The Reckoners - How To Play

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the 1 to 6 player game the reckoners designed by Brett Sobel and Seth Van Orden and published by Naboo Games who helped sponsor this video based on the popular novels by Brandon Sanderson this game will put you into a world where everyone with superpowers is evil and no one is fighting back no one except for you and a ragtag group of regular humans who have made it their mission to stop those tyrants so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up place a number of these city district trays on the table in a circle equal to the number of players plus one and since we're setting up a two-player game in this video we're using three which ones you pick doesn't matter so returning the unchosen districts to the box this area represents new cago where you'll be facing a number of super-powered villains known as epics represented by these cards which you'll shuffle into a facedown pile then place one randomly face-up into each city district this represents the villains currently residing in those parts of the city now into each district tray place one of these epic action brackets into the slot for it here so that only three symbols are showing to its left now put the purple research and green health cube into the numbered position for it here within these tracks based on the matching values showing the epics upper left-hand corner so we place the research marker into position three and the health marker into position seven the smaller number is shown here you can ignore for now we'll see how that works a little bit later some epics will show an infinity symbol for their health value and that means the block will go here instead this is the reckoners resource tray which you'll place nearby and then using these pink markers in the population tracks here you'll create a starting population of 40 then place these yellow markers into the money track to indicate a starting wealth of four this area is the reckoners base and you'll put this white marker here at the top these are the equipment cards which you should shuffle into a facedown deck and then deal 4 into the slots found to the right and I should mention that all of the trays and any components you see in this video are what come with the game these upgrades are part of a special edition this is steelheart's Trey and his miniature which you'll also set nearby with his cutout in this position you'll find there are two possible boards that can be fit into this right side and you'll put the one showing a magnifying glass into position first keeping the other one nearby for use later in the game then refer to the following chart found in the rule book and set these pink markers into the matching positions on his research tracts based on both the number of players and difficulty level you want to start with will choose the beginner level which sets his research value to 18 these are steelheart's double sided power and adjustment boards with the same difficulty level from before use this chart in the rule book to pick the right adjustment board inside based on player account meaning we'd need 2a which you then place here we would also need the a side of the adjustment board which goes here now find steelheart's movement dye which you can set into this position the value on the dye doesn't matter 4 of the brackets are now put into these rows so that each has only two symbols to the left of it next we have this component tray which you set nearby as well containing the enforcement Managers barricades plan tokens and leftover markers now give each player one of these trays representing the reckoner they wish to play as whose color will be shown along the banners here they also collect the matching miniature and ability whose character image will be shown on the back along with three days in their color and three white dice each player is also given one of these planned tokens which took place into their tray here and then they can collect one of these double-sided player aids if one of the players is Kody then they also take this sniper token but otherwise any unused boards miniatures and abilities are put back into the box finally place out one copy of each non white dye even for character colors you aren't using now if you're playing this game solo you'll control two reckoners like we have here each operating independently if you have two or three players you could choose to have each player control two reckoners but it's recommended that you only try that after your first couple of plays either way that's the setup you reckoners the city of new cago has been overrun by evil super-powered epochs organized by the mastermind Steelheart and like the books that the game is based on often the human players cannot directly go on the attack they need to research their enemies first find their weaknesses and then exploit them but ultimately to win you'll need to reduce steal hearts health to zero before the population is reduced to zero immediately following the setup you'll then perform five steps known as the prologue first place Steelheart on any random city district board then activate his red track which is right here to do this you count how many of these red enforcement stars are to the left side of its bracket so in this case one two three this is how many enforcement miniatures you'll take from the tray now also notice the deployment group size which is the white number within the red banner so in this case - starting with the city district where Steelheart is currently located add a number of enforcement's there from those you collected equal to the group size which we saw was - then in clockwise order go to the next city and do the same and around and around the district she'll go until you run out in this case we only had one left so it would go here these enforcement's are steelheart's Bruegel police who will help to power up the epics in their districts if you let them go unchecked and we'll see how you can deal with them a little bit later for now though the next step in the prologue is to roll the steel heart movement die sending him that number of districts in a clockwise direction which depending on the result could have him returning to his original location which is allowed now using the four dollars that the players started with you may purchase equipment cards from the reckoners tray and to do this the players will work together to decide what item to buy subtracting its value here from the money track and then giving that card to one of the players only that person will be able to use that equipment and its ability these cannot be traded and should be kept by that player's board that said there is no limit to the amount of equipment a player can have and we'll talk about how these can be used a little bit later after a card has been purchased immediately reveal a new one from the deck and then purchases can continue to be made as long as the team wants to and has the money to pay for them also at any point during this step the players can choose to spend one dollar and then discard all four face-up equipment cards back to the box these will not be available to you for the rest of the game you would then draw four new options from the deck with purchases complete each player picks a city district to put their miniature on choosing the same or different districts and that completes the prologue the game is now played over series of rounds and each round is broken into two phases and the first is called the reckoner phase and this begins with the roll dice step here the players will simultaneously roll their own dice each picking at least one to keep placing it here under their rule number one column however you can keep as many others as you would like just line them up underneath even if they would end up off of the tray if you have any dice left then you roll those and again you must keep at least one of them this time to put under the second column again you can keep as many others as you would like as well then if you have any left over you will roll a third time and then these you must all place into the third column this means that as you're rolling if you keep several dice early on then you may not have any additional ones to roll for the later columns and that's perfectly fine as we'll see the dive phases that you roll will give you abilities to use during the game although players will roll at the same time they do not have to roll at the same pace you might stop to see what someone else gets before deciding which days you want to keep or reroll you may even let a player roll all three times before making any real decisions with the dice that you have either way communication and cooperation about what dice you need as a group will be key to your success in the game after all the rolling is completed it's now time to move on to the used dice step here you work together to decide the order in which you want to use your dice for example I might use some of my dice my partner might use some of theirs then back to me for a few more and so on to use dice pick the action you wish to perform and remove its matching diet from its column and place it into any one of the spots at the top of your tray to show that it's been used although your dice were placed these columns when rolling they don't have to be used in any particular order you have access to all of your dice here and can spend them as you like now later in the game you may get new dice through equipment that you purchase and if you run out of spots here at the top for your used dice you can also place them into this area just keep in mind you must always completely use one die before using a different one now though let's take a look at what all these different symbols mean and how you can use them for each of these dollar signs that you spend increase the reckoners money track by one dollar for each attack enforcement star used remove one enforcement miniature from the district that your model is currently in and return it to the general supply this is the contain epic symbol and with each one that you spend move the bracket for the epic at your location one space to the left or instead you can target Steelheart if his model is in your district picking one of his four tracks to adjust either way just keep in mind you can never move a bracket past the leftmost symbol on its row so this would be as far as this marker could move we'll learn more about these tracks later but basically the further it is to the right the more dangerous the epic is so containing them will be important to your success at this point I'll point out that every die in the game shows the exact same symbols on all of its faces the exception are the colored dice which will have one side showing two of the symbols so for example I could spend this die and move this FX bracket to spaces or adjust Steelheart two times or assign one symbol to each just remember you must fully resolve one die before you resolve another so I couldn't use one of these symbols to contain an epic then use another die face and then come back and use the second symbol here both would need to be resolved one after the other this is the research epic symbol and with each one that you spend reduced by one either the research value of the epic at your location or steelheart's if he is in your district this action represents you studying to find the weaknesses of your target if you reduce an epics research to zero it is said to be weakened and then you move its health value to this small number if that would make it less than its current health this epic will now be easier to defeat this skull symbol represents you attacking the epic at your location so for each one spent you decrease its health value by one however some epics have a starting health rating of infinite and these cannot be attacked until they are weakened which again means first reducing their research level to zero that would move this epics health down to three and now these attack dice can target the epic reducing its health it's important to note that steel heart is considered to have infinite health and it's immune to these skull attack dice until its research level has been reduced to zero as soon as that happens this board here is immediately replaced with the one that we set aside earlier and this health is set to the same level as what his research was at the start of the game which is based on the difficulty chosen by the players so for a two-player game that would be 18 now these dice can be used to attack steel heart if you are in his district and the players will win the game as soon as they reduced steelheart's health to zero if you reduce an epics health to zero remove it from the tray and set it aside with any other epics you may have defeated that round you'll receive a valuable reward for these later as we'll see however removing the epic has no effect on any enforcement's barricades or reckoners at that district we'll talk about how these barricades come into play a little bit later but it should be noted that once an epics research has been moved to this zero space no effect can raise it back up again likewise if its health is reduced to zero it cannot be increased for each die face you spend with this symbol collect a planned token but do not put it into this tray instead set it nearby as a reminder that you have it but that you may not use them this round only tokens currently in your tray can be used and we'll see how they work a little bit later now aside from the actions related to the specific faces showing on your dice you can spend any die no matter its symbol to perform a move action which lets you move your miniature from wherever it is to any other district with one exception these are barricades and they may be added to districts later as we'll see and any district with at least one barricade cannot be moved into or out of by the players thankfully another use for any die you have is to spend it to remove any barricade from any district no matter where your miniature currently is the final use for dice is to pay for the effects of some character abilities or equipment so let's talk about how these can work some will have this symbol here meaning the effect below is permanent and can be used at no cost for example when you gain the tensors this symbol means that you collect a green dye from the supply and add it to your personal pool of dice you will keep this die for the rest of the game this symbol means the effect can be used once per round for free during the used die step for example this is David's character ability which lets him change the face of any one die he has to another result and after using an effect like this rotate the card as a reminder not to use it again during this round finally some abilities will show a symbol typically found on a die face and if so then during the used die step you can spend a die showing at least one of those symbols to activate its effect once during that round even if the dye you use shows more than one of that symbol the ability is only resolved once and the other symbol is just ignored then place the die used to activate the card on top of it as a reminder not to use its ability again that round in the case of this image er its effect provides you with three planned symbols that you spend as if they were on a single die you can even use symbols like this on one equipment card to activate the power on another equipment card just keep in mind that all three of these symbols would be used up in the process I'm not going to go over all the specific card effects you might encounter and how they work but they are all explained here on these two pages of the rulebook and you can look them up as they are encountered when playing just note that any effect that requires a die face to be spent can also be paid for using one of these planned tokens which case you'd place it here instead of using a die to show that it was already activated speak of which I think it's time we explain how these plan tokens work first of all you can collect as many of these as you like and they will stay with you round after round until spent but remember you cannot use a plant okay during the round it was gained which is why you will place them here when first collected as a reminder of fat also they can only be used during the used day step but basically they can be spent in place of any one symbol for example you could use this as a red star to attack an enforcement figure at your location or to contain an epoch there you can even discard this as a dye of any simple type in order to move or to remove a barricade after the players have used as many dice as they want to or Ken it's time to move on to the next step of the reckoner phase receive rewards here check all epochs that you just defeated in the previous used die step and gain the rewards showing in their top right hand corners these rewards can be used in any district no matter where the epic was defeated or where players are currently located but these rewards can only be used at this time if you don't or can't use them they will be lost so let's go through these symbols now though many of them will be familiar to you for example this lets you remove the indicated number of enforcement figures so two in this case and you can split this effect across more than one district this lets you move an epic action bracket that number of spaces to the left but again you can split this across any number of epic action tracks including steelheart's this allows you to gain that many planned tokens and you can give them all to one player or divide them up as you like the symbol increases your money track by the indicated amount finally you probably noticed that all of these rewards include this research symbol but it has a crown inside of it meaning that only steal hearts research level can be reduced by the shown amount and this can be done whether or not a character is in his location if steal heart is already weakened meaning this board has been replaced by his health won then these types of research rewards will no longer have any effect on him after resolving all your rewards discard all defeated epic cards into a face-up discard pile the final step of the reckoners phase is to purchase equipment and you do this just like you did during the prologue the only difference is that in some rounds players may have had die stolen by Steelheart in which case they'll be sitting in this area then during the set up in addition to buying equipment you can also spend $2 per die to return dice here to their original owners also don't forget you can choose to spend $1 to discard all equipment here and draw for new ones out and if you have planned tokens remember they can be used as an earn money symbol but only during the used die step not during this purchase equipment step this brings us to the end of the reckoners phase and you'll now move all planned tokens you collected into your tray for use in future rounds any horizontal abilities are now turned upright we've used planned tokens returned to the supply and use dice being reclaimed by they're controlling player just remember plan tokens can only be spent during the used die step so they will not be available to you during the epic phase which begins now first you'll begin in the district where Steelheart is currently located and then go clockwise around the various locations at each one if there is no epoch in the tray a new one is drawn in place there and then it's research and health levels are set according to the values in its upper left-hand corner as usual and then it's action bracket is set so that only one symbol is visible to the left of it in the rare case that the draw deck would run out reshuffle the discard pile into a new one once you've filled in every empty tray this way it's time to activate all of the epics starting again in the district where Steelheart is located and then one by one in clockwise order resolve each of these epics even new ones that might have just entered a district this round when an epoch activates you resolve every symbol showing to the left of its action bracket one at a time from left to right so while it's here you'd only resolve these two symbols but if it's here you now have five to resolve and this is why containing an epoch and moving its bracket to the left is very important because none of these symbols will be good for the players so let's go through the various symbols that you'll encounter and I'll be covering these in a different order than what is showing in this current table setup for example let's start with this fortify symbol which means that you increase the epics research and health by 1 now if an epic is already at 0 for research then it cannot be increased again by cymbal see what only raise its health I should also point out that an epics research or health can go above its starting level but not past the maximum number of spaces in its tray or out of its infinite box where it might have started depending on the epic now if both tracks are already at their maximum when a fortify effect occurs you instead reduce the population track by 1 this symbol that we've seen before adds an additional reinforcement miniature to the current district and if you would ever run of enforcement figures to place when required for each one you cannot add reduce the population track by one symbols like this will show a certain number of figures and for each one shown you reduce the population track by one so if we were resolving this effect we would drop it by a total of three it's also probably worth mentioning again that if the population track ever reaches zero then the players immediately lose the game if you see any of these four symbols they relate to the same colored tracks on steelheart's board and for each of these symbols triggered move the related bracket one space to the right brackets can never move past the last symbol shown they will always stop here but for every time the bracket should be moved to the right and can't be instead resolved the symbol showing in this last position so for example if this bracket was meant to move three spaces from here it would move once stopped and then this symbol would need to be resolved two times for the two extra spaces it couldn't be moved meaning the population would drop by another two when this symbol is activated it represents Steelheart hunting down one of the reckoners many secret hideouts for each of these symbols you would need to resolve move the marker here one space down this track if one of these symbols would need to be resolved when the marker is already at the bottom then a base has been discovered and together the reckoners must select a single die from any one of the players and put it here into one of these slots then this marker is sent to the top of the base although there are only four notches here if more dice are stolen by Steelheart just place them nearby finally some epic actions show arrows on either side if so this is called a gifted action meaning it will not happen in the current district but instead on the neighboring districts so in this example that means a single enforcement model will be placed here and here after resolving all the required actions of a particular epochs track which in this case would be these four you then move its bracket to the right a number of spaces equal to one plus the number of enforcement managers in that district so this case we would need to move it three spaces but remember the bracket will always stop here and for every space you cannot move it further to the right you trigger this effect that number of times so in this case we would lose two more to our population you can probably see now the real threat of allowing these enforcement figures to pile up within a district if you do not keep them under control you're gonna suffer some serious consequences once all regular epochs have been activated in this phase you then activate Steelheart by executing each of his tracks in order from top to bottom this track will reduce the population and this one will have Steelheart hunting for your base as we learned about this track is the one that we saw during the explanation of the prologue and it works the same way here again you collect the number of enforcement figures as represented by these red stars and then place them in groups of two in each of the districts starting with steelheart's and then going clockwise around and around as many times as necessary when activating the blue track you'll take a number of barricades in hand as shown to the left of the bracket so in this case to then place them one at a time into each district starting with steelheart's and going in a clockwise direction until your hand is empty and if you ever run out of barricades to place for each one you can't reduce the population track by one either way once these tracks have been resolved roll the Steelheart die and move him that number of districts clockwise and those are all the steps in a round of play which you're reminded of here on your player aid which also provides definitions of the various symbols here on the back and after you complete one round you repeat these steps for each new round until either you lose by the population track hitting zero or win by reducing steelheart's health to zero and that's everything you need to know to play the reckoners if you have any questions about anything you ah here feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures videos and lots more over on its page at BoardGameGeek which I'll put a link to in the description of this video but until the next episode thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 34,056

Rating: 4.9333334 out of 5

Keywords: The Reckoners, Instructions, Game Rules, Learn How To Play, Learn, Tabletop, Watch It Played, Card Games, Learn To Play, How To Play, Rules, Nauvoo Games, Board Games, Miniatures, Play Throughs

Id: 8Fj3gsvo9GA

Length: 25min 26sec (1526 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 27 2018