Red Lanterns Review - The Right Treasures Are Everything
Transcript
Hey, I'm Alex Rathbone from Board Game Co, and today I'm reviewing Red Lanterns from Moon Gate Designs. Red Lanterns is a two to four player game in which across five rounds, players are going to play the cards from their hands in order to manage the deck, unlock abilities, gather treasures, and hopefully win. Before we dive into this, this is a prototype, all rules and components subject to change, and we'll have a link to the crowdfunding campaign down below. Also, this channel is sponsored by All Play, more of them at the end of the video. In Red Lanterns, players are going to have a hand of cards. You're going to be playing cards for their abilities, but also playing cards face down in order to acquire the right treasures at the end of the round. Ultimately, the main way you're going to get points in the game is by gathering these treasures. Every single round you're going to place out treasures from the deck, and you're going to get some face up, some face down, depending on the player count, and then you're going to have a hand of cards. Your hand of cards are going to have face up abilities and face down abilities. So, in the game, you're going to take turns playing cards. You can play a card face up in order to do the ability. Add a treasure from your hand or your discard pile, that's not a good starting card.
We can draw two cards from the deck, then discard one card in your hand. So, for example, I can play the guild master in order to draw two cards right away. Let's go ahead and play this one over here. We're going to draw two cards, and we're going to discard a card in my hand. I'll get rid of my I'll get rid of my seven right now. I'm actually trying to work towards building up my abilities right now, so this two might be helpful, we'll see. So, you can play a card for its ability, that's the first thing you can do. You can also play a card face down. Playing a card face down effectively signifies that you're done for the round, you're locked in, because the face down card will have a value. For example, if I play this card face down, it has no effect over here, but it will be my elder for the round, and it's going to be the thing that I'm using to try to ga- gather the treasures. Cards are going to have values that go up to nine, so if I play an eight face down, that could be really helpful to ensure I get the right treasure. Keeping in mind, by the way, that right now the treasures on the table, we have a four value treasure. This one is a one value treasure, but if we can move it into my vault, that'll be worth three points, and this one's face down. We don't know what it is, so it's a bit of a risk or gamble as to you want that one, or maybe it's just the last one standing. What do you do when you're trying to gather that? So, you play your cards for your abilities. Eventually, you get to a point where I'm going to go ahead and play this card face down. I'm going to play that face down as my elder. And let's pretend the other players have already played their cards face down, which means we're going to resolve and see what players did. This player played an eight over here, which means they're likely to get that four because an eight is the second highest card. It has no effect when played face down. I played this over here. I played the spy. I was sitting here, you know what? This is early in the game. I can probably get this to my vault. This is a four, and this I don't know what it is. I'm kind of happy to get anything. I may as well play this face down to unlock an
ability. Some cards when played face down will have an effect. In this case, I've unlocked this ability. Once unlocked, I can look at the top or bottom card of the treasures deck each round. So, I have more flexibility to look at the top or the bottom of the treasure deck to know what's coming and to use that manipulation. Basically, you have abilities on your player dashboard, and you can utilize those or unlock those in order to improve what you're doing each of the rounds of play. Not to mention, it's worth a point as well at the end of the game. So, that's me, my face down card. I'm probably not getting anything. Let's see what the last player played. They played a nine. They're going to go ahead and take that four. That four is too good to pass up. They're going to take it. This player is going to go for the face down card, and they got a two, which is not bad. It's kind of halfway between that Imperial stamp, but this one over here, they won't have to worry about trying to get it into their vault. And then, I will take that Imperial stamp, put it in my discard pile. It will eventually cycle into my deck, and I'll hopefully have the chance to put it into my vault.
That's basically how a round plays out. Then from there, you're going to go ahead and move the round tracker to the next round, and then you repeat that process for five rounds. That is ultimately how you play Red Lanterns. Everything else in the game comes down to the abilities you're unlocking on your player dashboard, as well as the actual abilities on the cards, both their face up and when relevant, their face down abilities. But, the arc of the game is you have a hand of cards. You're going to pick from your hand of cards, playing some abilities in order to kind of manage the things, playing cards from the deck into the play, moving cards from the different from the the central area to the bottom, trying to adjust the hand your your hand of cards, or move cards into your vault. You're trying to manage all those things. Whenever you play a card as your elder, you are kind of removing that card from play. It won't really be in play anymore, but it can unlock abilities or sometimes it's a higher value card, so it can be the thing you need to go ahead and get the treasure. You're going to rinse and repeat that process, doing that for five rounds, managing the abilities until one player has the most treasure, most points, and wins the game. Which brings me to my review of what I like, don't like, and can see others not liking with Red Lanterns. I'll start with the fact that this game looks absolutely beautiful. The card art over here, the foiling they have on these The art in general is great, but the foiling touches look perfect on these cards. I think they did a great job with the production. The box as well has a kind of like 3D effect to it. I think they really nailed the production and the look of this game. But more importantly, how does the game play? It's a good mix of hand and a board management. As you unlock various abilities, as you try to manage which cards you're going to have, and as you try to be mindful of which treasures are worth pursuing. That three treasure could seem pretty good until you see there's a five treasure in play, and every point matters when you're only
getting five treasures across the course of the game. You really need to be very mindful of how to maximize the abilities you're going to get. And that challenge of unlocking abilities, early on unlocking abilities can have those abilities be very helpful throughout the game, but again, it's only five rounds. Spending too much time unlocking abilities instead of getting the right cards, that's a trade-off in its own right. So doing things like looking at the card pool on the table, trying to see the discrepancy between the values. When is the right time that you don't actually care about not getting the perfect card because hey, I'm getting a three. If the three is the worst card on the table, again, the face-down card is a question, but maybe use abilities to figure out whether you can figure out what card that is, or alternatively swap cards into play. The more control you get in the game, the more enjoyable this will be, and in cross five rounds, you only have so much time to get that control going, but it is a delicate balance of hunting down the right combination of treasures, getting them into the vault run ready, utilizing the cards with the high values, or utilizing the cards with abilities, or even the mind games you play with other players.
As players unlock more abilities or use certain card abilities, there's lots of swapping things around from the deck to the bottom to the the play area, and that will have a degree of I just moved the top card of the deck over into the central area as the face-down card. Do I want that face-down card, or am I trying to tempt you with that face-down card? Because really I want that four on the table, and I know you're going to be tempted by the five cuz I just swapped it in. There is some degree of mind games as well that can be quite entertaining. As far as what I don't like in the game, there's only one thing that I don't like, but it is a big thing, unfortunately, which is that for me across five rounds of play, I don't feel there's enough time to really lean into what the all the engine building aspects. Yes, the first round or two, you can get some abilities. That's fun. But then even the card combinations of the treasures, some of the treasures you'll want some to be mixed with others, and then trying to balance how much you're trying to do in terms of getting the right combination of treasures, getting them into your vault, unlocking abilities, and acquiring the treasures themselves, I feel this game could have possibly like I think seven rounds might have been the right number, I'm not sure. At least for me, I'm only talking about for me. For me, seven rounds might have been the right number.
You don't want it to go too long. I think this does give a relatively solid experience for how short the game is, but the problem is it feels like to do too much with only five rounds of play to do it in. So, the tough decisions are there, but I wish I felt like I was getting a little bit more out of all the decisions I was making, hence my desire for a sixth or probably a seventh round. As far as what I can see that I don't like in the game, I mentioned that I like the mind games with other players. You might not. Mind games might not be your thing. Having a player put a card into play to tempt you, only to take it and realize they just fed you a one and now they get the four, that could be frustrating if you don't like that kind of what are you doing and how do I counter it. Also, I'll say it doesn't operate as well at lower player counts in my opinion. I think it really is better at three or four as opposed to our two-player game. I think two-player the treasure pool is not as interesting. I do believe, again, prototype rules, components subject to change. I do believe they are aware of that and still working on that, uh but so far I'll say that at least my two-player games felt like the decision space around treasures just was less free and therefore less interesting. As far as final thoughts on uh Red Lanterns, overall this is a solid game. I like all of the mind games, the puzzliness. I like the decision space around what this game is doing. For me, I'm going to be coming in at a 3.5 out of 5. The main thing that holds it back for me is as much as I like everything this game is doing and the cards, the card abilities, and everything you're trying to do, it really does sync up very nicely as far as how much you're trying to get done, how you're utilizing the cards in your hand, which cards you play for the treasure. The biggest problem for me is that I kind of want more time to see all of this come together and I think five rounds is just a bit too short for what it is. As far as other game recommendations, definitely check out Panda Spin from the
same studio for another thinking game as far as how to play your cards in a hand shedding game. And then check out Citadels. If you're interested in mind games around what cards will be played and how to mess with other players while trying to gather treasures, well treasures buildings, sort of things like that, uh check out Citadels, an oldie but a goodie. I mentioned that All Play is a channel sponsor. If you go to allplay.com, you can find a variety of games both from All Play as well as partner publishers. And check out Pop Art. If you're looking for a game that is going to be also beautiful, plays very differently, it's still about trying to uh gather points by how things combine in different ways, uh but if you're looking for a beautiful game, beautiful presentation instead of uh you know, overlaid uh overlaid um uh the the the the foiling on the cards, you are actually overlaying cards on top of other cards to create scoring patterns and art pieces. And in the case of until next time, I'm Alex Radcliffe from Board Game Co. Hope you found this review helpful and as always, I hope you have a good one.