Survivalist - Kickstarter Overview
Transcript
Hi everyone, my name is Bonnie.
And I'm Naveen from Before You Play.
And today we're going to be giving you an overview of a game that is currently on Kickstarter called Survivalist.
Yes, this game is designed by Robert Hewitt and published by Homestead Games New Zealand who are helping sponsor this video. Now in this game players are stranded in the wilderness and it's your job to try to survive as long as physically possible. You have to gather different resources, craft items, and ultimately try to be the last person standing.
That's right, this is a worker placement push your luck game for one to six players where each round a players will be assigning their workers to the various action spaces in order to collect resources and craft items and also protect against the various threats in a push your luck fashion so that you can eventually protect yourself from these seven deadly threats. And so today we're going to be giving you an overview of the base game as well as the advanced two-player game which includes the Pack Hunters expansion.
I do have to mention of course this is a prototype copy of the game so things are subject to change in the future. If you're interested in the campaign there's going to be a link in the description which you can check out. Lastly, if you like these kind of videos and you want to see more in the future, please consider subscribing.
And with that we are ready to begin. So if you please look to your attention to this end of the table, we're all set up here for a two-player game of Survivalist the base game. Welcome to the wilderness. And so like we're mentioning in this game we are trapped in the wilderness and so in order to survive we will need to forage or gather these different resources to craft various items such as a smoke signal or a stone knife so that we can protect ourselves against these seven different threats which include things such as thirst, storms, hunger, illness, you know, all of the terrible things that'll happen if you're trapped in the wild.
Yeah.
And the player who is able to survive the longest is the winner. Now the game is played over the course of 10 rounds but the first eight rounds is where a majority of the game takes place. This is where we're going to be preparing to go up against these various threats by gathering these resources and crafting items. In the ninth round each player will reveal and utilize our secret skills and finally the 10th and final round is when we'll actually go one by one up the various threats to see if we can survive them. And so each round during the first eight rounds of the game is split into three phases. The first thing that happens is starting with the player who has the compass token and going clockwise, each player will take turns choosing an action by placing out our player piece onto an available space of the board. Now the board is divided into three distinct areas. We have the back country, which is this entire column here that's comprised of several action spots, and each of these action spots can only be taken by one player.
So if it was my turn, I can take my player piece and put it on any one of these available slots. So let's just say I put it here, which would be gather, which I'd resolve in the next phase.
As for the other two locations, we have the clearing as well as the campfire, and both of these spaces can hold any number of player pieces. Such as say I were to place my player piece here on the forage location. Then, once all players have placed out their player pieces, we move into the action resolution phase, where we resolve each of our actions starting with the back country from top to bottom. Now in this game, there are three main types of actions, and they are the title of these back country spaces. They are foraging, crafting, as well as gathering. However, since we're in the wilderness, there are also different dangers that we need to face, as well as wounds that we may need to take along the way. And that is the push your luck aspect of the game. When it is your turn to resolve your actions, in this example, Naveen would be going first because he is above my player piece. You must first start by drawing a certain number of discs from the bag, which in this case is going to be four discs. That's a very expensive space.
You have your bag.
And in the bag are different colored discs that represent various things, such as the four different types of wounds that we have on our player board already. There are also these blue discs that represent exposure to cold, and the disc color that you want the most, which are the yellow sunshine discs. And the reason why is because these don't affect you at all.
Yes, and since my gather symbol has four different items, that means I have to draw four of these from the bag. I want to draw yellows. This is what I drew. Oh.
Oh.
Not good. It's a lot of cold.
So then, all of the discs that you draw from the bag that are not yellow discs will get placed onto your player board. And if you can't already tell, your player board sort of represents you. It holds your backpack. It shows how frozen you are.
Your tolerance to cold, yeah.
exposure area of the board. And at the very top is the visual representation of your body, which starts the game partially wounded because we already start with one of each type of wound discs. We have the head wound, the left and right arm wound, as well as a red chest wound.
Mhm.
Now, when drawing these discs, you're going to place them in their corresponding areas of your player board, which all have a maximum amount that you can hold. For the various wounds, you can only hold three of each type. So, if ever you draw a fourth one, then you technically pass out, and you basically forfeit the rest of your turn. You do not get to take an action, which is terrible because eight rounds for preparation is actually not a lot. The freeze discs, however, which are the blue ones, you can hold a maximum of 10 of them, basically two in each slot. So, if ever you draw an 11th one, then same thing happens. You pass out.
Yes, so our board, it starts off with two stacks of two on these far right ones. So, I have basically a capacity for six. With this draw, I've I've essentially taken on three of that six that I have left over. So, maybe I'll just stack them up this one, two. And then, I also took one of these pink left shoulder wounds. I'm going to have to stack it on here. And again, we have a max capacity of three on the body up here.
And again, if ever you drew a yellow sunshine token, these do not get placed on your player board. This is a best-case scenario, but these go out of the game.
Yes.
So, you'll see fewer and fewer of them in the bag as the game progresses. And on the other hand, if ever you were to take too many of these discs and you do pass out, any excess that you couldn't hold go back into the bag.
Yes.
So, in the future, more and more people can still draw them. Fortunately, each player also starts the game with a single med cube, which is another type of resource that we can acquire throughout the game. There is no limit to the number of these that you can have, and basically anytime you have to draw cubes, and maybe it'll cause you to pass out. For each med cube you spend, you can return a disc that you drew back into the bag and redraw. So, as long as you can survive that redraw, then you can continue on with your turn.
So, this is that push your luck element that we were talking about at the beginning.
Right. So, that is what the bag symbol represents. Your risk of injury. Assuming you survive that, then you can actually resolve the main action, which in the case of Naveen's action over here, allows him to gather for one. Anytime you take the gather action, this allows you to take a certain number of resources specifically from the ridge. So, the ridge area has all of its resources face up, so you know exactly what you're getting.
And all the resources you gather will go into your backpack. Now, each player has a maximum capacity of five, so if you ever draw more than that, you have to discard down.
But, you are required to take the amount of resources that are listed on the action. So, Naveen says to gather one, but other actions like the one below him says gather two. And in the case of this blocked out action because of our player count, this one says you gather all of the resources. So, you are required to do that if it says so.
And remember, we resolve turn order from top to bottom, so the items that you might want might not be there when it's time to resolve your turn.
Next, we have the forage action, which also allows you to gain resources, but instead of from the ridge, you gain them from the valley, where they're going to be placed face down. And some of these spaces are blocked off with a fire token in a two-player game. And finally, the last type of action you'll see in the game is the craft action, which allows us to use our resources in order to craft either basic items or expert items. Now, the difference between the basic as well as the expert item is that basic items require you to turn in any three resources. They don't have to be specific ones. Whereas, the expert items require three specific items in your backpack. However, during the 10th round when we must face these seven different threats, the basic items only protect you against a single threat, whereas the expert items protect you against two of them. And you may notice that each item has a star value that's printed at the bottom, and this is in case the game goes to a tie, then you would count up the points on the star values. So, as you can see, the expert items also have higher values. Now, the way that the last round of the game works is each player will basically face all seven of these threats starting from the bottom threat and going upwards. And it's always going to be in this order starting with thirst. And for each threat, if you have an item that has the threat symbol on it, so as an example, if I had this deadfall item, then I would be safe from thirst and I would get to move up to the next threat.
However, if you reach a threat where you don't have an item that covers you, then you'll be required to draw discs from the bag equal to two times the number of reaper tokens that are next to the threat. And in the final round, if you have to take more discs than your capacity allows, then you don't pass out, you're out of the game. And so, if other players are still in the game, that means you lose. But if there are no other players still standing, then you technically win because of course your goal is to be the player who survives the furthest.
Yes, so this means you have to find a way to gather the appropriate resources, craft the right items so that you can survive the various different elements that are coming for us at the end of the game.
And of course, you also want to manage your player board because the fewer of these tokens that you have, the more capacity you have to draw them. And that is what these two final action spots are for. Now, before we move on to them though, the one last thing I want to mention about the backcountry is this third and final symbol on the very right here. This represents the drop tiles that are in the drop zone. Thematically, it's as if these items are being air-dropped to you. And when you're playing the base game, this symbol allows you to take that many tiles from this area. And they'll will you to do things such as healing a wound, which allows you to remove a wound disc from your board, or clearing two freezes. This allows you to collect one fire, and fire tokens, players can spend two of them in place of a single resource, or in the case of this token here, this allows us to summon a reaper twice. And anytime you summon a reaper, that allows you to either place out one of the reapers from your player board onto one of the seven threats, or remove one from the board, placing it onto your player board.
And the maximum amount of reapers you can hold onto your board is three, just like any of the other wounds. Now, the reason why you might want to pull those off the board and put them onto yours is because when you go into that final round, if you're not prepared for something like thirst or storms or something like that, then you want the least amount of reapers out there, because remember, for each one that's in there, you have to draw two of those tokens.
Right. And conversely, if you see opponents not protected against a specific threat, then maybe you want to add more reapers onto that spot. Now, the final two action spaces are very simple. They just allow you to remove a certain combination of wounds and freezes from your board. For the clearing, it's two wounds and a freeze, and for the campfire, it's three freeze tokens and a wound.
Yeah, and unlike the back country, which only one player can go to, the clearing as well as the campfire, any number of players can go and take that action.
And of course, you do not draw any discs. There is no risk of injury when you are going to these two action spaces. Now, once all players have finished resolving all of their actions, then we move into the final phase of the round, which is called bed down. This is basically where we clean up and set up for the next round. The bed down phase consists of all of these steps at the bottom of our player mat, and in general, it's going to be things such as moving the round counter and passing the compass marker clockwise. You'll also be adding additional reapers to the threats, but the threats that these reapers get assigned to is randomized and placed face down at the start of the game.
So, this one might be thirst, this one might be isolation. You'll find out as you flip them over each round.
Each item that did not get crafted will have a med cube added to it so that in the future when you do craft that item you gain some med cubes. And we'll replace any item cards that were taken and refresh the various items in these locations. And that's essentially how the first eight rounds of the game work. Now, the ninth round works very differently. Instead of doing any of this, all we're going to be doing is revealing our secret skills card. Each player has a secret skill that has these four options and in order for us to gain the rewards that are listed on the right, we have to turn in a certain number of a specific resource on the left, which for this secret skill is going to be the pelt skins. Each exchange is optional, but you can do all four of them one time. And they're going to be things that allow you to discard a wound or take the reaper action three times. Or in the case of this exchange, this allows you to gain a lucky break token, which in the final round allows you to just bypass one of the threats.
So this is sort of a get out of jail free token.
Yep.
Then once that's done, we move into the final round of the game where like we already mentioned, all players are going to face all seven threats together starting with thirst. And again, you must either have an item that protects you or you'll have to draw discs from the bag equal to two times the number of reaper tokens there. If you're protected, then you move your player piece to the next threat. And if you're not, then you are out of the game. And the player who reaches the furthest threat wins the game. And in the case of a tie, again, you're going to count up the number of points on the star icons and whoever has the most points on their items after subtracting one point for each leftover wound and freeze token on their player boards wins the game. And that's essentially how the base game works. Now, let's take a look at the Pack Hunters expansion. Now this is the two-player advanced setup of the game which includes the Pack Hunters expansion. This expansion adds two main things. We have the Packlands board with our player dog meeples who are going to be going around collecting the drop tiles, which is very different from the way that the base game operated. This board also includes a new action space, which we'll talk about in a second. And the second thing is we have a revised location here called the gorge, where players can gain a lot of resources at once, but at a cost. Now, starting with the pack lands board, all of the base game drop tiles are the gray tiles here, and all of them are already fully laid out on this board. In addition, this expansion also includes 11 of these rare drop tiles, which are going to be a bit stronger than the normal ones. Now, when taking a back country action, instead of this symbol on the right here
representing the number of drop tiles that you can take from the drop zone, with this expansion, that represents the number of dog movements you can take using your dog. During setup, each player in reverse turn order will place their dog piece on a space that shows a paw. And for each dog movement, you can actually move your dog piece in a straight line any number of spaces. But again, always in a straight line. And if ever you start your dog movement on a drop tile, then before moving your dog, you claim that drop tile. So, again, these are only claimed when starting your movement on the tile. And once the tile is removed from the board, it actually uncovers a wolf space, which is bad, as you'll see. Now, when moving your dog token, if ever you pass over one of these rare drop tiles that are face down, you get to claim the med cube for yourself, and that is when the rare drop tile gets flipped over. And now, it basically functions like the other drop tiles, in the sense that you have to start your turn on that tile in order to claim it.
Now, these rare drop tiles, they are conditional. This one, for instance, says you get three fire if you have more resources than your opponent.
But again, your dog token must be leaving the tile in order to claim it. And even if you do not meet that condition, you must still remove the tile. You just don't gain the bonus. As for these wolf spaces, the reason why they're bad is because any time you pass over a wolf space, they require you to draw a disc from the bag. And again, that is the push your luck element. You do not want to draw discs as much as possible.
Yeah.
Because they're going to give you wounds. But that's essentially how moving your dog works. And you'll want to do this many times throughout the game. In fact, the new back country tile that comes with this expansion actually has a new type of action called fetch. And this basically allows you to move your dog once and then two more times because of the dog movement uh symbol here. So this is a a total of three dog movements. But in order to take the main action, you have to spend a bone resource. But it is optional, so you could take this action and just do the two movements here on the right.
Mhm.
Now one last thing about your dog specifically is if ever you draw wounds that you cannot hold and you also just do not survive re-drawing through med cubes, your dog becomes injured. You are immediately required to move your dog to either the clearing or the campfire.
Mhm.
And there it will remain until you choose to take that action by placing your person there. And the last thing about this board is there is a new action spot here, which only one player can take per round. And this action allows you to draw a new skill card and move your dog one time, but you are required to discard four meds to do so. The good thing though is when moving your dog, you ignore all wolves that you pass over.
Mhm.
And by the way, in the final round, right before resolving the threats, all players move their dog token to the top of the threats track and you claim the tile it was standing on. So that is the one last tile that you get to claim. And if you are lucky enough to bypass all seven threats, then you are reunited with your dog. And the last aspect of this expansion is the gorge, which is actually a new location to take actions. So instead of going to the back country, the clearing, or the campfire, any number of players can place their player piece at the gorge. And this essentially allows you to take a gorge card, which all have the same number of symbols on them. And this gets you everything that's on the card. So it's a fire token, a fetch action, a trap, which basically allows you to draw the top card from either deck and keep it in your own personal supply to craft later, two med cubes removing two wounds, and removing three freeze tokens. However, each gorge card on the opposite side shows a debt that must be paid, and you have to pay this at the end of the game, and it's always some sort of combination of resources that you have to keep in your backpack. And again, your backpack can only store five resources. So, this is going to take up space in your backpack until you actually go to repay it.
Mhm.
Now, the or else here is if you do not pay your debt, then at the end of the game for each reaper that is next to a threat you are unable to be protected from, instead of drawing two tokens per reaper, you draw four. So, it is a very very steep
dangerous
hefty price. So, act wisely when going to the gorge. But otherwise, that is essentially it. So, as you can see, there is added complexity when playing with this expansion, which is why it's reserved for the two-player advanced game. But otherwise, that's essentially how you play Survivalist the Board Game.
Yeah, so if you are interested in the campaign or this game, there's going to be a link in the description which you can check out. If you have any questions about the game, uh feel free to leave them in the comments down below. We'll try to get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you all so much for watching the video. We hope it was helpful. If you'd like to see more videos like this in the future, please consider subscribing.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Bye.