Not Bored Gaming - Episode 9 - Tainted Grail Review (Spoiler Free)

hi everybody look this is a quick public service announcement regarding this review this review is going to be a spoiler free as any review can be I'm not going to be doing is I'm not going to be looking deep inside what's called the the exploration journal I'm not going to be talking about any key elements of the story itself I'm going to try and keep this as sparse of information as possible while still being relevant to the review at hand now obviously any review is going to include a level of spoilers I'm going to be showing you inside the box we're going to talk about the game the mechanics the overall story and that's fine if you don't want to know anything about tainted Grail then two things first of all why are you watching a review video secondly please go and watch one of our other videos instead and save this experience for you however for those that you are staying I think on that got the gun right for those of you that are staying then as I say I can promise you that this review will be a spoiler free as possible so that's a public service announcement over with let's get on with this episode this island is never meant for humans moving on the border between our reality and the ancient power known as the weirdness it was populated by a mysterious legend during Christmas humans however came here anyway with their wooden ships their ambitious king and his fellowship of knights running into the plague ranging their distant homelands they took the island piece by piece raising many years of foreboding shape a mysterious purpose the fourth ambassadors of the island faded into legend 400 years later not even their name remains the people of Avalon call them the four dwellers times the Red Death is drag the men he is dying and without their power the land itself crumbles back into the weirdness that's why your hometown has gathered five of its strongest and wisest heroes and sent them to find help in distant Camelot as these champions set out to brave the dangers of this war are abundant you watch them from afar you are not high not poor chambers and welcome back to not board-gaming I'm your host I'm mark Alyn today's episode is a very very special episode we are doing a review today of one of the biggest and most anticipated releases of the year that is tainted Grail the fall of Avalon by awakened realms now I think it's only fair to say that this is a review copy when I went to s and I was speaking with mass since we're cut who awaken realms and obviously one of the designers of tainted Grail and he handed me a copy of integral a review copy so that won't if you watch my other videos that won't suede the review obviously I will provide a critique on whether I liked the game or not and what I do like or don't like about the game but I just wanted to be upfront and honest with you guys so obviously essay tainted gray out the fall of Avalon huge release this year and it is an abstraction on the kind of King Arthur Knights of Camelot tale in the way that a lot of movies do say Monty Python and the Holy Grail or the Fisher King or first night or Excalibur or transformers the last night let's let's not talk about transformers anyway it's an abstraction based on the e Arthurian legends and it's set in a slightly or the world the Avalon if you like and here we go you can see from the box itself is fairly fairly big and weighty box and it's got the artwork on there there looks to be a sword in some kind of night I see I mean no it's not in a stone it's in an eye and here we see a figure of one of the many years which we'll find out more about as we go through the standing over that so what does it say on the back it says tainted Grail is a story rich survival and exploration game for one to four players set in a dark universe that blends Arthurian legends and Celtic mythology with unique dark vision and as we look on the back you can see it shows you a list of some of the components and also it's not really suggested layout the layout changes as the game goes on and I'll explain more as we get into the review itself but there's a good amount of content well there's a right amount of content within this box and you'll see in a moment when they get through to the unboxing video exactly what you get in the box 42 grail fall of Babylon now I was also handed as well as part of the review copy the tainted Grail full of Avalon the monsters of Avalon miniatures as well and as you can see in the back of there it lists some of the minis that are in the box I'll explain how some of those minis work with the base game not all of them do as we go into the review so I've had the game for about three weeks now I have had a hospital visit so that kind of delayed my time as going through our operation delayed my time in being able to play but I spread about 20 hours into this game so far and I do think that that gives me kind of enough pedigree if you like to be able to put formulate an opinion and provide you guys with a review on this now as it's a fairly big release what I have done as well is the very next section is going to be unboxing section if you like on the tainted Grail and on the monsters of Babylon so if you don't want to watch that you'll get straight to the gameplay and my thoughts on it then skip to that time and yeah and therefore you will be able to find out more about the view my views on the game itself unfortunately as we go into the game as well as coming with a rather excellent rulebook we should really just take you through everything as I mentioned right at the beginning this is going to be a spoiler free as possible so for most of the review I'm going to be referring to the can of solo tutorial scenario which is a really good thing what it does it gives you a scenario way using the components from the game but it doesn't spoil anything in the game itself so when I said at the beginning this is a spoiler three as possible this will enable me to make this review as spoiler free possible and this is a really good kind of four-page document which takes you through kind of a couple of cycles of the game and how to play the game and it gives you a great indication on what you need to do as you delve further into the review itself so okay very eager to get into this very excited to tell you my views and my thoughts on tainted Grail so without much further ado let's go and have a look what's inside the box [Music] okay so what we're going to do is take a relatively brief look what you getting inside the boxes both the tinted green Gregor game and of course the monsters of Avalon minis as well now not everybody will have picked up the monsters of Avalon but of course if you if you biked tainted Grail and you will be getting the core game this is gonna be a spoiler free as I can make it there are some key components inside this box which potentially if I showed them to you and maybe small your enjoyment that's not to do with this exploration journal and I'll come on to that shortly so as we go into the box the first thing you keep going to or one of the first things you're going to see is your taint of grail full of our babylon exploration journal as you go through the the game and you play your various adventures in here i'm not going to show anything are various listings and numbers and depending on what choices you make you will read these out and they will guide your game almost like a choose your own adventure type scenario and at the back we actually have the tutor the tutorial the exploration journal for the tutorial as a separate thing so when you first set up the game and i can show you that because there's no real spoilers you can can see there we first set up the game you're allowed to play one scenario as a solo tutorial and that gives you the gist of the game so that is a very very very thick book not only do you get everything relating to all the cars are you going too late now there's also something there called the book of secrets as well we need to see that this is blue and BOS and that gives you further adventures you're also going to get for each of your adventurers a letter this as b or a line r EV me and maggots and that gives you a bit of background on why they were chosen for this adventure there is a map as well which gives you a rough indication of the land that you're exploring but not everything is on that's kind of a dated map and then you have your save sheet so there's my current save she just there I'm going to hit too much detail I've just finished chapter two on my current game and that allows you to save the game meat meat midway through because of course there's lots to play now then each of your player boards are here and you can see we have magnet I have I'll I be or and then we have NIMH as well that doesn't have a player board where you can do is just put her into any one of the player balls and we'll come on so how they work later on and we're gonna go inside the box in here I've got these Sundrop minis in here and as you can see these are the big statues these are the men here's and you'll understand when we're going to the review itself how these work these are effectively your timing and your tiny mechanism in the game and also they allow you to uncover kind of other aspects of the board then you have your five characters there so we have as you can see on the Sundra I think that's Bay off there on the Sun drop these look beautiful these are really good details the Sun drop that you've gone for Sun Drop I don't think it'd be disappointed in what comes out of that as Nev who's a particular favorite of mine my wife he's called Nev and he spell exactly the same way as well and here we have a four dweller and when these come on to the port and start hunting you down yeah things get a little bit scary so that you can see now for the waking realms game and if you think about nemesis and you think about lots of head ass you think about anything that awakened realms have done they tend to be mini heavy and unless you've gone for the monsters of Avalon box you're not gonna get loads of minis there are what two dice in here one of the moving Guardians around which is this one I'll explain or cut he and Sally and one is again just a standard d6 very nice d6 to making some decisions okay so as we get down here we have various encounter cards and your encounter cards are blue grey green and purple and what you will do is put a number of them into your hand each chapter that you play and there are varying difficulties and they will tell you exactly kind of walk bodies or what monsters you can either fight or use diplomacy on what come on how that works you also get a number of cards here is probably the best I show you these are my current ones for for maggots I believe these are yeah for maggot and these are my combat advancement deck and my diplomacy advancement deck and my diplomacy and combat cards and what these allow you to do is carry out combat throughout the game or allow you to carry out your diplomacy if you come along anybody you have to talk to like guards etc and there's a number of those for each individual character and they are bespoke for each character or each bullet raid should I say so that is maggot that is leaves for me and the reason they're here and not in this main part here is because these are saved from the game on currently plays it has a save swap so when you finish the chapter and you can then save you couldn't game state using this say key and then put them in here and save them for later and here we have my encounter cards for there as well for this the scenario and currently played we have down here some these are skills cards here so you get to grade your skills beyond what's on the board and then we have some secrets cards you want to see what's in there no their secret you're not going to get to see what's in this so basically you will pull those out at various points throughout the game and here we have item cards now these allow you to the game allows you to pick up certain items as you go through the game it'll give you a card number and there you go you can see various items are on there we can get a buttered saw a buttered shield a poisoned dagger etc and then the key proper game is these and these aren't fits through your map tiles and you'll lay these down it tells you which one will go where and how you lay them on the board and only a number certain number visible at any one times you've to have the men here's work and these will then you'll read the text on there and take you around the map you read the text and it will point you to the expiration journal where you'll read the text in there and see where the adventure gets you and this see these can occur and this is strictly setup in the right kind of way these kind of go like this throughout the board and create this beautifully evocative map so that's the core box of of tainted Grail full of Avalon I've got some other things you have some mark accuse you have these stop markers and then these dials with you you will put in your many years as well and you also have some kind of token quests and timing tokens as well all that will become evident as we go through the review I say I just want to show you a fairly spoiler free review of what you get in the core box not very many heavy at any one time as a solo player chances are you are going to be playing it solo or double headed solo and you're probably gonna have two characters and up to three men years on the board if you're doing double headed if you're not chances are it can be one character and up to three men here's on the board all these figures are required in the game anything that's in the monsters of Avalon box is actually not necessarily required in the game ads instead amount of kind of visual flavor to it you can quite happily play the game without the monsters of Avalon it tells you all the various monsters that are in there from the underbrush worm to the worm tangle to the wolf walk her to the door Holland the mulch man the child Morrigan a hell pig and as we go in here you'll see there's a little Victoria which tell me what's in there and again these are the suburb minis and the quality of the minis is just astounding it is absolutely beautiful I mean I'm gonna keep with the sun drop because I think they look fantastic if you haven't got some job you're gonna have or if you want to paint over them you're gonna have many many hours kind of painting over these but as you can see there's a fairly decent number of minis that go in there but as I mentioned earlier you don't actually need them they are pure visual flavor they are great to have if you've got them they will allow you to put them on the board kind of put in place of cards are you're going to place on the board but if you don't have them it's not the end of the world and I do know that in the core game and simple cause of the core game you're only going to use a handful of these minis some of these minis won't actually be used until more expansions of being released so that's kind of future proofing what you can get for future games but they are fantastic so that's a fairly Whistlestop tour around what you get inside the box of tainted Grail for the curve a lot and also the tinted Grail the monsters of Avalon as well but that's not really why we're here is it because what we want to do is have a look at how the game plays so let's go into the gameplay now so he takes his prey of the fall of Babylon by awakened rounds we heard at the beginning that there was an expedition that took place but five of the area's finest warriors went out to find out why the men years were darling what was having why was the weirdness creeping in however something has happened to that expedition as it mentioned at the beginning you weren't warned of these expedition so the villagers and the people of the area of now decided that you know what we need to find out what happened to our brightest and our best warriors and they've pulled together the second brightest new second best forty is the effective beating to go out and find out what happened to the a-team and also explore the wonderful landscape so you will take part in this massively increasing and contracting landscape as you add more towns and subtract Isles away playing from the playing area and you will start to delve into this wonderfully deep story every exploration town you're going to go on to in awaken runs will require you to look into this massively detailed journal and the story will progress but in a choose-your-own-adventure tight way there are multiple choices within each each section that relates to a card on there so the story is ever-evolving and you will make multiple multiple visits to the exploration journal depending on which card you are and as you're going out you're exploring this landscape and you're fighting bees and you're having tik-tok Senor battling using cubes and you're rolling a few dice and you may be running away from the forebearers or you may be running away from the Guardians or you're battling the guardians you're going to have to have a character that is worthy of this task and the very first thing that you do in tainted Grail is going to be to settle your character you as a solo player are going to choose between one and four characters I personally I've done it true solo with one character I've also played double-headed with two characters in reality the bookkeeping isn't that difficult between one and two I'm sure there is a real pedigree a real kind of premium that you can get from playing three or four characters betting more characters that you are there are some minor things you will kind of reduce from the time aspect of the game as well so the very first thing you're going to do is play one of your characters now for the tutorial scenario which is what we're going to be talking about and help you to discuss the game without spoiling anything for you it asks you to choose Bay or and I'll show you how we can set there in a moment however that my games were my favorites the juice is attitude fiery head female character called Nev who's a very feisty warrior why why do I choose knees up and I am hey twelve my wife is called Nev and I am H and she's a fiery head tattooed fiercely independent woman so you feel really remiss for me not to use need in my adventures as she's my parent in my adventure on life however for the sake of this video on this tutorial we're going to talk we're gonna be using Baio so let's have a look at how you set up beyo or any of you as you progress throughout Avalon onto your adventure into tainted Grail the fall of Avalon so the very first thing that you're going to do in tainted Grail is you're going to set up your character now there are four five characters sorry if you include Nev and got leaving your copy they're only four player board so how does that work well each of these character tiles is interchangeable between each of the player boards and each of these play boards is slightly asymmetric it will offer different starting stats for for energy for health and for terror and your character will then also have some abilities that will then fill in in terms of their skills here so on the left here we have the combat skills which are aggression courage and practicality on the right we have the diplomacy skills job empathy caution and spirituality so to set each one up on the back of each each character's tile player tile is a little bit of a backstory and it tells you exactly what abilities what skills they have and you can see here that they are it's kind of combat heavy he's got two in aggression he's got one encourage and he's got one in practicality while over here on the diplomacy side he's only got one in caution it also tells us that there are three food he starts the game with three food and warm wealth and these are going to be your first interactions with the red cubes now trust me on this score you will start to treat these things red you are going to spend your entire game either chasing them down or giving them away as you have to use them on almost every single action that you do but we'll come on to those in a little bit so here we see going back to beoh and setting him up we're going to put two cubes in his aggression that means he has two there we're going to put one in Courage and we're going to put one in practicality and we're also going to put one in caution over here we know he starts the game with three food and one wealth and those going to those little wells and then we can snap that back in that doesn't have to come out iron for the rest of the game but we also looking at the three columns here but energy health and terror as I say there's an asymmetry here on this there are little Chevron's on each of the columns about things go so over on energy he starts with six so we put a cube there over on terror he starts with zero and put a cube there and then for his health we have this handy little marker and as you can see it's got a tiny little heart on there to symbol health and we put that at the top and what that means is it's got these little little lines are coming across from it and as your health goes down it means that your energy can never be higher than your health so you've got a visual reminder of where your health isn't how much anything you can have at any one point and that is it we have set Bay or up he is ready for his battle out onto the fields of Avalon look at how we set the board up now so each chapter in 10-degree allows you to set up the story and the map tiles in a slightly different way however for the solo and tutorial scenario it's asking you to set the map tiles up like this so the first tile that you're going to set up it's gonna be tiled 101 and this is where you're going to place your men here now you're not going to place your men here although you will place that person here this is the men here and these are the big kind of the statues and the the entities that watch over the land of Avalon are protected from the weirdness taking hold however these have started to go dark and when they turn off that means that the weirdness is gonna creep in and start swallowing the land so first thing you're gonna do is lay tile 101 and they ask you to layer men here and on here you have the statue you also have these timing discs as well which have a number of a number of numbers going around they're ranging loads 8 and for this first one it has you to place it on the on the on the on the tile 101 you set it 8 minus 1 for every player so I'm doing so low so 8 that minus 1 is going to be 7 so we're going to set that for that and that's the men here on there as well but we're also going to put our man here not men here man here and this is where Bo is going to go on this tile and by they are being on this tile that means that opens up every available and legal orthogonal tile that goes to it so as we can see that then makes the map look like this how there are little numbers here which state which tile goes where so on 101 join at this side by 104 John at this side by 103 down at the bottom by 105 and up at the top by 102 from each of these arrows are on there so that is your starting your starting can of move and as you explore around the map so they all spent some energy and went there we were ten-foot tile 107 because as an arrow up their entire want oh nine down at the bottom there's no arrow off there and then if he went here and spend more energy we have put 108 down at the bottom there there's no tile up to this the only way to unveil this one is to beyond that that particular one and put 106 but what about if you was to I don't know if he was to go up to up to 107 here that would open up this tile here as well as opening up kind of 117 off that way however however you really got to be aware of the can of nine tile radius around your men here these men here help you kind of open up the map and if you were to what your throughout the day you can move off and explore further areas when it gets to the end of the day onlys kind of nine tiles here using the men here as the central are going to remain on the board so if you then have to rest off this map at the end of the day then what's going to happen is the weirdness is going to consume that you're gonna get put back onto the board but you're gonna suffer a penalty for it so the only other way to actually do that is to get some other tiles that have the men here symbol on there and you put them on once you've activated them you put them on with whatever the dials phase and that will then open these up but first of all that's difficult there are different costs for each of those you don't just activate them n here by going on the tile you have to pay certain costs and secondly as you progress throughout each day then your dial is going to be reduced by one eventually no matter which here you've got that's gonna be taken off the board maybe because he's gone dark and that one becomes a new and that means that only these tiles are then available and that is kind of the core game of where you place your men here's what happens with the tiles and what happens when your men here's go dark what what's that you see that the areas that you've explored don't stay on the map permanently yes that's true see in tainted Grail what happens is it's a lot of things you think you know are gonna get slightly flipped on their heads and this is probably gonna be the first instance of that because you see these many years not only are they the protectors from on the area of keeping the weirdness away but also they are dying and because that means the weirdness is gonna start creeping in they are going to become your kind of best friend as they allow more of a map to be opened up and explored but unfortunately because they are dying they're also gonna allow some of the map to constrict as well and their power only goes so far so although you may go off and explore almost any area of the map that you can in a certain given day as long as you are back within their many years area you're safe if you stay out of that many years area then you're not safe from you're only allowed three of these on the board at any one time the game only comes with three so there's only so much of map that can actually stay viable and visible and available to you as well and also what I means as well because what happens throughout the map is every CAD board tell that you go on has a number of options that you can explore within there some of them can only be explored if you have certain traits certain abilities certain secret cars again and it may well be that say you get this tile here and then you have to go off and explore a tile over here somewhere there's unexplored as of yet before you can then come back and then do another exploration on this tile because it is triggered by something else of course these many years only be so fast you have to time your game in terms of which men here's your mine as in when you like them and what resources you need to light the menus as well because they take wildly different resources and all the time that time dial is taking down against you so there's lots of things in this very ear ear Lee look what happens in the gameplay already but you have to think about you have to think about light in the menus you think about having to think about where you can explore each exploration is gonna cost you one of your energy or two of your energy depending on what cars you draw on out of there and there are things in the game that are going to want to kill you and also stop your quest as well so let's have a look a little bit further into the mechanics of the gameplay and what happens as you explore throughout the map because at the hearts of a tainted Grail is a procedural RPG what you're gonna do is you're gonna spend the game and the entire journey that you're on kind of increasing the abilities of your character and the only way you can do that is by exploring the map keeping the main mission in mind you're gonna find out initially what's happened to the first expedition but also completing side quests and tasks and then increasing the stats and abilities and wealth and reputation and food resources that your character has Nibelungs to find bigger and better enemies and bad guys and have better the kind of diplomatic conversations with people all the while opening the map unraveling the story you really does play very much like a video game man to start man what you're going to do is you're going to explore not every tell that you go on sometimes you will pass through them you'll come back and explore them at some point I almost guarantee that every tile is on the board at some point during your game will be explored out to explore you'll have moved your man on there maybe spent an energy point to do that and you will get given you know you will be on a particular map and here we are we're on the current connect farm hold and here it says here that I can spend one energy and I can gain one reputation once per day and on the back of it it gives us a little bit of flavor text as well it says why one cannot farm hold a deep feeling of loss fills everything incorrect from dilapidated farms to the sunken eyes of those who remain in town the men here in the market is orbit extinguished and everyone brave or resourceful enough has left to find a solution and at the bottom it tells you what the activation requirements are for that men here so if you're asked on dark and what you needs its to do and for there I would need all characters on here I will need a secret card which is many a right secret card or if they to energy to wealth and to magic per player it's getting up mannequin many are back on and illuminates it also gives you a little bit there about you know some text about what you can do in terms of the choices but what you would do once you exploring this you would then flip to the relevant area in the exploration journal and this becomes your very best friend now in the main game you'd go to flip to 101 and I'm going to show you briefly that tells you all the various verses there on 101 and there are a number of choices that you can make remember I said this was very much a choose your own adventure game in reality it is however for the sake of the tutorial the cenotes solar scenario this is special and the back scenario kind of tutorial scenario about 101 on here so here we go it tells you a little bit about his we're Oregon right deep feeling of loss provides contact it says now you're ready to do to choose what to do in this location guys by the way I say this is the solo tutorial scenario you're gonna be playing this scenario so I'm just couldn't read this little bit here it tells you what to do it's not gonna impact the main game itself so now you're ready to choose what to do in this location below are two options each has a requirements so here are the options it says I can speak with my master only if you don't have any parts of the surprising Aran state it's not going to stasis in a moment or you can component yeah or you can complete your mission and that requires me to go to the first one or you can complete your mission if I've got the part - the surprising Garen status I don't have anything at the moment so here we go we're gonna choose verse one which is to speak with my master it says if he's up the earlier than usual as you enter he earns a large pack behind the kids and intends to you with a wide smile you hear that good hope you're ready to stretch your legs a bit I hear a star feel near whitening and the local time picked it up it's a side inger large is your do digi ahead I'd rather not have it fall into the hands of some other Smith you not falling stars are a bad omen for most simple folk but they always excited like Smith's and Armorer's after all the legendary Excalibur was forged from one of those cold shards of distant skies soon you depart walking down the sloping fields towards a mist covered forest with some rations your trusty hammer and a purse of silver if he gave you before stepping into the shadow of the trees you take one last look back at the ancient towering statue above the shacks and houses how much longer can this tired old thing protect corn axe and of course talking about the men here and here we go we got it tells you some here so first of all I'm gonna came part 1 at the surprising Aaron's status again 1 well sup would be a red Cuban man wealth marketer and he says I've acquired I've gained my first story related status marked on your tutorial say sheet or writing down a piece of paper B also gains warm wealth and then it tells me that after that exploration ends and I should return to the variables what happens you then go back to the map and you make another choice am I gonna stay here am I going to explore further what energy do I have that allows me to do that and that's really interesting PI is that this is a solar tutorial there's a limited options in there but as something as I showed you crack if you go into 101 absolutely there are some kind of 9 vs and various things that you can do in 101 in the real game and that is an overview what happens there but let's talk about what happens when you decide to end your turn you see because where you rest in tainted Grail is sometimes as important as where you have explored because but only does rest give you the opportunity if you paid food to kind of increase your health back up and increase your energy back to its maximum and reduces terror if you have none of these red cubes left which we've spoken about they are very very very very rare commodity embodies a bit very much needed commodities if you don't have any use less thing recover less energy you won't bring your three Curie or your health it's exit oh it's not only does it allow that obviously acts as a reason for the next day starting and the next day starting obviously means young men here's time soaking well anytime tokens on the board or going to either subtract or increase by once that's a time you mechanism done however that is not all that rest is used for you see if you were to rest on a tile that has this symbol here which is like it I don't know it like an eye blinking that means that you will also experience either a dream or a nightmare on that particular tactile depending on the entry goes in the Journal of corresponding to that tile and also depending on your status as to whether it's a dream or a nightmare now importantly importantly some of these dreams are absolutely necessary to help you progress with the story they will give you major hints so as I say choosing where to dream or where to rest and have a dream sometimes as important as choosing more exploration to have as well for example on a random page in this and you will not know where this dream is connected to if I was on this particular tile might occur and I decided to rest there he said you might if I had the dream he said you returned exhausted from your disappointing journey south this entire land is uninhabitable afflicted with strange magic but this place is safe as it always has been once the red vegetation surrounds you on both sides you finally feel safe game part 5 of the fair of the far point clue status and we'll come on sir how statuses work on the same sheet very shortly for us to have a nightmare in this particular area on this particular tile it would give some text never said each character has this nightmare gains one terror point and up goes my terror level so as you can see there are certain things that can only happen when you rest and when you dream or have a nightmare so we talked about the stations and the statuses let's have a look at these statuses and how this really starts to make the game a excel at being kind of an arm they using paper-based system in a large sprawling exploring board game he's nothing new of course Dungeons and Dragons you said I probably grind out of all these types of games and as we've gone through much recent one is probably Kingdom and death monster and whilst some of the games have really heavy bookkeeping what they do or they mice doin tainted Grail is relatively lie you will get a pad of these shits a cheese basically in your statuses on there as well and the front side is to save so when you come away from the game actually allows you to record the state the game was him makes keys to put away and get out again but the main thing which helps you throughout your campaign are these statuses and your game statuses by exploring certain areas maybe taking a rest in a particular area completing tasks or gaining certain secret cars as well and when you get them all you doing a really really clever way is you just put a cross in whichever one you got there's no massive bookkeeping you're just filling across there are some 17 odd statuses you can collect there now that may sound like a lot but let me tell you my current game I just completed chapter two and there are 14 chapters and chatter - took me about five hours to complete so getting these 70 kind of statuses is gonna take a long time or getting the right kind of statuses you're never gonna completely more I should imagine as your passages in your journey Forks throughout the game then you will know you complete some statuses and not others but when you complete your States is when you Meister take something off on this sheet let me tell you this is part the game you feel like you do something really new and exciting it feels like you're gonna get dividends for that some of them have already paid me dividend some of them may not under may not for many many games yet it doesn't matter I gained that status I feel like I've achieved something and that is the good thing about any RPG is that you are constantly striving to improve and better your character when your chances of completing the game so so far we have it getting that it's all about timing it is about making sure that you're maximizing your moves that you are denies you your resources by having the right amount of red cubes II for finding wealthy experiencing magic and in your stance as well but like all these games throughout this detailed story you're gonna want to have an element of combat in there now lies games trick combat very differently he may well be that you know you have a game that uses dice for combat or it may belt be wearing that you have a game where you are checking your stats against an attack your stats for combat and then not be not subtracting damage off that way what take the Grail this is it just come up with a very very involved card system you get initially a starting hand of some combat and some diplomacy cards now combat cards obviously for fighting and diplomacy are for difficult conversations let's put it that way we've made me a guard or somebody that doesn't particularly like your personality or you come across however let's focus on combat because they both work in more or less the same way and you get given a meagre hand of starting cards for combat I should progress you the game and as you are leveling up your character and you're gaining experience points you can actually use those experience points to buy more combat cards or diplomacy cards from your combat advancement deck or your diplomacy advancement date and that allows you more options in your combat and some stronger combat actions which allows you to tackle the kind of strongest bad guys however that comes further on in the game so when you come across an encounter it's gonna tell you which color encounter to draw and there are four colors there's green there's purple there's blue and there's gray and generally the blue ones are for diplomacy and the rest are going to be some kind of creature that you're gonna be fighting against and here we go very handy in the tutorial it tells you what your first encounter is going to be an acute is card as we flip this over we can see it's missed shaped vermin now there's lots of green text on there that is obviously not on in the main game in the rest of the encounter cards that's just to take you through the first combat there it tells you that we have to inflict four damage on the MS shape element it tells us here this we are we're going to put the damage cues that we damaged and this here effectively what is the kind of the creatures come back to you after you've had your combat turn and I'll explain how these works so first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna draw three from our combat deck there we go that gives us three cards to play and we get to play these down now how you do that is as you can see on the side here we have some matching symbols so here we go this one always matches at the bottom and it says I get 1 times red cube on there but it also says if I match this up with this particular ability on my card then I can also claim a red cube before that so there we go do I have a kind of an aggression aggression stat and yes I do I actually have two cubes in my aggressions so that means I can play that against that card and what I think gives me on that particular term is it gives me two cubes against this creature so that's already out of four cubes I need to kind of kill this creature I have two cubes but that's not the only thing I could do there in the two cards that I have left in this particular hand I can then add these on as long as these little kind of cards with lightly strikes line up to some of the abilities and I have the relevant trade so here we can see if I was to then line this card up what would happen is that I can line up this bonus to line up with that card if I have that trait and do I have that trait yes I have one in that particular trade yes that means I can also use that card there we go and the green one there allows me to then also draw another card from the combat deck into my hand so so far for this action I have it flicks a - damage I take in an extra card I've lined up the combat but does say here that if I ended my go now and the creature eat I ate it against me but every I would gain a red cube for every point of damage I receive so let's end that there there we go I've got two cubes so far it's now the creatures turn and there we go you can see wanted to not - I would get one point of damage but because of this trait on here that means I get another cube there we go and now my creature has for damage or so3 damage out of its for against it so I'm almost there now comes back to my turn again and I can play any one of these cards as long as they match up and there we go if we look at this one it does say that if I have two cubes in my earth so five two cubes in my aggression I will gain a further two cubes and also again one cube down here for connecting because that always connects and I do have that so that actually gives me five cubes I've destroyed that creature however sometimes in here you do get abilities that you have to do and that will means at the point I lay down this card I lose one energy from my board and that's it thanks effectively combo it's not that difficult a concept to get hold of the tutorial takes you through it very very well of course we won't always be using the first encounter and as you progress through the game as your abilities increase as your character increases as you add more cards to your combat to your combat you get the ability to string together some really really hefty combos and that's really really good and if you're playing double headed what happens is you take it turn the creature attacks and then the other player takes another turn and it really starts to build up this rolling damage on to the creature however it is possible as well that you take on a creature that's a little bit too mighty for you and you can end up losing combat and for that there are penalties as well now each combat there each combat deck comes with these little markers at the top here and so these are all one difficulty and as you progress through different chapters it tells you to add either two difficulties three difficult for poor difficulty in there and obviously you're shuffling those up and you don't know what you're going to come across and that helps certainly create this procedural elements of ever-increasing potential bad guys as well as using that for combat it's more less exactly the same rules for diplomacy except for diplomacy what happens is you are potentially just maybe go on diplomacy you have you try to win them over so what you have is you start in the gray tile and using that card system as before your cube either moves up or goes down when it reaches the top you've won like that kind of diplomat the outcome when it reaches the bottom you've lost it and that is how the combat system works it's a little bit different it's a little bit unique and you know what it really fits within the theme of the game I can potentially see some people not liking this combat system and certainly in the early days in the first couple of hours of planing it feels fairly rudimentary but once you get canopy enough three or four hours into it into the game and you start to build up this combat deck you can really see those combos working together [Music] [Music] however tainted Grail is a game about a story it's a very deep and involving story that's going to take place over many many hours of play and how invested you are in this story is absolutely key to how much enjoyment you're going to get from the game how much you like a text-based choose your own style adventure in your board gaming it's gonna dictate as to whether or not this game is for you this exploration journal literally drives everything along yes you will get text and play vertex on the back of these cards but there is a lot of story here that tells its tail through this and it flows together by a safe unveiling what's on the back of the characters going to the relevant chapter and then kind of reading that out and progressing the story maybe and making choices on there and there are a wealth of choices in each particular chapter it's very neat a particular card that you can choose some of them may not seem completely obvious and sometimes you take a pun sometimes that pun will work out to be a bad choice for you because in a game that is this deep and this involving and we're timing is absolutely key and critical to you actually progressing and getting to the end of the day and getting to the end of the chapter it's very easy to be let down eight very kind of a straight path on this and end up somewhere that doesn't necessarily progress the story doesn't necessarily progress your character and you feel you may have wasted an entire day and your menus were getting very close to becoming dark because you followed a a kind of a trail that led nowhere and that potentially that could be a factor for some people you know this I think this exploration journal is an exceptionally well produced and well-written story that really is dragging me into this the fight that each of these cards has numerous options and some of them some of them will not become apparent to you or available to you until you hit certain stats on here or until you collected certain secrets cards or you've got you've achieved certain statuses on and you know there may be a tendency from people the problem with this I think is maybe a tendency to read ahead and if you really had you doing yourself no favors whatsoever because by reading ahead you can start valuating with choices and you're gonna start diluting the experience of listening for me although I love this I think it's a great book and it works really really well I do also think that saying in in the vein of the app before this war of mine but that may well have been better represented in app form now I know that that really drives a wedge into a lot of people we a lot of board gamers do not like using apps for their games so I'm glad that this book is there because that obviously opens obtains a grail for a lot of people I do wish there have been a simultaneous release of the of the app with this book because because there is always that temptation there and I've done it I've done it myself in my early games I was analyzing I think I want to get through this particular part of this particular chapter and I ended up reading and analyzing unfortunately I downloaded it so I'm very very stringent now on the fact that I make my choice first then I read the options that are available there but that is that is you know kind of at the heart of this game itself it's a large complex story it covers multitude of different kind of spreading out storylines which facially I should imagine will all tie together the exploration is absolutely first-rate you have this constant feeling that you going back to a particular stage that you're exploring and finding something new it's very much a game about resource management and about timing as well we mentioned the red cubes they are used for absolutely everything I mean every almost every action you take in this game is gonna cost you some of these red cubes and they become a little bit of a focus for you as you're running around the board trying to maximize your resources and then you get to a decision point you think god if I made a different decision three turns ago I would have the resource before that you have a many ears which constantly kind of increasing or contracting the board as well and that again has an element of time and for me I really like that element I think it's a great way that keeps the pressure on and the tension on in this game and makes you want to explore more however for some people he may well be that that is the element of timing and this resource management is just too much and unfortunately the earlier in the early hours of you playing the game it can feel overwhelming and you know I myself have maybe two or three restarts of the campaign before my current game where I've just finished the end of chapter two and there's been some close calls in that so it's a punishing game it's not a forgiving game it's a game that you will constantly make different choices and you will learn a lot from it as well read the story being so wide and so complex there is the possibility that you lose a thread of where you are now we've got into the save sheet it does give you an area to make some notes it's not a very big area if you're using a pencil maybe you can rub stuff out there do I suggest making those maybe because you know there is a lot going on here and you're gonna be playing it for many many many hours so maybe take additional notes to that as well because if you like me it's not gonna be the only game you play you're gonna play for a while put it away maybe for a few days maybe for a couple of weeks come back to it maybe not completely grasp and remember where you are and again that can be an issue for people it may well be that some people just take that ability to choose to start the adventure again now there are lots of things that we haven't discussed obviously because I don't want to spoil too much this is how we use these tiny jokers not only in the men hears but also on the broad and cross tokens and how you flip them for certain things as well there's a small elements of dice play your abilities on here sometimes in chapters in here or allows you to take those abilities roll the dice add them together and that will give you an outcome so there is a look based element to the game as well then you have the Guardian dying every now and again you will get a guardian and they will roam around the board kind of seeking you out if you like they're not really it's almost a way and the way that you do that is you would place their card on the board and move that around unless you've got the monsters of Avalon and then you would use one of the guardian fingers in there and you'd move that around the board will not spoke about the four dweller now I'm gonna tell you how this person how this this four dwelling comes into the game but when they come into the game invariably at some point the chances are you can experience the four dweller in the game it creates even more pressure on timing there more pressure as you become hunted almost by this by the look there's a lot going on this game I think I really really really like this game a lot of people have been waiting for this game to arrive and for me I think the amount of thought and dedication and concept that's gone into this have created a unique experience you will have played elements of this game before you know it's very easy to say oh you know doing this expanding map is seven the continents using a paper-based kind of system to record your stats these Dungeons & Dragons or it's killing death monster you know moving around the map and kind of timing your moves to maximize them may be similar to city of kings and all those things are absolutely correct and if you don't like those elements of those particular games and it may be that this game isn't for you it's a big and involved game it's going to demand a lot of your time there's a rather cynical thing in the monsters of Avalon whereby we've got this if you plot for this there are some great and fantastic looking miniatures in here do they add anything to the game no they're very much of a visual flair I knew suddenly if you've got that in the core game that maybe 50% of that box you will never ever put on the board because they will come a current in future chapters so you know there is a slightly cynical there I can understand why Erica awakened relative have released that because people like minis and I have used them when I had guardians come out and you know they do add to the Flair of the board itself other than that I don't think there's anything extraneous here I think that everything that's on the board and everything's in the box works really really well the same system is absolutely fantastic it's entirely possible to use that safe system it kind of mid-game our mid chapter I'm gonna use it at the end of the chapter then it's great it makes storing and pulling things out again an absolute breeze because it gives you a true state of kind of game saving there and there's no way that anybody is gonna leave this game out on their table forever because it's going to take days and days and days of continuous playing to actually do this look I think it's a great game I'm so pleased that I got the opportunity to play this game from the tutorial which is just fantastic - absolutely immersing myself within the game itself it's been an absolute joy now as we come to the solo game there are two two aspects that you knew solo you can do two solo or you can do either double headed off or choose more characters I've done both and I would say that true solo is a particularly punishing game because what happens on true solos if your character dies that's it that is game over you do get a few kind of when you're down in the danger zones you do get a few extra mitigation conditions for true solo which kind of you don't get in co-op so that's good that's okay that allows you to potentially have a better chance of prolonging your time in the game but if your character dies into solo that's it that's game over whereas in co-op what happens is yes you can die a lot sooner but you can also then choose another character that hasn't been used yet from the box to install it instead of install them into the game and continue your adventure so for me playing doubleheaders is absolutely the way forward if you want a more difficult challenge by all means go true solo and I did that for my first couple of games and yeah it is punishing break taught me a lot about how the game works itself so guys look thank you very much for sticking with me throughout this this review of tainted Grail I hope I haven't supported too much of the game for you I tried to keep my lid on most of the things I've certainly not showing you inside the exploration journal I haven't even talked about how the chapter cards work I've talked about seeker cards or the items cards or these these extra stacks cards that you can get here there's lots that I haven't discussed there's a lot I'm leaving you guys kind of the ability to discover for yourself thank you all very much for joining me on this journey through tainted Grail if you want more detailed look inside the tutorial in the solar campaign you want to see a playthrough of that and please check out poor Grogan's gaming rules video where he played through the entirety of the solo tutorial on tainted Grail I'll give you an even more in-depth look of how the game plays from my perspective so this is just it's it's a massive game and I'm really pleased I had the opportunity for you absolutely guess who's not board game seal of excellence because I think that it's just a phenomenally produced of products once again thank you very much for joining knot board gaming I'm mark I'm your host remember you can always follow us on facebook at knot board gaming as always be o our edie and on Instagram as well please don't remember that and don't forget if you liked the like the video here then you can always like and subscribe to the channel and please do check out our other videos so one final thought if you have nobody else to play with there's nothing wrong with playing with yourselves

Channel: Not Bored Gaming

Views: 6,634

Rating: 4.9496856 out of 5

Keywords: not bored gaming, board games, boardgames, solo board games, solo boardgames, board game reviews, solo board game reviews, tainted grail, fall of avalon, awaken realms, kickstarter, king arthur, camelot, nemesis, bgg, board game geek, tabletop games, youtube

Id: aUcScBGPzmc

Length: 58min 33sec (3513 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Solid_State_Soul]

Very much looking forward to receiving my copy... whenever that will be. I did the King's Pledge all-in-one shipping wave for this. I think it'll be May 2020 before I get my copy. :(

[u/Wrong_Strain]

This was a really good review.

[u/Paul_the_Scribe]

Does this game get boring the further you play through the campaign?