How it Plays: Merchant's Cove Gameplay and Review

hi welcome to ant lab games where we give you our real impressions while we play i'm your host anthony and i'm francis and today we present merchants [Music] merchants cove is an asymmetrical worker placement game meaning each character has a different set of actions with varying strategies roles and experiences the way that the oracle plays is essentially like a roll and write my basic my innkeeper basically creates makes beds in in the different rooms will this thematic game be exciting enough for two heavy gamers i'm not done because i get to go again no you don't because i'm behind you oh yeah just keep going or will it miss the boat on strategy most importantly will this be the first asymmetrical game to stay on our shelf we tend to not enjoy asymmetrical games find out soon as we show you how it plays welcome to merchants cove we're at merchants cove we are so what is merchant's cove well we're merchants and we're on a cove and we're in a cove yes we are looking to well emergency cove is like one of the most famous places in the five realms to sell wares right so boatloads of adventurers come to the cove sorry this is actually from the manual yes i didn't know if you were talking about like some movies i'm not just making this out so they are actually uh super convincing like it was how did you i had you convinced yeah because i just i read it in the book when we were learning the game so we are merchants competing to sell the most of our wares and goods to the adventures coming to buy our stuff essentially yes especially yes so take a look at the table we'll show you the setup real quick we'll show you the characters we chose to play with because this is an absolute crazy asymmetrical game yes and there were seven characters to choose from we got to choose two of them so yeah um what are we doing here so we have the merchant's code which looks exactly like a cove which has six boats that are going to be ferrying adventurers in to be you know taking part in all the all the wares we'll be producing so for this playthrough uh we need to show a separate character we'll go over them in a minute but let me just go over the board setup yes real quick first so like i said at the top of the board we have six empty boats which we will be filling as soon as we kick this game off in the center of the map we have the town square where we have our town spoke offer unemployed and ready for hire they are ready for hire here we have our different faction halls so we have our warriors we have our bards we have our wizards and we have our nobles and over here we have our rogues our little thieves den yeah so that's bad place uh down here we have our supply of corruption cards which are very bad and you don't want any of those uh here we have our rogue card which kind of gives us a little bit of setup for the rogues for the play actual variability for the game yes we chose the most basic one so that had the least amount of variability for this place here just to keep it simple right um so all it did was tell us for setup that we're going to put four rogues in in the adventure bag uh two rogues would be starting in their lair and any rogues drawn from the bag during a load the boats phase we will be putting directly into the boat so no special rules there but that's it here's our time track where we are actually going to be taking actions and i think we're going to want yeah the ai goes first so we start at the number one and then we go from there perfect we'll explain that as we play it's not nothing important right now but i am the blue player we have a ai called the peddler yes who will be um taking actions and creating goods and selling goods um based on this ai deck which uh oh man i was just shuffling i just threw it across the table but i will be putting this out will be it will be telling us what this ai is going to do um it's set on easy it's not set on a normal it's not set on hard i didn't want us to get beat that badly and show how terrible we were at this game but that's it i think it's good that's the quick overview we are again competing to make the most gold so the gold track is around the world more merchants after all that's it player with the highest gold at the end of the game wins and we'll explain the round as it goes but i think we should just go over our characters real quick yeah because that's going to take some time yeah and just explain as we play yeah as per normal fashion okay sounds good i'll go first so i have selected the oracle to play with um they come with these really cool little minis that we have not yet painted because we've got a long line of things to paint but um we do we have long things to play first so but anyway she is sitting here with a whole bunch of actions to take now the way that the oracle plays is essentially like a roll and right except instead of rolling a bunch of dice and taking actions you're going to be rolling these runes so every turn that i take i'm going to actually have to roll this variety like a little bone meatball i've got a voodoo doll got some other good stuff i'm going to roll them in this divination dis dish divination dish hopefully not put them all on one side of the dish i will have to work on that and then that'll tell me what actions i can take without going into these too much because we'll go over them as we play i have the opportunity to create some tomes which i'll be able to sell to folks and i'll also be taking their readings doing horoscopes and uh trying to make predictions about what adventures are going to come in so uh that's essentially what i do i i don't want to go into that too much okay you'll see up at the top here i have uh this this little rectangle of four spots and as do you yes with some different icons that's actually those are kind of our uh job postings if you will so that's where we will be able to recruit townsfolk into to do uh even uh more actions yep so all right so the character i chose for this playthrough is the innkeeper yes after much ado much to do so there were a lot of choices i thought the innkeeper was so unique and so different that you know and so was the oracle like these are the two these two characters are so different than all the other ones um that come with the game uh that i thought it would be really cool to kind of play this one and showcase it i think it's just different it's different than what's out there i will mention that these two both do come with the expansion they are expansions yeah so these are not part of the base game yeah um which again it's cool to kind of show difference you know what what you can do to expand this game but um my base my innkeeper basically uh creates makes beds in in the different rooms that will be servicing different adventures coming in making drinks and trying to sell drinks the the general flow of the game is is to have your merchant create small and large goods to sell to the same type of characters that come in right so if a red warrior comes in you sell the red warriors red items red items right that's how this works there's red green yellow and blue those four colors um the difference with the inkeeper is i do not create any large goods instead i create beds in those beds i will score based on loyalty of my customers which i'll show you later as well as matching the um the boats that come in for that particular player class the character class and the adventurers that's it i'll go into more detail later but the way the turn orders go is that whoever's disc is the furthest behind or on top of the stack that's furthest behind will go right you take a production action where you're actually going to produce your goods by doing that you're going to move your character to any free spot so we all start on this activate your uh your hired help which we don't have any right now so it kind of makes sense but you can't ever take the action you're already on you always have to move to another space it doesn't matter which one you just have to pick one each space costs time that's all that's the currency in this game yeah is time and that'll push you forward on this sort of time track once you take your action you uh you fulfill the action so like if i wanted to make a bed i'll make a bed it'll cost me one or two time i'll move my my token once i made my bed um and then my turn's over if at any point a player token passes one of these uh little meeple symbols you will actually draw from the adventurer bag and bring a an adventure out and put it in a boat of your choice um up here this is a double one this is for the three player game setup just so you know why that's there this signifies market phase um it will trigger sooner if the boats if the boats all come in before then which they usually do these mice will go over them later you have to worry about them this is three rounds so once the four boats come into dock that signifies market phase we all sell our goods that ends the round three of those and the game's over yes but it moves along pretty quickly once we stop blabbing yeah uh so let's i didn't even know you didn't explain well why don't we why don't we fill the boats then we'll explain it yeah we'll do that while we jump in so the start of the of the round is called the arrival phase yeah and you just go down here and you look at it so you've got the arrival phase you've got the production phase which is your actions you've got the market and then you've got cleanup yeah and then you do it again so uh at the arrival phase you're bringing two guys per boat okay so warrior a big warrior boat over there there's another one swan boat wow what really did you shake this bag i've been shaking it the whole time all right uh lots and lots this was not warriors it's my prediction so well that's gonna be tough all right so we've got some interesting things once a boat fills they come in and then whoever fills them gets to pick which dock the difference with the docks you understand is this far left dock the pier you can only sell large goods right these guys two boats worth are coming in uh you can only sell small goods to them over here you can sell small or large but you get a corruption for doing that so that's like black market yep um this here is the peddler and i'll explain this right this second because the peddler is the ai for this game and during the arrival phase you have to draw four adventurers to put in his pool because he's going to be using these to fill the boats all right so that's done so that's the arrival phase everything's set up he's actually gonna go first yes i'll do his turn and then perfect i will take mine so we don't know what he's gonna do yet so you take the deck and we're actually gonna bring out two cards and whatever is in the middle so these two halves of these cards is what triggers so he's gonna do time you go from top to bottom so times one he's gonna make a large um good yes sorry so i have actually um the alchemist is the good so you just need to pick um goods for from another unplayed character at this point so um so he's gonna make one large yellow good so it's gonna be some kind of yellow potion so that's gonna go in his offer um it's gonna cost him one time okay so he's gonna go here and that's it that's his turn so this goes off to the discard this slides over one and the next card's gonna come out there and then it'll activate his next action perfect um so the way this goes it's whoever's furthest behind or on the top of the pile the friends behind gets to go next which happens to be me oh the first game i haven't gone first that's good it's weird that's really good all right so i will i'm going to make a bed action so let's get some let's get my in ready to start thinking about taking in client taking in what's your in called i don't know i haven't named it mathematically maybe usually uh so i i i probably should have thought of it yeah i would have thought you would have had something oh sorry i'll think of something before this playthroughs out okay so i'm going to place a so i'm going to take this build make a bet action so i can make a green or red bed it's going to cost me one time to do that so i'm going to put that here and then i could have put it in any one of these rooms and i just have to think about what the best location would be for this bed you know what i think i'm going to put it here instead because i have double chance because no matter which boat comes in if i get one of those into the middle um i think i stand the biggest chance of because it's not about selling different size goods right because it's about who can you who's what's where's the most what chance to the most amount of people it's the most chance all right so that's one time i'm gonna move my little timer up once and my turn now it's purple okay um all right i see what you did all right so i may want to all right cool so before i can even decide what i want to do i have to roll these roll the bones fantastic fun trying not to roll into one half of my divination dish okay so actually it's interesting so this is how this works uh my little fuji man fell outside uh he goes into the closest half and that obviously he only has one side but just stays on the same thing there so okay so i've got a bone and my voodoo doll on one half of the dish which is not a combination that lets me do anything at all um and then i've got two dice and a token a coin that's flipped up to the corruption card side it's a token of appreciation i think which i would really like to not use right now so um well well all right so kind of well this is kind of crap well you know what i might do instead i'm just going to do something that doesn't require any tokens and i'm going to go here i'm going to recruit okay what do you want i want this guy okay so i'm gonna take this warrior uh this is gonna cost me whatever's underneath here so it's gonna be a corruption card which i'm gonna take oh it's not even a good one and one time which is going to bump me up to the top of this stack and then i can employ him anywhere after also getting his bonus which is a small red good so that goes there and i could put him here and just get rid of a corruption card when that triggers not right now but yeah that gives me the opportunity to do that or i could do this and that lets me draw two things that's pretty good i may do that all right so i'm going to do like this they're all very good they're all very good and very powerful so okay all right you spent your time i did you get to go again i get to go again because i'm on the top of the stack so let's see hope for a better roll any more good energy into these you do oh man that's better anyway all right so i got a 4 on this side and all good stuff oh interesting i could actually i got a 4 and it did land with my bone so i could do my star charting mm-hmm [Music] i could do i could do that maybe i'll maybe i'll do that with my bone and that guy instead of the i could do my voodoo too so i'll explain both of these since i'm i'm thinking about both of them right now so for this voodoo doll this is actually my divination and i can do a prediction and try to predict who's going to come out of the adventure bag and that's that's pretty good actually um or i could just kind of straight up get this so maybe i'll do that so i'll do this four and this bone and i'll take this action for two because the thing is if i take this action that's only one time which bumps me here which gives me the opportunity to potentially do something else you know what i mean i know you like the slow play you get as many turns as you can you know i like to get as many turns as i can this is basically a rondelle by the way which i want to talk about because i usually you know how i feel about rondelles they would be dizzy but i like this one um i just don't know all right i'll just go with this i'm just going to do this anyway boom so i will play it that's good fast play um so i get to star chart for four because that's what number came up on my die and the way this works is i'm trying to encapsulate a one by one square or a two by one square twelve ohm rectangle and get a corresponding good either small good or a large tome i have a corruption cross in the middle which has some lines that i could use to complete something that i want to build but that will gain me a corruption card for using it ideally i want to enclose a full color if i enclose two colors that gets me absolutely nothing but could could be strategic in the future so right now i'm just gonna do this i'm gonna go one two three four boop like that okay four and i get a small red oops okay and that costs you how many times it costs me two times wow and i get to bring in adventures okay oh it's a guy it's a guy it's a rogue where is he going i'm gonna go right there nice that's a bad boat all right so it looks like it happens to be my turn again i'm gonna go down here and this is how this works i'm going to make a drink so i will take a drink for whatever color bed is in that room uh and i'll put it in my offer and i will be able to sell that to one of the two peers that takes small goods when they come in and that's going to cost me one time oh look at that so it is now the ai's turn so he is simply going to draw the next card okay and he's going to get a good two wow he's going for yellows like big time which is not really wise considering it doesn't have a lot of stuff out here um all right it's gonna cost him two time wow one two so now he passed he's going to take one of his uh characters now so he the way he it works here is he's going to um pick the farthest right good and try to match that color with with one of his meeples down here doesn't have any matches so he's never going to hit the yellow because there's no dudes so um if he would have had a rogue that would trump it but he doesn't so we're going to take a green um and we'll put it here so left side of the board uh towards the middle okay start here so no it would be oh yeah towards the inside yeah so that would be the inside so it's either inside or outside left or right side right so that's what he does this goes there the slides over he's done okay all right so his the ai is very simple he just yeah he's a very easy even though he's building a lot of yellow goods it doesn't really help him but whatever so he's pretty intelligent yeah well we'll see if he pulls off a big play no he usually does so hopefully we can stifle him so it's actually back to me which is great i know um what i could do is actually i want to make another bed and i'm going to go up here and make another red bed and put it in this room it cost me two times one two and i'm gonna have to pick see this is why i didn't want to do that two-time action because now i'm buried at the bottom of this pile yeah red really even better i'm gonna finish this boat get one of them in get in here done i like that okay so now i'm done okay it is ai again yes we just keep keeps it going all right so he's got an one-time instant red or warrior faction sponsor so he's gonna get one gold for however many warriors are in the faction house there is one so he gets one gold uh that's going to cost him two times wow not smart ai yeah that was a pretty bad move on your part guy boom and he actually gets to play another again he's going to pull a dude it's going to go well it was it was pushed over here right it was like this so it's going to go right side interior so this blue guy is going to go here ah okay yep okay so he is done and now it's the purple now it is do my horoscopes these boats are filling though let me tell you what both of our fillings they are filling oh that was a good rule that was very close if i ever roll into one side of the dish everything in one side which happens a lot i get a question corruption card um okay so i have a four voodoo four two voodoo and bones um yikes um that action is going to take a lot of time i would like to start marking some of these x's and stuff but yikes i can't do the star chart again because i'm already there okay i guess i'll do this voodoo guy down here for one time we'll start there right and i'll do four with my voodoo so the way that this works is i get to mark off a number of these meeple silhouettes um equal to the number on the die so i've got four right now so i go one two three four poop and i have now four chances of adventures being pulled to guess the correct color basically so i'm going to guess right now what color adventure is going to come out over the next like four pulls and let's see all the red out there probably not gonna pick red um i may say green i don't see any green out so um i'm gonna mark off all of these that are not green so just so that i remember that this active divination represents green and i'm gonna hope that we end up pulling some green okay so that was one time that was one time so you go again i go again roll again roll the bones too many bones all right yikes okay so i have a three and a three i have a bone i could do that again one two three oh that actually might not be bad but again it's putting me right there and then over here i have my voodoo and a tree so i could fill in one of these which this all this does is mitigate my my die rolls so i can cross out one of these um a la like any roll and write to mitigate uh one of my die rolls and that only cost me one so it would be kind of silly not to do that i think he's one oh he's orange oh yeah i'm sorry it looks like kind of gray it does i picture him being very gray all right so i'm going to do that um and i have the tree on my coin right here so that's not going to cost me or give me a corruption card so i'll do this how many times is that actually it's one oh all right it's like and no corruption no corruption be silly not to take it but that action oh you didn't on the other side yeah the truth exactly okay but i am gonna bring out an adventurer for that exciting what is it going to be it's great wow you nailed it yes yes yes yes you predicted okay so i did i predicted it so what i will do then is maybe i should put him in this swan boat yeah i kind of want to put him in the swan boat because then i can bring this boat into dock and what i get to do now because my divination was correct is i get to circle these three or i can cross them out or whatever you want to do but i'm basically like spending then you circle all four of them no because i only need to cash in three times three yeah uh to get this large good so i will get a large green good to put on my tray cool and that was it that was it right because that's my divination so now i'm not done because i get to go again no you don't because i'm behind you oh you just keep going this is how it works you don't get to keep taking turns that's how this game works that's crazy see how she goes if you don't if you don't watch it for a minute it's before we started this game not this game before we started playing like this game he has to understand the player that i'm playing the character that i'm playing completely he's never played the oracle but you have to understand how it plays i have to show him how how we can teach you how it plays if we don't know how it plays well yeah i was right i was saying it's more about checking me all right so well it's all about checking you all right i'm going to come down here and i'm going to make another drink because i need to get my red my red booze going uh that's gonna cost me another one and i'm gonna bring in a new adventurer and we have yellow oh he's going right here and this boat's coming coming in oh my goodness that is so many red a lot of warriors coming in sorry peddler whose turn is it oh it's my turn again look at that look at that i think i'd like to oh so i don't know see the thing is i don't know what bed to make yeah on the right hand side i decided yeah that's a little worrisome yeah we don't really know what we're doing yet at least not yet so i can hold off on that for now so what i think i'm going to do is i'm going to come down and i'm going to recruit who do i want which is funny because it's almost like like you're building beds is you predicting what adventures are going to come out similar to how my divination works exactly all right so i'm going to recruit somebody all right i'm going for this guy so his instant action he's expensive too i can't get him off the board i don't have any nails all right so his instant action is i get to remove a dude from a boat let me get rid of this rogue and put him back in the bag um and he is going to who will he what is his new job well i could either make him a bartender i can make him a housekeeper i can make him a um bouncer uh yeah or security um i think i'll make him i think i'll make him a housekeeper for now this is ooh you know what um yeah i'll make a mask i just just like thematically i just love how in this game like i have this like giant warrior as my astrologist why not he's got he's like in tune so that's gonna cost me corruption yeah and two time one two so i'm gonna bring another person out and it is yellow so we will put that yellow in that boat so this was not correct then good sorry um there you go okay so it is now your turn now it's actually your turn it's now my turn what are you doing oh no i think that counts that counts wherever here's the thing when it lands i think i explained this before when it lands outside you have to put it in the closest yeah that's everything nothing landed oh it looks like you're getting a corruption card i mean the nice thing about it is that you have everything in one side of the dish so you can literally do any action that you want to um i have a four and a two just so you all know these these corruption cards at the end of the game are worth minus one gold for every road in the thieves den so right now they're worth minus but some of them do have like i can show this because this one does some of them do have like faction markers on the bottom but those usually come with two symbols of corruption hey i'm trying to look on the bright side there's always a bright side um okay i could do another prediction for one right you could i would like to see i like to do these but the horoscopes are so weird because you have to like it has to be like a four three two one you know what i mean um and you get this stuff which is really cool good stuff yeah it is the good stuff but it's also two-time action so um which isn't great so i think i'll do i'm just gonna do my divination again uh for four try to get another color huh i'm gonna try to guess another color and i will guess i mean green was doing well yellow okay it wouldn't have a lot of blue either i'll do blue this time okay so my prediction is for blue let me move her down here because i'm doing this okay and that costs me one time all right and now it is his turn oh it is his starting what is you don't get to go again you don't get to just keep going all right so he's making a blue item this time very nice smart well not really well but it's gonna cost him time and a corruption so he's gonna get a corruption card and one time so he's gonna actually go again go again but he um and that's it yeah yeah so he he did not pass a guy okay right so he's gonna go again oh this is a crazy one all right so what is he going to do here he is going to recruit and grab two more guys from the bag so he's going to do a recruit of the right side interior so he's going to recruit this one okay and he is going to he just keeps him for end game points right he'll get that and he's going to draw two from the bag and add him to his collection he's got a green and a green wow and no green goods that's bad luck on him sorry dude and that's it he's gonna so he goes corruption and it cost him one time yeah so one time for him which means he's gonna put a guy out right um and he's gonna put him out hold on let me do this first so he's got the farthest right good is blue so he's going to bring out his blue guy and he's going to put him in the right interior boat that one and it's going to fill it and that actually ends nice mark it so that i get that uh you get what this my divination was correct well you picked blue right yeah yeah and i do uh no no no he didn't draw from the bag that wasn't a draw from the bag that was a him selecting from his supply that doesn't count that doesn't count uh what he did draw from the bag was a green did you did you mark off for that what what he did draw from the bag initially was green no and actually i should have circled this whole thing before right yeah i'm just cheating yeah that's why i have to watch what you do i know i'm just gonna fix this okay so that ends the um the peddler's turn yes all right okay all right couple things we need to do first when these boats first arrive any boats left behind these guys aren't going to be able to dock and purchase goods so where they're gonna what they're gonna do is they're actually going to like go to their museum go to their their lodges so he's gonna go to the faction house these two are coming in they're going to the faction house and actually when when these guys come in also they all they all go on the pier and what you're doing you're looking for a majority um on the pier and this this grand pier yeah is actually gonna do a combination of both boats that came in so clearly red is the majority there yeah um and then we have mixed majority here as well which is good all right so uh what this did was it signifies end of round so the market token goes right next to the furthest um players and as soon as all of us are on or past this marker we do a market phase so we're all going to get like another turn yeah one one action maybe maybe two so you actually get to go okay so let's see what i have available to me this time all right not much um all right i've got a two and a voodoo i'm on my voodoo doll though so i do have a green which is good um so i could do another one of these guys one maybe you know what i mean i know exactly what you mean and then go again you just keep milking it i know why not though you know why not uh well actually what i think i'm going to do though is i'm going to use this my little green tree and my die and i'm going to put an x somewhere and i'm going to put an x there's two choices yeah i can either put it on my faction board and actually i could do like an x here and gain four bucks four bucks right now immediately which is a good choice um or i could come down here and put an x here and work start working my way up this like horoscope track um but i don't know what's a better option for me right now i would kind of like to do the horoscope track but four points is also nice i'll take the points okay when in doubt take the points sure uh all right so i get four gold and that costs me one time so i go again it's actually go again you do there we go um all right so voo and that guy oh actually i have to draw no we don't draw a video you don't do any more loading the boats while we're uh in this mode because the docks are full right now oh i know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna use my bone and my four right here and i'm gonna do another one of these connect the dots yep i could actually do one two three and start like a new line if i want to you know um or just do like a whole new box but i'm gonna go yeah i will do that so we'll go one two three oh i could actually do four take some corruption and take a corruption card i'm gonna do that okay four and now i have one two three do you have enough goods to do that oh no i don't i only have one left you're right unfortunately oh that sucks you're gonna have to do something else i could do one two that's too much corruption uh when i have one line remaining oh i'll just go like here for or maybe or maybe yeah i'll go there i can't decide too many good choices i keep drawing a lot why because we enjoy them oh shut up it's a lot to think about you know uh but i do get another one of these guys over my shelf and that cost me two times one two two now you're now you're in a position where you'll be out of commission for a while so that that long term not true it's going to put you behind for so many so let's see what this guy is gonna do wow he's going to do this again he's going to do this recruiter guy he's going to take the right and right exterior so that would be this one and then he's going to draw two from the bag and he's building up his army over here rogue and a red oh wow that that was a good move by him actually uh he's gonna get a corruption he thought long and hard about it yes he did he got a corruption card and one time boom my turn i'm gonna go ahead and make a yellow bed yeah i think i'll go yellow it could have gone yellow or blue uh pretty simple two time one two and i'm done all right that's it that's it okay so we now enter the market phase time to shop so now this can be done simultaneously everybody just sells goods right um and the one rule of thumb is just go from peer to peer right so only large goods can be sold here you get the value of the good times however many of that color worker right at that pier yep so for example i have one green good right i could sell that yeah or you could not sell it and you can hold it for later do you wish to sell it home i don't know i don't know if i want those now or if i want to wait and see if maybe like more green guys come out i think i'm gonna sell it now yeah because the green guys have to get to that dock that's the thing they gotta come out they gotta get in that boat and they gotta get that side and they get to that doctor a lot of stuff that's gonna happen so a lot of things right so that's old how about your reds what do you wanna say yeah i'm gonna sell them here small ones can be done at the center yep so i have three small goods big payout so this is gonna be nine times five forty five point five points yep forty five so i'm at 55 yep tons of cash in there yes so much cash a lot of goods selling to those warriors they all want their signs read they do now with the uh with the peddler he's very simple he always sells left to right and sells everything so he's gonna sell this eight dollar good yep to the first pier second pier he's gonna sell both of his yellows for four dollars each that's another eight um and his blue large he's gonna sell down here he's going to get a corruption but he's going to actually get 16 points for that so that was actually a pretty big one we'll get corruption now 33 right so that wasn't a bad round after all for him now we also get market um sponsors if you have those unlocked right you don't have that i do not not he does he gets it for every one of these guys so he's got three greens so he gets three for that so he's gonna get one you know times how many guys are in the faction hall one rogue so he's got two more points for that okay and he's got one red so he's gonna get four more points for that one two three four okay so he racked it in now for me this is where it gets complicated i have to wait for everybody to finish because i'm going to start taking things right so now starting with the left pier if there i go for the majority color if it's a tie i choose tie on the first doc i get the red guy nice and bring him in majority on the second dock is red so i can bring him in as long as it matches my boat if i if i had i'm sorry it matches my bed if i had a bed here that was blue for example yeah he couldn't go there but i'd have to take him they come in the majority comes into your in yeah majority here i can choose again i'll choose the yellow again if i chose the blue i kind of screw myself what happens is if i were to take in if this bed were red for example i had to take yellow or blue they would go into the center and the brawl and they'd fight yeah because like we were sleeping i get corruption cards for everybody in the brawl unless i get my bouncer to escort them either out of my inn yeah or to one of the tables come sit down right so i'm actually gonna get points for my beds so i'm gonna get six and six is twelve and eight is twenty okay that's all i get um i can sell and i should do this before my two uh drinks to the center dock which had five right so these are worth 15 each that's another 30. wow really yep nice well done um now here's the catch my bed would have been worth six plus any of my loyal customers of the same color i don't have any loyal customers yet i do now after i score them they're going to come and sit and give you pay they're going to pay you dividends later on basically they're going to be like oh more warriors come in have come have a drink with us yes we love you and watch this fight we love you right now so then now these beds are gone he's not he's a noble that's the noble table yeah well i guess that guy is so now the beds go away because they're unmade right they they use the room and now they're going to come hang out my in in the tavern because it was such a great time yes that's the market phase yeah pretty simple right um i didn't have any i don't get any sponsorships for market either in this right on this board um so that's another thing so now we clean up we have some opportunity to do something right you get immediate ones or i do yeah it's it's the bar keeper the bartender rather he actually negotiates and gets us more sponsorship money so now we're in the cleanup phase okay so i'm just uh empty the most discard the rightmost townsfolk card so this goes away slide those over refill i i like how the ai pulls these too because like with two players a lot of times we don't cycle through things like these offers yeah so that's just nice okay uh after this round the the first mouse is going to go up to here okay um and then i think that's it yes all the boats go back yep and all the people go away yeah they're gone all right and that is it okay so yeah let me get these back in the bag and our good friend the oh the peddler yeah so let's arrange this so what you're going to do here is we've moved this mouse these are going to go in the same order but they're going to move to the two like that and then the market is going to go to the 12 right like that yes all right so now we have to do um we now we go right back to the arrival where we draw two for every boat so you want to go put them in two two two two oops two okay all right so we've got we don't draw any for the peddler because he's already got his fill up to four yeah so we do have to end the round i think i shuffle his whole deck and reset him so i'll get that going um what else we already reset that we reset that yeah because he's gonna go so let me just do his turn yeah i like how i have loyal patrons in my it's nice my in now that's very very important okay so i think he's been shuffled enough let's get him going all right so we'll start with one here and one here so he's gonna do one time green which is kind of weak he's weak one it's one dollar for that that cost him two times wow not smart ai no that's a bad move dude and he passed a guy so we're gonna bring in a boat guy already um yeah he's gonna do right side interior oh he brings in actually no he brings in his own sorry oh yeah so he brings in a rogue because he doesn't have any goods for sale yeah so that's going to go right here ooh it's a whole bunch of rugs that's bad all right so you moved him up yep my turn hmm i don't like the way this looks these boats are bad they're really bad actually i know they're not great so i know they're not great [Laughter] yeah okay so i'm gonna bring him and i'm actually going to do a little recruiting this time i need to get some more help [Music] i like that one i'm gonna get him i'll take another corruption card actually because what he's going to do he's going to allow me to take a guy from the bag and put him on a boat yeah so let's do that guy from bag on boat red hey i'm gonna put them here and i'm gonna make him i'm going to make him my corruption security he looks like a security guard all right cool so that was um that was a two time action one two okay so i'm gonna have to bring out a dude but it's your turn let me see what you call yellow i really don't want to stack up yellow like that i just don't have the yellow good ah you know what i'll bring it why not why not let's do it okay yikes okay i can do a three one two three huh wow i'm gonna do this oh i can't do that crap oh no cause i'm sitting there you can't do it again i know that's rough well that stinks um [Music] shoot i could i don't want to do anything with that corruption i could do it for one that's really what i wanted to do darn it i don't want to use my coin because i have corruption there oh i've got voodoo one that's it yeah i've got like i could do my voodoo for one i could do a divination do that and then that just moves me up and i can go again try that so do that one time and i'll pick um i'll do red just for one red huh one red so now i have two active divinations that's how this works so i will act on both of those okay um all right so you took you moved up one yeah i did so again okay not oh uh yeah actually this works out great um so i'll do this now i can do my bone thing once which one's that three what's that which action are you doing i'm gonna do this star chart thing okay and i'm gonna go i have a four so i'm gonna do like one two three four i can get like a red but it's another corruption card don't know if that's worth it i don't think it's worth it um i'm just gonna do this four okay um so i get a yellow good but i get a corruption card all right that's it and that is it i move up two one two i draw from the bag it is red yes so i'm going to do this move him right there okay and i get a red i get to take either a market or an x and i'm going to do a market on if i want a yellow maybe because again i'm thinking about who might be coming into the yield this thing you know what i mean yeah um i'm just gonna do the red because i know those guys are there okay hopefully they get more you can put a triangle they're like you're supposed to draw the market symbol whatever if you want to see a long game then watch me draw that like a thousand times uh but i like to put an m because it's market okay okay did you move up you moved up your two right i did okay so i guess i could this is red there center green red all right i might as well just do the tour all right i'm gonna go for two yeah i'm gonna make a yellow bed okay in that hole yeah that's worth it it's expensive though one two okay a drug i'll green him right there okay and oh where'd i put him right there do i want him there no i want him there i want to bring that boat in okay um instead so i drew i went is that it that's it okay okay so peddler's gonna go yes the peddler goes sorry that's what i was thinking ah so he's gonna build a giant blue object okay blue potion so he's brewing potions for one time okay and that's it he's gonna go again and he gets to go one more time oh he's gonna do some more good stuff wow he's building a small red and a small blue dude and that's gonna be one time as well one time as well and he's gonna bring out a guy he is going to bring out a gun so he's gonna bring out the red and it's to go on the far left interior right here that one yeah yep okay and he's done thanks okay boom and it is your go okay um all right let's see what we got that was close too close um all right i could do more divinations i do have the ability to adjust the die result as well i haven't done anything over here um but i could actually maybe i'll do that that's for two i would really like to get some stuff but yeah i don't want to do that i'm gonna do this instead i'm gonna do these two one two just so i can yeah because i haven't done it yet and this way i can just kind of show how it works um so i'm gonna go here and basically i have a two and a two these are the this is like the horoscope action so you have to start with a number and then the next number has to be at the on the top row has to be bigger than the number that you started with it hasn't has to like kind of go in order so um i'm going to for example put a 2 here for the first one and then i'm gonna use my plus one minus one here i'm just gonna cross that out and make this one a three okay and now i get the corresponding object above it which in this case is either a small blue or a small red object and i will do a small blue okay and that cost you how many two times all right oh their boats are filling so fast oh it's a green guy oh yeah so this divination was taken was taken last time before all these blue people came out so it's bold and where do i want to put this guy i could put him here all right so those two blues are actually wizards are going to spend the rest of their time yes sorry guys you don't get to visit merchant's cove and shop oh yeah i guess sorry go shopping over here over the bridge yep so that is the end of your turn it is now up to our peddler who is building a small yellow item now for two time okay one two and he's gonna bring out a green because he's got nowhere else to go a green right interior is here oh my gosh and he just filled it up wow okay so we've got another wizard and a noble okay coming in so this is going to go here that is there and we are ready to get into the next morning wow okay all right so my next turn yes i'm going to create a red bed okay make a bed and i'm going to make the bed right here in red that only cost me one time oh i get to go again very good let's see i would like oh this is where it gets tough i can't do that i can do that but that's going to cost me and that's ugly you know what i'm going to do this this is actually pretty good okay okay i'm going to do this this is smart i'm going to recruit i can't wait okay what are you going to him yeah for one time one corruption i'll take the corruption huh i'll take the card he's going to give me a green which means i make a green smart smart smart okay right here yes that's what i that's what i would have done that's what i would have done and i'm going to make him my i'm not going to make him my bouncer i don't need to yet i'm going to make him my bartender he looks like a bartender type uh but i do it's going to cost me one time okay which means i need to bring out no we're not bringing anybody else oh i don't bring out anybody you're right okay so it's your turn yeah very good that gives me one more action sweet yeah oh yeah it does it does yeah or two yes or two good no no one point i'm sorry you might get two we'll see yeah we'll see okay wow that's not great um okay i have one i could do one of these things or i've got a bone and a one i have the voodoo and a one hmm all right of don't want to do that i guess i'll do this this thing it's not great but just go down here for one time and i will do that and i guess i will pick i have no idea what's going to come out next time so i'll do yellow why not yeah uh um yellow or yeah i'll just see yellow that's fine we'll see just feeling it um all right that was one time some of you again oh and i did oh we're not drawing that's right because we just haven't stopped we did all right yes exactly what i needed right there boom boom one two three the big yellow big yellow that's good i needed that okay um and that cost me two times one two so that's it so you're over i am over all right my turn last turn for me so i'll do a two-time thing two-time thing i'll go here and i'll make some drinks yellow drink yeah you better you see them coming in yeah they're coming in they're ready to drink they're very thirsty so i'll do that it's gonna cost me two time though boom boom so that ends me this guy's gonna go what's he gonna do come on wow he's gonna get two big yellows what no he's gonna rake it oh yeah he is that was a crazy cheap oh that was so cheap two big yellows cost him two times one two he took my strategy and that's it and he's caught all he is is a freaking deck of cards yeah he did he stole your strategy that's how easy your strategy was hey so easy shut up all right so he's done that's it we are in the market phase so what are you going to do are you going to start selling some stuff let's see where the majorities are okay so we've got some nobles and a warrior oh it looks like we have a bard majority borrowing the majority yes so even though the rogues were pretty strong yeah the bards took it and we have the warrior majority yep at the far right pier so push the buttons back all right all right where are we now so are you going to sell we'll go left right yeah i'm going to sell so i have two eight point large tomes that i will sell to the nobles so that's 8 16 times three four eight times three times two forty eight whichever way you slice it do you wanna count me up 48. one two three four five six seven eight so is that one or three 103 and i'll get you a gem capstone in a bit um and i have a blue so i could sell my blue as well yeah and i will also yeah it doesn't matter well it does matter i'm going to sell it to this one yes it does i don't want a corruption card so one two three four all right so we'll now have uh him go he's just gonna sell left to right so he cannot sell the blue here he can sell the four so give him four points um oh he can sell these two yellows yeah absolutely at the front pier so that's eight and eight sixteen times three it's 48 again so what's he at uh he's at 47. so give him the random 55 plus 40 is 95. 8.95 wow that was a huge big transaction for him um [Music] four you can sell in the middle yep um this one you can sell eight more two easy to get corruption yeah for trading on this pier eight four five six more eight and he's gonna sell his red for three times two is six six more six more you get two corruption cards no you only get it once oh he's getting in the middle no no you only get one see no yeah oh sorry no he would have slipped he wasn't take three away yeah he would have sold to the middle yeah you're right you you deal as many times you want here you only get one card yeah all right so everybody's done that was a lot of choice you guys yeah i hope i get as many so majority you guys like like this is really majority yellow majority green which already red so i i match the beds which is exactly what you want to do okay um so i'm gonna get eight points for this plus another eight for this so that's 16 points okay for that so 56 66 okay it's for this guy and he's gonna count so i'll resolve them all next so i'm going to get six more for that 72 i'm gonna get six for that and that and that so that's six times three is eighteen one two three four five six seven eight ninety points okay that is it yes um in this four i get a cell in the middle for another four which is kind of cheap okay four and that's all the points i get okay not enough i'm behind mm-hmm all right factions um market factions yeah so he's gonna get green so he's gonna get two points for that well i would but i don't get them before okay um that's it yeah okay all right so we do clean up so this goes in the discard those slide over get the bag these guys go back to the bag yeah now this one comes up to the two yep these all slide right there and this is midnight it goes to midnight again all right now we didn't really explain what these are but you guys see these corruption cards on the hands and as we're going through here instead of just going from like the five to the six you can actually jump up on this hand you get a corruption card for doing it but it sort of buys you like more time yeah like yeah but it's corruption so let's go ahead and um talk about rivals yeah two two all right he's going to draw two more one and two can you put those last ones in the boats it's so far away i got it two and we are entering round three now this is it last and final round yep and i will reset him so yes he's going first oh he is oh my goodness he's bringing out people right away well let's see if he starts creating goods that's his thing i want to like go here you do it's a merchant's cove yeah it would be pretty cool like i love the art like i like that dragon yeah like wow yeah he's going away and making two reds okay two time two time one two he's bringing somebody up bringing out red no problem he's gonna bring him out left interior so that is the left interior and he is done all right so now it is it's my turn okay so here before i forget here's your oh yeah my giant ruby here's his ruby i don't get one i'm almost there we'll get there someday i'll eventually get there well the time is right i got a lot of regular customers though so i should get regular customers to get things going here okay so well i think i think i'm gonna whoa all right i'm gonna do this i'm gonna go i'm gonna come down here and recruit one more person one two i'm gonna recruit this guy on the end okay and she's gonna let me get rid of three corruption cards wow that's great let's see one two three that's all of them wow let's put this in the bottom of the stack wow yeah but i'm gonna get one back because that's what it cost so i will take one and now i have a full group in my employ uh i do get to draw one though green i guess green isn't that bad right green's not bad it's not the rare item okay but it's not bad but it's green all right you go it's okay um oh wait did you just draw a guy it wasn't yellow was it it was not it was green why oh no all on the same side yep yeah there you go you betcha thank you all right great there's so many of these freaking things i needed that lady who can cancel out like a thousand corruption cards um right hmm so all right i could pretty much do anything i have this this pretty powerful oh i could do this that's a that might not be a bad idea i could do a 4 and a 3 here that's two time though that puts me like i have the opportunity right now to really do one action perhaps two but i have this terrible corruption card thing guy i have my voodoo so i could try to do another one of these maybe i'll do that first so i'll do a four voodoo move my divination um so i'll do one two three four and i will look at i'm gonna go green i predict green will come out all right one time that's my first action so i'm going to draw a guy hopefully it's weak it should be or not it is green um that's uh actually not anything it's just math so and i'm going to put in here why are you bringing that in yeah i'm gonna bring it over here can't i want to bring it in right here yeah you can do that i know but i really want to bring it over there yes you can't do that um you should have put them in that boat what you should have built up green on that side then if you wanted to yeah i know but it doesn't really matter to me because now you have a big green thing that you can't sell what right didn't you just make a big group i didn't make a big oh i did didn't i yeah you did oh crap okay yeah i'm gonna take that back i do i knew there was a reason for that thank you all right i'm like where are you gonna sell the big green thing yeah that big green thing that i just made yeah all right so that was how many two one i just moved i'm already done so i have to i get to go again okay oh that was the last okay so one two three all right i'm gonna go do another corruption card for that is it worth it yeah keep them coming i have so many it's like it's gonna be interesting when it's when this is all said and done [Music] i'm gonna go back up here to my star chart and i'm gonna do this and this i'm gonna use this plus one guy yeah and change this to a four okay so that i can go one one two three four so i will get a corruption card for that okay okay uh where'd you move right here no oh no two one two okay and it's another green yes and that brings them in yeah it does yikes yeah buddy all right so i'm going to put in a green bed over there i think my turn yeah speaking of which i will create a green bed that's probably a great idea all right and that's an expensive one okay so that's one let's draw another guy okay green wow there's so many greens that's cause they're not on the board um that is true that's not even like divinity that's just math it is math okay let's bring greens in right there okay all right it's his turn what's he gonna do he's gonna do a two times red fraction so eight points for him that's so cheap eight points two time one two he's gonna bring out none of those so he's gotta pick yellow yellow and it's gonna go in the right interior so that'll go here all right here he goes you go again i do i do don't i all right so i don't want to do that interesting i could do that okay so i gotta to time is a lot it is it really is yeah it is unless you want to take the corruption oh no you can't what do you mean i keep thinking you're the orange guy i'm not the orange guy yeah i just i'm just trying to think of what i can do to get points in here because what's out on the boats isn't really helping me right and green could be it so i said it's gonna have to be right i guess so i could i could do this i can come down here and activate my people you have a lot of them i'll do four so that's one two three four because what this does is it doesn't one-time activation of any sponsorship faction and i could pick blue or red doesn't matter they're both worth four points i just get money for that so my bartender he gets money for them this allows me to move to bed i can move that bed right here um why would you do that why not because you're gonna get oh oh it's the same for you i don't it's still too big yeah so left here to me doesn't really mean anything different right because i have nothing to sell to them yeah um i go i'm going here for a reason oh i'll explain that later okay so that lets me remove uh people from the brawl okay but i don't have anybody crawling which is kind of actually a smart tactic and i should have taken advantage of it but i i don't nah probably not um and he lets me remove corruption so i get rid of this i've got zero corruption yeah i've got not zero yes you two have not zero so that was it so that was worth that actually cost me two actions though so one two and that's going to bring another person out in the boats so i brought out a blue so okay blue will go i'll put blue i don't really like blue though i'll put blue here or i'll put blue here and send these guys here ah okay and i'm gonna put this there all right it is your turn okay um great here we go this is getting down to the west it's very close yeah this is about to end yeah i'm not even prepared for this yeah okay yikes okay um two three four it was a good roll um i can't do that again so that's out of the question my other option and i can't do that because my two dice are not in the same side of the thing so um i can go here and do another voodoo for four [Music] and put things like we're gonna pick like maybe we're only going to pick one more boat person i mean yeah so it's like is it worth doing that you know i don't know i mean unless we're filling up that boat but filling up what boat that other boat that's empty and that appears oh yeah that's right there's nobody going out but it's done it dumped off its passengers yeah it did okay yeah i don't really know if i want any of those people all right well i might as well go for it i'm just gonna do this do a four voodoo i don't keep calling this video but only because it's a voodoo doll but it's actually not it's called divination um and i'm going to go for ah we'll see that's the silly thing about this is that it's a four right which is only going to get me big stuff yeah and i can't sell big stuff anywhere yeah you can over there all right i guess i'll go for blue then yeah you have to go for something you can sell to that dog that's worth money yeah all right we'll see what happens i don't think we're getting any more blues out though is that uh-uh probably not we never know what do you got what what did you just do you gotta put your guide down there well yeah i know again i'm not yeah i'm not drawing so evil next whoa all right one two three four so now i can do this one in the middle here and i can do one okay so two three four so i get a market and i'll do like the blue market like that and then i start over again because i hit the four i start over at one mm-hmm we start back at one here and that lets me get a get rid of a corruption card those are bad yeah so get rid of this one all right that's it and that gives me two one two and i bring in a dude all right green oh so you pushed it up to the end i did all right so these guys not by choice well that was by choice actually why because you could have put one in that other boat that only had two people in it oh that's what i want to do but that's okay no that's what it is it's too late i already put them out why'd you do that because you made your choice well no but you made me you i don't know i didn't make you do anything i know but you had me thinking that this was it do you know what i mean so i wasn't thinking about it that's all right you're thinking about it now you should have just let me take it back and put it in another no we don't do take backs here this is isn't it like redos you made a choice you made a choice you made your bed you have to live with this you have to live with those consequences now all right yeah all right let's let this guy get his game on so he's going to get two points okay for playing that he's gonna do it twice he's gonna get two more and he's gonna cost him two time two time yeah actually this is going to go here too yeah you want two uh-huh okay and that's he's not bringing any guys out so it's gonna go over to the end it's your turn my turn so i'm gonna do a single action here and draft some green beer i guess that's green beer oh okay that's gonna cost me one time okay then i'm gonna go here and i'm going to create a bed a green bed for that room and that cost me one time nice wow that's all i could do no wonder you didn't want me to put that boat back well it is what it is with any other boat all right he's going to go so he's going to draw he's going to recruit do this thing the left interior so that's this guy for one time one time and he's also going to draw two from the bag and add them to his supply okay yeah one time and he's done okay my turn this is the last action let's see what happens wow that was so close to being not good um wow i could do a two and a half i could do a two out of three that would be good that's a big item that is yeah that's what i want to do that's what i'm talking about all right oh i can't do that because i'm sitting there you can't do that accident again oh that's unfortunate that's sad i hope you have a better action to choose oh that sounded so sympathetic not uh i'll just go do my star charts then fine for three three bones i could do one one two three that's not enough i could do one i'll do i could do that that's not bad i could do this one oh but that's gives me a corruption card i don't want any more of those all right i'll just get a small green item one whoops this is like messy because i don't want to put my hand on here okay one two three small green small green all right there you go it's all about the green items you have one uh two actually two but nothing matters but that ends the game that's so we're going to do a market market so we have to sell well let's let him go first he's going to sell two reds so he's going to sell him to the middle okay and that's going to be 3 6 times 2 is 12. right you've got two threes four okay so he's done that's all he had to sell okay he didn't know much yeah uh he is going to get points he's going gonna get one two three four plus five is nine nine more points for his market nine which is big yeah all right what do you have okay all right so i have two green items two large greens that's twelve times three it's 36 points 36. so 10 36 46 46 okay you just took them i did yeah um these go away three and then i've got three times one two three four sets twelve more so one two three that's 58 that's where you land so far so far yeah so i have so that's done so i'm going to take the majority green green a majority blue i don't have a seat for okay i don't have a bed for it yeah so can you give me um my 11 points for my market guys my factions because i have two markers 11 points yeah 59.69 all right all right so the um majority is blue who would go here i don't have a bed for him so he's going to actually come down because he's got nowhere to sleep and get pissy in that brawl so he's angry um so here we go i have six points yep so it's going to be 6 plus 6 is 12. so it's 12 points here 1 two one ten okay um i'll take my gem and i also have another 12 points so that's 22. yeah so he's gonna come down here i don't have room for this guy so he's going to come out and brawl so i get two corruption cards for them one for each okay because i didn't have any room for them um but that's it i would also have this to sell i took one from there so there was three there or four there there were four more 234 okay all right so that's that that ends the um game the game yeah uh so let's go into the final scoring let's see all the little bits and bobs we need to do so after round three all players reveal the corruption cards and receive final scorings sponsorships from your corruption cards right so let's say what do i have i just have two so six points six point what did you lose six points only two of them okay i have one two three four five six seven corruption points so it's minus 21. but i have all these hats well we'll add those up in a minute so minus 21 you're 69 so 68 58 48. all right so you're there and how much how many blues do you have i have three hats all right so that's 12 yeah 50 60. so you're back to 60. i have three yeah 3 times 6 is 18 right oh i give you how many 12. all right so 66. thank you okay um that's not it so you're gonna get points for your dudes too yeah i only have one guy so that's worth it he's right so he's worth five two three four five so that's just for the folks at home based on the icon the symbol on your card yep so so you got that i have one more corruption so i lose three more points okay i gain one for green okay i gained six more for blue okay and for my reds i'm going to gain 10 more 38 48 and for my blue i'm gonna gain six more ah one two four five six okay i think that's it for may so now he it's gonna lose a lot here for his corruption i think he's got one two three four five corruption so he's gonna lose 15 points okay one two three four five maybe 28. now gain five more back because he's got that red symbol okay uh again ten more for reds 33 43 two more for green 45 and six more for blue five is 51. now he's actually gonna lose nine more because he had corruption on these as well one two three four five six seven eight nine that's where he ends all right that was pretty that was real very evenly distributed pretty close considering considering we played three completely different games games nuts we usually we hate asymmetrically usually hate usually we'll say usually and i stress we don't hate that much stuff all right but let's go talk about it let's talk about it all right there you have it merchants cove from merchants cove that was um exhausted that was long yeah it was long and challenging more challenging than you expected yeah but in a different way i mean obviously we know to expect we've played this yeah yes but um not these particular classes we wanted to try them kind of fresh um we played a few rounds of them but not a full game with them so we didn't really know how it was going to pan out from a total score perspective but um but we want to make sure we got because the mechanics were definitely different for these yeah um but what are your thoughts on this um i was pleasantly surprised i'll be very honest so we typically do not like as as as two players playing most of our games with the two of us we tend to not enjoy asymmetrical games purely because there are not that many out there that don't uh that don't limit you um in terms of like who you can play or what characters you can play as um the i mean the two that come to mind right away obviously are vast and uh root which we tried over and over and over we bought like root we bought the expansion we bought the big you know we tried it i think we sat down and tried to play like several times a number of times a number of times and you guys know we don't take lightly to like games that don't work for us right away we try to give them like multiple goals yeah yeah and um it just it never came together because it's just so frustrating to not be able to play multiple characters i feel like you're not getting the full experience of the game unless you're playing with four people so for me to say it can play it too is like okay but and even really getting the experience the game itself just feels kind of to me it just feels a little more shallow because you're just going at each other yeah and it's just two people going at each other right that's not the type of gamers we are yeah so there were a number of factors working against us for for those two titles like so so as much hype and love there are for vast and for roots so many people love those games yeah we don't own either of them and we just don't enjoy them so that for us going stepping into another asymmetric game that's the first thing we think about is that fear of oh my god is it like those other two games that we just can't that we just don't enjoy so like so you immediately come into this on guard yes you think you're not going to enjoy it well or yeah exactly like kind of thinking okay i hope this wasn't built for a bigger group i hope that you know the two player play style and play count was taken into account um and i i'm happy to say have your report yeah that it absolutely was yeah like early on like when you first cracked into it you made a statement that oh we're gonna go out and say hey we're gonna try to play these two classes and i was like you better be careful because what if we can't play those two classes yeah there's a restriction on player count and we had to be we had to play the yeah the blacksmith and we had to play the other person you know yeah i think i put out like a story yeah yeah i was like and i was like look i put out this story and because i had broken into it and stuff and he's like wait wait wait but what if we can't actually play those and i was like oh no no no we can play any class and i said with as many people as we want to now you've got my attention right because a true in my opinion a true asymmetrical game is one where you can play any character right in the game with any player account and none of the classes play the same way right and that's exactly what that's what this is that's what merchants cove delivers on right right so let's just i mean we're not going to go down a list of things but right at the end of the day this is a lighter game there's no question and i say lighter in in what you can do right because you you're limited to the amount of things you can do with every character right you've got like four or five main actions a couple of like smaller you know supplemental actions but at the end of the day like with the innkeeper i could make beds i could make booze i could you know recruit somebody from the town and that's about it yeah i only have a handful of things i can do but those actions have to be done within 10. but it's like therein lies the challenge yes because you are limited in what you can do which makes it easy to learn and difficult to really like master yeah because you do have to be really mindful of your time you have to make sure you're doing things in the right order you have this rondelle system down here which i don't know if anybody else is calling you rondelle but i'm calling rondell because essentially what you're doing is you're moving around this thing assigning your actions yeah to the spaces where you land if if it might be stressful that's what it reminds me of it feels like that the only the only i guess the only just um disadvantage of this type of if you want to call it a rondelle and in a typical rondelle i can push that's your pace and end it before you do right and you could do that here i could run ahead but you can milk your turns up to that where yeah in a game like maracaibo yeah it's just like i can push ahead hard and and i will mess you up if you're slow playing it right where this i can't because i don't have enough opportunities because you can just keep milking one yeah one turn actions and and get multiple goes out and i would end up screwing myself but i do think that that is part of the strategy so i i would probably say like if you um if you've played this before and you maybe thought it was too light or it was like a kids game or something like that i would be willing to bet that there were some strategies that you didn't exploit that would be worth revisiting yeah it would be i think my assessment i would think so yeah i definitely don't think it's a kids game because it's a lot it's heavier than a kids game because there's a lot of like you could teach anybody how to play their character pretty quickly yeah but for them to be really efficient at playing their character and manipulating the the um adventurers coming in the patrons coming in on which boats you want to which dock you want to actually getting the right good queued up like that's where the really the complexity comes in yeah and that's where and i think understanding what the other characters do too i know it's poking fun at you for wanting to know like what the oracle does um and he was like intent on like really understanding my character before we started but also that's because you need to be able to you like you need to know that when i'm over here star charting and i'm pumping out you know that's how i'm generating my large items the same way that you're generating beds or something yeah so it's important to understand that um the other thing with the asymmetry as asymmetrical games a lot of times too that is challenging is that the the characters do play so differently that it's almost like you're playing two separate games together and what i liked about this was that you you feel like you're playing the same game because you are on this board together you're working on you know the same you know the same stuff i guess um but the your actions are different but like they're similar enough that like if i went to you know like i you know played as alchemist and i'm coming over to play the oracle i'm like okay well it's just a translation this action that i'm doing that's star charting which is completely unique to the oracle right is in um in its essence very similar to an action on your player board where you're building beds okay or you're brewing potions so you're building armor and you're putting ore into your your furnaces and yeah there's a whole lot of how you're doing it but yeah there is it's it's it's all fun every board feels similar like even though they're very different yeah which is i think you know it could you know hats off to that like yes the designer for making it comfortable enough to be able to pick up like i was able to learn the innkeeper even though it's pretty complex compared to the other ones pretty quickly yeah you know and in every class that came with it in the bass again it's very it's a very easy learning curve but employing it is is kind of is refreshing and rewarding yeah in its own way because as a smith you feel like you're you're you're crafting with the alchemist you feel like you're playing a mini version of potion explosion you do yeah you know because it has marbles and they're dropping and you're trying to bit combos on that so like that's really cool like it just has a lot of i'm playing the captain's like playing your own little mini map treasure hunt game and fishing game like it's really really unique and different and and i i guess i really enjoyed it like they're they cut to the chase like as far as asymmetric games this is my favorite hands down yeah oh absolutely yeah not affairs again no there's a ton of competition out there right but absolutely this was a lot of fun and you could say okay well once you learn a class it's like it's boring right i would play this again like i would i would because i think i could do better and like i would do that like i played with the captain i really like that one i'll do it again the blacksmith i haven't tried that one i want to try it like i want to go and i want to try each and every one of these classes because this game isn't isn't overly at least it doesn't feel long i don't know how long this play through was but it didn't feel long because it kind of ramps up towards the end well and you get the satisfaction too of like this sort of engine and again like your engine is almost a shared and it's like a shared engine that you're both driving in different directions because you've got your folks that are that are here in the town and everything that are you know you're you're ramping up and you feel that ramping up as the rounds progress yeah and that part is really exciting and very very satisfying yes to watch it all come together so yeah um so needless to say we really enjoyed this one uh definitely um a pleasant surprise like i was not expecting it to be this enjoyable and i'm not sure you know like here's the thing we don't really know what the vibe is out in in board games or what everybody else is thinking about these games we don't we typically try not to watch any of that stuff because we don't want to be biased based on yeah somebody else's opinions right so we have no idea what that five is on this game how if it's like the super hot game right now we usually watch after yeah afterwards just to kind of see okay well now that we've gotten out what we think about it i wonder what everybody else thinks about it because you know just out of curiosity but uh for us you know we're you know you know us as heavy gamers we love the real crunchy thinking games but we also love the real lighter to mid-weight thematic yeah games because to me i feel more fulfilled playing one of those than i do a cube pushing um super heavy euro that that is really dry on theme yeah this one i think you could definitely get more folks to play as well yeah like your audience is so much bigger yes if i yeah if i had to sit down and play a game with four or five players like i'd want it at this level yes and i think it would be that much more fun i think people would really teach yeah easier for people to learn it's really really great to look at yeah and there's not a lot of player interaction exactly which we're good with that yeah like a lot of folks out there yeah a lot of folks out there wanna want their uh asymmetric experience to be very rootish where you're beating each other and stomping each other's forts down and taking each other's land over like you want that interaction we don't want that interaction which is probably why we don't like those games yeah because we don't like that because let's just take that right and that's just not how we play we're two care bear euro players right who once in a while like a little theme thrown in and you know to me this delivered yeah absolutely and it's beautiful the game is gorgeous i told you i want to go to this place like i know it doesn't exist the components are top-notch yeah i mean they're just like they even like colored the meeples i don't even know how they did this yeah there's something like they're printed yeah cute little meeples cute little bard yeah everything about this game just yeah no the only downside to it i will say yeah because it takes forever to punch and put this together very careful preview teaser yeah you've got to be very very careful not to tear stuff because it is it is tricky and there's a ton of components but i'll say this when you're punching it sometimes there's pieces that aren't supposed to be punched this would be folded so don't try to punch me yeah and if you get somebody who tries to really punch that piece out then it's only supposed to bend but not actually punch out you could you could tear some cardboard so be very careful i got fired yes she no longer is allowed to punch games we'll just put it that way but anything else you want to say no i think we've we've pretty much hit this one home i know we i don't know we're we want to get your opinion too so do let us know in the comments um we did get some really cool interaction um on our like teaser video on our on our um unboxed video um so we would love to hear what you think about this if this changed your mind about the game if you had some predisposius predispositions before right or if you're even more excited about it um as always that first comment is going to be pinned to the top so if this helped you make a decision whether or not this belongs in your collection let us know by giving us a thumbs up or some comments we have uh been pretty good actually about responding to comments and things so i'm trying to keep up with you guys and really engage in some conversation there so um or if you just think we're a bunch of fools yeah if you guys like for for root's awesome telling the way about this game you're like oh this thing doesn't hold a candle to root you know maybe for you it doesn't but for us it does yeah everybody's different everybody's allowed to have their own opinion yeah so here it is that's it yeah that's our opinion so and it is just our opinion that's all everybody's going to have a different one yeah but that's it so we hope you enjoyed the gameplay video uh thank you for watching as always and we'll see you next time i'll see you you

Channel: How It Plays - Boardgames

Views: 6,905

Keywords: Boardgames, Playthroughs, Reviews, Tabletop Games

Id: fB2QQjWDV0s

Length: 110min 53sec (6653 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 22 2021