Aetherspire | Playthrough

0:00 Hello everyone and welcome to Meet Me at the Table. This is Colin and today I can't believe I hadn't heard of this game until recently. We are going to play Aether Spire. Thanks to Steve from Co-op Guild to let me know about this game. I picked this up and had so much fun playing it with my kids. I can't wait to show it to you here. This is a unique tower building game. You're going to be building four different towers, one of each of the four elements. I've been watching Avatar the liveaction season 2 on Netflix. We just finished it and all I can see is Avatar here. We've got water, air, fire, and earth. And we are trying to build up these towers. We need to have four of them on the board before either time runs out or the center core of our location here gets totally destroyed. What you're going to see today is the easiest version of this game, and it isn't easy. I've only won this one time, and that was by the skin of my teeth. If you want to see a game play that incorporates everything that this game has to offer, Purple Moose Plays has a great playthrough. I'll put a link in the description below. You can see that. Today, we're going to play as a one-player game as well. This game you can play as just one character, which I also really appreciate. Make sure to turn on those cling on subtitles just in case I make any errors and miss them in editing. Otherwise, let's just jump into our setup and start our playthrough.

1:18 After setting the board up on the table, I have set up our Aether core here. This is one of the main ways we're going to lose. Invaders are going to come in and try and destroy the core of our fortress. This is called our fortress. We have two of these Aether core tokens. If both of them are removed, we lose the game. We have one wall of each of the element types. So, the first time an invader comes in that's an air element, it'll destroy this, but then after that, it's going to destroy our aether core tokens. So, this is what we're trying to protect. This game is a tower building game, and how you're going to build towers is by building pillars. You need pillars out to put out other levels. So, I have all of my pillar tiles or tokens over here. We have dice that we will be rolling each round, which we will utilize to build pillars and potentially activate our special abilities of our character. We also have four spire completion bonus tokens that we've placed up here. Every time we place out a spire top, we get to activate one of these. One of the other ways that we lose this game is if we simply run out of time, we're going to have a total of 14 activations. As long as I counted that right. So, we have a token here to track that. And whenever we move to the invader phase, we're going to move this up one, draw that many invaders. And then, if we hit one of these white symbols, you can see these white numbers, we're going to flip over one of the ether fiend cards. Each time you play this game, you'll want to make sure you have an ether fiend for each of the different elements. I shuffled these up and placed them out. There are four

2:48 different levels that you can use in this game. And you can do a certain level. So, for an example, right now I'm using all the level one cards. Uh, but there are up to four levels for all of the different ether fiends. And you could either choose randomly or you could do a specific level, meaning all of them are level threes. We're doing all level ones because yeah, like I said, this game is hard enough. In order for us to build these towers, we're going to need different level tiles. We have the large, medium, and small tiles. I have them all over here shuffled up. Each of them are dualsided. One side is a multicolor, so they're basically wild. They can be used as any type. On the other side, it's going to be one specific element. And so when we are drafting and gaining these, we may want to gain them as wilds because you can put any type here. Or we might be fishing for specific ones so we can complete our towers. There are a total of 40 invader/element tiles or tokens that we're going to be using throughout the game, but they're always randomly drawn. So you place them in this bag. The last piece to talk about on the board is because of the difficulty level we're playing. We start with one single multicolored floor on the board. And we then draw two invaders and we're going to place them out and they're going to essentially block these locations from us being able to build pillars. Invaders are always going to be stood straight up and down. And if they are laid down sideways like this, it's an element that we can use to cast spells. So, a lot of times the fun part of this game is gaining these invaders,

4:20 turning them into elements, utilizing them for special abilities. It's all that fun triggering bonus effects that just gets me all excited. Next up, we need to choose our character we're going to play. And what I find really amazing in this game is we have five unique characters you can play. if you're playing solo. Then they have five characters that they recommend if you are playing your first couple of times you use uh when you're playing a multiplayer game. And they've got this symbol right here. And then they've got five more that look like this that are just five additional hero abilities. So I have 15 different heroes that I can play. If I'm playing solo though, I have five that I would want to choose from. If you want to make the game harder, you can use one of these uh regular ones, but you're going to see you have less abilities. The solo character, you have slightly more abilities. But really, other than you just choosing one character for solo, that's really the only difference. We're just going to take turns over and over again. We also have our first player token, which also counts as one free roll. We can utilize this as a free rroll once per turn. The character we're going to be playing as today is Crystal, and she has three trigger abilities and one passive ability. So, she is able to discard a die that we have rolled to then flip up the two of your other dice to their opposite sides. We can also, and these we can trigger as many times as we're able. We can also discard a dieice to move one of our elements clockwise on the elemental wheel. And I'll show you that wheel in a second. That can really help us trigger some of the spells. We

5:52 have condense. We can discard two matching floor tiles that we have in reserve. We then can either search for any tile of that element or we can just simply draw a multi-tile. And remember the multi- ones are the wild ones. But remember the wild ones uh they will have less build spaces. So you don't want to only do wilds. You're going to need to have a combination. Finally, our passive is after advancing the invasion track, we can choose one aether fiend to go dormant until the start of the next invasion. those aetherines are going to negatively affect us. And so being able to negate the ability of one, essentially the first one we flip, we never going to have to deal with because we can just continually ignore that one. Once we flip two, then we can choose which one we want to have affect us. We've now completed our setup. Let's walk through the turn order structure, talk about some basic actions, and just start our playthrough. The game is broken out into three different phases.

6:45 Our first phase is the supply phase. This is where we can gain one of the floor tiles and put it into our reserve. We can choose large, medium, or small. And whenever you are gaining them with this type of ability, it says you can exchange one as well. So, if I draw one and I don't like it, I can put at the bottom of the pile and draw a new one. After we do that, we're going to draw three elements from the bag and put it into our spell circle. And I'll show you that in a second. And then we're going to roll our five dice that we can use to start placing out pillars and activating our special abilities. After completing the supply phase, we'll go to the build phase. We'll perform basic actions and special actions. And then we have the invasion step where we advance the invasion track, reveal any ether fiend, and then draw a certain amount of invaders and place them out onto the board. We're just going to rinse and repeat this until we either win or lose.

7:35 We can see here you win as soon as the fourth elemental spire has been constructed. You lose if your last ether core is destroyed. if the invasion marker reaches the last space of the invasion track or if you just run out of pillars. So, you got to make sure you don't run out of pillars. Here we have a list of the basic actions for the game. We can use a die to place a pillar in the fortress. Then, we can roll any number of our dice. We then flip this token. We can place any of our uh tiles that we have in reserve and put them out into the fortress. That doesn't cost us anything other than us placing them out. We can use elements to cast spells. We can place a spire topper on a completed spire. And how you do that, and this is the main thing we're going to be focusing on, you have to have a stack of four tiles of the same element. So that's what we're going to be trying to do is make towers of each of the four different elements. You're going to have to have four floors that have the same element or there's a multi in there. So it's a wild and then you can put the topper on there. When we do that, we can defeat that element's aether fiend, gain one spire completion bonus, and remove five of those invaders from the bag itself. Whenever we gain elements, we're going to be placing them in this circle, depending upon their type. Now, what we can do with these elements, we can use adjacent elements. If we discard one red and one white, we can activate Firestone. Conversely, if we had a green and an orange, we can use that as this lava bomb, and we can destroy two invaders. This one we just move an invader and place a pillar up here. This

9:08 ice beam that lets us crystallize two invaders in the same room. And whenever you see crystallize, that means we turn the invaders into an element. So that's really fun because you can trigger tons of abilities. Finally, we have the mud slide over here, which is earth and water. That lets us roll three additional dice. We can always give up two elements of any type for floor crafting. And that lets us draw one floor of any level type. And then we can exchange one level. Or if we give up three, we can get a multicolored, which means you don't flip it over. It's wild. But then in general, it has less building spots. So we can always do this with any type of elements. All right, that's enough talking. Let's start. We'll start with that supply phase. And we need to decide which type of floor we'd like to gain. I only have three spaces to place a large tile initially.

9:57 And that means I'm going to have to build two towers on one of the tiles. This tile will only have space for one tower. So, I know one of these other two I'm going to need to be able to build two towers. So, I think I'm going to go large to start off with. So, I'm going to grab that top large one. And we're going to flip it over. Ooh, this one has two blue. Uh, actually, I kind of like that we can build two different towers. Both of them start on a blue floor. Now, you're going to notice there's only three building spots, but we need to do four spires. This means at a minimum, one of the towers is actually going to have to be five levels because it will have to start on a tile that doesn't match the element that we're going to do cuz we only need one water spire, not two. But I do think I'm going to keep this in our reserve. So, I'm going to set it aside. We can at any time place that out onto the board. Next up, we're going to draw from the invader bag three elements. and we're going to place it into our spell area. So, I drew two white and one of the fire. This will mean now during my turn, I can once for sure do this firestorm if I'd like. I would have to spend one fire and one air to do it. The final part of supply is rolling five of these dice. So, I'm going to take three away. And we're just going to roll the five in right here.

11:10 There are some blanks, just so you know. Anytime you see a white, that's considered a wild. And actually on those multi- tiles, so like this one right here, you have to have a wild to place one here. You can't use any color. It has to be white. But for the other boards, as an example, the one that we just got here, I can use a white in replacement of any of these uh waters. We'll now move to our build phase, and that's where we can trigger our special abilities and do different actions. The first thing we're going to do is this Aether morph. We're going to discard this die. It's blank. It was a miss already. I know I could roll it, but I feel like this is worth it. And you can use that roll at any time. So if I have a way to gain more dice, and then I reroll, I can roll even more dice. But I'm going to discard that die to move one of my elements clockwise on the elemental wheel. And you know what? I think I'm going to do it a second time as well. Discarding this die. So I'm going to discard two dice to do this. I have three left. I can move one element clockwise. And I'm going to do it two times. So now I have one here in the green, one here in the fire, which is the wrong type. But isn't that kind of amazing? Because what I'm going to do now is spend these two and I'm going to activate the lava bomb, which lets us destroy two invaders. These two invaders, the red and the air, are going to be discarded, placed into my bag.

12:29 Then I'm going to spend this white to get one pillar here. I can't place a level two on here until I have all four of these completed. I then think I'm going to re-roll these two dice. Let's see what we can get. Oh, one is blank. Well, the one that's blank is kind of useless. This one I might as well do another pillar. You can see it right here. Right on our tile. And then we're not going to be able to use this one. I do think I'm going to place our double water large tile here. So, we have You know what? Why don't we do it over here? Because there's water in this spot. Just from a thematic standpoint. It doesn't matter where you're placing them. I just like it from a thematic standpoint. I'm going to put it over there. And you can see we have two build slots. That's going to end our activation for the build step. We'll then move to the invader step. Moving this up one. And this means I'm going to draw two invaders from the bag. These are going to come out in the board and block us.

13:23 So we have one, actually two whites. Whenever you place invaders, you first look to see if there's anywhere on the board that matches their element type, air. And then if there is air on the board, you would go to the highest level and place them there to essentially block those locations. We don't have any air here. So then we look at the multicolor. We look at the highest spaces. Here's our multicolored tile. We could place them here or we can place them up here. And because this is considered higher on the pillars, they're actually going to block these pillars. So, even if I had a pillar in this location and this location, I wouldn't be able to build here until I got rid of these two. We've now completed our first turn, it goes pretty dang quick. Let's go to the supply phase again and let's gain another floor. Do I want to go for another big? Why don't we go for a medium? Let's see what we get for a medium. We'll flip this over. It's blue. Might as well keep that. It's a blue that actually has two locations.

14:20 I I do think I'm I'm gonna keep that one. I'm gonna I'm not gonna refresh it. I've got spots to place blue. No problem. Then we're going to grab three more elements from the bag. So, we have two greens and a red. So, we can place those out. Oh, I can activate that lava bomb again, which is nice. Or I could trigger my ability, go over here, and then crystallize, which I might want to do. I'll show you that in a second. Then, we're going to grab our five dice and roll them. Rolling up our five dice. We do have one blank. I do have some water. I think before I do anything else, I'm going to reroll. So, I'm going to use my roll here. Uh, and I'm going to roll these three. I'm going to keep, sorry, the wild and the the water. Let's roll these three up. Oh, nice. More water. This is good. The first thing I am going to do is give up this fire dye so I can move one of the elements clockwise. We're going to move this earth clockwise to water. And then we're going to spend the water and this air to crystallize two invaders that are in the same room. Well, we have those two whites that are in the same room. So, they're both going to become an element for us. Then, I think it's time to build some pillars. We're going to do a water pillar here, a water pillar here.

15:37 [sighs] I've got two of these. I could use them on my multicolored, but I'm kind of wanting to pump the water up. So, I am going to do one of these in the water space. Now, I'd love to do here as well, but you can see this needs a water and an air, and I only have one left. So, I think I'm just going to do those three for now. Those are going to turn into pillars. And then I'm going to use this dye on my multicolor tile. We'll give up this dye and place this tile or this pillar right here. Next, I think I'm going to give up one fire and one air to activate Firestorm. Now, normally we can move one of the invaders. There's no invaders out, so I can ignore that. But I am going to place a pillar. We'll place that pillar here. And now I didn't have to pay that extra cost. And then I can place our level two on top of this space. And now I have two waters already there. Next up, I would need three water pillars. And then I'm going to start looking for these small tiles, trying to find a water. I'm going to need two of those to get us to level four. We'll move to the invader step. Moving this forward one space. And that's going to activate this fire ether. His name is Ferno and he states, "After the invasion step, destroy all pillars that are under a fire invader." We're going to make that dormant thanks to our ability until we get two of them out and then we'll decide which one. Kind of amazing that I could ignore that. I'm going to draw two invaders from the bag. Next up, it's going to be three. All right, we have white. I have nowhere I can place a white, so it'll be on one of these

17:09 because of the multicolored green. I have no green spaces, so it goes to the multicolored. We'll place it here. That's going to end. What is that? Turn two already. We're going to move to turn three. I do think having another large tile out would be helpful. So, I'm going to draft another large tile. We'll flip it over. Oh, interesting. So, this one is water, which I don't really need because I've already got water started there. If I place this though, it says crystallize all of two elements. So, I could choose two elements and all of those invaders would become helpful. Uh, I don't think I'm going to use it though because it's water. I'm looking for earth or fire. Uh, earth, fire or air. Actually, any of them. Oh, this is an earth one. And this says gain to ether core. If I put this down. Oh, h you know, we have to keep it. Do I want to place it? Well, I can decide that when we get to the build phase. I now need to draw three of these element tokens to be able to gain some more for spells. Oh, two blue. I like that. Two blue and another white. That is kind of amazing actually. Now we'll roll five dice.

18:16 Rolling up our five dice. We've got some air. We've got some earth and a blank. I was kind of hoping for some water. Do I re want to reroll all of these? What's on the opposite side of these? Air. And what's So air would be Yeah, I'm going to reroll all five. Uh, I I want a little more water, I think. Okay, here's some wilds and some water. Well, ask and you shall receive, I guess. I do think I'm going to place this large tile right here. When I do that, I gain two more ether core. So, that's going to just protect our ether base a little bit. Now, I have a spot for green, and that means over here is going to be where I'm going to want to build the whites. I think without a doubt we are going to want to crystallize because two of the invaders they're both in the same space. So or same room I should say. So we'll gain a green and a white for that. And then I think I'm going to spend one green and one white to do the floor crafting.

19:11 We're going to draw one. I'm going to draw a small. And then we can exchange it if we'd like. Oh, this one's blue. I don't want to exchange that. We're going to continue to work on our water tower, shall we? So, we're going to place one, two, and one of these wilds here. That's three. So, I'm going to give up these three out of the five dice. And we've placed three more pillars. And then we can put out our level three cuz I have it right here. And now we have three levels for water. We just need one more. I have one of these wilds left and a blank die. Before I use my remaining two dice, I think I'm going to give up this green and this blue for a mudslide, which means I can roll three additional dice in. Unfortunately, I've already used my roll, so I'm just going to have to take them with what they roll.

19:57 Another blank. And I've got a red and a white. That That was not helpful. Bummer. With our white wild die, we're going to use it here to place our fourth pillar. And then I do think we're going to do our phase shift. We're going to discard this fire dye here. By doing that, we can flip two of our dice to the other side. Well, the blank, the opposite side of a blank is actually a wild, which is going to help us with placing some more pillars. We can use our wild dye plus this air dye to place one of the pillars here. And then a wild dye to place another pillar there. So, we only need one more pillar. We actually just need one more of those water tiles on top of here. And that's our four levels. Level one, level two, level three. In the meantime though, we are going to push down the track. Now, we have to draw three invaders. We'll draw those three invaders. We have a red and two greens. Now, remember that red would normally have a negative effect where it would burn one of the uh pillars that it goes on, but I'm negating that right now thanks to Crystal's ability. won't last forever because soon we're gonna have two of those ether fiends active. But for now, we're okay. The red's going to have to go there. The green can go to these ones because I have green spaces and I have two greens. So, we're actually good.

21:18 That will end this turn. Let's now go. Do I want to go for a small one? Do I want to try and finish blue or do I want to try and get an air out or a fire out? Because I don't have air or fire. The bonus for placing out a spire is just too good. I think I'm going to go for one more small water one. So, I'm going to flip this one. It's green. Uh, I don't think I want to keep that. I'm going to put at the bottom. I'm going to need that green one likely, but it is what it is. Oh, this one you can place on top and it destroys three invaders, but then you can't build on top of it. So, that's the one I have, but that's not the one that I wanted. We'll then draw three tokens from the game for our elements. And I have a blue, a white, and a red. Oh, awesome. I can crystallize again. Final part of our turn is rolling our dice up. Wow, three blanks. I could discard one to flip two of those to wilds. So, I might not want to reroll. I'm going to hold on to those for now. To start off, we will use our blue and our white here. Putting them back into our bag to crystallize. We want to do two in the same room. It's two greens. Hard to say no to that, right? I then think I'm going to use both of these greens. I know I'm using both of those greens for the floor crafting. And we're just going to draw from the top. I want another blue. Is it blue? No, it's red. I'm going to put that at the bottom. I'm going to need red eventually, but I have nothing really for that red yet. There is a green. That's not what I needed either.

22:45 And you know what? I should have been smart. Can I pretend that I was smart? I am going to keep this red. So, I have a red and a green in my supply. I'm going to put this one at the bottom cuz I don't see myself putting that tile out. So, right now in my reserve, I have these two. And now the question becomes, do I use these two for another fire or floor crafting or do I save them for a firestorm? I I'm going to do it. I'm going to spend the two. I want more floor crafting. There's got to be another blue. I could, if I wanted, I could spend I could have spent three to just get a wild, which maybe is what I should have done. Now, this one's gain one ether core. I already have a bunch, so I'm going to put that at the bottom. I'm going to draw again. It's not It's another red and it's not blue. Yeah, I should have just gone for a wild. You know what I could do? I could do this condense. Discard two matching floors.

23:33 I've got two reds. I know I'm putting it at the bottom means it's going to be a while before I see them. But when I do that, I can search for any floor of that element. Or I can just draw a multi. And I'm going to draw a multi of this top one. That way I can put that on. Maybe even finish it this round. We'll see. I will discard one dice. So, I'm down to four to flip two of these over to the other side. That means both of these are wild. I'll then use two of those wilds right here cuz I need a water and then an extra water for that space to place out one of these pillars. And then I can place the wild here, which can be considered a blue. So, that means I have 1 2 3 4. Let's drop the topper on here, shall we? When we do that, we've completed 1/4th of the things we need to complete for the game. We're also able to defeat the aether fiend that matches that element. So, we never even saw this guy. He would have said, "You must spend one water element to cast firestorm."

24:34 Firestorm was normally fire and air. You'd also have to do water. We don't have to do that. He's gone. We'll then gain a spire completion bonus. So, either we can draw three elements. Oh, that's very tempting. I have no elements out. We could roll four more dice that we could use right now. We could rebuild all walls. That's silly. All my walls are built. Or we could just draw two tiles, which also is quite appealing. But I think based on the fact I have no elements, I'm going to do this one. I'm going to draw three. If nothing else, I can spend all three elements for one wild tile if I wanted. We have one red, one white, and one green. The final piece when you complete a spire is diminishing the element. I have to remove five of these specific elements from my bag. And that means now it's less likely I'm going to draw water, which is kind of good because that means we won't have problems with water on the board. But it's also bad because it's going to be harder for me to activate spells that need water cuz there's less in my bag. With the two dice that I have remaining, let's do two more pillars here. So, we will have two ready for our earth elements. Overall, that felt like a good turn. Invader phase. Normally, we'd flip over this card, but since we defeated that Ether Fiend, we don't have to worry about that till we get to this four. The green one will be active. So, let's draw three invaders. We'll draw up from our bag. We have two greens. Both of those are going to go onto here. And then I have one red. And I still don't have any red on the board. So, it's just going to come here into our wild space.

26:04 I don't I also don't have any air. I need to get air. And I need to get fire. I need to get two more on here. One will go onto this one and then one will start on that one. That's kind of the plan. All right. I do think that means for our next turn supply certainly doing one of these. We'll flip it over. That's fire. Yeah, let's let's keep that. That's fire because that can help us over here. So Oh, but if you look at this just you can see there's no build uh on here. There's no building symbol of two small ones or something like that. So the only thing that can go on top of here is another medium tile. Just so you know. We'll then draw our three element tokens. And oh, we've got a blue and two whites. Oh, that's awesome. We can do some crystallizing. And then we'll roll up our five dice. Uh we've got one blank of water, a couple fire, and a wild.

26:55 Crystallizing is just too much fun. So, we'll start there spending an air and a water. And we're going to do that crystallization with the two reds here. We're doing that because now we can place this level here. here. And we actually have two levels of red because this can be any color. So, I already have two levels. I then for sure I'm going to spend two of these dice here and here to get two pillars. We'll spend a green and a red to just destroy two invaders anywhere on the board. And we're going to do the two greens that are out here blocking those green spots. So, those are gone as well. I have no invaders on the board. We'll then spend one red and one white. Instead of doing the firestorm, let's just go for floor crafting. I need an some more of these middle ones. And actually, the biggest thing is now I have no place to place air. If I draw air, it's going right for the core. So, I've got to be careful of that. It's blue. I certainly don't want blue. I'm putting at the bottom. Blue is done. So, I'm just going to put that.

27:52 And it says here, you may exchange. I'm going to exchange that blue. Want to flip. Oh, this one's red. That will work on this one. When we place it, we can destroy three invaders. So, that's a great one to have. We actually may almost be able to place that. I'll use this one as a wild. So, we have our third one here. And then why don't we roll these? Let's see. We haven't rerolled yet. I got a water and a blank. That was a waste. What I can do is discard a die to flip another one to the opposite side. That's a wild. We'll use that wild and place it here. So, we now have four pillars. Now, I'm not going to place this new floor yet cuz I already took out all the invaders, but we're going to place out three invaders this next turn. I can destroy all of them by placing that tile here. That's going to end our turn. Continuing down our invader track, we will draw three. Once again, I'm ignoring this red, which is amazing. We will draw three from the bag. We have two greens and a blue.

28:50 Thank goodness no reds. And by reds, I mean airs. Good thing there's no air in there. The two green will once again be placed up here. Now this blue, we're looking at the highest section. That spire blocks off this location. So it's going to come back over here. It's now back to our turn. We're going to do the supply again. I'm looking for air or earth. Uh yeah, air is going to be great. I'm going to want to put that over there. So I'm going to keep this tile for sure. We then get to draw three more of these. One, two, three. And yeah, let's see. I drew four. Sorry, I'm cheating. I'm gonna throw those back into the bag. I'm gonna draw three. One. Sometimes it's hard to feel it. There you go. I've got a white and I've got a green and I've got a red. We'll roll up our five dice. Oh, they're all actual things this time. Some more red, which is amazing. Our first action we're going to take, we're going to place our red medium tile right here. When we do that, it says destroy three invaders. Two from here. that one blue one back here. No invaders on the board again. Remember, I'm playing on the easiest level right now. Things are going well, but that sometimes is not the case. This might seem kind of crazy, but I'm going to give up this white dye. I'm going to spend it so I can flip the two reds. But Colin, you want to finish the reds? Yes, I do. But I don't have the final level yet. Although I could get it, but no, I want to get that air tile out as soon as possible so I have a location to place all the different elements. So, what I

30:21 can do with these now, I can spend the four remaining tiles to place out three more pillars in this uh blue area so that hopefully I can get that white tile out. We'll get the last pillar out by doing a firestorm, giving up a white and a red. We can't move one of the invaders, but we can place a pillar. Placing that pillar here means we can place our first white tile. Now, this is only going to be floor one. We need four floors on that tile now of white. That ends our turn. We're going to move this down. And now we're drawing four from the bag. And our next Ether Fiend is active. This is Mesa. So, Earth Invaders can only be placed or moved to spaces with pillars. So, this can be brutal, but I'm going to leave that one active and keep the fire one inactive. I have two places I can place that earth.

31:12 That's why I'm not too terribly worried. We have four of these. One, two, three. Oh, two air and four. So the green has to be placed here. White, the highest level is up here. Two whites. And this red is going to block here. For our next turn, we get to choose which tile we want. I'm only looking for mediums now for earth. That's the only one that I need a medium. Everything else I need small. Small for fire, small for air, uh medium for earth. Because of that, I think I'm going to go for the small, right? Might as well. We'll flip it. It's a water. Water is 100% useless. We're done with water. Put that at the bottom. We'll flip this one. Oh, this one we can place. And it just lets us draw one uh one of any of the types of tiles. I'm probably just going to get rid of that one. Then we get three of our elements. And we have two red and a green. Oh, great for destroying. Was kind of hoping for a blue. Now I can use a die to move a green over and then crystallize. We'll roll up our five dice. And we've got a couple air, a couple earth, and a blank to start our build phase. I do think I'm going to give up two reds.

32:24 But I'm going to do that so I can gain another small tile. We're going to see what it is. It's green. I already have one green, but if I have two green, I can discard them. Now, I I'm going to put the green at the bottom. I'm going to put the green at the bottom. I don't need another green right now. I'm going to flip this one. This one's red. Okay. All right. This gives me an idea. Oh, and speaking of which, I should most certainly have kept that green. I've done this a second time. I'm going to keep the green so I have two greens. And I'm going to put this one because you don't have to exchange the one that you drew. I'm going to exchange this one that I drew from before and put that at the bottom of the tile stack. I'm then going to discard this white dye so that I or I should say that's a blank die. I'm going to discard this blank die to move this over here so that way I can spend these two and crystallize. I'm going to crystallize these two air. So, now I have two air in my spell pool.

33:18 Next, I'm going to use our roll ability here once per turn. And I'm going to reroll all four of these. I don't want the air or the earth yet. I'm thinking of fire. I want fire. Roll these up. Oh my gosh. Three blacks. Well, with that absolutely horrendous roll, let's spend one of these. And we'll flip two of these to a wild. That's good. At least we'll then do a lava bomb. spending the one green and one red to destroy two of these invaders. Let's get rid of these two. And then we can do a wild here and a wild here. And that air will do all the way up here for three pillars. I am literally one pillar away from completing my second tower. Wasn't able to do it though. We'll continue down our invader track and we have our final ether fiend available. This is the terror wing and this guy's terrible.

34:08 During the supply step, roll one fewer dye per air in the fortress at a minimum of one. I'm going to want to cancel this one normally, but because I'm one away for the fire, I don't want any of my pillars destroyed. So, I'm not going to cancel this one yet. I'm simply going to negate Ferno. I'm now drawing four invaders. So, we'll drop one, two, three. Yeah, see, there was a red. That red would have burned one of my pillars. Four. All right, we should be okay with all of those. The two greens going to have to go here. The one red is going to go here, but it doesn't burn the pillar. And then this blue, once again, I love having this uh blue space back here. I've got three of them. I'll put back here. We'll then move to the supply phase. And by the way, no air came out, so I'll still get to draw roll four dice. Going for a small one. And it's an air. I want to keep an air. I want to pump the air next. The air ability is terrible. Uh so I definitely want to get rid of that ether fiend. And we'll do green last. Uh, but I have two that are still at the base level, you guys. I don't know. I think we're going to run out of time. I think we're going to run out of time. Three of these uh elements.

35:13 We've got two white and one red. Boy, lots of white and one red. We'll then roll up our five dice. Beautiful. I've got a red that I need. This will be able to complete Yeah, that should be able to complete our red tower. No problem. Let's start off by doing a firestorm. We're going to spend one of the whites and one of the reds. We can move one invader and then place one pillar. We're going to move this red invader over here to the white side. And then we can place a pillar. Oh, why don't we place it here? Because guess what? When we do that, we can then place our fourth level for red. And then when we place that, we can place our spire. We are halfway done with the game. We have flipped over the aether fiend, removed five of the elements, and I do think we're going to gain this benefit. We're going to draw two floors. I'm going to do both small.

36:05 I want small, small, small. Oh, this one's just a crystallize. And then our second one here is a blue, which is useless. Oh my gosh, useless. I have a few ideas of what I'd like to do next, but I think I'm going to do the green and water here to place a pillar and then that wild to place another pillar. And then I'm going to give up two of these elements, the white elements or air. That means I only have one left, but I'm going to grab a middle tile. I need another uh earth tile. That that'll work. That's earth. So, let's keep that one for sure. I still have two dice. Let's just pick them up and roll them. Hoping for something better. That will actually be good. We'll use this white dye to do a second pillar here. And then I have the green dye. I might actually discard the green dye to move that white element one space clockwise. It's going to go into the red area. I'm doing that because there's less red and blue. I'm going to probably be drawing a lot of white, so might as well get it over here so I can trigger lava bomb or firestorm.

37:09 Moving to that invader step, I am going to move to four and negate the white uh invader. I don't want to deal with rolling less dice for every white air element in the fortress. Four of these invaders are going to need to be placed. And next time it's going to be five. One, two, three, four. The green can go here. Do I not have a spot for red? I don't anymore. You guys see this is where it gets interesting. Where am I going to put the reds going forward? I need to be careful about this. The blues can go back there. They're in the back corner where you can't see them. But the two reds, the first red is going to destroy this wall. That wall's gone. The second red is going to take out one of these ether cores. Remember, if all four of those are gone now, or three, we lose the game. Moving to our supply phase, we most certainly are going to want to draw from here. Oh, it's a white. I think I want a white. Yes, I most certainly want a white. So, I'm going to keep that. I'm going to draw three of these tokens. I get two greens and a blue. Well, go figure. The blue shows up. Two greens.

38:10 This will let us roll. We can at least destroy two of these. I almost want to build a red tile over here so I have a spot to put reds or a wild or something. In the meantime, we'll continue to roll up our dice. Three blanks and two wilds. What a horrible roll. I do feel like I might as well discard one of these blanks to flip the other two to their wild side. So that way we at least have four wilds. We'll keep our whites rolling, giving up two of our dice to place that third pillar out. And then we're going to place out one of these for the level two. This is only level two, you guys. We need to get all the way to level four. The good thing is with the other two dice here, I can place two more pillars. So I have four.

38:56 I just need one more pillar there. And I have one more white in my supply. I am going to spend these two to destroy two elements or uh two of the invaders. I'm going to do two greens. So, the greens are gone. I at least have room for more greens. And then something I could do, I could actually give up these two to be able to roll three more dice, which would give us more pillar places. But I only really want one. Well, you know, I'm going to hold on that. I'm going to hold on that. I don't think that's super helpful. I'm going to leave them where they are. Unfortunately, that ends my turn. We're going to move to five invaders. We're going to negate that terror wing again. Now I have to draw five of these. One, two, three. I can place all of those. I just don't want red. Uh four and five. If it's red, oh boy. Four, five. No red. We'll place the two green here and here. We'll place the one blue in our last blue space. We're starting to run out of spaces. And then the two whites we have to place here.

39:57 These are the highest spots. It's now our next turn. I think we're going to run out of turns. We're going to flip this. This is green. That is most certainly what we need. So, we're not going to draw again. I was about to roll dice, but I need to remember I get three more of these as well for our spells. So, two greens and a white. We'll then pick up five dice and give them a roll. And we've got a couple wilds. We've got an air and a fire. Why don't we start off by crystallizing two of these elements or invaders? And we had two in that white space. So, I'm going to crystallize them. They become elements that we can use. We'll then use our air dye here. And that will be our third pillar. And now we can get to our third level of air right here. And now all I got to do is three more pillars cuz I think I have another air, don't I? No, I need one more air small tile. I then hate to do this, but I'm going to discard two of these to move two of these clockwise and spend all of these to crystallize twice. We're going to crystallize to green that are over here.

41:04 And we desperately need space for reds or blues, so we're going to remove these two as well. We still have two white dice remaining. Let's do that for two more pillars on white. That means I only need one more. And what I could do is give up these two to be able to roll three more. But I don't think that's worth it because I only have one more place I really want to put a pillar instead. I might do two greens just to draw a small tile. I need an air. I could spend three to just guarantee it. Oh, do I do that? Three to guarantee. I don't think I've seen a lot of air. I think I'm just going to go with it. No, that's not an air. I think I am going to simply replace this one. And air. No, it's not an air. At this point, I do think I'm desperate. I'm going to do all three of these. So, I have no elements.

41:54 That's going to give me a wild, and that will guarantee that I can get the air next time. We are certainly running out of turns. We are at five. I'm still going to negate the white one. We'll draw five tokens from the bag. One, two, three, four. We're okay with all of those. And the fifth one is green. We're also okay. The two blue and the air are up here. And just so you know, if I was not negating the Terra Wing ability, I now only roll four dice instead of five. And then the two green are placed over here. It's our next turn. We are going to go for small tiles. Let's flip this one. It was red. I don't want red. Well, actually, I'll keep that red just in case because if we could place that red, we've got a spot for reds. Then we're going to draw. And this is our only three of these that we have. Oh, we drew two reds and a green. We'll give our dice a roll. We've got lots of wilds and a blank. Let's start off with a red and a green activating this, destroying two of these invaders. We'll destroy one green and one of these whites. That works well because now we can use a wild dye here to place one of these here. And then we can place that wild tile that we got right here. And that's one, two, three, four levels. We are going to complete our third spire. We've now removed our white ether fiend and removed five of these elements from our bag. We're also going to gain the benefit here of rolling four additional

43:24 dice. Although I don't know how super helpful that's going to be. Rolling up our four dice. We have another blank, a couple reds, and a green. Why I say that isn't super helpful is I don't have a ton of places I can put pillars right now, which is what you use dice in general for. We'll use our single- roll that we have here. We're going to reroll the blanks. Let's just see what we get. And then I think we're just going to lay out. Okay, another blank and a water. And with all of those dice, we're going to use two of the wilds. So, just place two pillars here. Hopefully, we can get rid of that one guy. And then place one of these cool ability tiles. Specifically, this one that lets us crystallize. I think that's what I'm going to try and do. Sadly, that's all we're going to be able to do this turn. We're going to move to six here. Drawing six from our bag. So, we've got this turn, we've got next turn, and next turn. We've got three more turns to place out three more levels for green, which I think is doable, but we have to not die before that. I'm going to draw six of these. One, two, three. Those all have places. Of course, we're ignoring that one of feed, so we have to worry about that. Four, five, six. That's going to hit our center again because I don't have any spaces for a red. So, I'm going to remove this and remove this.

44:39 All the rest of those. Oh, no. The greens are I think we might have just lost. We place the white element here. But unfortunately for us, because there's so much green. One, two. Oh, no. We don't lose. We don't lose. One is going to take out the wall. And then the other one's going to take out one of these. We have one left. Oh, we're still alive somehow. I don't know how we got just that lucky, but we'll take it. We'll start the next round. We're looking for the supply. I want maybe a blue. Is there a blue in here? There is. That's great. I'll show you why I want the blue. I don't even know if that's going to be worth it. We're then going to draw and we're going to grab three more elements. And I've got one blue, which is nice. A white. And we have a green. We'll then roll up our five dice.

45:27 We've got some air, some earth, and some wilds. To start us off, we are definitely going to do a crystallization. and spending our blue and white. And we are going to get two more greens here. We're then going to use a green and a red. Yes. And that's going to destroy the two red or two greens that are here. And we can build a green floor. No way. This is super cool. We're going to place this here. We then have a green. And we have a green. And we have two wilds right here. So, that's going to place three more in this location. That's two floors. We'll go here for floor three. We can spend our one remaining die to be able to move one of these clockwise. So, we can discard these three and roll three dice in again. Let's see what colors these are.

46:19 We've got a wild, a wild, and a green. We are literally going to be one pillar short. So, a green and a wild will work here. And then this wild will work here. If we could get that pillar, I have the fourth level of earth we could place there and then we could just win. But I'm not able to do that. I think that's going to end my turn. I have no elements left. It's all going to come up to which invaders show up. We'll move our tracker down to six here. We have to draw six of them. So, we are going to draw a green. That's okay. A white. I still have a space for one white. We still have to draw four more. And I have a lot of green and another white. One of the whites will be placed here. The other one I have no place to place it. So, it's going to destroy the wall. I still had a white wall. The other greens, we're going to place one here. Place one here. Place one here. And I still have two more spots for greens. One here and here. So, I'm not dead. But I'm going to need to get rid of all three of these before I can place that other tile.

47:25 Speaking of which, we'll draw a tile. I don't really even care which one it is at this point. Oh, it's a draw one. Yay. I don't care. We're going to draw from our bag. We'll draw three of these elementals. And we have a blue, a white, and a red. Which is that going to work? Blue, white, and a red. It's only We only have three elements. We'll roll up our five dice. We have the wild that we need. Two wild. So, we'll be able to build the last pillar so long as that spot's empty. And you know what? I think we can do it. Blue and white. That will let us crystallize. We're going to crystallize these two. They're both green. Then we can do green and red. And that will allow us to take out one of these and one of these. We can then give up two whites here to be able to put the last pillar. That means we can put the level four. And that means the spire's out. And I think we just won. Oh my goodness, that was so tight and so much fun. Oh, I love it. I love having the solo character. You really get to know your abilities. You don't have to keep looking at it. You still have a great time. This is definitely if you love the puzzle co-ops or puzzle solo games, highly, highly recommend this. This is not a destroy everything and feel good about yourself game. This is definitely a how do I make most of my actions? What happens when I do something and all of a sudden cover up that multietile? When I covered up that multi-tile, all of a sudden, I started losing the ability to

48:55 place those uh random elements or invaders that I drew that didn't match the tiles that were out. Super interesting. Also, when you remove uh elements from your bag, you draw less of them. So, that's why I was trying tons of greens, cuz we have the most greens in here. I mean, look at what's left in this bag. Yeah, it's a majority of green. I got so lucky I didn't draw a ton of reds. I've had no place to put reds for a while and that's what really killed my ether core. But I was able to gain two more cuz I placed that out and I think that well I mean that did that saved us. Hopefully this helps you determine if this game is for you. I want to give a huge shout out first to Steve. Thanks for the idea of this game and then second of all to our patrons. It's because of you and our subscribers that we do what we do on this channel.

49:41 And if you're excited to see what Barrett and I have coming next, then I need you to meet me at the table. Goodbye, everyone. The master went to set me up against your enemies.