The Isofarian Guard 1.5 Preview - What It Is, What's New, How Much It Costs & More!

hey I'm Alex Radcliffe on board Gameco and today I'm talking about the isofarian guard reprint campaign note I say talking about and not review because this is not a review this is almost a cross between a should you back at video and a a preview video this is not paid content by the way although it is worth noting that disclaimer I do work for game found an ice sphere and guard is being launched on game found please take that into account this is basically this interesting video you see I'm here to talk about what the ice sphere and guard reprint is what is bringing to the table and unfortunately I can't talk about it from the sense of hands-on experience because I don't have anything in front of me to actually work with there are not prototypes out there in existence to work with so I can just tell you what's going on about the game and I'm doing that because I like the isofarian guard a lot I've enjoyed this game a lot and I want to talk about what's coming up partially because it addresses some of my own concerns with where the game is a game that I very much enjoy but have one notable critique a critique that has been shared I find I find players who played ice fair and guard or divide it up into two camps those that really love the game and those that love the game but do have concerns about the amount of grind that can be present depending on your experience and they are doing things to address that they are doing things in this new campaign this is both a reprint but also updated content as well and so I wanted to go through a short note on what is fair and guard is as well as what you can expect from the new campaign as far as the short notes before I go into nice ring guard in general it's worth noting I have an unboxing I have a gameplay I have her first impressions I can't possibly call it a review this game has like 300 hours of content and I'm nowhere near there so I have a first impressions unboxing a gameplay I also have a full comparison video comparing 5 different big box campaign experiences and ranking each of them the pros and the cons which one might be for you in different ways and one of the perks one of the pros the isofan guard is it has one of the most if not the most immersive narrative experience I've ever experienced in a board game the four dollar app the foretell iteration the way they have that the storytelling in general it is I I can't promise it's the best story you've ever read I just can't say that but I can tell you it's one of the most immersive stories I've experienced within the board game world that is one of the highs of this fair and guard and why I enjoy it combine that with bag building this game has a degree of progression you're going to be engaging in the game in this game you're going to be wandering around on this larger map over here going around the kingdom of ice Safar if I call correctly and you won't be wandering around but you're also going to have characters so over here we have Alec over here but in each of the five campaigns you're going to have two characters that you're using in the game and those characters are going to have their own unique aspect this is not a small nuanced difference between our Warrior and a barbarian we are talking fully fledged different characters and we'll all have their own twists and ways that they they build out their bag and their own advantages the the items they have the gears they have everything they have is going to really direct how you experience and enjoy that character vastly different than other characters in the game they just they play the play styles are so drastically different and therefore also so rewarding to build them out and that's what you're doing in the game you're going to frequently be facing off encounters uh you can have enemies on these enemy boards there are four of these you can facing off against multiple enemies at once and they're going to be building up your bag adding chips to it over time uh Deluxe the final Deluxe buying enhancing who you are as a character what you do and what your chips do as you upgrade yourself and then you start having cars various cars that will be and play on your board cars are going to flip in different ways and activate in different ways and it's all about trying to find the ways that your character operates so that they can take down the enemies as efficiently as possible while you preserve your life force as much as possible so that you ideally don't die it is a long game there are multiple campaigns there's five campaigns in the core box and each one is a lot of content behind them you're talking about you know anywhere from 50 to 100 hours for a campaign depending how involved you are in side quests and that just gives you a lot of a lot and you can charge through it you can charge them I believe if you're trying to be really aggressive you can charge through a campaign in 20 to 30 hours but for most players that likely won't happen for most players you're looking at closer to the 30 to 50 per Campaign which gives you just a ton of content in this game that's kind of the high notes of this Vanguard I'm not going to a full review of full how to play again I've talked about that more in other videos and that's not the goal here the goal here is to talk about what's going on with the game found campaign what are you what can you expect to see both as a new party to the game as well as someone's coming to it for the first time uh someone's coming into it for the first time uh you're looking at four different pledge levels that are available there's going to be the to the 180 plus level for the full game this is going to give you the full game of the ice fair and guard please note this is much more expensive than I believe the original was it 69 or 79 price tag that the original game had it is it is much more expensive because the original game was frankly underpriced for the sheer amount I mean do you see the size of this box this is a frost Dave and size box and my Frost even size box I mean it makes it makes Frost even look like a smaller box it's a large heavy box full of just multiple just giant these are full two full trays full of chips boxes full of cards an absolute ton of content the weight of this thing pulling it off the shelf every time I pulled it off the shelf you want to take yourself very seriously when you do so this is a heavy box a lot of content and so it's 108 for the full game it's 200 for the game plus fourtel that's gonna be twenty dollars for the foretell animation which uh they're adding one thing we're going to talk about soon is that they're adding more narration to the very side quests to more of the game so that more of your experience is fully fleshed out on foreteller so 100 for the game 200 including four teller 240 if you're including the neo-freen map and 275 if you're doing the all-in for 100 for 1700 plus sleeves from sleeve Kings uh being added to your game that's basically you're looking at as far as the possible pledge levels anywhere from 180 to 275 dollars for the new game as is but that doesn't talk about what's being changed for those of you who have already backed the game for those of you already backed it whether you've played it or not to understand what is out there what you're getting your hands on the biggest thing to note is that there's a 39 update pack out there there's an update pack that's going to update your game to the new version for 39 and I know how frustrating it is it is frustrating to have update packs in any game and it's frustrating to feel punished for being an early adopter the counter to that as I'll point out the difference between the 79 original price point and the 108 now even with the update pack you're paying less than someone who who's new to the game is paying for this well the update pack is meant to be there for a variety of reasons they're doing a lot of things but the first thing to note is every single one of these books is being fully reprinted these books over here there's five different campaign books all of them with a ton of content in them every single one of these is being reprinted the pages so often the books so often reference various sections you can't just put a small little update this that the other you have to fully it's a fully encompassing system so you have to kind of update all of them and all the books are being updated but it also allows room for more content or tweaks or adjustment to the content being done so every single one of these books is being changed if you're someone who is not interested in the update pack if someone who's just interested you have ice Vanguard you love it you're not going to play through it again anyway you just kind of fine with the experience where it is and you're not interested in waiting to see what shows up well your game is already the game it is your game is as good as you are currently enjoying it which means if you love your game you already love it and if you hate your game well then you already sadly hate it but the update pack is going to be giving you all these books are going to be completely brand new printed as well as giving you hundreds of new cards so you don't have to mix and match and trying to find exactly which card you're looking at 300 400 new cards in the update pack or in the new printing those are going to give you either new content or updated content without having to mix and match you know trying to find okay I have to take out this card and put in that one and take out this card and put that one we're not doing any of that let's say we're not doing they're not doing any of that but that's going to be the other thing that's there in the update pack the event cards one of the things one of the changes you expect to see from your final copy of the game to the new copy is it's gone from 60 event cards to nearly tripling that to 160 event cards instead those event cards are one of the things that I do try to in some way mitigate the grind giving you something else that's happening as you go from from region to region so going from 60 event cards to 160 cards you're also going to be adding they're going to be adding a region a new region that didn't exist in the original game is going to be added to the game as well so again you have more and more things being slowly added to the ice fan guard to enhance it it effectively is a 1.5 version of the game it's not new a new expansion it's not new you know new content in the typical sense but it's updated and improved upon content across the board the adding four or five to six hours of foretell inneration there's going to be more side quests Caravan quests all of that so your foretell experience is going to be even more all-encompassing than it was before bringing in those same voice actors to redo to it to add in not redo to add in new content to the experience so if you like the foretell experience and you wanted to have a present everywhere well it's going to be more present than it was before with these extra five to six hours of narration the branching pass in the game is one of those things that I want to be a little looser I don't want to get too into it because I want to save your experience for you but one thing they're doing in order to kind of deal with some degree of the grind and they're doing a bunch of things to try to mitigate to try to improve the experience so you have all the highs with as little of that grinding experience which for some has been a problem if some it hasn't so so if you're someone who didn't you know have a problem with it already you're totally fine if you're someone like myself who loved the game but felt there was a little bit too much repetition this could be one of those things that engages with that but they're going to have branching quests with more consequences to them meaning there's life span guard or version 1.0 or Reggie already has a degree of choice in the game but those choices Ricochet back on each other and you're not going to have a large degree of consequence on the choices you make it's more about just which element you're kind of experiencing but now you're going to have more consequence more weight to the choices you make things you do in the game are going to have an outcome for better or Force how you engage with the world you might find yourself getting more or less rewards for doing different things rewards that minimize the amount of grind the game by kind of giving you some of those resources based on the pathways you've chosen the options you've taken and therefore lower the amount of you know trying to find out whatever other stuff you need from from the uh the sill to the resources to all of that the other things you need in the game you're going to get less of that that you're trying to hunt down because you're going to be getting more rewards based on the types of options you take as you go through these matching paths so there's more of a not necessarily more of a long-term way to the way things play out but more of a way to and consequence of the things are happening in the game that's going to give you all of that that's worth noting as well that this game because I mentioned that you know waiting for the final game if you are back in this if you're hoping for the update pack when will you be able to play the game the current plan for the ice Vanguard their current plan is to have the pledge manager close by the end of the year it's also worth noting by the way that the pla the price of the Pledge manager are going to be higher than the price is doing the campaign so if you're someone who's waiting back in the pledge manager prices are going to be a little higher they're going to go to full MSRP I believe and so just you know back accordingly back responsibly there's also of course the stretch pay it's over on game found so if you want to split up your payment you have that option but if you wait until the pledge manager you will be paying a little bit more for the game but their goal is to close the pledge manager by the end of the year the goal is to close pledge manager so they can get everything shipped off as soon as possible I cannot guarantee at all what their turnaround times will be no one can not themselves not anyone not the factories no one can guarantee turnaround times but their goal is to have this very quickly turned around their goal is to get this new version this new green printed version of the game into your hands as fast as possible they want you be to be able to play this game in the whatever tweaked version as soon as you possibly can and so that update pack if you're sitting there wondering why how is ferngard but I don't want to wait another year and a half to get my hands on the new copy hopefully if things go well that won't be the case that's what's going on here again this is not a review I have not played the new content I cannot tell you if the new content improves the experience all I can tell you is that the ice fan guard is a great game that I am optimistic and hopeful about the changes that they are making because any change in the right direction could hopefully just make the experience even better on top of an already great game that I've thoroughly enjoyed as far as what comes next to the campaign there's not gonna be stretch goals there's gonna be daily reveals you can check all that out and see it across you know the follow the campaign I'll link to it down below as well as all those other videos I mentioned I'll link to all of that down below so you can be informed as possible and there's a variety of other channels that have done gameplay content review content all different kinds of content around this game it is it's an excellent experience it's rated a 9.0 on Board Game Geek right now so the time of this video and I understand why if you play the isafarian guard it gives you a lot of incredible moments and a lot of fun bag building enemies to fight against and the only downside the only downside is the one thing that I do mention and they are trying to adjust much as possible which is the potential for the elements of the game to feel a bit repetitive the more you're playing into them and they are trying to approach that as much as possible to tweak it as much as possible to maintain the feel of all the good that you like about the game while minimizing just how much of that there can be in any case until next time I'm Alex Radcliffe from board Himco hope you found this video helpful and as always I hope you have a good one

Channel: BoardGameCo

Views: 9,850

Keywords: review

Id: EOzENt4DpwE

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 05 2023