Grimcoven Review - The Night Is Dark & Full Of Terrors....

hey I'm Alex R from board game Co and today I'm reviewing Grim koven by awaken Realms Grim koven is a one to four player I think boss battler I think the closest we can call this over here is a boss battler it feels a bit like a Rog light although I don't know if there are actual Rog light Progressive unlocking elements but either way boss battle or adjacent will get into it we'll explain all of it as we go through this and of course disclaimers or notes this is a prototype all rules and component subjects of change and of course please take into account that I do work for game found this game is being put up by awaken and while two separate companies they do have shared ownership so please take into account any potential bias I will be giving my thoughts opinions score and all that but by all means if you are too concerned about that bias which I think is reasonable then there are plenty of other content creators who have their hands on this game and you can get their thoughts from them you can get other thoughts from them anyways with that let's go and dive into this this is grim koven a one to four player Rogue light sl/ boss battler although again I don't feel fully comfortable with either those terms although I think they do both feel somewhat appropriate the general idea of the game is you're going to have your Hunters over here you're going to have a hunter over here I'm set up with a hunter and a deputy right now which is going to be how you manage solo play but you could go ahead and have multiple hunters and go ahead and Tackle all the enemies in front of you but you're going to have a hunter that's you're going to have or Hunters you're going need to pick you're going to have various minions who are in play in this case I have the uh convicted murderers as my minion of choice you're going to have an elite enemy in play which we have this guy over here and I should note by the way this over here is entirely fictional scenario not the actual scenarios you have in the game and then you're going to have the boss in play so we have a boss and then lastly we're going to have the actual environment itself as well as the various environment cards that will impact the game so for example right now we have the witches tile we have an effect on the river over here we have this little piece over here which is the pile of skulls which has a gameplay effect and so the combination of all those things are basically going to be the scenario that you're diving into a variety of hunters variety of minions Elite enemies the boss and the scenario all those are going to give you the unique scenario that you're actually sitting down and tabling in this one shot game this is not a campaign game this is a one-hot game where you go ahead and Ross the series of this uh Adventure you're basically trying to kill the boss before you die and along the way you are leveling up and powering up your characters progressively while frequently frequently you're going to be leveling up and powering up your characters by taking these cubes over here slotting them into your little uh track over here and getting various unlocks each time you see that unlock symbol which is a lot of unlocks and also when you hit this spot over here you're going to flip to your corrupted side and get a little more powerful as you go while simultaneously swapping out your miniature which is incredibly fun cuz your corrupted Miniatures they just look cooler frankly that's going to be the basic progression of what you're trying to do here the problem is you're dealing with an enemy an enemy who is trying to kill you the entire time and you need to make sure that you're dealing damage to the boss to take that boss out while staying one step ahead of the enemy to that end you're going to go through a sequence of steps every single round where you're going to start by uh checking to see if you have any of these cubes which you can get these cubes from picking them up from various spots on the board from these spots where you're going to spawn those Cubes but you're also going to get it from killing various things in the game anytime you kill an a minion you're going to be going ahead and getting one you can go ahead and track and different cards over here the boss cards the enemy cards you'll see over here this Elite enemy when you kill it you're going to get three of them over here when you kill a boss card you're going to get three as well or four from this one because ultimately you're trying to do is you're trying to kill the boss cards we'll come back to that shortly but when you kill the boss cards that's going to be how you slowly deprive the boss of his health as you try to take him down but meanwhile going back to your character any of those that you've earned you're going to start the turn by placing them into these various spots over here then you're going to go ahead and draw a corruption card the corruption cards over here these are going to give you a range so if you look over here at this card you have a range of how much corruption you have to have to trigger different aspects in it and sometimes they're negative I Say More Often they're negative but they are they can be helpful or good too you're going to look at how much corruption you have in your track you're going to wait up against the card each Hunter doing so and that's going to determine something else that happens gain a Hunker move gain a hunger move two spaces things like that from there you're going to go ahead and reroll all your dice so you're going to start with certain dice in the game based on the equipment you start with so for example over here I have three blue Dice and a purple dice we're going to go ahead and start with and I'm going to use these dice to go ahead and drive my actions we're going to roll these Dice and this is where the game is dice placement puzzle we want to take these dice putting them either on various cards you can see over here I have an upgrade card already we have these basic actions over here and then we have the various cars the equipment you're going to start with and you can place dice into those so for example I can go ahead and place this die here to deal one damage at range two and in line of sight the problem is my hunter's over here there's no one else who is in range two so I can't actually do that fortunately what I can do is I can move so for example I can take this die slot it into the move action move my hunter stat which in this case is two and then move one two picking this up along the way which will already help me start to power up and then go ahead and go ahead and place this over here where I can deal one damage at range to an line of sight and kill this guy because minions by default have only one Health although they do have the possibility of gathering shields on them in fact this minion over here if he's not attacking he's going to be shielding up so you kind of want to kill them as fast as you possibly can that's going to be two of my dice already spent I'm going to gain one of these from having taken him out over there we can go ahead and put them you know in various spots on our board over here and then we can go ahead and try to figure out what to do with our remaining two so for example in this case based on where I am I could try to gather this treasure I could try to walk over here but I might leave that for my Deputy to gather instead so let's say for right now I might just try powering up I'm going to go ahead and gather this and put it on that spot and load a bullet each character in the game is going to have their own way that they operate the Gunslinger in general is frequently loading bullets to be able to do a more and more powerful shots in one single take so right now I'm loading up a bullet which I can discharge whenever I wish to take an attack to be able to power up my attack dealing one additional damage so from there I load the bullet and then my last ey over here I can put in a variety of places but I think for right now we might just go ahead and load a second bullet and again I can discharges that will setting myself up for better and better attacks so that's going to be my first turn I've taken my actions over here not a lot happened but because I do have two of these over here in the beginning of next turn I'm going to slot these in and be able to upgrade which we'll talk about shortly then my Deputy can go ahead and act and I should note strictly speaking what you're supposed to be doing is your alternating actions taking two actions back and forth between the characters in the game but you're going to go ahead the deput is going to start with these markers over here slightly simplified board a slightly simplified card although they will still upgrade themselves and we'll talk more about upgrading soon so maybe we go ahead and have this guy do I want to try to get this guy I could move two maybe I'll Sprint I might move Sprint going over here moving one two three my move status two but I'm going to move three one two three taking this treasure now keep in mind I do know what the boss is going to do you can see their current turn and their next turn coming up at any single point but I'm going to go ahead get take this treasure and I can heal four or I can go ahead and gain two of those I think I'm going to go ahead and gain two corruption because I think that's going to really help me power up and it's worth it the deputy does power up a little slower which does make it a little less satisfying but we'll come back to that and then I'm going to go ahead and do an attack I'll deal one damage in range 0 to one which means I'm going to kill this guy taking this guy out and gaining another corruption so I'm starting to clear the board of these minions which is great until they come back because they will come back that's going to be my turn at that point the enem is going to take their turn they're going to take the turn following a specific 1 2 3 4 five step first you're going to look and see if there's any event that you need to resolve right now is first turn of the game there isn't from there we're going to go ahead and activate the minions all minions on the board are going to follow their little activation they usually have a kind of a if then kind of situation like they might be able to do something in which case they do if they can't they go to the next action in this case they are looking to see if there's any enemies within range three I believe within range 0 to three in this case there aren't no enemies are in range to 0 to three we can travel through portals on Sprint actions but the enemies don't have that option so for right now they're just going to instead Shield up so I'm going to go and put these on the board I will note the Miniatures do have little Shield holders I'm just putting on the board so you can track it a little better so you can go put over here you can track it in the shield holder and then go ahead and have that two shield on them over there well if it will slot into there there anyways that's going to be the way the minions operate they either attack or they Shield up and again different minions might have different activation sequences from there you go to the elite enemy where the elite enemy is going to activate this guy's over here he's trying to get around to us as well and he's going to move two right now because he can't go closer to us each space on the board can hold up to four models over there and that's going to be his action he's closing the distance but right now we do have a little time which is great cuz right now we're currently at our weakest we need to power up in the game then from there you're going to go have the boss taking action the boss is going to look at his card this says focused move two spaces focus is the idea that in the game you can deal damage to a boss card for one of two reasons if I deal eight damage to the boss then I go ahead and kill that boss card which is great because killing the boss card is an essential part of actually winning the game so trying to deal damage to the boss card to be able to take it out is a big deal because you're going to get powered up you're going to get corruption for it and it's also the boss is going to have a little number of cards once you take them all out and deal with the final attack card that's how you kill them it can be hard it can take time and process and dedication to really power up your character across the course of this adventure while surviving everything the game throws at you so you are trying to deal enough damage to your boss card to actually take it out that would be the ideal in lie of that though there's still a reason sometimes to deal at least one damage per Hunter right now as a two- Hunter game if I deal two damage to the boss card I'm going to ignore any focused abilities basically the boss is under pressure and he can't operate the way he IDE wants to so we'd ignore that over there so over here Focus move two spaces in this case he's going to he's going to move two spaces then move two spaces again he's really running around the board attack each hunter in range zero to one from the boss with three dice so over here in this case he can just go ahead and move over here to close the distance he can go ahead and roll three dice over here and then you're going to look at his card to see what those dice do in this case we have one of each symbol over here which means you're actually going to activate all of this dealing two damage then teleport the attacked Hunter to a space with the closest tornado so going to deal two damage to this guy and then move him over there we're going to put some markers down over here to mark that we are dealing damage to that Hunter over here then we're going to go ahead and deal two damage for each shield on the attacked Hunter fortunately he didn't have any any Shield so we don't take anything and then just does two more damage alone so we'll place that one with a three and we're already at four damage out of our 14 over here which is something we need to keep track of as we go from there the boss card is going to be discarded we're going to go ahead and put another one over there and reveal the next boss card as well but step five over here is resolving this event card which I'm realizing I didn't take the stande out over here but there's going to be a little thing over here which you're moving from here you're going to start in the center you're going to draw a new event then activate all tornadoes spawn minions next stage you're going on a cycle where every round you do one of those things which basically means every four turns you're revealing either a new stage revealing new minions activating tornadoes drawing new events there's bad things that will be happening to you but they're happening every four rounds so there's an incentive to take out the minions in the game because you're powering up through it and you're removing threats from the board just understand that more minions are going to be spawning every single new minion stage that's basically the Arc of how this game play plays there are other things to get into but just to focus on the general overview of how this operates is you are trying to gather various corruption across the board you're trying to kill various things anything from basic minions to Elite minions to the boss cars themselves because that's how you power up gaining corruption yourself to be able to continuously power up which is one thing we are going to show you over here because at the start of your turn if you do have corruption you're going to slot it into the spots and then you're going to draw two cards from your attack deck and there is a specific Deputy deck for the AI characters over here we're going to go ahead and draw two cards I'm going to look at them and then either I grab one more card which gives me a new way to place dice in the game or alternatively I put these both on the bottom of the deck and instead I go ahead and take a new diey from the pool being able to add a new D to the game to be able to activate different abilities so for example over here this character might want that astral D over here which is the one I just grabbed to able to activate this particular ability that blender bus can be very strally powerful in the right situation but I might need more purple dice to be able to reliably activate it or blue dice for the shield element instead so over here an upgrade action basically has you either adding a new card to your repertoire or alternatively adding a new die both of which can be incredibly helpful usually you're going to be doing some combination of gathering new cars and new dice to be able to drive your action economy as f as forward as you possibly can to be able to take everything out that's the basic Arc of the game Deal damage take things out gather corruption power up hopefully try to outpace the boss because the boss is constantly dealing damage to you and you are in a tough spot here you need to be mindful of the boss cars you need to be mindful of what the enem is doing how they're operating inorder order so that you can stay one step ahead of them and ultimately survive long enough to take out the boss because that is not an easy process you really need to power up to be able to deal damage the final boss cards can be devastating in what they do and there is a final card once you've once you've taken out all these cards the boss will either Shuffle when the cards are gone over here and you reveal this card you're either going to shuffle all the cards that are currently in the discard put them back over here and continue the cycle or if this is the only card left you're going to reveal it dealing with whatever kind of damage you have to deal with here which again they can be incredibly hard to deal with and that's kind of what's going on in Grim koven it's a boss battler you have hunters you are leveling up and powering up across the two to three hours of the scenario while you try to stay one step ahead of your opponent dealing from drawing cards upgrade cards from a very large deck of upgrade cards that's going to give you a lot of different ways to build out and develop your Hunter while dealing with the unique circumstances that this scenario comprises of from Hunter to minions to Elite minions to scenario to train effects to the boss themselves and all of that and with that let's go ahead and dive into my review starting off with ease of play ease of play is not the worst on this one now I will note in general I found that awaken we's prototype rules are not always the best or easiest to get through and I did have some questions on these as well that I have to reach out to the developer on as usual I hope these things will be cleaned up in a final game this is a prototype all rules components up to change and all that but definitely I still had the usual questions I do with an awake Ms game but ultim I'd say that this was one of the at least you're comparing it to like their big box Isis Vanguard tainted Grail all that this is definitely an easier one to get up and running on but still dealing with a chunk of rules to get through and understand all the the setup and terrain and all these things and the scenario stuff all that stuff to get through as far as the game time game time can easily run that 2 hours plus range I believe they say it's a 2 to three hour experience and definitely at least if you're not dying that is if you're dying it can go quicker if you're not dying it can easily run in the two to in the two to three 2our plus range and easily hit those three hours if you are someone who likes to think through your actions take your time process how to Mid Max everything because sometimes you need to do that to be able to survive so this game can take a time like this is not for someone who wants to sit down for an hour and take down a challenge that's not what this game is I don't know if they plan on concluding scenarios that might have that easier time frame length whatever it is but right now it is I think in that 2 to three hour range as far as what I like don't like and can see other is not liking starting off with what I like which to begin with is the Miniatures in general the Miniatures and the aesthetic production I I generally like awaken Realms games in terms of their their their production but these particular Miniatures I really enjoy like I have a whole unboxing you can check it out I really enjoy the aesthetic of these Miniatures my hunter right now like the hunter I've been using a lot because this one over here easily my favorite character both in the way he loads up his weapons which is a lot of fun to unleash like a six damage attack when you have enough cards on the table but also just these sculps over here I find them incredibly satisfying I love the aesthetic of this game so overall a fan of that the art the aesthetic and all that past that I'll say as far as the gameplay I like the sheer amount of character development and powers and abilities that happen in this this is a game that's all about leveling up it's all about drawing new cards and finding new combinations of how you're going to build out and develop your character every single game and that I just find a satisfying experience because I like powers and abilities and this game does that I do have some complaints we'll get to uh in the what I don't like section but overall the sheer amount of how often you are upgrading Gathering new dice Gathering new cards leveling up your variety of characters in this just make it a satisfying experience if you like that Arc of getting more stronger getting more powerful while you take down an overwhelming force and the force does feel overwhelming the force does feel like it's very much something you can't get past the idea of being able to deal eight damage to a boss card seven damage to a boss card to take it out cuz you only have two turns to do so you can attack the card while on the next turn phase but then by their time it goes here and once it Cycles out you lose all damage you've dealt to the card so you really have to be able to take it down in a reasonable time frame and when you're dealing with enemies coming at you from all sides when you're just barely trying to stay alive dealing with the minions the elites and then the boss themselves it just feels overwhelming and so that Arc of feeling overwhelmed the feeling like you can't make it but then actually powering up I do find that kind of experience satisfying the feeling of of getting over the hump of getting over the part where you can't survive into the part where you're able to get everything done and I like the fact that the game is very deterministic you are rolling dice in this game but it's a dice placement game you're not rolling for the attack the enemies roll for the attack so what hits you is a little different but there's a lot of deterministic ability in this game between your own actions and how you're going to use the dice you've already rolled towards certain abilities without having to worry about like you know will you hit will you miss you simply take the actions that you're taking and then you also don't even know what the enemies are going to do you know how each enemy is going to act and while that might make it a game that's not as much for you if you like that chaos or the uncertainty if you like the ability to plan and optim opiz around what's going to happen this game definitely gives it to you as you go through it and there's a good balance of of crowd control and actually dealing with the Enemy who's there the minions represent just enough of a threat that you're often in this Arc of taking out the minions which helps power you up which is more satisfying but then eventually you get into a cycle where you have a turn or two and also once you take down the elite as well because usually the arc or at least for myself the arc I found myself in is taking out a bunch of minions to make my life a little easier then trying to focus on the elite to get him out of the game entirely and then from there taking down the boss knowing that the minions are to be popping back up every four rounds and so that gives you a good Arc of being able to deal with the small inconsequential threats to power you up while also giving you time to focus in the boss which you will need to do so in order to actually win the game and then I like the sheer variety of everything the sheer variety of how you build a scenario I like the fact that it's not a campaign game it is a single shot game that's going to give you an opportunity to have a large variety of how a game will play out from the scenario to the hunters to the equipment to the minions to the boss to the elites to everything about the game changes up game game which means you can you can realistically have a single shot game that feels drastically different every single time you dive into it while still giving you that Arc of character progression that can sometimes make Campaign games so satisfying but doing so in a single shot session granted two to three hours of a single shot session as far as what I don't like in the game first of all the early game dice can definitely not be satisfying and that's even worse when you're playing the solo I played this both solo and two-player and solo is worse I do wonder if there might need to be some balancing around the deputy characters I find that there's less less growth as far as how they operate they're a little simpler to activate which is nice but I think in the future and playing the solo I would exclusively play it with two full Hunters as opposed to one and one I just find the full Hunter experience just more satisfying I do like what they're going for with the deputies I like the full Hunter experience more satisfying but anyways as far as the early game dice it can definitely feel tough early game late game it's not that big a deal to go ahead and have a few dice that don't work out well you even have the opportunity to go ahead and spend a tactic to go ahead and roll your dice the problem is when it's early game and you're only rolling a few dice spending a full die to roll feels just as punishing as getting a bad roll and especially early game when you have those minions crowding in on you and that's when it's most beneficial to be able to take out you know three four minions in the first round that can be incredibly punishing to not have a rooll go your way early game later game not as much of an issue early game definitely an issue also say spending a die to roll see feels so punishing going back to what I said spending that die to deal with a bad roll is just not a satisfying experience and you will need I will say as far as one of the things that I did deal with as far as prototype and we'll come back into some final thoughts is I do find the prototype was definitely a little messy as far as dealing with things like just the sheer amount of cards and tokens like cleaning this up to go ahead and deal from one boss to the next boss the sheer amount of like all my cars are just in a giant stack this is very much a prototype issue and should hopefully not be an issue in the final game but I do try to cover what issues I've experienced along the way just in case uh so hopefully not an issue but definitely has a lot of card decks to deal with and I think it does need a good insert good card management to be able to make the experience as smooth as possible and then lastly the thing I touched upon a little bit earlier is as much as I enjoy the the variety of card upgrades each character has they have nice thick decks of card upgrades so that in theory you'll never have to have the same combination of how you build out a character unless you are playing this game an absolute ton but what I do find interesting or not necess interesting what I do find not as satisfying is I think the variety of how different those cards feel I didn't feel that as strongly as I'd like very often I'll draw a bunch of cards and feel like okay I could take this one or this one it's which symbols meaning sometimes it's very helpful or fun or satisfying to get a good car that feels like it works into my engine and times it feels like I'm just drawing a bunch of cars that the only difference between them is which symbol activates it which just didn't feel as interesting I love the idea of growing up growing the hunters I love the idea of developing them as you try to figure out different arcs or Pathways of how to build each character as you go through the game but to me the thing I definitely want is I want each Hunter to feel interesting and clever and have combinations of cars that really augment each other well and if you're playing as a hunter like if you're playing as the Gunslinger right now half the cards are going to be ways to load ammo which is both helpful and useful but I wish there were more cars that did different things that were more interesting as far as how they operate have a car that it's like you know hey if you unload three bullets in a single turn you get to go ahead and deal an extra three damage boom suddenly that card is augmenting and building off the things you've been doing I didn't feel that sense of cohesion from their decks just yet I think there's a lot of potential to the way they can grow how cool a character feels across that two to three hours of play as far as I can see others not liking the game's hard the game definitely feels hard which again makes it rewarding when you actually win but this is a game where you can play for 2 to three hours and then lose at the end you have to be okay with that kind of experience at least right now now and again I don't know if there have plans for like difficulty scenario like difficulty grading for scenarios or bosses or enemies and things like that I think it's a good idea to have that for players who want different things but right now I would just say it's hard doable but hard there's also a smaller concern around replayability aspects there is a whole secret deck of things you can do like right now in this witches hut depending Which choice over here you do you're going to go ahead and read a secret and have an in-game consequence once you've played the game you'll know more what those things do I don't think it's a huge issue but if you really want everything fresh just noting some things are going to be like I know if I go to the witches hut the thing that's better for me this game is to discard instead of well not discard to speak to the witch instead of stealing her items or whatnot that's going to be a small little thing to note as far as final thoughts on this one I really like the core structure of grim koven I really like it the the overall core structure I really like I had a few complaints I think the biggest ones for me are going to be what I think are prototype issues the sheer level of card management token management deck management all that stuff I do think that the game experience will be smooth would be smoother or more streamlined with a good insert helping you along the way for me the biggest thing that holds the game back a bit is that as much as I like the overall Arc I didn't get that sense yet of cohesive I don't know coolness is the right word I'm looking for that sense of how interesting a character build can feel as you combine a bunch of cards and maybe I just haven't seen the right combinations I haven't fully gone through every single card yet and so it's possible I haven't yet seen that but the overall sense I got was as much as it's satisfying to build a character I guess for me it often felt like choosing another die was just as good if not better until I was overwhelmed by by Dice and just needed more cards whereas I ideally want to feel that the only time you ever really grab dice is because you just need to to manage your economy I want the cards to feel that much cooler I always want to want the cards even if I have to take a dice I want to want the cards so that's the main thing that I want different as far as rating on this one currently for me it's a four out of five I overall overall enjoy the Arc of it and I'm looking forward to the final game as far as other game recommendations first of all another game that has that similar in-game Arc in development but it's very ambitious a great game if you can actually sit down and table it highly recommend checking out Mage Knight Mage Knight the board game phenomenally well done game that gives you that sense of progression as you go through what's not a two three hour experience but what can easily be a 3 to 6 hour experience as you go through it but is incredibly satisfying and then on a similar note if you're looking for that in-game progression although again it can run a little long depending I'd say too many bones from Chip Theory games is another one that very much gives me that in-game session not a campaign game but the in-game Arc of just powering up as you try to deal with overwhelming odds and an eventual boss in a very different Arc of the way it structures it but overall very similar feelings of satisfaction as you build and upgrade your characters across the course of the experience in any case until next time I'm Alex R from board game Co I hope you enjoyed this video and as always I hope you have a good one

Channel: BoardGameCo

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Id: r6HntsHzV1k

Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024