Return to Dark Tower - Round One Playthrough

welcome back to the table today we are going to try a round one with none other than return to dark tower this is particularly special to me uh less special to alicia here probably my wife uh i grew up with the original dark tower i did not yeah you you definitely did not i am oh i am perfectly of the age to remember dark tower i had a cop i have a couple copies now some of which are in semi working condition but nothing like this uh although you did have a chance to play it at gen con right i did yeah yeah we had a well actually not even a demo we played a full game of this at gen con with rob rouse and jeremy howard right uh and justin jacobson didn't play but he oversaw the he was kind enough to let us play of restoration games so and they sent this to us we got this just before the holidays so we're really excited to play it i've played it a couple times now but we wanted to get to the table for you to show you everything in action uh we're not going to play an entire game on camera but we are going to play quite a few uh turns at least on camera then we'll finish and we'll come back and share sort of what our whole experience was and we have set this up we have an app that hopefully i'm animating on the screen right now so you can see a little bit about what we have going on but what we have in front of us is the map yep the world map the dark tower of course indeed and then who are the foes that we have for this round so we've got the brigands the briggins we debated on how to pronounce wiggins brigands brigands or we did a little sling sling blade action too and said briggins bergens uh also what uh frost troll frost troll that's the next level up right and then we got a titan and then our adversary is bane of omens yeah so when you play this game you can actually select that so each level two three four and then the adversary you kind of like can mix and match so we picked the ones that we wanted to we picked the mission which you can see here on screen is raise and outlaw army gleb the outlaw king suggests charging the tower head on he asks you to muster an army at the tower walls what this means is our goal is quest in tower scar desert and spend 100 warriors which is a lot of warriors in this game however it says spend 10 less warriors for each gear you have and you might not be able to see this on camera but we have the gear spread out here there are six different types of gear you can collect from the bazaar you can also get treasures from the bazaar these are also off camera but just to let you know what we have up first is the spear of a teach i think i'm pronouncing that right hopefully as cole's idol and the lamp of hope now these treasures and the gear will give us some benefits as we're playing but we're also going to want to collect some of that gear so we can do that final goal a little bit easier 100 warriors yeah well if we get one of each of these goal or gears that's going to take it down to 40 which is still a lot still a fair amount um and the board has been seated with some briggins bird brigands and one frost troll here in the north uh i am starting i am the wario the brutal warlord in fact and you are i am a relic hunter and she's starting over in the east uh so we're setting this up for two players obviously uh and we've got two skulls starting on all the citadels and all the sanctuaries because the app told us to do that and with that i think we can begin well there's some other things some some other things i was given the black mark which is this little ring on a chain that says you cannot spend or lose this card for any reason spend one spirit which is one of the currencies in the game to give this card to another hero what i believe this is going to do because the uh adversary bane of omens he's going to be hunting down and doing bad things to whoever's holding the black mark um so we'll see how that goes luckily i also started with gleb the outlaw king from the uh the storyline and as long as glove is with me uh it says if you end your turn within the mountains gain six warriors so gleb is going to help us collect some of those warriors along the way because we need a lot we do uh and i i did learn in the few times i've played this one player has to have those things so we're gonna maybe have to meet up and trade some stuff along the way so that we can sort of trigger the end game uh gleb also gives me a plus two humanoid advantage um we'll explain advantages when we get to them but there are things that you can spend uh when you're resolving some of the things like battles and whatnot yeah um so i'm going to continue on here to see what's next you're probably going to hear some sounds we pretty much set this up ready to go for month one and you'll hear the tower a little bit which is probably one of the coolest things in gaming right now um and now it's my turn so we've got the companion quest and adversary quests aren't legit for the first round after the first month we're going to be giving an adversary quest which we have to tackle or bad things will happen and then we're also going to be giving a companion quest which we can do to either get like a quest item or maybe even another companion like old gleb here but right now we don't have that so i'm going to start and one of the things you have to do in this game is cleanse these skulls off of these locations because if we run out of skulls here in the general supply and we only have two four six eight of them left right now we lose another way to lose is if we get three corruption we can get corruption cards by failing at things or if we have to spend something we don't have it uh and the corruption cards will go here they make things a little more difficult but also like i said if you get three it's game over uh to win the game we have to get all the way through it and achieve that main goal um so i'm gonna go through what you do on your turn at the beginning of your turn you're gonna start right here in the middle of the player sheet it says start of turn and each of us have a special power as the brutal warlord i get to gain five warriors what is yours that i get to gain a potion she gets a potion so that's that's cool everything's kind of beneficial there now i do the middle of my turn and this i can do in any order but you can move you're going to do a heroic action you're going to do a reinforced action and like i said i could do the reinforced first i could move first i could do whatever you can also split up your move so if i move a little and do one of them i can finish moving a little bit more and do another one so i'm starting right here in the citadel there's two skulls so i'm going to go ahead and begin by cleansing so when you cleanse it says remove all skulls from your space i'm going to simply take those off the board put them over here in the supply so we have a little bit more in the supply and you gain i gained two spirit uh spirits going to be used for a number of different things particularly when you reinforce uh but you get to spirit after you take your heroic action period whether it's cleanse battle or quest uh now i can so i've done my heroic action so i can't battle i can't do anything else like that i can reinforce and if i reinforce it a citadel i'm just going to gain a potion i think though i'm going to go ahead and start i'm going to move and see if i can get some more warriors just so we can get a ton of them and i'm right here next to this village so i'm going to go one two of my three move and then i will reinforce at the village at the village you can gain six warriors for free or you can spend a spirit like so and gain 12 warriors so not too shabby considering we need a large army yeah and now i have 24 uh 24 warriors practically game over now we will spend those before we get to the end because we're going to do a lot of battling but i feel pretty good about that and like i said i can split up my move so i have one movement left so where do you think you have any ideas by the way it's cooperative that's why we're consulting with one another you have any ideas where i should go maybe for my next turn i mean i guess it would depend on if you wanted to do some more cleansing or if you wanted to maybe hit up the bad guys in your area yeah i guess i i guess i'll move this direction either way okay um so i'm going to do that now my turn is over i've done all three of the things and now at the end of your turn you take one of the skulls out of the general supply this part's pretty cool this is very cool and you drop it in the tower and then you look to the app and fortunately for us it says no events usually the events aren't necessarily good for the most part i just hit continue and now it is your turn alicia the relic hunter all right so i am in a citadel area with a couple of skulls so i think i'm gonna oh actually let me take my potion first oh yes let's top to bottom it's hard to remember that i know i i agree i stink at that so stay on top of me about it okay all right so i have a potion of the golden sun which i get to spend and gain a spirit which i'm just going to go ahead and take care of that that way probably one of the weaker potions honestly but not bad i'll take you know i mean i'll take a free spirit why not and so i've done that i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna cleanse which i'm gonna take these two guys off the table take care of that and because i took a heroic action i'm gonna get two more you've got spirit i know you're supposed to say yes i do yes i do i have spirit we're not gonna we have problems how about you oh david you started it you started it okay so i did that now i can if i do it a citadel i can get a pouch no i think you don't really need to like get more potions no no oh yeah so look let's look at the treasures you've got the spear of a tish when you defeat a melee foe gain that seems like it's more for me yeah yeah yeah cause i'm male is not my game this one says prevent two uh two warrior losses per dungeon room we don't even have any dungeons out on the board yet so that's not the greatest one and then the lamp of hope when you cleanse you can remove skulls from any space oh that seems solid considering there's just two of us and there's a large map on the board that's huge some of these you have to spend but this one you don't i don't you're right so i need to go to a bazaar in order to gain a treasure oh and what's good for me is that i also have a virtue that when i reinforce at a bazaar i get to spend one less spirit to gain a treasure so seems like getting treasures is gonna be my gig i mean you can do it easy anyway ah fair enough so i'm gonna go ahead where's the nearest bizarre bizarre over there is pretty far it is fun um this one here is within one two three spaces so i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna go one two three thank you and i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna reinforce there and i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna spend a spirit because i can spend one rather than two to gain a treasure nice i'm gonna go ahead and take the lamp of hope that's good now treasures we can have four of potions we can have as many as we want um companions we can have as many as we want and the gear here you can only have one of each type so either one of us can only have one of each of the six gear and we're gonna want to collect that gear sure this game too that's less ten less warriors to have yeah for each one and one thing we forgot to mention to you because we're always too wimpy to try it why why chance it this haggle die uh when you reinforce if you want to you can roll this die and either well you take whatever rules so uh if i'd rolled this when we reinforced uh she would have also gotten three warriors but there's other faces here there's one that's the bonus is getting a gear for free which is pretty bad that's not bad there's a potion and then there's a blank space that doesn't give you any bonus but you still get to take the reinforce action and then the bad side or two sides is sort of the bizarre closed side if you're familiar with the original game and that means you don't even get to take your reinforced actions what it just kind of penalizes you we'll see if we use this i promise we i will use it at least once just to risk it because it is nice to get although it really sucks when you get shot down yeah is that everything for you i need to drop a skull oh boy did he fall out events events and by the way before we go to the events just want to tell you whenever if you get the chance to play this game don't rob anyone the opportunity to drop their own skull you gotta really just let everyone drop their own skull it just feels right the tower awakens the bane of omens invades the soul of the one who bears his mark the player with the black mark gains a corruption i unfortunately that's you have the black mark this kind of sucks i mean that's on your turn and it's happening to me so i have to gain a corruption right off the bat i'm gonna take the top corruption card and it says suspicious you cannot carry more than two potions um so that's not too bad it is it is a penalty because like i said we can carry as many potions as we want i cannot i can only carry two so i'm going to be consuming potions as i get them the worst thing about this is now i'm two away from losing us the game so if i get another one for sure i'm going to want to get to a sanctuary for a reinforced action that way i can get rid of corruptions that is one thing you can do and probably something we're going to have to do in this game uh what's next here and that the month ended so the first month always ends after once around the table but then it can go varying amounts month two new quests this is kind of a cool thing so our companion quest is recruit mirus mirus the horse lord probes the tower's defenses with her right riders you can convince her that there is strength in numbers our task quest in anza and spend three stealth advantages to gain miris as a companion so where is anza it's in the west it's over here gotta be hans uh looks like are you on it oh no it's down here it's where the villages so i'm going to put this out there to signify that's where our companion quest is and we also have to put our main quest out we forgot to do that so we'll check that in a second and then the adversary quest assassins unleashed the bane's assassins hunt the one with the black mark great this is awesome uh they will first strike the warriors around the hero the assassins can be ambushed as they leave the tower though task quest in the throne and spend two gear or the hero with the black mark will lose warriors how many we don't know and that is in the south so quest in the throne i believe that i'm going to lift the tower for a second it's right there so that quest i'll put it down it's going there got it hit continue so month two begins and this is going to be something really helpful and cool that i'll show you here after the tower finishes interrupting me um we had forgotten to put the main quest marker out but you can always go back and look at the main goal and it says quest in tower scar desert which is right here in the north next to the tower uh to do the main goal so when that time comes that's where we're gonna go but that that marker helps us remember that and then we can just back out and start playing again so it is back to me oh and that quest is right next to me i know can you have more than one companion i can you can have as many companions as you want the only limit is treasures really all right uh and then the gear all right um and that's to spend three stealth advantages i don't have any stealth advantages here's a stealth here there's a stealth what do you have you have a humanoid advantage as your virtue yep and i have two wild advantages and i have a magic advantage and your wild advantage is in oh hills mine is in the forest so that is not going to help us with that and then the other one is to get two gear around the other side of the board well that might be more i think i'm going to go first take your first personal action start your turn yes i am going to start there i'm going to get my five warriors and then i think i'm just going to go take care of these brigands uh while i can i'm going to move one two to the brigands and then i'm gonna battle now here's a very cool thing this is how the battle works you're gonna push this button here on the app and then you choose what you're battling you look it's the briggins i'm gonna tap riggins i'm gonna hit battle and since they're a level two they have like sort of a small deck or hand of cards that come out face down and i'm gonna pick two of those and then you're effectively just sort of suffering the results of those cards however you can spend some advantages that you might have in order to improve those cards so as you can see here this one says lose five warriors and i have advantages you can spend up to 10 advantages overall if you have them so what advantages do i have well the brigands are stealth and humanoid and as long as i have gleb with me i have two humanoid advantages so there's two okay and then is that in the forest it's not the forest so i don't have that i do have one melee advantage but it's not a melee creature so that's not gonna help um and that's that's about oh no i have one wild advantage when i'm in battle which i am so i have three advantages here for this fight and two cards so i'm gonna improve this once that's one of the three now it says lose three warriors i'm going to spend the other one on it again now it says gain one potion so it went from a negative thing all the way to a positive thing so i'll take my potion you go it's that same potion yeah and then i'll continue and then we've got the next one so the next one is lose one potion but i have that one advantage left so i'm going to spend it and it's no losses so i'll take that i have no more advantages to spend and we get to remove the token from the board we've defeated the brigands at least those brigands and that was my heroic action so i get two spirits please oh all right um and i haven't reinforced i haven't moved no i'm not oh you did two you moved i have one more move and then i can reinforce um you know what i'm just going to move down to the bazaar okay and i'm going to reinforce there but i'm not going to oh is there anything good here oh there is it uh this golden mace of azcol came out to replace what you took and it is says while on a space with a foe spend spirit equal to that foe's level to remove it so you're not neces you're not battling it but you can remove enemies uh foes off the board just as long as you have a nice amount of spirit which is i mean pretty good magic wand but i'm a huge warrior like i'm a brutal warlord i don't think i need it i'm gonna let you take that if you come back and get another treasure so i'm just gonna get a gear for free and i will take you know what i'm gonna take that stealth advantage just in the off chance i can get another couple wild advantages or something to finish this quest okay so that is everything on my turn now i just drop a skull oh actually you know what i'm going to do before i take that i'm going to roll the die so i'm reinforcing it that bizarre and i'm rolling i can't watch for a little bonus oh boy david see this is why the bizarre i got the bad face so i don't even get the dusky cloaks uh i might not roll the dice again but i probably will he probably will i probably will so that's my turn i'm going to take a skull that was sad drop it oh it fell and it came right out so the skulls are going to go in there and they're going to go in a number of different places there's these three sort of levels and shields on each side that you're going to remove at times and those might let skulls pour out that have collected in there throughout the game they might show glyphs that are going to make things more difficult for you to do but this one went all the way down came out the bottom into the north here and since it's my turn and there's no one controlling the north i'm going to be able to place this right now i'm just going to place it should i place on the city one of these because we already have skulls there and we could just cleanse them sure so what's the rule on how many skulls you can have in a space you only have three in a building so if we put this here and for some crazy reason the skull is specifically if we're specifically told it has to go on this citadel it would be the fourth skull and if you're to place your fourth skull you do not do that you remove the building and the skulls that are on it and that's bad because the building's no longer there for us to use and if it's destroyed the person whose turn it was gains a corruption as well well that's no fun i think though i mean you're right here and you have that lamp that lets you cleanse anywhere yeah i'm gonna put that right there gonna take another risk because it worked out so well before well yeah okay but you can get rid of them all in one swipe all right but you don't have to got it so that is my turn oh and there are vents so it says a seal is broken a seal is about to light up to show it should be removed so i'm going to hit reveal and then the tower is going to sign you know shine one of those seals we'll see where oh and it's right here facing us in the north it is the bottom so i'm going to remove it oh and just like i said earlier it uh let out another skull so why don't we put that on the sanctuary oh right i know that's a little risky yeah but that's what we did so just so you know we have three on the citadel three on the sanctuary here we can't have any more on those but there's two other buildings that we could play stuff on yeah so that's my turn um hopefully nothing else bad happens oh this is good gleb recruits warriors the player with gleb may spend one spirit to gain 12 warriors oh definitely wow that's i mean so i now have a lot 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 41 i have 41. now i just need all the and i need those too that's true but i'm surprised we have that many warriors already thanks gleb yeah thanks club and now it's your turn okay okay so i'm going to start here i'm in the bazaar and if i tour were to reinforce in a bazaar i'm going to go ahead and get a treasure which i really want that one oh but first i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to take my potion what kind of potion you get this time oh not the same one i got potion of fortune's favor so i spend to gain plus one wild advantage that's nice that will help if we want to get this stealth one if we get this the dusky cloaks and that and just one more stealth advantage we need one more all right all right so i'm going to do that so i got that i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to reinforce at the bazaar i'm going to oh you have to spend one right to reinforce i'm not going to be able to fight well you won't be able to fight this turn no but you'll have more you'll have more uh spirit next turn all right i'm gonna go ahead and take this then and i'm going to cleanse i think are you gonna move at all um yeah i think i will i'm gonna go ahead and i'm just gonna position myself to be here but i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna cleanse and i'm gonna use my lamp of hope to cleanse and remove skulls from any space so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to remove it from the sanctuary here that has the three on it see the sanctuary doesn't have any anymore well the citadel still does sir and that was your that was your cleanse your heroic action so you guys oh do i do get two more spirits so and she's positioned herself next to this frost troll here because she just picked up that golden mace of azkal she's gonna be able to instead of battling that hopefully next turn just spend spirit to get rid of that uh foe off the board so we don't really have to battle it so we don't go through all the battle and loss of warriors which is probably a good thing or having to spend advantage and all that stuff yeah all that stuff so that's pretty good so that's it for me i got my two spirit i'm going to drop did you want to roll no no no we didn't did we not learn that lesson yeah okay i didn't clearly oh that popped right out i'm gonna put that where you you decide wherever you want to put that see i don't want to press my i'm far uh when to uh remember you got that lamp well that's true zap it from wales okay okay okay okay all right i'll do it that lamp is pretty sweet i know so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to put it here on the sanctuary that way we cleanse three when we cleanse that area and that is my turn and there are events oh no all right so rumor agents of the tower are infiltrating a sanctuary waiting for the one with the black mark me to approach so again it seems this is more just kind of like a hint that something is going to happen probably bad to a sanctuary eventually in the in the not too distant future oh and we've got more uh foes coming out so in the south we get a frost troll in middle sister which i think we had something else on this middle sister it's over on the river oh shoot he's hanging out with us wait what yeah oh man briggins and frost rolls oh my i've i've not seen that yet in my plays two foes in one space so if you were to go to a place do you get your choice yeah you can pick okay yeah i don't you can't take them on both at once that's for sure i mean um all right so it's over to me yeah all right well i think i'm going to uh we left this citadel with things on it you're within range you still need to collect some more stealth into that adversary was to spend two gear you have no gear oh and i screwed up the gear last time so i'm not going to do that okay so you know what i'm going to go ahead and collect gear right you're at now bazaar yep yep i am going to well first take your five dudes oh thank you i got warriors coming out my ears i am going to reinforce at the bazaar for free and gain one gear so i'm gonna gain that stealth uh that dusky cloak okay stealth advantage um now i'm going to move now i'm gonna i think i'm gonna spend one spirit to move twice the distance that i can normally move and where are we going over there just in this green space is that the adversary quest is the tower over there oh yeah yeah he's just on the other side all right so i'm gonna spend this okay and i'm going to go so i can move six i'm gonna go one two three four five six oh so that gets me to another bazaar so that uh next time i can get that second piece of gear before i go to that situation i feel like you crossed all of middle earth over here what's happening and i didn't do oh i didn't do uh i didn't do a thing though i didn't do a heroic action i'm actually back that up i'm not going to take all my movement i'm going to get to this place and cleanse these two skulls off of there and then finish my movement down there all right that's the better move and get two spirits okay so that's my turn i see i didn't even use the dye you didn't even use the dye uh here comes the skull it got ate up and so it's in the tower but we have events the tower stirs the tower is about to rotate keep your fingers clear what does that mean is this thing going to move i think it it might oh so the tower oh so you didn't see us but the tower rotated and spilled out another skull out here in the north so not on the citadel certainly not on the citadel um of these three where do you think you might go um next the bizarre is going to be for gear or treasures the sanctuary is to get rid of corruption probably not and the village is for uh warriors i mean i could use some warriors i still have my just put yeah okay i'll put it on the village okay um so that's the only thing that happened a seal is broken the seal is about to light up and show you ugh well hopefully it's on it's gonna be on a different side i imagine it is on over here oh on the right here is it the middle yeah yeah you get it i got it oh another thing popped out great all right listen listen dark tower we've had enough of you um i'm gonna go ahead and put in the citadel things are moving fast oh oh man yes so the briggins it says faux acts briggs strike each hero loses one item if a brigand is on or adjacent to their space uh i got a frost troll which is no briggins and where are you clean out there nope we're good high five david nice we're so lucky we're so good at being lucky all right was that my turn that was that was all you sir all right so we're gonna take a few more turns at least just so you can see a little bit more uh it is your turn oh my okay so i think i will i'm going to take my potion just because i need to fight something with all this potion of 1000 strides spend to make any hero a spin to move any hero up to three spaces that's nice not bad so i don't have to spend a spirit if i didn't want to or you could i could have you you could move me yeah i could do no i need to be right there so i can get my gear fair enough okay so i'm going to fight the frost troll because i can and you're not going to battle them right you're just going to use your mace uh yeah i think so because yeah because i can while i'm on his face with a sp with a spo i mean with a foe i can spend spirit equal to that foes level so for a frost roll that is three i've got plenty well you got four uh-huh so i've got enough okay and so i'm gonna spend that i'm gonna get rid of those guys so whenever you remove a foe that way you do have to tell the app that you've done that so they have this button right here and it goes and it shows all these and it shows you how many you had in play so we're going to go to frost troll here it says two in play hold to remove one foe holding and now the tower the app everyone at the table knows that that frost troll has been removed frost troll acknowledged got it so i did that so i do get two spirit bags for doing a no no no i did an actual battle yeah that was that was that was yeah that actually wasn't even taking it oh yeah that was true treasure even more all right so i think i'm gonna go ahead and cleanse um i'll go ahead and cleanse this that's probably good over there yeah i'm going to cleanse this citadel here thank you david thank you pretty good shape on the skulls and i was able to do that way over here because of my other lamp of hope and i get two spirits two spirit back and then i get to re-enforce in an area and i haven't moved so where do i want to go yeah what do you want oh you want you said you wanted to go to this village maybe and get warriors that's what will happen if you get um yeah i think i will do that i'm going to go one two i'm at a village so i'm going to go ahead and i will i can for free you want to do this i mean why not i mean three you get six warriors or you can spend one spirit and get 12. but if you're gonna roll that down you have to roll that first i i do have to roll it first before i decide on the spirit spending not before you decide but if that has the bizarre clothes you don't get to do anything oh boy his dice does not like us i'm done with the diet i'm done okay so no warriors no um and that's the end of your turn although you could move unless you wanted to stay put and take words i'm at two uh you moved twice uh i think i will go ahead and stay okay so then i'm going to drop a skull oh and he just jumped right out jumped right out into the east i'm gonna go ahead and put it on this citadel that's probably good no events that's a plus well there was a hundred last time so that's fine all right so it's right back to me so as you can see month two has gone back and forth a few times we're on turn five of month two whereas month one only had two turns and we haven't done either of those quests but i think i'm going to get one of those done right now if i can so i'm gonna start my turn get five warriors i adding to my one million of them that i have uh and i'm going to reinforce in that space at the bazaar uh to gain a gear it doesn't matter because i think i'm gonna have to spend these gear you need three stealth no no i'm not doing that one oh i'm spending two years to uh head off the assassins oh all right so i'm just gonna take this uh trusted maps which is actually not bad because it improves my movement um not if you have to spend it though well i mean it improves my movement right now so i can get up to where i'm going all right i think i'll need that um and now i'm going to move uh up let's see here i gotta lean forward one two oh i can do it one two three and now i'm in the space with that adversary quest i have two gear to spend so now we can just hit that adversary quest and it reminds us quest in the throne which is in the south and spend two gear or the hero with the black mark will lose warriors which i don't want to do although i probably could if i wanted to so i'm going to spend those two gear back to the supply uh and now i just hold the complete and assassins unleashed you ambush the assassins as they leave the tower preventing them from hunting ever again uh the hero with the black mark does not lose warriors so i continue and if you could remove that little quest marker from over there that tower i got it so that'll come back i'm sure but not quite yet and that was i quested so i get two spirit two spirit i moved to get there i reinforced before i did that is the end of my turn i'm in pretty good shape i've got a lot of warriors i got a lot of spirit yep drop off the skull all right ate it and there are events new wares put any number of treasures from the market on the bottom of the treasure deck then refill the market are there any here that we really really want you defeat this there's not a lot of melee are the are the brigands melee two words yeah okay well so oh no there's stealth and humanoid the uh frostrol is melee and humanoid the titan is also melee in humanoid and then the bane of omens is stealth and humanoid so we're dealing with stealth and melee all humanoids yeah so i think we can get rid of as cold's idle because this is uh improves our dungeon situation and there's no dungeons on the board right now oh what about that this one has a humanoid advantage that's not bad considering all of them are humanoids and i think we get rid of the spear batish too so we're gonna put those on the bottom of the deck and bring out two new cards the lamp of darkness that's got to be the opposite of the lamp of hope uh spend to remove one foe from your space oh so that's a lot like your mace except you have to spend this right but it gets rid of a foe and no spirit like it's just okay that's not bad uh and then the other thing that came out is the acorns of the white oak spend to remove up to five skulls from anywhere on the board also pretty good and plus wild advantage in the grasslands okay but yeah still wild it's not bad all right so there was that okay the towers agents lie and wait if the player with the black mark is on or adjacent to a sanctuary they lose 25 warriors are you where are you i'm in that space is it you are like you are next to a sanctuary am i you're yeah okay right right adjacent yep yep or adjacent so i'm losing 5 10 15 20 25. you know what i had them to lose yeah but we also need we need 100 we need gleb to come back into action here ouch how did it know it did it just knew i think it knew because well i mean i'm glad you had them to lose otherwise you would have gotten a corruption yeah that would it would have been bad of you that wouldn't all right so it is back to you oh my gosh okay so i'm gonna go ahead and i'm going to try again to gain myself some warriors no no david you're not gonna use that okay no i just put the die way over here i'm gonna keep it here just in case just in case you're feeling froggy all right so i'm gonna go ahead and reinforce oh but first don't forget my potion okay potion of the siren song spend to move any foe up to two spaces oh yeah you could move a foe to you and just mace them off the board also true up to two spaces though so a little yeah from folks so i'm going to go ahead and do that so i did that um i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to reinforce and i'm going to gain i'm going to spend a spirit and i'm going to get 12. nice yeah 12 is significant when you only had seven yeah i'm kidding my og-7 here we go and so i did that and i'm going to go ahead and move [Music] i think i might head over yonder i mean why not are you gonna do a cleanse you think are you looking for a fight uh i'm not close enough for a fight like i could spend that like if i went one two three and i moved him one two it still wouldn't be in the same space one two oh that's true yeah you could do it it's just brigands though oh but you only have two spirits yeah so yeah you couldn't take out a frost troll right now anyway with that mask or you could just fight them the brigands and then save your spirit situation for the frost troll yeah i think i might try that i'm in an old-fashioned fight so let's go i like this one two three and then i'm gonna go ahead and spend this to move a foe uh up to two spaces i'm gonna move these guys one and two nice which means they're here with me so this is spent and this is how you play the game all right so i'm gonna battle then i'm gonna battle my foe so let's hit what cards do you want uh i'm gonna pick fourth on the top fourth on the top second on the bottom second on the bottom okay lose five warriors oh wait we didn't even check your advantage situation yeah what is my advantage brigands are humanoid and what else stealth uh yes correct you have one humanoid in right and two wild so i have three oh and you're in yeah you're in the well it's two when you're in the hills and you happen to be in the hills i'm not sure if we planned that no we didn't we did not it's happening look at us so that means you have three advantages to spend all right i think i will at least spend one for right now let's see what happens that takes it down to three warriors let's roll it another yeah gain one potion i can deal with that all right i gained the potion of purifying breath so spend to remove up to two skulls from any building hmm not bad well you should spend that before the end of your turn i will so we continue yep and you have just one advantage left you want to spend it yeah of course there's three warriors all right it's nice nice to know when you foul this that was pretty cool not bad so confirm got it and we removed the brigands bob riggins briggins [Music] off the board okay so that has to be the turn you did so much or did you want to use that potion so i get two of these because they did the thing that's true mm-hmm and i can still spend up to two to remove oh yeah i would use two lonely ones over here where no one is no one is so go ahead and do that i'm gonna go ahead and spend that it's nice when you can find a location that has two skulls yeah not three for that card or yeah the one and you waste the one that's not bad so i'm gonna i did that i got my two spirit uh end of my turn let's scull skull and roll some skulls oh it popped out and there are events so uh came right over here um [Music] how about the citadel i mean that's your nick of the woods so i mean i guess i'll put on the citadel and the events faux acts frost trolls strike move each frost troll to an adjacent space then place a skull on each building on or adjacent to the frost troll so now we can choose where that frog we only have one nostril on the board all right and we get we have to move in one space um so i would say we should move him to a space that has a location so that only one of them is getting it or we move him because then he's not adjacent to these two he's just this what's on that south one nothing nothing the village we could move him down one or we could move him closer to you because you're going to go over there and mace him off the board anyway yeah i could probably do do you want to met the bazaar uh yeah because then if i go to the bazaar and i reinforce her i can get another treasure all right so he's gonna go there and then it says uh then place a skull on each building on or adjacent to the frost roll so that bizarre gets a skull all right i can deal with that that's not too bad that's not terrible it is interesting though that's part of like the board it definitely seems like a living world but something real shaggy force faux power increases the power of brigands has increased they have changed status from ready to savage their battle cards those are the cards we see during the fights are more difficult and you will need more advantages to avoid losses so this is just a warning that the next time you fight brigands they've trained up a little bit oh and the month ended so luckily we did finish that one quest but this companion quest is gonna go bye-bye what yeah i think that's how it works question quest failed recruit miris ramirez band is driven out of the four kingdoms to distant lands you do not gain mirros as a companion so we'll take that off the board bye felicia and month three new quests mark of the outlaw kings a filthy rat has run off with the gauntlet bearing the mark of my authority i know where he's hiding return with the mark and the rat our task is to go to the east and quest in three rivers and spend three stealth advantages so it's very similar to the last quest we have to have three stealth advantages to gain the mark of the outlaw king quest item so we will put this uh it's in the east in three rivers three rivers is party it's a happening place wow okay well at least you were headed there that's true i don't have three stealth though wicked ritual the bane of omens gathers cultists to perform a foul ritual if they complete it the bearer of the black mark will become corrupted by the tower that is not good we don't want me to get corrupted i might have to visit the sanctuary soon so our task in the north is to complete the eagan's fairgrounds dungeon or the hero with the black mark will become corrupted oh so it says spawn dungeon here and this is in egan's end right here all right it says eagan's fairgrounds encampment so we need to add the dungeon which i'm going to take a look here got these dungeon tokens looks like not that one here we go so that's going into egan's end the dungeons are pretty cool uh i'm not sure we're gonna have that on camera because uh we're probably gonna have to prepare for that one a little although i could probably go in there month three begins okay so whose turn was that that was my turn your turn was last right and so if i run correctly dungeons are just like a really punishing onslaught battle it's just battle after battle after battle it's like it's like a fight with a foe except you're literally looking at a map so i might run over there just so you can see that but i don't want to risk us losing necessarily although i've risked with this dye already um i am close enough to try it i get five warriors off the bat you know what i think i'm going to i'm gonna spend one of my spirit do i need to this is one two three four five yeah i'm gonna spend one spirit all right uh to move twice my speed can you reach my guy yeah you're gonna go one two three four five uh and first i'm going to reinforce at the village and spend another spirit for another 12 warnings oh that's going to be helpful yeah meat shields here we come sorry guys sorry guys welcome to the army [Laughter] and now i'm gonna go in the dungeon so this is actually uh pretty cool so when we go to the dungeon we're going to click this dungeon button right here and that's the only dungeon on the map so i'm going to click that and you can see here it starts with this map the first room is the rectangle there that has the sort of glowing light and the torch symbol is where i can go from there so it says the way is dim but do your best and i'm sure it'll all be fine in the end choose your path so i'm going to oh and it looks like the advantages here are just humanoid and gleb's given me two of those okay so i've got two yeah i don't got i don't have any other advantage oh yeah oh no you're not in the forest and i'm not battling so it's just going to be gleb's two humanoid advantages all right globe i'll hit that your time to shine sir so the first thing uh is to lose five warriors um [Music] i think i'm just going to do that because i want to use if there's another one that says like lose a potion of which i don't have any i want to be able to use an advantage so i'm going to just sorry guys did you take your five at the beginning i did okay just making sure we're gonna need those we got all the warriors uh so i'm gonna continue uh one more location so there's no branching paths yet i'm gonna choose that lose eight warriors that's you know what i'm still going to just take that bye guys it's been real because i got him to spend and it will be fun to just get this dungeon done although i don't know how big these are i'm going to continue oh now you got three choices yeah and i think i i believe i have to explore all of this i'm not sure there's like one individual room i'm going for so i'm going to go off this direction lose six warriors okay my warrior count is getting down um but i'm also gonna take that one so i'm gonna give him 10 and get four back so i'm down to 24 warriors i still feel like we should be in pretty good shape all right i'm going with your bad son oh i'm gonna go off into this extreme area eight warriors david okay i think i'm gonna use one of his advantages yeah eight seems kind of stupid i'm gonna use one oh one that's a nice improvement it's really good i'm not expecting that sort of delta right okay so continue oh okay so i can just go all the way back to these ones um i guess i'll check this branching path 12 nope six still six i'm just gonna i'm gonna lose those six all right if we see another eight i'll i'll use it again all right continue i'm gonna go off here i bet this is the last room i'm hoping i mean it probably is eight okay so i'm gonna use that advantage last one okay one one warrior that's okay so continue and now you're just going to have to hopefully this is the last room and i have 16 warriors left eight seems to have been the worst we've encountered so but i feel like this is the big bad last room so we'll see here 12. no that's awesome i can't believe that you know for a game that's this deterministic that doesn't have a lot of dice rolling that's still pretty exciting we get pretty lucky okay continue oh there's another room this has to be the last that's gotta be it this is gonna be big no that's it you find the cultists and overcome them before they can complete the ritual continue so that may have seemed easy but it took oh my god a lot of my warriors i'm down to 16 and i had something like 50 at one point um so i'm going to continue you got to get something sweet wicked ritual no i don't think you get much of anything you just make sure bad things don't happen and this was i think this was the adversary quest yeah so this would have been here taken off wicked ritual you broke up the ritual and eliminated the cultist the marked hero is safe for now remember because i was good job david thank you i'm gonna take that dungeon off the map all right and i think that was everything for me you need to drop a skull still and i did oh no i did a quest so i get two spirit oh always remember to take your spirit after your heroic action yeah for sure so i gotta drop a skull okay and then you can take the final turn and then we'll cut the cameras did you reinforce at all yeah i reinforced here oh because you got the okay okay you're right ate it events okay gleb oh now you're bringing roy gleb recruits warriors the player with gleb may spend one spirit to gain 12. yeah i got spirit yeah uh and you just murdered like four people 40 people i did i didn't the dungeon they were losses to the dungeon that's like buy [Laughter] rumor agents of the tower are infiltrating a village waiting for the one with the black mark to approach you know i kind of want to get this black mark over to you for all uh excuse you no sir get oh david david okay so the app is instructing me i didn't jinx us i mean it says give the black mark to the player taking the next turn if you wish it oh wow that's crazy does that mean i get glib no it doesn't mean you get gloves that's baloney you got gloved because you had this we can meet up and i'm happy to let gleb go with you for a while but we have to meet up you can come over to me on your turn i'll give you a glove no we're not friends anymore we're not friends and it is a cooperative game so this should go well all right i'm gonna hit continue okay it's your turn like i said uh elise is gonna take the last turn we're gonna give that honor to the relic hunter uh and then we're gonna finish out and we might win we might lose we'll have to see we've been pretty lucky i think that luck is gonna be doing all this it's gonna run out i feel like we've been doing we're gonna get punished hardcore we might get punished hardcore uh but take your last turn all right i'm going to take my potion of course yeah potion of dragon teeth spend to gain six warriors yes please oh that's nice i'll take six dudes and do you have anything what kind of uh potion do you have for stealth uh spend one to gain a wild advantage spend to move any hero up to three spaces six digits six correct thank you so i did that it's a wild advantage all right i'm going to go ahead and i think i'm going to cleanse now do i want to cleanse i want to battle because i can't go over here just yet because i don't have three stealth advantage yeah but you could go over there and knock that frost troll off the board that is true do you have it's gonna take three spirit uh-huh i got that and you can get there because it's only one two three away so you could do that i could do that um but also is that where you want to reinforce uh bizarre so yes oh yeah so you can get a treasure situation so i'm gonna go ahead and do that i'm gonna go boop boop and then i'm going to battle and i'm going to battle you're going to battle are you going to use your mace oh oh i'm going to bat no i'm going to use my mace and i'm going to get rid of them so let's remove him from the board and it costs you three spirits yep all right i will remove the frost troll from we will fight a frost troll once upon a time but not now i mean why when i got this thing it is pretty sweet that that is powerful that treasure is pretty awesome so no frost trolls on the board anymore thanks to that base but i get two spirit bag for no no and that was a free action remember so you can still cleanse one of these big locations i'm gonna use my lamp of hope to do that and i'm gonna go whoop and cleanse this area we're in really good shape on the skulls there's not many skulls on the board thanks there's a few in the tower sure sure okay so i've done that which means i get two of these bad boys back and i'm gonna go ahead and reinforce at the bazaar since that's where i'm at and i can spend a spirit to gain a treasure or you can get a gear or i can get a gear oh you could get that stealth i should do that that's going to be a free action because you have stealth and that wild and you need one more stealth somehow correct oh oh what the acorn of the white oak gives you one wild in the grasslands which is where that thing is i still need stealth i know but this would be a stealth that you could use there so i can reinforce next time and then do the thing yeah that's a good idea that's a good idea okay i think it'll be my next turn spoiler alert we'll tell you in the end if that's what we did but i'm pretty sure that's that seems like a reasonable seems like a good thing and it's a companion quest too so you might get your own club listen nobody's as cool as a glab is that the end that is i need to drop a skull all right drop it so we've got some events we'll tell you what those events are and then we're gonna say goodbye for a little bit the tower stirs it's about to rotate keep your fingers clear i don't know if you can hear this oh so one skull is that it yeah is that all tower pick your poison okay not bad i mean you're right here uh yeah i'll put it there one thing i want to ask did we take a sh uh a door off of this yeah is there a glyph shining through it uh no okay sometimes a glyph can shine through it and it's symbols like the banner symbol or the reinforced symbol and it means that if that's facing you in your home kingdom so or in the kingdom you're in technically you're sitting over there so we'll be facing you or if it were over here right it would be facing me it means that you have to spend one spirit in order to take that sort of action you can't just take it for free anymore which and that changes which is kind of crazy um but it didn't happen new wares do we want to get rid of any of these this we don't want to get rid of no let's go this may be yeah oh that was pretty to remove a foe it's just you've got that mace like i think the mace is good let's get rid of these two all right and we've got oak stone bow you can battle a foe on an adjacent space that's not bad and the terrain advantage uses the space you're on so you could go next to a guy and be in the hills and get your advantages that's cool that is cool and as cole's horn do not spend spirit for oh so like we were saying if you have a glyph facing you you have to spend spirit if you have as cold horn nah you don't have to nah bruh um none of these are stealth advantages but you want to get that one so that you do that quest uh anything else no no other events so we've played a fair amount but the game is quite a bit longer we're going to keep going and going trying to collect enough of this gear so that we can go in and take on that tower quest with the warriors that we need which is going to be like what 40 warriors at least yeah and you killed 40. yeah so uh we're gonna have to and that'll probably be me i'm guessing yes i'm kind of the warrior fiend um and then just so you know when that happens that just brings the adversary out onto the board then we have to fight that adversary and defeat him so that's what we're going to be doing uh wish us luck we will be right back uh to you to share what our whole experience was like though we lost all right uh we just wanted to get right to the point we did lose but we had a lot of fun along the way and it did take a while it did took us about another hour and a half probably maybe another hour maybe yeah yeah we were burning through it uh but we'll give you a little bit of a recap what happened because we did actually get to that main goal yeah we did i had a hundred in fact i had probably a hundred and maybe twenty plus warriors thirty came from me i helped yes she gave me a bunch uh we cooperated in that respect i took all those warriors i did have to spend uh 90 of them because i did at the time i don't know at the time i had a piece of gear so it reduced it by 10. yeah we took it down to 90. we did that and then the uh bane of almonds came out on the board and we could fight the bane of owens uh that was uh had some unexpected it was challenging it was challenging and i thought okay well i'm the warrior guy yeah so i thought i would attack first and you didn't have any warriors at that point no because i gave you all of mine so i was like you take a run at him first because you had all of the warriors still we were like okay meat shields david's got all the power you'd been doing good on all the other beasts like i just really been wiping out beasts with a treasure that i had which i don't anymore oh you got rid of that yeah yeah like i had to get rid of a treasure that i had where i just had to pay the cost of them in spirit in order to just get rid of them the golden mace of as coles which pretty solid yeah we got it i don't know that you used it did you use it before we maybe on camera at once maybe but she used it a lot a lot i did do some battling i'll tell you a frost troll is no small feat for someone like me was not for you but you took a run at the bane of omens and uh turned out that it needed a lot of things that you didn't have yeah so here's what happened uh and i'm just going to give you this warning if you play return to dark tower and you get up to that last fight if you will um you want to go in not just prepared with one thing that you think you need to be prepared for you want to be you want to have warriors you want to have items in this case uh there's probably you basically want to be in really really good shape you probably don't want any corruption you probably want to have managed the board and continue to manage the boards such that it doesn't affect you negatively because that fight included a lot of things that we didn't see in the other fights during the game yeah in fact the first battle card that came up asked me to get rid of no items oh that's right asking me to get rid of a bunch of items and i had exactly three uh so i had to use an advantage and an advantage and an advantage to the point where i got past that and then i tried the next card because i figured okay maybe this one's going to be about it's the same thing and it was a very similar thing asking for a lot of items and that one i couldn't advantage down enough i had to get rid of my three items so i was completely naked except for old gleb here uh and we thought we we'd never done this part before we retreated after i had effectively accomplished two two out of four yes and we thought that when we came back there would just be three cards left or something right and that was not the case no it was not the case in fact you go back and this is actually kind of a cool thing so all of the advantages i had spent on those cards those cards were where they were so if i'd whittled the card down to sort of no effects it stayed in the bane of omen sort of deck if you will because when elisha went back yeah he had all of his cards and you still had to take on five cards but when you're randomly picking those cards off the screen you might get some of the cards that i'd already sort of whittled down and you did get one of those because one of them came up with just no effect right that was the second one so i went in thinking okay they want items i have and she had a ton of items i'm like up to my eyeballs and items i've got four treasures i've got a companion i've got potions gear i got all kinds of stuff and at one point you ended up passing this to me well the game dictated that you passed the mark of uh the outlaw to me so i just i was covered item-wise i'm like okay i think i can nail this but this was of course before i realized i was gonna have to take on five cards instead of the three that we thought so first card pops up and it's lose 30 warriors yeah i had passed all my warriors to him and i was like oh no yeah it was basically the opposite of what we were prepared for so when i fought i had no items and that's what i was asking for when alicia fought he asked for warriors which she'd given all to me so i had to advantage down it was the perfect storm for for them honestly because it destroyed us and what really got us in the end is we had both gone in i think i had one corruption i did two so because buildings kept getting destroyed and as soon as those were destroyed we had to take on a corruption which stunk and then we were just spirit poor we couldn't get rid of anything and then us having to retreat or losing here ended up giving us just one too many corruptions yeah the corruptions the other thing you need to know is not only that last fight with sort of the main bad the other things as they grow in power the events that take place after each turn became far more severe this game definitely communicates to you very quickly that you need to finish yeah it's about to get real the events that started taking place at the beginning the events were like hey if you're near a brigand or on a space with a brigand this little thing happens to you now not a big deal then it became um remove a building i mean just straight up like or take everyone takes a corruption right just there you have that too there's nothing you can do so the penalties of those events became very severe combined with what we were trying to do with the bain of odin's omens and we absolutely got destroyed but it was fun we did end up removing six of the what 12 seals off of the tower so and we had to deal with some of those uh glyphs that were shining in our face at times although you got an item i did well so i got a companion who let me ignore the glyphs because i had the battle glyph on my part and so i would have had to have spent a spirit in order to do any battling so long as that glyph was there but this let me ignore that and then if i were to go ahead and do that action anyway i would not only get the two for at doing that heroic action but i would get a plus one because of the companion and spirit became very important because at the end and we didn't have enough of it because at the end we were thinking okay well we we're not taking the sanctuaries off the board because that's the only place where we can get rid of our corruption but at that late in the game it is hard to like spend some time luxuriously grabbing some spirit and then going to a sanctuary clearing your corruption but that's that's probably in retrospect what we needed to do every event everything was hit in the fan and we were like oh okay yeah she had a ton of stuff like it just she had a bunch of potions all the treasures some yeah it was just crazy and she did finally get a a companion the other cool thing is what treasure is oh yeah yeah so i ended up picking up the necklace of haggling and it let me ignore the negative effects on the die so you guys got to miss the fun die actually yeah we started using she started i started using today a lot i will tell you off camera we did use this diet a couple more times prior to that and it burnt us both again so we kind of swore it off right until i got this and i was like all right let's play and then interestingly enough i don't think you ever rolled the bad side when you had that i know it's like we got gear you got some potions so it ended up being pretty good but anyway that was our experience with dark tower we will probably try it again at some point hopefully try to to win it um i do think in my experience it scaled pretty well with two players right like it it it really just kind of like dishes out the pain at the same pace no matter how many players are playing um there were some things we had to take into consideration because with four players you can kind of spread out her on the board and take care of things oh and i don't yeah this was helpful in a two-player game this lamp is very helpful because it let me cleanse anywhere yeah that was huge we didn't have to be there yeah but that was very very helpful and we did a great job at managing the skulls yeah i would say i mean i haven't played enough to comment on all of the treasures but i will say that treasure and the golden mace of asgol yeah um i don't imagine me playing this game and seeing this pop up and i'm not wanting to get it like someone has to grab this thing because you can just run around knocking guys off the board however when you communicate to the app that you've done that it i think a lot of them would always just come right back on the board like we knocked the titan off a few times and the titan was a tough customer right and one time she knocked him off and the very next event was he just came right back on so i'm not sure if if that's part of the brilliance and intelligence of this app in this tower but they kept on dealing out the the foes and it was a little too tough for us so anyway that was our experience with this scenario of dark tower if you have any questions at all please make them in the comments below uh we'll share as much as we can about the overall experience down there but until next time make sure everyone has fun at the table and we'll see you then congratulations you got to the end of one of our videos now if you want more practice just click on the video over here it's another video you might not have seen it yet so click on it if you don't want to do that at least click on the subscription button below that always helps us and if you want notifications please ring that bell

Channel: Man vs Meeple

Views: 12,613

Keywords: Board Games, Boardgames, Tabletop Games, Games, Card Games, Euro Games, Strategy Games, Family Games, Kids Games, Gen Con, Best Games, Top 10 Games, Watch it Played, The Dice Tower, Worker Placement, Ameristyle Games, Area Control Games, Good Games, Dark Tower, session, other

Id: 6SGzWaXA8Z0

Length: 72min 48sec (4368 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 08 2022