Command of Nature Review and How to Play

so I did a couple of unboxing videos about command of nature the basic game and the extra two characters the expansion that it comes with uh what doesn't come with it you can get it separately um and someone in the comments asked is this game fun what's uh what's the good and the bad so I thought I'd just do a quick video on the rundown of gameplay just a brief uh summary of game play and what I like about the game and what I don't like about the game uh this is the be hero gaming channel where we talk about all things gaming this is a really easy to setup game and I just barely was able to squeeze everything in here into the camera view here um so we're going to talk about this game and on the channel we talk about other games uh hobbying tips with games that have models with them so if you want to check those videos out those are posted too and we also talk about how to be a hero in real life uh that's just something that's really stuck out to me as I play games and it's really exciting to be a hero and level up and get better which you can do definitely in this game which is a big plus um but once you put the game away has it made you any better of course because you've had a good time with your your family and friends but uh we want to make sure that we're doing things in real life that are going to make us level up as an individual so with that said command of nature you are commanding nature some Elementals and some magic and when you're done playing command of nature don't just command the nature but go out into nature whether it's spring summer fall winter it doesn't matter what season it is get outside and make sure you're doing something in the sunshine uh or just feeling the breeze getting outside the sights and sounds and smells of nature are amazing and they have wonderful healing properties um if you're struggling so with that said let's talk about the game command of nature basically what you're trying to do is you're trying to defeat your opponent's sage and the sage is going to be uh one of your most powerful warriors and you can see the sages pictures on the board here as well and uh once you've defeated your opponent's Sage you are the winner and uh I will talk about first of all the the I can't think of very many drawbacks to this game because is it fun yes have we played it a gazillion times times no we played it a handful of times and we've had a good time almost every time we played with one exception uh as your Elementals are knocked out you can go over here to the elemental market and you can purchase more it doesn't have to be from your faction it can be from any factions you see here there's various factions that are laid out you can use your money here at the end of your turn to buy more Elementals that will go into your discard pile that eventually once your deck runs out you'll be able to reshuffle turn your deck back over and have the potential to draw those Elementals and play them into your formation well the one drawback to the game is that that we experienc is we had a game that went on and on and on because as Elementals were defeated uh my son and I kept buying more of these and just kept filling the slots and some more would get defeated and we'd fill the slots until eventually the the scales got tipped and there was a winner so with that said the the games can uh it says 30 to 60 Minutes on the box but they can kind of go on and on if people are just buying Elementals and they're just filling in the slots so as a tip uh with that said over here in this market you have the opportunity to buy additional attacks instance that you can use on someone else's turn and uh various other cards that will help you in the game I recommend to focus on these because if you get yourself a bunch of really powerful attacks from this Market add those to your deck you'll be wiping out your opponent's Elementals right and left they won't be able to fill them in fast enough before the sages move to the front and defeated so that is one uh tip I'll have is for you guys is is kind of focus on your ability cards here and buy lots of those uh and then if you need a couple of Elementals you can purchase a couple to put in here if you kind of find yourself running thin over here and now the way that works is you'll notice on each Elemental here this is the the hit points up here and this is their uh strength of their attack ability some Elementals will have an ability here at the bottom the basic Elementals will not and let me let me show you here this guy has a has an ability at the bottom the reason why I really enjoy this game is because of the strategy for this um Geo weasel to use his ability he must be in row one he can't be in row two or three okay So eventually you're going to have to move this guy up into Row one if you want to use this this ability that's on his card now uh the onyxx bearer here can use uh maybe her his her ability in row two but not in row one or Row three okay so the strategy comes in where again basic ones don't have an ability but uh the other ones do is getting your Elementals in the appropriate row so that you can use their abilities and also uh protecting them long enough to where they're not going to be knocked out that you can keep their ability going throughout the game as you're playing the game and your Elementals are damaged you're going to put damage tokens on them and the cool thing about all of these tokens is there one on one side and three on the other for all of them and so even the gold is the same way or the coins you have uh singles on one side you flip it over you have a three so it makes it really easy when you're uh adding or exchanging you can just you add two just flip it from one to the three side uh as you're playing the game you can put boosts on your guys which give them a different additional strength add additional attack you can also put shields on your guys which give them uh will reduce the Damage Done to them however however many Shields are on them it will reduce the damage by three or if you have just one it'll reduce the damage by one so as you're playing there's abilities that can allow you to add those boosts and those Shields to your Elementals to protect them in the case that one of your Elementals is knocked out you immediately have to fill the ranks forward so I get to choose one of these two well I'm going to move this it doesn't really matter because they're both the same I'm going to move this guy up and then I get to choose one of these three and move them up okay um because this first and second row always has to be filled if possible now if you're down to one elemental obviously you're just going to have one in the first row but you have to fill these rows up now as the opponent defeats Elementals they're going to move up a level okay and so they're going to take their token and slide it up the the level track there once you get to level four here you can see is highlighted highlighted as well as level six and eight you have a level four six and eight Elemental here that are you're going to add to your discard pile once you get to those respective levels and your level eight guy is really powerful so the cool thing about the game and the another reason why I really like it is because these three guys at the front are are kind of weak they get knocked out quick and so you're going to move up three levels really fast one two three this guy's going to come out and uh As you move other other guys up some of these guys are basic over here some of them have abilities that you're going to be able to add to your ranks as well and so you get guys the weaker guys knocked out pretty quick and this moves up really fast eventually you're going to get up to level eight where you're going to have your Bruiser out here and I'll just show you here the pebble level eight guy I really like he's got an attack power of eight and seven hit points so not very many Elementals stand a chance against the ox and Avenger he also has this ability that can be performed in rows one or two um and then you can see here uh the level six guy is also a little bit more powerful as compared to the basic guys and the Jade Titan as well but once you get to your level eight guy and again when you uncover these they will go into your discard pile and once your deck has run out you'll be able to shuffle those cards up and place them back over here to to form yourself a new deck also as you're buying additional Elementals and additional abilities they will go into your discard pile and then once once your deck runs out again you'll be able to shuffle those and have the chance to draw those from your deck on your turn you have a list here of four basic actions that you can perform on your turn you can summon an elemental from your hand well how does that work at the beginning of your turn you're going to draw five cards and so uh you're going to have Elementals in here you're going to have abilities you can use attacks you can use now you can only summon an elemental if you have a free slot which is usually going to be in row three because as Elementals get knocked out they're going to move up and so this Elemental gets knocked out which by the way if they do get knocked out they are out of the game okay they don't go back to your discard pile and a knocked out Elemental is removed from the game and then I'm going to move these guys up to fill the slots now in my turn one of the actions I can perform you get four action points is I can play an elemental from my hand and fill an empty slot like that is an action point the other thing I can do is play one of my command cards from my hand uh there's various command cards this ritual requires me to have three ele Els that are connected or in other words that are touching these two are connected these two are connected these two are not connected because they're not touching each other there's an elemental in between them if I have three connected Elementals I can perform this ritual which gives me some kind of ability on my turn again this counts as an action point playing an elemental playing a card these red cards do not count as action points but they are used on your opponent's turn in response to their attacks or movement and this one says here that uh you play this card when an El mental in your formation is attacked reduce the damage by one so these red cards are really helpful to have again there's other ones over here you can buy that give you additional abilities to be played on your opponent's turn in response to their attacks and their movements another one of the command cards that you can play are these Attack cards and again you'll notice here this can only be used by an elemental in row one this can be used by an elemental in row one or row two because it's a ranged attack this one you just have to attack from here to here one row away because it's a melee attack so only the guy up front is able to attack the guy in your opponent's Row one and you're going to deal damage each equal to the strength again there's better cards in here you can see this one here you can you can attack from all three rows really cool Attack cards in here they're going to Grant you some awesome abilities for your guys here to knock out your opponent's Elementals to get their leader closer to the front where you can get access to them and attack them and win the game the ranged attack here uh can be used in row one or two and the reason for that is it can attack two rows away no more no less so if I attack from Row one I've got to attack one two rows away if I attack with one of my uh Elementals from row two I have to attack one two rows away you can't attack less than that or more than that it has to be two rows so again those are some of the command cards that you can play from your hand when they are played they will go to your discard pile which again you'll be able to reshuffle and add back to your deck once your deck is empty the third basic action you can perform is to swap the position of two connected Elementals again connected Elementals are ones that are touching so these two guys are touching these two are touching these two are not because there's Elementals in between them so you're not able to swap these positions as well as these two up here so say I wanted to get this guy closer to the front here I could swap these positions and that would take an action point one of my four and then the final action that's basic that you can do is draw a card from your deck you might be getting lean on cards and you think I need an additional card so I'm going to draw a card from my deck uh what I got I got another Elemental but which doesn't help me much cuz I don't have any open slots to fill in there so those are the four basic actions you can perform on your turn is to summon an elemental to play a command card to swap positions or to draw a card from your deck now as you uncover your uh higher level Elementals you can see here there's additional faction Elementals on the board here that are specific to the faction that you choose because these are so powerful you can only use one of these per turn so even though I have three action points left I'm not able to use all three of these I have to pick one and use that one and that's all I can use for that turn is one of these abilities um and they are pretty good is the reason why you want to knock some Elementals out so you can move this token up uncover these more powerful Elementals and get these additional abilities which really pave the way to Victory because you have better abilities better Elementals to play out into your formation uh and it really helps to knock out the rest of their Elementals to bring leader to the front where you can get access to them once you've performed your four action points you are going to get a chance to spend your gold every leader the ability they Grant you is to collect three gold at the beginning of your turn that's what this little Sun means right here is at the beginning of the term um there's additional ways to get gold other characters provide you with gold depending on uh uh tactics in the game and the way you use them but your leader is always going to Grant you three gold at the beginning of each turn so once you've done your four action points you can use your gold to purchase uh additional Elementals or additional abilities you can see here the only difference between this and the one you get is there's a gold value at the bottom the the basic ones this guy's not basic cuz he has an ability the basic ones are really inexpensive the more powerful they are they get really really expensive so it kind of behooves you to save up a little of your gold for when the powerful Elementals come out into play if for some reason you don't like a market I don't like these guys if I don't like these abilities you can spend one gold to swipe these cards and put them on the bottom and draw three new cards just kind of helpful to get a fresh Outlook if you don't like any of the cards that are available to you that is an option that you have available to you uh once you're finished purchasing you don't have to once you're done purchasing Elementals you can discard any amount of cards in your hand you can keep these or you can discard them well I have all these guys out there this guy's not going to help me much I'm going to discard him and then you draw up to five cards this is an interesting uh mechanic of this game because you're drawing cards at the end of your turn rather than at the beginning but the cool thing about that is so I'm going to draw these two cards here here's another instant I drew that I get to use on my opponent's turn so it's nice to have a full hand of cards while they take their turn so you can use cards like this on their turn now as you can see here I only had two cards available to draw so what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to take my discard pile I'm going have to give it a little Shuffle here and uh place it back down here and I draw two additional cards oh there's another instant card and uh I get another Elemental there so that is how you end your turn I now have my hand of five cards I'll turn it over to my opponent there where they will get their three gold at the beginning of their turn from their leader and they'll get to use their four action points followed by buying stuff from uh the markets over here and then they'll discard any amount of cards they want to and draw a hand of five new cards but uh I I don't know that there's many games that you draw cards at the end of your turn but it is one thing I like about this game because it kind of gets you set up for what am I going to do next turn you can start to plan based off of all I know is I have one melee attack so I'm going to start looking over here who's going to be a good melee attacker that I maybe want to move to the front uh or swap positions now keep in mind if you have multiple Attack cards each Elemental can only attack once per turn so if I attack with this Elemental and I have two melee attacks he cannot attack again I'm going to have to swap two guys to attack with the other guy I will say probably another drawback to the game aside from the that the games can uh can uh really really go on and on and on if if you're kind of just going back and forth and nobody's really winning the other thing is is it becomes difficult to keep track of your action points that you only get four of which is a lot if you had two that'd be easy four you you sometimes you lose track what we'll sometimes do is we'll put a couple of these tokens up here and say okay you got four action points okay you use one two three four just to help us along the way if you're playing four player and you you each uh each team has has two uh factions you get six actions instead of four and that becomes even more difficult to keep track of so you really do need to put those those tokens out to pull back as you're taking your action points because six actions can be tricky to track another thing that becomes tricky is who has attacked and who has not and so uh it's not too difficult but sometimes you have to remind yourself when if you have a turn that's taking a long time wait did I attack with this guy already or did I switch these guys I can't really remember there's no way of marking your guys for having attacked uh already one idea that that my son did have is you could put a piece of gold on them if they attacked already because obviously they're going to have these tokens on them but they're not going to have gold on them for any reason so that's one thing you could do is you could throw a piece of gold on there saying this guy has already attacked uh uh this turn so uh again the the things I don't like about the game is that uh maybe it's cuz we were new players we didn't really know what we were doing and that's why it was kind of going back and forth and on and on and on uh but eventually once all uh all the the powerful Elementals came out I was leveled up had all my abilities um The Oxen Avenger came out and uh again this guy is is is pretty stout uh with an eight attack he attacks with an eight and almost any guy is wiped out so uh he was a nice guy to have out uh I eventually was able able to be victorious but I think as we play the game more and get more experience and know what to do the games will go quicker uh once we kind of have a strategy and again one of the strategy is make sure you got some good Attack cards to add to your deck and positioning of your guys I thought this triangle thing looked really weird when I saw on Kickstarter I thought why in the world are in this like triangle formation um but I do think it's really cool because of the abilities that can only be used in certain rows give you a really tactical Advantage depending on how you want to switch your guys and position them and some guys abilities with this sun only happen at the beginning of your turn so if you want this ability to trigger this Elemental has to be in row one or two at the beginning of your turn um other Elementals that have this uh icon here where they show these arrows meaning when something happens this this ability will be triggered so I love the the Tactical aspect of the game it is a lot of fun to try to figure out and you can look over here too and read these guys abilities and think oh you know what uh uh this guy might work really well with my Elementals now keep in mind these guys have abilities that work well with their faction and so if you see a stone Guy come out you might want to think about recruiting him because their ability will work well with your faction that doesn't mean you can't mix it up a little bit there's some things and benefits to that as well but uh that is one thing to keep in mind but you look over here and you see some abilities you think o man I'm going to get that guy but then he goes your discard pile and you got to shuffle him up and uh and draw him later put him into play but it becomes a really cool tactical game on where you're going to position your Elementals and which ones will attack and which ones are going to hold back to to uh protect the leader uh the other thing I like about the game is is these these boost uh tokens and these Shield tokens you can play out that um will really turn the tide of the game depending on who is shielded you're going to put them at the front because they're going to have shields they're going to be able to defend against the other players attacks the Boost are going to give a weak guy an extra powerful attack to knock somebody out so the boosts as well are helpful um but uh oh whoops and also the uh the special faction abilities are unique to the faction so that becomes fun to try a different faction to see if you like that style of play a little bit better um I wouldn't say they're drastically different because there's not a whole ton you can do in the game but they're different enough to be a little bit different flavor when you go from one faction to the other and then again uh a couple more drawbacks of the game it's a little bit tricky to keep track of your four action points your six action points for for four player and um who's made an attack and who hasn't but again that's something you can remedy fairly easily uh but overall is the game fun yes we have a we've had a great time playing this game um just because of of the amount of tactics are involved compared to the other unstable games I think this is one of the most tactical of the other ones or sorry compared to the other ones so um I think uh I know the kickstarters are being sent out and I think this game will be available at retail pretty soon um and so if there's something interest interesting to you you can go check it out um I hope you guys uh if you're playing command of nature you're going to command some nature for a little bit and then uh get out into nature um that's something that's good for us it's good for our bodies it's good for our minds it's good for our motions um to get outside and and spend some time out there so make sure you do that that's a way for you to be a hero in uh the coming days and I hope you guys are looking for other ways that you can be a hero uh not only in your games but in real life uh and until next time take care

Channel: Be A Hero Gaming

Views: 6,047

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Id: 8YpcA7ALoC0

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024