Veiled Fate Review

the premise of failed fate is this you are a god i mean i know you were always telling everyone that but now it's actually true you're a god and you have a particular investment in one of the nine demigods who of course are all associated with a different color you want this demigod to be the most renowned demigod in the world because then they can ascend and be a god and you can just hang out with them all the time unfortunately all the other gods around the table have a particular investment in a different demigod so it's up to you to move your demigod up through the ranks and squash all the other ones but here's the thing because everyone else around the table are also gods they can manipulate each demigod's renowned at will as well and so the whole point of veiled fate is to hide that identity of the demigod until you're able to claim victory and bluff that you're actually helping other demigods move up in renown when really you've got all of your points invested in one particular character that's the general overview veiled fate is a social deduction game with a heavy emphasis on the deduction aspect and really you could play it almost without any social and without any deduction and it would still end up being a good game but with the social elements around the table and the ability to bluff this is a game that is really really good so i picked this up at origins uh ivy games gave it to me they didn't say hey listen we're giving this to you make a review out of it they gave it to me and they said i hope you enjoy it and i have i have really enjoyed it and i think anybody who's a fan of games with bluffing in them will enjoy this as well so you're gonna get a card at the beginning that card's gonna have color you want to move that color up the ranks while not letting other people know that you're moving that color up the ranks because then they can work together to just tank that god's reputation if they figure it out it plays from two to eight so there's going to be a range of gods that are available and i'll talk about that a little bit more in a second but it doesn't matter at the end of the game how many demigods are in front of your particular god the only thing that matters is that none of your competitors are in front of your particular god the game takes place over three rounds each of these rounds has a similar structure you're going to get to take one or two moves and these moves are usually just moving a god one space one space adjacent the city is adjacent to everything in the middle uh or if you're in a particular slice of the pie then you're adjacent to the city and the two other slices of pie that you're beside you can also do some special god powers which i'll touch on in a second the majority of the moves in the game though are going to be moving a demigod onto these quests and when you move with god onto a quest you also have to commit a card from your hand which will influence the balance of that quest it will influence what happens to those gods everybody who puts a demigod in there gets to put one of these cards and then when the quest is completely full you'll reveal the cards see what the majority of the symbols are in those cards and then apply the results of that column to the god so if there's more scorpions you would take all the symbols on the right side of the card if there's more feathers you take all the symbols on the left side of the card and the symbols are very simple they're usually move up one on the reputation track or move down one on the reputation track that's it wait for it there's more there's even move up two on the reputation track and move down two on the refutation track that's pretty much what you're calculating the only other thing that could happen is the god gets smoted there's a smiting of a god there's absolutely smitten and they're sent to the abyss on the board which then takes them a little while to get back into play and be involved in other quests and it moves them to the back of the line of their respective slice of pie number on the reputation track because position matters if at the end of the game everybody's at two points which won't happen but let's just say it will then whoever's in the front who got their last will win the game and so if you've been smoted you're at the back of the line and that means you know you're not gonna win that time you move gods around until all the quests are completed or everybody passes or people are taking moves that don't involve either gaining a card or using cards for stuff so it stops this just being a perpetual moving people around then you're kind of forced to pass when everybody passes the round ends you move on to the second one keep it going from there there are two other things that happen at the end of every round there's also going to be a global mandate that's going to happen you basically you can use leftover cards in your hand to vote on two different outcomes some that will raise the reputation of some gods some that will lower the reputation of the gods because the whole game is just manipulating these different tracks essentially you're manipulating them in interesting ways and you're trying to not reveal your hand too early while pushing up the actual demigod of your choice but that's it it's a very simple game in its essence the other thing that you can do on your turn instead of just moving your god around is you can do these super powerful god powers which cost you three cards in your hand or two cards or an extra card and they allow you to manipulate the board state even more so you can swap two people's positions or you can move someone onto a space that they otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to move on stuff like that this comes at a pretty huge cost because you're basically sacrificing moves down the line but it might be worth it if you need to get your god in a specific position to win the game usually in my experience you'll use these powers at the end of the game because they're so costly that you're not going to spend them on a bluff or maybe you are maybe you will spend them on an early bluff and make your competitors spend all their time dealing with that one thing and then you're sneakily moving up the green person into the lead that could be a strategy and and i think that defines the core exciting part of the game it is this bluffing element this game is chock full of what i like to describe as above the table interaction not the actual physical things that are happening on the board but the discussions that it creates around the table and the relationships that it creates around the table i think this facilitates that in an exceptional way or rather thrives when that is put at the forefront i've played this a few times now and every time has been enjoyable but it's been different levels of enjoyable there was one game night where it was five of us we played this to starting the night and it was great it was a blast everybody had a really fun time and then we played a few other games and then we decided at the end of the night hey do you want to just play veiled fade again because we all enjoyed it so much and everybody said yeah and and we took in it but because it was the end of the night and we were a little bit more tired the bluffing aspect kind of fell by the wayside and we just sort of pursued our own objectives and that was probably the least engaging or least fun time that i've played veiled fate because there wasn't that social element to it when you're just moving pieces on the board and trying to move your tracks up it's fun it's a fine puzzle but it isn't nearly as exciting as when you're talking about who you think the other person is and then at the end when they reveal themselves and you are dead wrong and you get to have that discussion point and that discussion afterwards it doesn't nearly touch those levels of excitement and joy it's just kind of it's okay but if you have a group that really engages in that bluffing aspect of things it's really good and it's really fun one other element of the game that i was really surprised about is the player count so i've played this at two players five players and six players which in essence is sort of a three-player team game so at six to eight players there are going to be two people around the table who share a demigod so i might be on the green team and you also might be on the green team then those two are on yellow and those two are on pink in the six player game and so we all have a vested interest in moving the green forward and bluffing to the other people in a two to five player game everyone has their own god and you don't have anyone else to rely on you're just relying on other people moving your piece forward in a bluff and then you getting to laugh maniacally when they do and it's interesting because i thought for me that the optimal way to play this game would be the six to eight player version and i think it plays very well at the six player i can see it playing equally well at the seven and the eight player but for me i think my favorite way to play this is inexplicably at the two player level because of the amount of gods not being used there's only one other god that you have to worry about at that two-player level and that's the god of your opponent and so if i'm gonna bluff with a couple other pieces the chances of me accidentally moving my opponent's piece forward and giving them a bonus is a lot less at the five player game it was a lot harder to bluff or a lot scarier to bluff because you didn't know if you were gonna be moving somebody else's piece and so at that two two-player level you really get that excitement of the bluffing element because you don't have to worry about anything else you can worry about just the one piece and that to me was really fun or it could just be because i played that with zach and it was our first time both of us playing the game and immediately he picked up the green piece and looked at it and was like oh after looking at his card and i said you know you probably shouldn't pick up the piece of the color that's on your card and he made a big show about him making a mistake and oh we should switch cards uh we should redo it and i'm like no you can just bluff zack i don't know if that was a bluff and then i looked at my card and i was the green guard i was the green demigod so i knew he wasn't green and that was a whole ploy to try to get me to think he was green and that he was gonna be bluffing with green and then well i was green and so that particular scenario made for a very funny event as we worked it out and he tried to bluff with green a little and then he saw me moving it and got scared and then bluffed with something else but i'm so so surprised that this works well at a two player count and and even with the six player count the reason why i like that a lot more than the five player count is again because of that bluffing element with six players there's only three demigods in play meaning that there are six other ones that you can bluff with freely and not accidentally move someone's piece and there's also a fun satisfaction of figuring out who your partner is and giving them a little knowing look across the table and figuring out how to correspond your actions so that other people don't think that you're working together that's also a lot a lot of fun at the five player again it was fun but you have less of that bluffing element or or maybe a little bit more you has to be a little bit uh scarier as you can tell from me reliving my experiences this is an awesome game it really is but only for the right group i can't specify how much of the mechanics might falter if you don't enjoy that bluffing aspect if you don't enjoy trying to suss each other out across the table i i just think there's not enough actual strategic decisions or tactical decisions i should say to make it feel like a rich dense game especially for the price point this is pretty much only available to order on ivy games's website it's not in wide retail hopefully it'll get there someday but ivy studios they make games with premium products and that comes with a premium price tag the component quality is great the board is beautiful the art's beautiful the board is so thick and sturdy even if the card design is stupid that they have these little flecks of dust on them that makes you think and literally every person who i've played with at one point during the game has looked at one of the cards and tried to scratch off the dirt that has made its way onto the card only to realize that that was part of the design why that's part of the design i cannot understand but it is it is so much so that i've lost my train of thought yeah i'm talking about the components they make games of a premium quality and this is running i think right now at the time this review again these sorts of things could change depending on whatever and there's different versions of this one with minis one without but i think the one with the minis is coming in at that 89 price point and that was the one that a lot of people wanted and a lot of people grasped back on kickstarter when it first was around there was a cheaper version which had standees and less thick cardstock for around that 50 price point maybe and that's what i do wish that this game was it it is an exceptional game if money is no object then and you like social deduction then this is one to absolutely consider do more research and i would really advise picking up but i also asked everybody who i played with how much do you think this cost how much would you be willing to pay and if it was a hundred dollars canadian would you feel like that was a good enough deal and the answers were usually that feels too expensive for the experience that it provides and i think that's that's to be said about a lot of social deduction games right when the game itself is a facilitator and is facilitating this awesome social discussion that is very much dependent on your group it's also your group that's that's providing the the entertainment value and makes it a little bit harder to analyze on a game play value so to speak the the highs and the lows and i feel it'll also make it hit fairly differently with groups that thrive in this environment and those that don't and i think that is where my hesitancy stems because if you're unfamiliar with this channel i'm fairly budget conscious on just wholeheartedly recommending this game to everyone because i think there is the chance that it won't hit as much as it did with my group and i can't help but feeling that the component quality isn't necessary that this could have been produced at a lower quality with less deluxe components and you could have the exact same experience and you could have the exact same fantastic experience without a heavy metal coin that when you flip it and catch it which is a game mechanic if there are ties that it doesn't hurt your hand when you slam it against it the rule book itself is also just it's just bad there's a whole section devoted on how to choose the first player written in a way that makes you feel like it must be done this way and then you realize oh it's just a random way of determining first player there's so many elements of over explaining in the rulebook writing it as though it's going to be looked at with a magnifying glass or with a fine-tooth comb when it's just a simple social deduction bluffing game i'm really not a fan of how the rulebook is presented it's not that difficult a game to grasp and yet the rulebook makes it seem doubly complicated than it actually is so with those caveats and even though i personally think it is overproduced i still can't help but commend and sing the praises about the quality of game and the quality of experience that it has provided me this to give it on my rating system gives an absolute seal of distinction and is probably one of my favorite gaming experiences of the year i really really enjoy this game i think it is exceptionally well done especially in the way that it creates that above the table interaction you need a specific amount of energy to commit to it to get its full value but it is one that i have been loving and am actively looking forward to playing again and one that i think i'd be able to pull out in a very large variety of situations even if the group doesn't like bluffing i know i harp on that a lot i still think i could pull it out and a lot of different people have enjoyed playing it and it has provided a really nice experience my girlfriend really enjoys this dumb game called spy alley where you are trying to collect different things pertaining to your own nationality and get to your embassy before anybody else and this gives me those vibes but in a game that is actually good that isn't roll or move and that's it and it's also incredible that it gives a pretty fun bluffing game and deduction-ish game with just two players i feel confident in highly recommending it and i think it's one you should be on the lookout for anyway i hope that was helpful if you're interested in purchasing veiled fate or not if you're wondering about it uh if you have any questions as always let me know in the comments below my name is chris george i don't have a catchphrase but again if this was helpful gently graze that like and subscribe button because it helps me out a lot and makes me feel not so alone inside and also means that you and i might be on the same team which means that you're gonna win we're gonna win you're gonna win and i'm gonna ride off of your coattails thanks for being here let me know if you have played it if you enjoyed it and please don't let me know if you bought it based off of me and you don't like it i'm sorry but somehow with quality of game i don't see that happening i'll see in the next you

Channel: Room and Board

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Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022