Too Many Bones: Know Your Expansions

[Music] hey gamers this is liz davidson from beyond solitaire and i'm here to help you make a very difficult decision so you're interested in too many bones this is the base box for too many bones and it alone is huge stuffed with premium poker chips neoprene mats pvc cards and player sheets basically you could play this at the beach it's waterproof and it's chock full of hours of gameplay but you're a gamer and that means that you might also be like me a completionist so we also need to talk about everything else that you could buy for too many buns if you've already played too many bones or if you'd like a smaller box introduction to the system there's a standalone expansion called undertow if you think you just want a couple more boxes to spice things up you can try the age of tyranny which is a campaign expansion 40 days in daylore which is just some more enemies and encounters splice and dice which is the most recent expansion of too many bones which also contains ways to make your own evil tyrants to battle with and on top of that if you've already gotten familiar with the characters in the versions of too many bones that you own or if you're getting too many bones and you want the best play experience with the most awesome gear locks possible you also have to consider whether you want one of the six add-on gear locks i was curious about what everything too many bones to date would look like in a big pile so i took it all out put it on my game table and took a picture and yeah that's a lot of stuff so if you're thinking about getting into too many bones or if you already have it and you're trying to figure out what else you might want i've made this video to help you this is a guide to all the expansions in too many bones what you're getting what's compatible with what and hopefully the information that you need in order to make a responsible or irresponsible decision about too many bones so let's start with the basics or in this case literally the base game this is too many bones as you can see this game alone has a ton of stuff right in that first box so before we go to talk about all the expansions that are available for this baby let's have a look at what's inside so you know exactly what you're getting so let's do the quick overview what is too many bones it says in the box it's a dice builder rpg but i'm giving you the quick details on what exactly that means in every game of too many bones you are going to be playing one or more gear locks these are the fantasy race that chip theory invented for this game and in the base game you'll have four choices you'll have picket tantrum boomer and patches as you'll notice they all have these player mats with slots for skill dice and if you want to know more about how each gearbox plays very differently and they really really do you should look for my other video that was released this gen con about knowing your gear locks in too many buns we'll be back to this mat but you'll be playing one to four gear locks and the game does scale for solo so if you're a solo player like me and you want to play just one gear lock that is entirely possible no matter how many gear locks are playing your game you're gonna be pitting yourself against a tyrant there's seven of them in the game and you're going to get a time limit the number of days you have to complete your quest a progress marker is the amount of progress your characters need to make in order to be prepared to face the tyrant the types of baddies you might face along the way each enemy chip has a type and you also get a handy warning about game length so if you go up against the goblin king you're going to be playing for a little while you might instead choose to play a shorter term game against somebody like momesh the goal of the game is to build up your characters that they're powerful enough to take out the tyrant and you're going to do that by completing encounters there are three special encounters that start every game and then you'll have an encounter deck into which you shuffle either solo or general encounters depending on whether you're playing by yourself or with others as well as some special tyrant encounters that are specific to the tyrant you're going up against this is the very first event in the game so we'll just have a look at it this one's leaving open dar only 12 hours till dawn in the send-off ceremony that will no doubt change the lives of every remaining gear lock and likely every life in dalore that's the land where this is set weapons and supplies are ready to go but the night is young and adrenaline fills the veins it's clear no sleep will be had tonight there's sure to be some shady peddlers and dark alleys ready to deal in loot then again some last minute training could pay a nice dividend by morning so what to do what to do after you read every encounter you're going to flip the card and you're going to make some choices so in this case you can train and get two skill points or you can shake down a peddler and get one point and one loot you'll also make one progress so that's how you get closer to confronting a tyrant loot and trading points are both crucial on your way you're going to want to collect a lot of both in order to be fully prepared for battle and to eventually have an epic battle against your tyrant in too many bones there are two types of loot there's regular loot which you can just draw and use right away some events also give you access to trove loot which you have to complete a mini lock picking game in order to open which is super fun your training points are going to go into training either your basic stats health attack dexterity and defense this is an rpg after all or into gaining skills on your character's unique skilled tree so for fun let's say that pickett is now up to four dexterity that's the amount of things you can do in a turn basically including move he's up to two attack and three defense and that's all noted by the dice that are in slots on his mat when he upgrades his health this die will go here these slots over here are going to correspond to these 16 blue dice that will go into the slot on picket's mat when he trains for that skill and earns that die so if he has the stand ground ability he'll put this die in a slot to roll when he wants to use that ability on his turn you might have noticed a lot going on in terms of unique abilities and dye faces but fear not there is a guide to every single gear lock in the game so for picket you'll have a complete guide to all of the faces of his dice to what every icon on those dice would mean his backup plan breakdown which we'll talk about in just a moment and even a beginner build sheet that is going to help you choose where to invest his early skill points if you're new to the game and you're not totally sure what to do so you mentioned a backup plan this game is called too many bones for a reason and not every die roll you make will be successful so we know that pickett could choose for example to roll two attack dice and let's say he only wants to roll one defense die that worked out great because i got a bone so this would give him two defense which he could choose to keep in place to use later two damage that he could do against an enemy here on the battle mat and a bone that he could choose if he wanted to put into his backup plan so the more failed roles you have in a battle that you save the closer you get to some really awesome bonuses in other words you can turn your failures into well-timed successes if you're careful enough a battle will take place here on the mat your gear lock will roll for initiative and will be pitted against groups of baddies which is what bad guys in this game are called who are worth 1 5 or 20 points the baddie points on the back of the chips are designed to help balance the game you'll have to go against groups of enemies that are worth more points the further along in the game you get and the larger your party is every enemy will come with a chip that gives you its health its initiative its attack value and any special skills that it might have so just as gearbox have special abilities enemies do too and you definitely want to be checking player references to check on the details of what those abilities do all battles are played out on this battle mat where you use lane shifts to mark which enemy starts in which lane and there are also spots for melee and for ranged characters a lot of the fun of the game is learning how to make moves that are to your greatest advantage on this battle mat while you're playing and then the nutshell is too many buns you have encounters you fight you train you collect loot and if you make enough progress in a fast enough time you get to confront a tyrant so within just the base box of too many bones you have four totally different gear locks with skill trees and play styles to learn seven different tyrants that give you longer or shorter games and who have their own very different special abilities and combinations of enemy chips that they'll bring to the table and quite an extensive collection of loot to attempt to collect and explore but let's get real we're gamers and that means that we want expansions and too many bones has quite a few of those so now that you know the very very basics i'll be walking you through everything that is currently available for this game so we've looked at the base game and before we move over into the expansions that require you to already have a version of too many bones let's talk about undertow so undertow is the only too many bones expansion that is a standalone so if you want a smaller introduction of too many bones undertow is a little bit cheaper and it's still a complete game unto itself things to know about undertow include that out of the box it's for only one to two players because there are only two gear locks in here however you can expand it to three to four if you choose to purchase a couple of add-on gear locks and just throw them into the game so no problem also while undertow is mostly compatible with everything else for too many bones there are two different enemy types in here that are unique to undertow and that work with the undertow battle mat so let's have a look through what's in the box and we'll talk about it so looking inside once again you have health chips enemy chips plenty of dice you'll have our loot cards and event cards that are just kind of in this nice little holder more dice didn't think i was done did you some sheets including just a general help guide and guides to the two gear locks that are in this box who are duster and stanza we'll talk more about them in my other video but stanza is a bard with all kinds of interesting abilities and duster if you've played basebox too many bones is actually a tyrant in that game who is now a playable character for us in undertow so she's got a whole interesting story and it is fun to play her against herself as a tyrant in too many bones which is entirely possible you'll get these stanza and duster mets and what i think is most interesting to talk about is this battle mat so the battle match should look familiar because it's mostly like the one from too many bones in the base box however there are also some additional starting spaces along the sides and that is because the action takes place while you're traveling on and along a river so sometimes there are underwater baddies that will pop up out of the water to come at you and a lot of fun stuff is done with that in this game also if you flip the battle map there are additional off-board entry spaces and these are for a different kind of enemy they're called mechs and those also add a lot of excitement and interest to gameplay specifically to combat so basically aside from the krellen and mech enemies everything from undertow and everything from two new bones is roughly interchangeable the gear locks can be played in either game absolutely no problem any gear lock can be played in any too many bones game or campaign no problem whatsoever you can mix undertow events with other too many bones events i generally prefer not to because the undertow events mention water a lot and the too many bones ones don't if you don't really care about thematic consistency you can probably get away with it and i have personally found the loot to be interchangeable there are some water specific loot items from undertow but there's no problem with how they work in a normal game of too many buns so i don't consider that particularly problematic so if you get undertow first and then get too many bones you'll find there's a lot that you can mix and match if you already have too many bones and then you pick up undertow again there's going to be a lot that you can combine between your games just watch out for those special enemies the one other thing that makes undertow special is that it has a campaign mode there is another campaign mode for too many bones that we're going to get to shortly it is not compatible with this campaign mode so too many bones if you own everything for it comes with two different campaign modes this one is for undertow and basically you fight against three tyrants in a row and you get some rewards and a little bit of storyline each time you make progress in that journey campaign mode for undertow is fun but it's it's very simple it's not super demanding it's just a way to get to play a longer game with multiple tyrants in it and be rewarded for defeating them i really like it and thought this was a nice addition to the game so speaking of campaigns the age of tyranny is the expansion that you want if you want to play a campaign for too many bones however you can mix it with undertow and i will tell you how so here's what the inside of the box looks like you have a deck of cards that'll help run you through the campaign with rewards epilogues for each of the tyrants you get a fun medicinal looking jar which contains some various components you will need including scars which we'll talk about in just a moment and at the bottom of the box you're going to find a reference guide for age of tyranny and this mat that is going to help you track progress all the way through a campaign in essence age of tyranny is a campaign that allows you to go through defeating seven tyrants so if you play it with just plain old too many bones you play against all seven of the tyrants that are in the base box if you want to mix and match with undertow the campaign in undertow is not the same as this campaign but there's no reason why you can't mix in tyrants from undertow with tyrants from age of tyranny and just pick the seven that you want to beat epilogue cards that come with undertow will work just fine in terms of giving you rewards and continuing the game one thing that's really interesting is that in addition to being able to reward yourself for defeating tyrants you can also face consequences or acquire scars over the course of the campaign i'll leave you discover the details for yourself but it is a game where your character's status will change based on things that have happened to them on a long journey and i think it's a really neat way to play too many bones especially if you've already played a bunch of tirings played a bunch of combinations of gear locks and you're looking for something new this is a really nice challenge the one last thing i'd remind you of before we move on to the next expansion is that while you can use undertow tyrants with age of tyranny this really is designed for too many bones in the sense that if you wanted to try to play the age of tyranny campaign with only the tyrants from undertow there are only five of them you wouldn't get to play a complete age of tyranny campaign so if you want a complete campaign you're gonna need to have the too many bones original base game so if you want to make sure that you have tons of replayability for too many bones specifically with regard to enemy types and encounter cards then what you want is 40 days in daylore this is going to give you additional baddies i think there's 15 new ones in the box and you also get some new encounters for too many bones so if you need some new solo encounters because you've been playing solo a lot and you've seen most of them or if your group is ready for a fresh injection of new encounters into your game this is the box to get so when you open the box you get another cool case of enemy chips i love these little tubes you get some new cards that are going to be your fresh encounter cards and a guide to help you process the baddies new skills and icons because they do add some new challenge to the game and also some new keywords and abilities so again this is specifically designed for the too many buns base box i don't see why you couldn't put things from 40 days in daler into undertow especially if you don't mind switching between on and off water or vents the main thing is that the undertow specific baddies the max and the krellen do not mix well into the base game of too many bones and those expansions everything else is cross-compatible and the last expansion that's not an add-on character is the most recent it's called splice and dice this is a really interesting expansion because basically what it does is it gives you some new tyrants if you just want new tyrants to throw into your game go for it there are cards in here for that but it also offers you two ways to build your own tyrant which is quite interesting so when you open the box you get a look at nobules's lab you'll recognize him if you've been playing too many bones very much and you'll get a rule book and also a couple of interesting mats so these game mats are designed to replicate a lab and basically these are meant to be played in in conjunction with either too many bones or undertow there are undertow specific baddies to work with in here to create ultimate tyrants so splice and dice is compatible with either the base box the standalone expansion or both there are two ways to build your own tyrant one is by playing through a game of too many buns but building a tyrant based on the characteristics of the enemies that you defeat so you can end up with a tyrant that is responsive to the game that you played alternatively there's a game mode where you're working directly for novulus and trying to create the most horrible tyrant possible then when you're done if you want you can save the tyrant that you created and go up against that tyrant in any future game of too many buns that you might play so if you're ever worried about running out of tyrants to go up against or worried that you would lose interest well not only is there a lot of variety in the base game and in undertow but this box will give you some ready-made tyrants and the opportunity to make as many as you want forever so if you're interested in the ultimate challenge and potentially creating it for yourself then splice and dice is a great expansion choice and beyond the expansions that i've shown you the rest are going to be additional gear locks that you can play in some ways i actually think these are the best expansions because the gear locks offer so much variability just from character to character and again if you want a more detailed overview of that look for my know your gear locks video that is also being released this gen con but for a quick tour you have tink the bot builder who actually sends little robots with special abilities around the battle mat to take out enemies dart whose name says it all and who has a sweet ride the lab rats who are the only group gear lock that exist in this game so basically you have these four different gear locks who are all operating as one character which is super interesting nugget who is just great she is a mixed melee range fighter with lots of cool abilities and a great hoodie gasket who is a mech and who has some different advantages and disadvantages because of that and gilly the scoutmaster who is awesome and has cool pets that you can summon to the board to fight with you i really like to play gilly not gonna lie so those are all the main expansions in addition you can pick up a couple of extra things so this is just an optional map that will let you track your days here instead of on a card and move your progress towards various tyrants on the board there's also a side for undertow if that's what you would like to do and you can get this add-on ally pack so as we mentioned gilly had some animal companions and tink has some bots that are normally just represented by putting dice on top of a health chip in the game but you can actually get an add-on pack that gives you nice premium chips to represent those extra helpers on the battle map when you play there are some premium health chips as well if you want them so the health markers that go under your chips are a little bit thinner in the main box but if you want that heavy poker chip you can get that as an add-on and there's currently a large box being designed to hold all of the too many bone stuff lest you think that there are too many boxes for too many bones so that's my overview of everything you can currently get for too many bones i hope that this guide helped you figure out what you might or might not be interested in and no matter which aspects of this game are for you i hope you have a great time exploring it now that we've gone through all the expansions for too many bones you may be somebody like me who just wants everything i do have a little bit of a completionist nature or you might want to make a strategic purchase to see if the game is for you before going further into the deep end i will tell you that i am biased about this game in the sense that i really like it and i think it's great so you really can't make a wrong decision here i do however have some recommendations that are just my honest recommendations about what i might do in different situations depending on the kind of gamer you are if you like to try a game out first before purchasing expansions you have two options with too many buns you can either get the two mini bones base box or you can get undertow which is a smaller introduction to the game although undertow might be tempting for that reason i actually recommend starting with the base box and the reason for that is i think that having four gear locks and seven tyrants is a better value than getting undertow and then adding on a couple of gear locks to expand later even though i'm a solo player i like that the base box has four gear locks to start with right away so you can immediately come up with more interesting combos and try out different play styles without having to buy anything else so if you're only gonna buy one thing for too many buns i think you should just buy the two mini buns base box undertow is great i like it but sometimes starting at the beginning is the best place to start if you want to get a base box and a little something more i also have a recommendation for that one of the reasons that i actually recommend the too many bones base box as the first purchase is because while undertow does have a campaign and it's fun i really like the age of tyranny campaign expansion that's really made for the too many bones base box if you want to get one main too many bones game and then maybe something to spice it up i think one direction that you can go is with the base box plus the age of tyranny expansion that way you can learn the game try out a few tyrants and then make an epic adventure out of it and i personally like that if you're not really a big campaign person another way to spice up either too many buns of base box or undertow so whatever decision you make this will work is to buy that initial gameplay box and then pick up a couple of extra gear locks i think that probably the thing that i like the very best about too many bones is that there's so many different gear locks to play and they all play so differently so even switching out your gear lock can make the game feel really fresh give you a whole new set of choices to make and really make things feel more dramatic different special so another direction that you could go if you want to get a base game and then some sort of expansion to spice it up is to get either too many bones or undertow and then add an extra gear lock or two if you're trying to decide among gear locks i actually have another video that was out this gen con that is about knowing your gear locks in too many buns so if you want an overview of each gear lock and what is cool about them you can either catch it somewhere in the gen con schedule or once gen con is over both this video and my video about gear locks will be airing on my own channel beyond solitaire and though i do love too many buns i am a reviewer by nature honestly i do like splice and dice but i think that it is the last expansion that i would pick up this is not because splice and dice is a bad expansion but it's because of specifically what it adds to the game i think that if you are just starting out in too many bones you already have plenty of tyrants to work with and enjoy and you also if you add something like 40 days in daylor have plenty of other encounters and enemies to challenge i think the need for more tyrant is something that can come later especially since for me the best part is exploring all the different gear locks splice and dice offers you those two ways to generate tyrants and while that's really cool i think that at least for your first while with too many bones it's really fine to just enjoy the pre-made tyrants that come with the regular base box and with undertow so if you're the type of gamer who gets everything there's nothing in the too many bones line that i don't recommend but if you're trying to make a strategic purchase for getting into the game for the first time or if you've already got one of the base boxes and you're trying to figure out where to go next those are my personal recommendations i hope that this video helped you out i hope you're having a great gen con and happy gaming [Music] you

Channel: Beyond Solitaire

Views: 8,903

Keywords: board games, beyond solitaire, too many bones, chip theory games, gearloc, solitaire, solo gaming, tmb

Id: TjJ6njrtphw

Length: 24min 51sec (1491 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020