pieces
  • Secure key connections before your opponent can, if you see them take dangerous cards
  • Start by making a safe foothold to build off from
  • Knowing when not to take a card, manipulate turn order at cost of a card
  • Drawing from deck to hide your information, especially if nothing valuable on display, likely to get you garbage though so usually better to take a tangentially valuable face up card
  • Make big plays right before the end of a round to score that round’s points
  • Only use 2 cards to remove a bridge as a last resort or in a combo play to remove multiple bridges (card advantage)
  • Focus on protecting your bridges and slowly expanding
  • Losing a lot of in play bridges is the main way to lose the game

Strategy

  • Sequencing/Timing
  • Card advantage (not spending two cards removing bridges often, almost always taking cards, using fewer cards to knock out/negate more cards played by opponent)
  • Anticipate and Initiate Treachery
  • Pay attention to what opponent takes and how eager they are to take it
  • Maximize value of cards

Push Fight

Goal of the game is to push one of your opponent’s pieces off of the board

Tactics

  • Trap and isolate a circle on board edge
  • Maneuver pieces to form a wall to obstruct opponent’s movement
  • Constrict opponent’s space to maneuver
  • Force opponent to make specific moves and/or pushes
  • Keep circles centralized
  • Get a square into opponent’s back line
  • Push just own pieces
  • Use pieces to form pushable lines
  • Look into opponent’s potential plays/responses
  • Exploit anchor for positional plays, protects whole line from being pushed back
  • Pay attention to what board state will look like after push

Strategy

  • Limit opponent’s potential plays
  • Exploit weaknesses
  • Maximize value of anchor
  • Maneuver board into favorable end state

Medieval Academy

Goal

Princess Jing

Goal

Firefly The Game

Goal

Mindbug Beyond Evolution Spoiler!

When I was sent this card to spoil for the upcoming kickstarter expansion Mindbug Beyond, I saw the Play effect and my mind focused entirely on that, forgetting everything else since that aspect is so powerful. Looking back and seeing it has Hunter and Tough too, I am shook.

For those of you who do not know, Mindbug is a two-player card game where you play cards to attack your opponent from 3 life to 0. There are only creatures, but you both get exactly 2 Mindbugs that can be used to permanently steal a creature when your opponent plays it, gaining all of the effects as if you had played it. I love this game so much it made it into my (still healing) tattoo from two weeks ago.

(That is Rhino Turtle on the end there. The full hand being Arkham Horror LCG, Dixit, Epic, Dominion, Jaipur, Radlands, Widget Ridge, Rhino Turtle [Mindbug].)

The card is Swiss Army Bug. It is a 4-power creature with Hunter, Tough, and Play: You may copy the Play effect of another creature. I confirmed that the Play effect can copy any Play effect of any creature in play by either player. As of now the Play effects are:

Core Set: Compost Dragon, Grave Robber, Giraffodile, Ferret Bomber, Brain Fly, Tiger Squirrel, Kangasaurus Rex, Mysterious Mermaid, Axolotl Healer, and Killer Bee

New Creations: Hungry Hungry Hamster, Ratomancer, Goreagle Alpha

The effect that immediately came to mind was copying Killer Bee. Due to the nature of Killer Bee’s unpreventable life loss if your opponent is out of Mindbugs, this can be the extra copy you follow up with after your actual copy of Killer Bee draws out your opponent’s last Mindbug. Having this can also allow you to play Killer Bee early to get that 5-power Hunter into play before your opponent can get any value from Sneaky characters.

As someone who is personally a big fan of having multiple of the same effect in hand, so I can double Ferret Bomber you (or now quadruple), this is a card I am definitely looking forward to. It can also give you extra copies of the one-ofs Giraffodile, Brain Fly, Mysterious Mermaid, and Ratomancer (or let you borrow the effect of those played by your opponent).

That being said, as is the case with Compost Dragon and Grave Robber, any play of Swiss Army Bug while your opponent has a Mindbug requires you to analyze just how powerful any of the in-play Play-effects would be against you. This also means sequencing your Play-effects becomes more important because if you do have a Killer Bee in play, you are at 1 life, and your opponent has a Mindbug left, you can’t play Swiss Army Bug, no matter how tempting the Kangasaurus Rex trigger undoubtedly is.

Finally, even just a 4-power Hunter, Tough is a card I would frequently be happy to have online early. This can be especially true if your hand is nothing but low power creatures (and/or you can exploit its 4 or less power). Playing this out early when the Play-effect is inactive will likely get your opponent to let you have it, since not triggering the strong play effect makes it appear to be a throwaway. Then, any 4 or less power creature you get Mindbugged becomes hunter fodder for your Swiss Army Bug. Of course, after the first time you do this to your opponent, they might get wise and realize they need to Mindbug this early, until you follow it up with all of the Rhino Turtles (*deviously contented sigh* good ol’ Rhino Turtle).

My only complaint about this card is that it is a “may” effect. It doesn’t force the controller to trigger a play effect such as Goreagle Alpha’s You lose 1 life point (like Mysterious Mermaid does). While I haven’t been able to think of a situation where I could force my opponent into both needing to Mindbug this and immediately losing if they do (if it wasn’t a “may” effect), my sadistic side is disappointed that I never will be able to. Sadness.

Anyways, I know I will be buying multiple copies of the Beyond expansion when it goes live on Kickstarter soon, so I can distribute them to all of the people I have hooked. Great game, and if you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it.  (Here’s the dice tower review by Tom Vasel on it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-9G24mEsgw)

HatMania Stream 1/22/23

This Sunday 1/22/23 at 10am CST I will be streaming the new video game HatMania, by the creator of one of my favorite card games Mindbug, on my twitch channel: twitch.tv/tomsepicgaming

“HatMania is a retro top down multitasking platformer with a twist. To successfully guide two companions through a treacherous dungeon, you must split your attention and navigate both their fates at the same time.” This will be my first time playing it. (I might go into it early to make sure I know the controls ahead of time though, haven’t decided.)

Mindbug is a 2-player card game where each player has the opportunity to steal exactly 2 of their opponent’s 10 cards throughout the course of a game.

On your turn, you either attack with a creature you have in play or play a creature from your hand. When you play a creature, your opponent has a chance to use one of their two mindbugs to steal that creature and treat it as if they played it themself. Mindbugs do not replenish so figuring out what to play when and when to mindbug your opponent is incredibly interesting. I highly recommend the game. (I just bought enough base sets and expansions to have 5 full sets to gift to people.) [Review by Tom Vasel from the Dice Tower]

 

April 2022 Dark Draft Monthly Vods

We had a bunch of good games this Dark Draft monthly, so I put them on Youtube. First video is out now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z94XJ9ZeWC0. The remainder of the videos are scheduled to come out at 9am for the next few days until we either get knocked out or win the tournament. They can be found on my channel in my April 2022 Dark Draft Monthly Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z94XJ9ZeWC0&list=PLsAW_960yJBFrVH6Sfnf7YxFC06P8Gjzu