The Great Wall Review - with Tom Vasel

[Music] [Music] and now it's time for another dice tower review with tom vassell hey everybody i'm tom vassell and today we're taking a look at a big giant game from awaken realms that's kind of saying the same thing over again they're always big giant games called the great wall but this is a game unlike the other ones that awaken realms has come out with they've done nemesis a big giant game where there's a it's basically alien the board game and we have tainted grail a huge exploration game and then we had ether fields a huge another exploration game iss vanguard coming out another huge exploration game the great wall well it's big but it doesn't have that exploration and combat this is a euro game essentially a worker placement game but one centered around combat together you and the other generals at the table are defending china from the hordes that are coming in at barbarians and you are building the great wall and sending out troops to fight against them it is not a cooperative game although there are cooperative rules and a separate set of components to play cooperatively and in fact i didn't i've played cooperatively with other people i set it up walked through it a little bit and i like the idea of it i don't think i would mind playing it cooperatively but this is a competitive game because you're just trying to get more honor than everybody else and so you know you are working together thematically but at the end of the day i want to go home with the most honor even if the wall is overrun at least i tried harder than everybody else here's how it plays [Music] and the artwork is just gorgeous going through all the cards you know from the leaders to the advisors it is brilliant watercolor you know i like the cards but the board itself just looks really good it's a little messy graphically saying where the different things go but that is my biggest complaint i'm really happy and love the components of this game in this game players are trying to get the most honor by defending the wall by doing various things that are going to get you honor but it's mostly by defeating the different cards that are coming for the wall you see here there's some brutes attacking the wall and better spots for more of them and there's a track right here on the table which is going to keep track of the number of rounds in the game so you're looking right now the three player board here the other side will be for four players and this will show you basically how many cards are going to come out each round at the beginning there's three on the board already but there's going to be more cards added to the table more of these onrushing hordes that you have to fight off players are going to take each round and there's a lot of different things going on in the round but basically you have a pile of cards here everyone has the same set of cards you're going to pick one of these cards to do whether it's betrayal which copies someone else's card or you're going to attack with your forces that are on the wall but most of the time it's going to have to do with your clerks each player will start with a bunch of clerks although you can buy more of them as the game goes by when you play a card these are going to be placed out there they're going to be put up here at the top of the board and played in turn order so let's say my card is first then i'll say all right so i get to move all of my people all my all the scribes that i have all the quirks i have to any location then each other player can move put two of theirs out on the board and then something special will happen here and i'm not going to go over all them in detail but each one like this one lets me move four my scribes and each other player can move two this one has to move three of mine and each other player can move two so they're all going to be doing different things when you place your scribes in the board there are various places you can place them these green spots can hold as many people as you want while the other ones you're just slowly filling them up and different players are going to place their pieces there after a card has gone through and you've sent out the different folks the different clerks that are on the card some of the spaces are going to activate if it's red it's only going to activate if it's completely full so if this worker isn't there if this clerk isn't there nothing happens but if it's full it completely happens while each green space goes off no matter how many people are there many of the spaces if you're the only person to put people there then you're going to take a dishonored token you're being greedy so hopefully that won't happen now the bottom spaces are pretty easy they're going to give you resources when this space activates every quirk you put there gives you a wood stone gold and chi so if you want those resources they're the main resources of the game you're going to go to those spots after you get wood stone and gold you're able to pay or to donate one of those to the supply here if you do that you get to honor you're kind of donating it to the general supply no one's going to fault you if you don't do it because you may need to keep the stuff yourself but this general supply is going to build up you also can pay another resource so if i'm on the wood spot here for example i can pay 2 qi to put an overseer out when you put an overseer out you're going to put one of your soldiers there which might not be something you want to do because you only have a limited number of soldiers but in the future let's say this filled up again i'm going to get one wood but this overseer gives me an extra wood and if i move the overseer up which is going to keep costing me chi i'm going to get extra wood also between rounds these overseers will provide you with the resources too so that's a good way to improve resources but at the cost of a soldier and paying another resource to move it up resources are mostly spent in two different ways one of them is by going here to buy more troops and you can see it cost two stone and a wood to buy infantry two chi in the wood to buy an archer and three gold in a wood to buy a horseman and so you're going to go here to buy troops which will then be sent out to attack the barbarians going here is going to get you these cards you'll draw these cards in your hand each card can be played at very specific times this says play when you attack with a soldier other players can recruit a infantry for free if they do that infantry must attack but every card that you play you can boost it by paying qi and it does something better there's not a ton of different cards but the cards are really useful so going here will get you more of them this spot here is very important because at a tea ceremony being at the top of this spot is going to let you break ties you decide the order that these cards are played each round and it's fantastic so going here can move you up one and if you take both spots you move all the way to the top here which is a pretty big deal going to this spot here is going to let you move your soldiers around from one spot to another going over here lets you spend resources to build parts of the great wall you're able to build barricades or big chunks of the great wall when you do that you can use these resources here but if you don't have enough resources you can spend resources from your own players start the game with some barricades but they're not going to do probably well enough you can see these guys are coming in and they're going to be doing a certain number of damage to the wall so you'll see here that there is eight damage they're going to be doing to the wall each barricade only protects from two so that's not enough but if i get five resources i can build the bottom section of the wall which has a defense of eight i pay 10 more resources i build the next section and which is a defensive 12 and the next one you'll notice the higher you build the wall the more spots for archers you have because this is where when you place archers they're going to go and also the number of resources you pay is the number of points or honor you get which is a pretty big deal i'm not going to get into combat too much but basically it's pretty simple when you recruit troops you send them out immediately and they're going to sit on top of the cards here and whatever card spot they sit on top of you're going to get the reward from that in his case it's gold or to honor and if you completely cover up the card it's defeated and whoever has the most troops on it is going to keep the card which at the end of the game can be worth points and this one is eight cavalry are pretty cool because they cover up two spots archers don't run into as much danger they shoot from the wall but each round they're going to get to shoot and they're just going to cover up the spots you don't get the rewards but it's a little easier and you just cover them up with blood spots again you're trying to completely clear out the card when a card is defeated it's going to kill some of the soldiers on the card although there's ways that you can protect them with chi and with other cards from dying and then the soldiers that survive are going to just come back to the waiting area here where they can be deployed again with cards at the beginning of the game players are going to get a leader you're going to get two and pick between them that leader gives you your starting resources the last number basically determines the starting order in the tea cup ceremony it gives you a special ability so for example this character every time you recruit at least one soldier you get some chi now how much chi do you get well you're also going to get two advisors and you have to decide one of the advisors you'll start with so this one for example every time i build the barricades i can recruit a troop for free in a chosen rest zone all right cool or i could have picked this one every time i attack with horsemen i get to draw a card i don't i think i like this ability better so the other one is tucked underneath my leader showing that icon there which means every time i recruit at least one soldier i get two times the number of icons there cheese so i get two chi now as the game goes by one of the action spaces i showed you or didn't show you lets you recruit more clerks that you'll be able to use to place out on the board but also you can pay money to get more specialists and every time you get a specialist you have to decide how am i going to use that specialist am i going to use it for a special ability giving me another special ability or am i going to upgrade the power of my main character's special ability that's pretty much the gist of the game over the course of the game if the walls are broken through each round it doesn't make you lose the game instead everyone who's not helping defend is going to get honor points or dishonor points which are minus five you also have to tie up one of your troops on these or you put in a card that you've won so they're not good at all you you can get rid of them over the course of game and you want to so these will lose you points you're going to get points for the different cards that you defeated and at the beginning of the game there's going to be some of these victory point cards at the top like for example this gives you three points for each overseer level this gives you seven points for each thing that you have that's above two uh each of your advisors that you have that's more than two this gives you points for each people who are still on wall sections and so you're gonna have some of these out on the board then everyone's trying to accomplish those this plus all the points that you got during the game and whoever has the most points is the winner [Music] there's a lot of components in this game and that's why i'm showing it to you all here packed up i was able to get it all in i have all the cards sleeved i don't normally sleeve cards but they i got the sleeves with it and they're beautiful sleeves we'll look at that in a second the components were upgraded here and i have them in this little tray here which i don't dislike and then these walls all have to be built but they stay together very firmly when they're done and then the board and then i have all the miniatures and trays now i'm not a huge keep miniatures and tray kind of guy so probably these would fit in the box a little bit better without trays but currently it fits in the box great with the trays but wow the minis the miniatures for this game are the nicest miniatures of this size that i've ever seen uh you know i mean they're maybe not as big as many of the seamon miniatures but these are the smaller miniatures for the troops on a map type game and they come and this is the set i have where they are you know have this kind of uh dry brush or whatever it is on top of them and they look great but if you'll notice each one also is very different so you can see the red horseman the blue horsemen and then the yellow and the green horsemen all look different and they're just fantastic i know there's a version of this game out there that you can get with just meeples i would never want to play that normally i'm okay with that i don't need miniatures in all my games but the miniatures in this one not only are they just beautiful to look at but they look good on the board and as you place the different miniatures you know when you have the wall here and you place the miniatures on the wall it looks good so when you put these walls out on the board it just looks fantastic so unnecessary in many ways but just having the archers on top and sitting up there and waiting for them i just the visual aspect of it it is the great wall now that's kind of a very basic overview of the game there is a lot more involved but it isn't actually that difficult the trickiest part of the game is knowing how to send out troops how the troops get placed and fighting that i mean that game has very distinct points and there's a lot of minor rules that are easy to forget but i just follow along the list like at the beginning of each round the card that you played you don't automatically get that back you can take it back but if you don't take it back you get two points for each one you haven't taken back so you could play the game never playing the same card twice but you probably want to one of them lets you get soldiers for cheaper one of them lets you get the overseers that's probably the first one you want to play but maybe not so that's like a minor rule but makes a big change let's talk about the things i like i love the special powers in this game i like any game i give you special powers and in this game you start with two you have your main general's power and then the advisor power so you have two powers and as the game goes by you can get more but what they do is they tempt you because do i want another power or do i want to make my main character's power better that's a great tough decision and that decision is compounded on the rest of the game the worker placement aspect here is very different than most games in most games you put out a worker you do what it says or in some games you put out workers and after everyone has put them out you do what it says here you're playing through each player's card so in a three player or four player game you're playing through three or four cards each card everyone puts out the workers you then see what activates sometimes the person who played the card can pick a spot to activate even if it's not full which is interesting but some only activate when they fill up so you're kind of cooperatively working together like let's both go to gold but you're only going to go there if it also helps you and that aspect is really neat plus the overseers that's a cool concept the card plus worker placement and in fact that's a good chunk of the game i like the various options you can build the great wall itself that's worth a lot of victory points you can try to go for those end game victory point conditions but you got to fight off the invaders now how do you do that maybe you concentrate on archers they don't give you a lot of points during the game but when every time you block an attack archers can give you more victory points maybe the cavalry you only have two but they cover up two spots and doing more that winning those cards can really win you the game you win a lot of those barbarian cards you will overall win the game so i like all that what do i not like the game is long i think it works really well at a three player game a three player game is about two hours which i guess is not that long but there's a lot of setup and tear down and stuff involved too and a four player game is gonna take two and a half maybe even three hours um but it feels like you're involved the whole time i'm always thinking when you place workers with your card i'm also placing workers with mine there's this constant ebb and flow and it feels like there's one too many mechanisms here's my problem with that though i think that i'm like god it just feels like there's one to anything but what would i cut i don't know i like the work replacement i like the playing the cards i like sending out the troops i like the special abilities that you have oh there's everything so interesting it's it's a heavier game but it is one that offers really good choices what troops are you going to build what things are going to do and i'm not even including the amount of expansions and stuff i haven't touched any of that at this point although i want to but i feel like there's plenty of game in here and then there's that cooperative game on top now the production is amazing yes the normal version with the downgraded resources and the wooden people is not as good but still that artwork is phenomenal but when you have this version i have this is one of the most beautiful games in my collection it really is and i haven't upgraded or done anything to it ah just it looks good of course this is waking realms and we come to expect this from them so this may not be streamlined enough for some i definitely get that thematically it is on point i feel like we're defending the great wall it's not silly it treats it with a decent amount of respect i know there's some more mythological stuff in some of the expansion but this is very straightforward it's not like that um highly regarded movie that came out uh it it the worker placement is going to appeal to people who like that mechanism but then there's war but it's not rolling dice there's not any really any randomness in the game but you gotta say hey we're all working together to defeat this enemy but no one's fighting this one and this one's gonna get through so maybe i'll go over here and fight this enemy they'll win but at least i maintained honor while my opponents did not because they didn't bother going to fight this person or i'll just build the great wall and hopefully that can hold the hordes off because as each card comes they add their strength together to hit the wall so you're gonna need to start killing cards to stop them there's so many choices you cannot do everything which is a delicious uh decision to make delicious like but i like it the every game is going to feel different because there's so many different generals and advisors you have different combos every time knowing when to get and use those special cards knowing when to let some of your troops die or when to save them there's a lot going on you will not be satisfied for your first play you're going to want to try again i'm very happy with the components of this game i mean i have the deluxe version but even the non-deluxe version has that amazing artwork in this game but this deluxe one with the walls being built and then the troops and stuff ah so much involved here this is the game of the night this is the big meaty game that you pull out to play and it it's going to be one that you talk about i'm not sure that it's a game for everyone i think that's for but it's definitely for me it's a game that kind of gives me that uh you know fighting combat feel it really isn't one with that worker placement aspect that i really enjoy i'm sitting there the whole time on the edge of my seat interested in everything worried about the wall worried about how i'm going to get points worried about what cars people are going to play a little bit of diplomacy talking back and forth just lots of great interesting choices fantastic game check it out i'm tom vassell this is the great wall and you've been watching the dice tower dice tower judgment excellent [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Dice Tower

Views: 45,239

Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, GeekUsername: TomVasel, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10, juegosdemesa, Brettspiele, ボードゲーム, brädspel, jeuxdesociété, משחקילוח, 보드게임, deskováhra, graplanszowa, bordspel, 棋盘游戏, gioco da tavolo, desková hra, gra planszowa, настольная игра, trò chơi trên bàn cờ, jogo de tabuleiro, لعبة اللوحة

Id: T3GXbnhgY-g

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/takabrash]

I didn't realize at the time there was an all-in meeple version for only $88. I would have grabbed that. Looks like a cool game.

[u/IRDingo]

I’m happy a backed this one. It’s the last big box Kickstarter game that I will back.

My games shelves are full. I have to get rid of one before this one arrives!

[u/Amish_Rabbi]

Is Matt Damon a playable character?

[u/Qyro]

Well that explains why it’s rocketed to BGGs Top 5 hotness today.

[u/Codeshark]

I don't remember why I backed this game. It's one of the few games I've backed where I don't have a reason like "I think this will be good" or anything like that. Seems like my unconscious mind made a good call based off the comments here (I'll check out the video on my lunch break).

[u/sanjoatc]

Just got my first solo and 2p plays of this game in (I backed the base game meeple version fwiw). I have to say, I absolutely love it. It’s such an innovative take on worker placement. It’s not perfect: the rule book is rough with not nearly enough example pictures for my taste and some glaring typos, the iconography isn’t always clear, the turn structure takes a lot of getting used to etc. HOWEVER, the engine building is super clever, fighting the horde cards is very satisfying, and planning your moves is very brain burny. Probably my top game of 2021.

[u/lust-boy]

Nice to see Awaken Realms insane production quality put to use with solid and cohesive gameplay. Was ultimately left disappointed with Nemesis (very low player agency and grindy, random, repetitive gameplay) and Etherfields/Tainted Grail looked to be more of the same.

I backed the minis version but after seeing how TINY the meeple version box is gosh, it's almost like Brass Birmingham slimness. Hopefully the plastic minis more than make up for it aesthetically.