Haven’t blogged in a while but I have gotten some games in and can’t wait to talk about them.

The main idea here is one of setting up conditions and then paying them off.  It applies to multiple board games, and I’ll discuss it by looking at 3 fairly different games in Unmatched, Black Rose Wars, and Return to Dark Tower, along with Epic Duels of course (ok, Unmatched/Epic Duels and Return to Dark Tower are by the same company and same design overseer in Rob Daviau but they are still pretty different games).

What those 3 games have in common is that all have special abilities of one sort or another.  This is a common thing in many games, and we employ them in all 3 of our board game publications in Cage Match!, Fearsome Wilderness, and coming soon, Essence of Eternity.  At first, you typically use special abilities to amp up the traits already present in the game, e.g. Spirit and Warriors are the primary currency of Return to Dark Tower, so the Orphaned Scion gets 1 Spirit every turn as part of her special ability, while the Brutal Warlord gets 5 Warriors every turn as one of his special abilities.  Or, each mage in Black Rose Wars has his/her special abilities, such as Nero’s Master of the Undead ability to gain power points whenever a creature he controls kills an enemy mage.  However, in BRW, the schools of magic also have their unique abilities.  Destruction favors damage, ok, you win by dishing out the most.  The game includes many creatures already, but Necromancy lets you boost those to even better creatures, then you win the game by overpowering your enemies with your superior creatures.

But, instead of just boosting already existing traits and conditions, you can also set up new conditions, and pay them off.

Unmatched and Epic Duels

The idea for this post started with an insight from Epic Duels:

You make a deck by choosing the conditions under which that deck wins.  Then give it cards to create that condition, and other cards that pay off on that condition.

An easy example is our fairly recent Baylan Skoll deck: His condition is that he wins when a lot of his cards are spent.  What’s great about this condition is that it’s already part of the game to spend cards and this condition gives you a bit of a play style.  So ok, you want to draw the game out a bit, spend cards just to spend them.  His cards DESTROY TO CREATE, CONTROLLED RAGE and SECURE THE FUTURE all help create the condition of spent cards, and then POWER AS NEVER DREAMED pays it off, since its ability is that it powers up based on how many cards are spent.

I mentioned above that the condition of spending cards is already part of the game.  However, you can also create new conditions to add to the game, then gain advantages based on those conditions.  With the Witch King in LOTRED, we added a “Morgul Blade token” and then the card TERRIFYING SCREECH does 3 extra damage to the character who has that token.  That only involves 3 of the Witch King’s 12 special cards, but you could build an entire deck with something like that as the path-to-victory engine.  In an example of that, Galen Erso needs to find the SABOTAGE card, play it by putting it into his opponent’s deck, and then he has boosts to many of his cards while SABOTAGE is in play.

You can do this for Unmatched decks too, and I did with Paul Bunyan: He plants trees, cuts them down, and then powers up with that condition.  Or, I had an idea for a simpler Johnny Appleseed deck where he simply plants trees, and if he’s standing on a space with a tree, well, you better watch out for Johnny Appleseed!  I just made another deck called the Fairy Princess deck for my young daughters.  The older of those two wants freeze powers, so that’s her condition:  She’s stronger when you’re frozen.  There’s no such thing as “frozen”?  No problem.  Some cards freeze you by adding a freeze token, that’s the setup.  Then her special ability and other cards get bonuses when the opponent is frozen by having a freeze token. That’s the payoff.

Return to Dark Tower

I haven’t blogged enough about this game, but I have to admit to not being sure about plopping down $150.  Well, as I’ll expound upon in a long overdue review, it’s been well worth it.  We’ve played it dozens of times, and it’s still really, really fun.  There are still many adventures and villains I want to face, and that’s not even including the competitive mode.

The base game comes with 4 heroes, each with their own abilities.  The main 2 resources of the game are Spirit and Warriors, so of course, the Orphaned Scion’s ability is to get extra Spirit (the best ability IMO), while the Brutal Warlord gets extra Warriors. The Relic Hunter gets a Potion every turn, and the Master Spy gets extra movement.

What’s left?  Not much, so with the expansion, let’s create a new thing called “colored skulls” and then have the new Haunted Recluse character play off of those.  Then for the second hero, let’s just create a condition that gives that hero a combat bonus, and then their ability is to create or manipulate that condition.  It could have been a mage warrior with an ability called “Magic Cloud” or something, but they went with a character called “the Archwright,” and the condition that helps him is when he has a “Battlement”.

Then his special ability lets him put down or move a Battlement, and his abilities pay those off by giving him extra advantages from Battlements.  And, to think that before the Alliances expansion, you didn’t even know Battlements existed!  That’s what it means to create a condition, which a special ability can then pay off.

Just to be clear, this is something fun, something to learn from.  I’m not complaining.  The Battlements ability is a good ability, and the Archwright is a good and unique character.

So in application, anytime you need a special ability, create a condition.  There are some abilities that set up that condition, then other abilities that pay it off.

I’ve played this games dozens of times and it’s been out for years, but it’s still worth a full review because it’s that great.  I should have something coming up soon.

Black Rose Wars

For those that haven’t followed this blog, BRW is a game of intense, “royal rumble” style magic combat game, which did get a full review a while back.  You and the other mages are confined to a fairly small “lodge” and go room to room, battling each other with spells and completing quests.  The heart of the game is the preparation phase, where you set up which spells you will play this round, and the exact order you will play them in.  Then the mayhem ensues as all your carefully laid plans go to shit.  It’s pretty much The starting game when we get together and typically the main game we play, as it runs about 3 hours long.

We got out Black Rose Wars: Rebirth and spun through the new rules.  In short, I haven’t been able to access all of the tasty new schools of magic yet, but I like what I’m seeing in that, it’s all new and different, with some new mechanisms with the “building” of destroyed rooms rather than destruction of built rooms, and I already love the new Agony school of magic.  I still have to see how the old set gets integrated with the new set, but I’m seeing online conversations about going half and half, or even drafting rooms.  There’s endless replayability.

Black Rose Wars has asymmetric characters but also asymmetric schools of magic.  I mentioned that Destruction and Necromancy are fairly straightforward in how they work, but now let’s look at the way the Divination school set up new conditions and pays them off:  They’ve created a thing called an altar.  You have spells that put down altars, that’s the setup.  Then the payoff is that many spells are more powerful when an altar is present.

Now, with Rebirth, the Shamanic school adds in totems.  Putting totems down is the set up by putting them down, then pay them off with healing, card draws and power points.  And, it’s that simple, adding them is the setup, and then the character has abilities to pay them off.

So here’s an example of a concept that we could apply to all 3 games:

Popeye the Sailor might be a dated reference, but all you need to know is that he’s strongest when he eats spinach.  So in Unmatched, his special ability is +2 attack damage when he’s on a space with a spinach token.  That’s the payoff.  Now we just have to set it up by adding some cute spinach can tokens to the game, and then have cards that give him spinach.  Those cards can be attack cards, card drawing — whatever.  All that really matters is that they set up the spinach, which can then pay off with a big attack card.

In Return to Dark Tower, the Sailor’s ability is that he can put down a spinach token once per turn on any space, which then goes away at the end of the turn. Then one of his other abilities is to gain an advantage when standing on a spinach token, and other abilities that he can unlock give him more abilities to move and use the spinach (maybe one called “Cannery” which lets the spinach last beyond one turn).

In Black Rose Wars, sailor magic has special abilities or spells that put down spinach tokens (there are cardboard discs or spinach flower minis for $20 each) and then other spells that give him a major attack boost when in a room with spinach tokens.

Set up the spinach, and then pay off the spinach.  It works!  Have fun.

Epic Duels Update:  If you’re here for the Epic Duels, we’ve been playing with our Disney decks like Baylan Skoll, Shin Hati, Ahsoka Master Jedi, Sabine Wren, Bo Katan, The Armorer, Greef Karga, Inquisitor Reva, Luthen Rael and Saw Gerrera along with newer decks for older characters like Poggle the Lesser and Ozzel & Piett.

Also be sure to check out the new Master Sol deck from The Acolyte TV series!