►►► Is this the heaviest bag builder yet?
Transcript
Hey everybody. Today on Roto Run through, we're preving a prototype of Whisperwood. But before I get going, please turn your subtitles on to the Klingon channel so that when I make rules goose, you'll know what they are. And if you've done that, well then welcome to the Whisper Wood, folks, which was the site of an epic battle between an evil corrupt sorcerer and the noble um uh golems that protect the world. And don't worry, the Gollums were victorious. They uh chased the sorcerer away. But in the aftermath, there is left scars of corruption throughout the Whisperwood, and the Gollums have fallen into a deep sleep from their exhausted, which means it's time for us, the Druids, to step up and save the Whisperwood by restoring it to its former beauty and harmony. And I'm going to show you how it works today in a twoplayer run through, which means it's going to be me, the green druid, Tormund, up against Jen, who plays Broadleaf, the purple druid. And we've already set up the game. There's actually quite a bit of setup uh that goes into we have to randomly generate this board every time by shuffling up the tiles and then players take turns one at a time deploying them till we've made a world. If I were playing a three or four player game, there would be more tiles, more corruption, etc., etc. Um, also the, you know, since you do this one at a time, it could be a totally different shape, different layout, all of that. The only restriction, the only main restriction is when you're, uh, building it, all the water has to be contiguous if possible. So, you can see
I've made one big epic lake with some tributaries. And then, um, we've got some other terrain. And here's where we are. There are some animals. The golems start in their starting spots. We've randomly deployed little rune sites, which are places where we can deploy our runes. Oh, speaking of our runes, as part of setup, well, by default, you slot, this is a two-layer board, so you slot this in um to the A side, and this gives you access to six different objectives that players could chase after for in-game scoring. Like I said, this is the A side. Supposedly, there's a B side, but my prototype doesn't have the B side. So, I do not know what the alternate objectives are, but everybody might have these objectives, but the next time we all might all have the B objectives, or maybe there's even more. I'm not quite sure. Again, this is a prototype placeholder components. You know the drill. Um Oh, speaking of which, boy, I wish I had the really cool three um you know, miniature components for the golems that light up that are actually lit. I mean, really cool. Check out the crowdfunding page if you want to know more. There's a link down in the show notes. Anyway, so we have randomly built the board. Um, we've randomly deployed the corruption, which is based on this little corruption on the random placement of these rune sites. And then we had to do our own setup as well. So, we have our six objectives. We all start with one corruption. Uh, you know, cuz even we were tainted by the battle. And what we're supposed to do is draw two and pick one familiar. And I chose to join Ren the Koi, who has a very nice special power. And this card also says, "What starts in my bag?" because this is
a bag builder, baby. Oh, and so I started with some corruption in my bag as well because Ren is very powerful. This is a powerful thing. Plus, Ren let me start with one of my spells upgraded. I chose to have advanced transmute where you can see Jen only has regular trans. She had to pay two resources. I only have to pay one to do to transmute. So anyway, um I started with Ren and then also we did a draft. Everybody drew a bunch of cards. We picked two, handed the rest around, picked two more until we have our starting hand of enchantments. So, I have drafted for those. Jen's drafted for these. She has um allied herself with Astra, the mayor, who lets her teleport around like crazy. This this horse is fast. Uh and uh yeah, otherwise we're ready to go. So, our bags are full of stuff based on our familiar, and we're ready to go. So, how does it work? Well, we're going to play through seven years or seven rounds of gameplay. And each year, first we will draw tokens from our bag. We do this at the same time. Then we will prepare to do actions by deploying our tokens wherever we want amongst our spells and our familiars and other things. Then we will take in turn order. We will use the actions we have prepared with the tokens we drew. And then we do some clean up at the end of the round. So right now we're drawing tokens. And at the beginning of the game, we I can draw one, two, three, four. Because as part of setup, my token for Ren the Koi has already been drawn.
So, I I get to draw four more from the bag. Show me what you got. Give me the good stuff. Don't give me that corruption. I don't want to see the corruption. Jenna has no corruption in her bag, but I've got some. One, two, three, four. I think I've got four here. I'm supposed to reveal them one at a time because if any of the ones I reveal are the corruption, I have to stop my drawing and resolve the corruption. So, let's see. So, what did I draw? I drew literally the corruption right away. Okay. So I draw a corruption and what I have to do is I have to deploy it on my board. Now remember we already start with one corruption and I have got two other places I could put the corruption. I can put it here or here. As um different powers get upgraded I might have even more places. If I have advanced call wildlife I could put a corruption there as well. I don't want to put corruption down because what corruption does is it makes these powers less powerful. By default, advanced transmute says, "Hey, I spend one token to get two tokens and then I get to play one of those tokens immediately, which is great. If I put this here and then I do advanced transmute, I get two tokens, but I don't get to deploy them." So, here's the deal. This is my souped-up advanced spell. I don't want to go, you know, cl, you know, clutter that up with corruption. So, I will clutter up my restore. Normally restore means, hey, restore a section of the forest, water, earth, air, or wild, and then move forward on a matching track to get progress and get all kinds of bonuses.
But if I put this here now, I don't want to do the restore action because I'll I have to pay two tokens, but I'll only get half of the benefit. I'll get the res I'll put the restore tile out, but I won't get my progress. So that Okay, so I I made that choice. Now I'm going to keep drawing. And then I drew air. I drew Wait a minute. Why did I have another I have set up my bag wrong. Hold on a second. It's interesting. The rules suggest that before you put all your stuff in the bag, you should double check to make sure you got everything right. I put a second thing in there, which means Okay, I'm just going to pause for a second and fix this. Sorry. Yeah, just somehow. I You know what? I must have accidentally left a corruption in from the last time I played. I just didn't empty the bag completely. Uh anyway, so anyway, right. So, there was no second corruption. Let's continue. I continue to draw. And what did I draw? I drew a cinder and a moon and an earth.
Okay. Which means I forget. Did I draw everything? No, wait. No, no, no, no. I I drew. All right. Let's start over. Let's start over because I drew one too many. All right. So, first thing I drew is my corruption. I deployed it. Then I draw air and I draw fire and I draw water, which I'm kind of bummed by. And then I draw moon. And okay, I did not draw earth. Earth is still in my bag. And you're allowed to look in your bag whenever you want to see what might come the next time you draw. So I've done my drawing. Jen, she's going to do the same thing at the same time as me. She has no corruption in her bag, unless I messed up her bag like my own. So she's just going to draw four. And let's see what she gets. She gets air, earth, cinder, and moon. All right. And she didn't get her fire. All right. I got my fire. She did not. Okay. So, we're done drawing.
Done. Um, if we ran out of stuff, we would refill our bag from our discard pile. You know, bag builder stuff. But anyway, now we go to prepare. Everybody does this at the same time. Let's focus on me. I've got to decide how to deploy these five tokens amongst my various spells and any other cards I might have. And right out of the gate, I've got my Ren. The only um token in the world that can activate Ren the Koi is this. So, I'm going to do that for sure and use Ren's superpower. Although, if I wanted to, I could instead treat this as a water token. So, I could use it to flow or to convoke or to maybe whisper or do other things. But no, I'm using Ren's power for Ren because this is much more powerful than anything else I could do with one water token. But besides, I drew a water token. So, I don't need two water tokens. So, what am I going to do with the rest? Well, the interesting thing is, oh, this is very interesting.
I got my fire. Fire is very powerful because it lets me cleanse or if I can if I combine. Oh my gosh, look at this. I got my moon, my fire, and my air. I got everything I need to deploy a rune, which is a great first start turn. So, if I put all of these here, I will inscribe. Um, and then as part of inscribing, I will lose this. You can see there's a little X here. Uh, if you use it, you lose it. So, you always got to be finding more. Um, and then I've got this one water. What would I do with this one water? Well, I could use it to advance transmute. That's not bad. That's not bad. But here's the deal. If I'm going to inscribe, I need to first move the location we're at at the beginning of the game here in the center of the board has no, you can see these are the places where we can deploy runes. There's no place. So, I have to be able to move to deploy a rune. So, what that means is I wouldn't be able to advance transmute. I could instead flow. And that means I could travel up to three steps along the water, starting in water and ending in water. Up to three steps along the water. And if I end in a place where I could do a rune, then I could inscribe and start unlocking bonuses, either these endgame bonus scoring things, or instead I could replace those with different enchantments. And if I get some of these enchantments, oh my, if I could harmonize right out of the gate
and get seven harmony immediately, geez Louise, there are some really Although, if I were to do this, if I were to make an air connection in the first turn, well, I'd make progress on the air track and I would get to upgrade another spell. I already have advanced transmute. Ren the Koi said, "Hey, as part of setup, upgrade one of your water spells, which was call wildlife, transmute, or flow." I chose that. Um, if I were to get this, I could upgrade soar or inscribe or cleanse. Oh, I could do more powerful cleanses. Oh, [sighs] okay. I think that's my plan. I I've got a plan. I have figured out the three thing. Although there are other things I could do like instead Oh, I mean I really kind of want to use this fire to cleanse because cleanse either lets me trash any token I want and turn it into points. So you can thin your deck out.
But the important thing is you could by doing a cleanse action you could harmonize them, flip them over, turn them into harmony, which is a resource we need to talk to the fairy folk. So that's cool. So I'm kind of like, hey, I want to get rid of this corruption as fast as I can. It's just clogging up my deck. So, I could cleanse and get rid of one of these. But then what would I do? Well, you know what I could do? Oh my gosh. Could I do I I could come over here and I could whisper with a white and a purple. That means I could whisper to the air spirit, right? As you can see, uh, you know, this is the whisper action. It says, "Oh, white and a and a purple." That is talk to the air spirit. So, if I could get to the air spirit, I could unlock a special power. Now, the problem is doing this means, oh, I wouldn't get all the benefits because of this corruption. But if I cleanse first and harmonize [snorts] away, then I would get to do a full super whisper action. I'd get to do all of that stuff. But to do that, oh, wait, wait, wait.
Yeah, to do that I would need to um go I mean if I want to whisper to the air golem I need to get over here to the air golem which means I need to use one of these movement because you can I mean I could right now I could flow but that means I can only move along the water and the water won't get me to the air golem. What if I went the other way? What if I went like this and then so I cleansed to get rid of this? So I do a super golem action, right? And then I soared. This would let me soar from air, which I am. The starting zone has all three types of trains. Water, air, and earth. So that means I have all So that means I could soar to any other tile where there's um air. But then I here's what I'd want to do. I'd want to soar. This means I'd be talking to the water and there's no air where the water is. So no, I can't do that. So, I am still going to cleanse some stuff away, but I think this is too good a start. Uh, so I'm going to flow to move around so that I can get into position to deploy a rune. And then I'mma I'mma inscribe that rune, which means I'm not going to be cleansing this stuff away, which means it's going to continue to clog up my deck. But I'll try to cleanse it later on some turn when I've got my red and I've got corruption at the same time so I can cleanse it. I might regret not doing this sooner, but that's that's the way it's going to be, right? So, let's I have locked it in. I'm doing one, two,
three actions. [snorts] Although, here's a here's a bummer. Oh, you know what I'm going to do? Oh my gosh. Okay, forget about flowing. This is going to come over here. Now, when I do this, I'm going to trash this. I'm going to lose this, but I'm going to give up a water to get two resources. And one of them I'll be able to deploy immediately for free. So, I can stick to the plan, right? Because here's what I can do. I can say, "Oh, I want to soar over to the air golem, let's say, and I want to cleanse." So, I can do this. And I want to whisper to the air golem, right? So, let's say I go like this. All right. So, this is my plan. I totally changed my plan. I'm going to cleanse out that corruption.
I'm going to soar over them. I'm going to do my koi action as well. And I'm going to transmute. That transmute is going to get me the other token I need to be able to whisper. And so I'm going to do four actions this turn instead of three. So I'm going to get more done by by using my advanced transunion ski. Yeah, I've got to use my advanced spell. It's my BEST THING. MY KOI GAVE ME. IF I DON'T USE MY ADVANCED SPELL, WHAT WHAT AM I WHAT AM I DOING? So that's the plan. I love it. That's a cool way to go. Okay. And so you can see right from the get- go, even with only five tokens, there are so many different ways you could strategize. And later on the game, when you've got tons of extra cards and all kinds of cool special tokens, oh man, this game gets deep. But that was my first turn. While I'm thinking about that, Jen's thinking what she's going to do. First of all, of course, she should have Astro the Mayor take her far, far away. Um, this Astro the Mayor lets her go anywhere, but Astra the Mare is a skittish mare. Astra the Mayor does not want to go hang out with other animals.
So, Jen could go any place she wants except for a spot with an animal. So, she can go almost anywhere and then she could make advancement on a track associated with where she moves to. So, Astra is super powerful. She could use this instead as an Earth to stride or do something else. But no, of course, if she's got her special token, she's going to use it on her special bestest bud. And now she's got to figure out what to do with all of these. So, ooh, she's got her sun. I think this is called a cinder token. I think maybe she's got her sun token. That means she could call wildlife. Um, she could also use this to restore um Earth or to whisper to the Earth Gollum.
But if she got to whisper to your column, she would have to move up here. And moving up here into a corrupted zone would give her corruption. And and you saw how corruption is clogging me up. Jen doesn't want to get clogged up. She doesn't want to deal with that corruption. So she doesn't want to go whisper to the right. So she's definitely going to call some wildlife. She's going to go for a ride on the horse. She's going to call some wildlife. And then she's got these three tokens. So she didn't get her fire. So she can't inscribe. like I was about to do. She can't cleanse. She could whisper, though. Um, but again, she'd have to soar to get over here, but then she wouldn't have she wouldn't be able to to whisper to them, right? Maybe she should just start restoring the land because that is an important thing to do in this game. This is what we're here to do is restore the forest. So, what could she do? Now, she could use two tokens to transmute to get get um now she'd permanently be trashing one of these to get two more, but then she could deploy one of those two wherever she wants.
[sighs] What else? Oh, and by the way, so if she transmutes, that would give her a cleanse. So, she could get rid of her only corruption. She only has one corruption. She would have no corruption, which means none of her powers would get blocked up. So, that's pretty nice. That's not too bad. But then she's still got decide what to do with this. No, no, no, no. You know what? No, no. She does not want to trash something to get two things, do some bag building. There are other ways to bag build in this game. Definitely. So, I think Jen is going to restore because um you know, right now there's no corruption here. So, she'll get the full benefit. She'll put a token on the board and advance on a matching track and she doesn't have to trash anything to restore. So, what does she want to restore with these three? Right.
The green. She'd have to use her cinder plus the green to restore earth. Nope. She wants to call wildlife. So, forget about that for a second. We'll come back to you. So, that means she goes like that. She can restore an air zone. All right. That's pretty good. Um because that will let her advance on the air track. So, let's say she goes like that, right? She will she will she? Yeah, she will. Okay. So, then anyway, she's still in the same spot. She's got one more tile. What's she going to do with this tile? What is she going to do? Um, well, I mean, it could be half a trans because you could put something on there and then wait and on a future turn, it will still be sitting here and you can finish what you start. You can you can, you know, make an investment long term. She could do the same thing for convoke, which would let her teleport to a uh to whatchamacallit uh you know, any golem she wants wherever.
That's pretty nice. Just being able to get to the golems and talk to them faster is very nice. She's got She could also say, "You know what? I'm not going to do I'm just going to leave it here." But that means she's only drawing four tokens next turn. That's not good. Maybe she could stride. That just lets her move from one space to the next space over. But she already can move wherever she wants with Astro the mayor. So, it's not like she needs more movement to restore and call wildlife. So, what is she going to do with this thing? H. Well, she could get ready to whisper to um the forest golem, right? I mean, she she has to move into that space, which means she will have to take corruption. Oh, but look at this. If she puts a rune in this space, she can up this says upgrade any of her spells. And Jen is very jealous of that spell that I have upgraded right from the get-go.
That's pretty nice. Maybe she wants to get in position. to whisper to the Gollum next time. I think so. I think so. I think so because here you go. Okay. So, that's it. Jen is locked in. So, Jen is only doing two actions this round. I'm maybe doing four. Jen's only doing two, but she's setting herself up for stuff in the future, right? Because she's No, I'm sorry. She's doing three. One, two, three. And I'm potentially doing four if I've planned it right. This is hard. Keep and I've totally forgotten. All right. Anyway, so Jen says she's done. She's done all of her preparing. I've done all my preparation. We are done with the preparation. Everybody agrees. We now go into actions. I am the first player. I'm going to perform an action. So, I could uh deploy Ren. I could go soaring. I could do an advanced transmute. I could cleanse. I cannot whisper though because this isn't ready.
I don't have the second thing. So, let's do Ren first. Let's just get my special uh buddy. So, what does Ren do? Ren says, "Place one water res restoration tile in any location connected to my location by water and then purify any corruption that I might gain." All right, so this is what we're here to do. You notice everybody's got all these tokens. These represent us cleaning up the land and they're worth points at the end of the game. So I through the power of N because I am touching water I can repair or restore water in any of these tiles anywhere. And if the act of doing that makes me take corruption, I will get to purify it immediately. Normally if you take corruption, that's bad. It goes in your discard pile. It eventually goes back in your bag and it eventually clogs up your actions and maybe makes you lose points. So that's all bad. But Ren says, "No, I don't take corruption.
I take harmony because she instantly purifies." So that's nice. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to restore a water section. And because I'm touching water, it could be anywhere, but I want to restore some corrupted water so that I will take the corruption, but immediately purify it. [snorts] So there's a couple of them right here. Let's go right there. Let's just go on ahead and restore this water right there. All righty. And normally if you're restoring, normally you can only restore where you are. But Ren swam over there. And Ren is such a pure being of awesomeness that she was able to say, "Oh, the corruption I should have collected for that. Nope. It's just harmony." And boom, I've got one harmony. Jen started with a harmony. Now I've got a harmony as well, which is a resource that he can use for other stuff, right? Okay. So that was it.
First, we restored, then we harmonized. All right. And you uh um I'm done. It is now Jen's turn. And what is Jen going to do? I've already forgotten what she's doing. Oh my gosh. Right. So, Jen, all right. She's going to go for a ride. She's going to restore. She's going to call wildlife. So, she could go anywhere except for this zone, this zone, or this zone because there are animals. Now, Jen doesn't want to get corruption. So, she does not. The main way you get corruption in this game is moving into a zone with corruption. Either moving yourself or moving an animal into a corrupt zone or moving a golem into a corrupt zone. Doing any of those things will give you corruption that will clog up your deck. You can also get corruption by um restoring corrupt areas. And there's a few other things that'll give it to you as well, special powers and stuff like that. Um anyway, so Jen does not want to go to a corrupt zone. She uh can't go to a water space, but wherever she goes, she is going to restore air. So she wants to go to a place that gives her access to air that she could restore.
So that means she wants to come here or here or here or here. You can see the uh the gray clouds represent Oh, you're up in the sky. There are one, two, three, four, five air spots right there. That's pretty good. I think Jen is going to say, "Astra, take me over here." And boom. Astra has delivered. Uh, so first of all, we moved to a place where there wasn't an animal. And now Astra says, "Hey, that was such a great ride. Why don't you progress on a track matching where you are?" Because we've come here, Jen can progress on the white air track or the green earth track. And that's an important distinction. If she goes on the air track, the first step over there gets her a moon. [clears throat] And the moon lets you inscribe. It lets you um you know a whisper to half of your restoration and half of your whispers needs these moon tokens. But instead if she advances on the earth track, she will get one of these suns or these embers. Those let her do more wildlife calling. They let her do the other half of whispers and restores.
And so here's the deal. Um you know, these are both valid ways to go. Jen's got to pick one right now. What's it going to be? I think she'll go moon, right? So, that means, right, she is going to advance on the air, not the Earth track. She makes her first step. She gets a moon token. And now, normally when you get tokens, they go into your discard pile, which are these cool little trays. They're designed so they fill up with stuff and then it's very easy just to pour them back into your bag when your bag empties out. Nicely done. Nice components. But that's not all. We just crossed a line. It's kind of hard to see. Actually, as part of setup, what I'm supposed to do is I'm supposed to take two owls, two bears, and two um otter and put them on these little spots as a reminder that when you cross the line, you get to deploy these animals. But Jen, I found, oh, they just block the view of what the powers are. So, but it's really easy to forget. Actually, strictly speaking, what we should do is we should say, hey, there's a reminder when you move into the space, get a bear. When you move into this space, get an owl. And when you move into this space, get an otter. So, what did Jen just do? She just moved into that space. So, not only she get that, she is the first to deploy an extra sweet little hoot hoot owl wherever she wants.
No, not wherever she wants. Where she is. This owl has come to visit her. So, there is an owl in this zone. There's another owl way over there. This is now one less place that Astra would want to go to because Astra does not like owls, apparently. All righty. Anyway, so she got two things. And now, this could be hugely valuable later on in the game. Um, having to do with scoring objectives and uh other stuff, right? But for now, Jen summoned an owl and got that. That was her first turn. She used Astra and discarded the Astra token. Okay, it is now my second turn, right? And so what do I want to do next? Oh, I would like to soar.
Kaka, I'm going to fly. And so I can go from any tile that has air on it to any other tile. I am planning on talking to the golem. So, I'm going to fly skipping over all this corruption. I took no corruption. I'm coming right up here to the clouds to whisper to the Gollum. All righty. So, that was it. And now, so is not particularly exciting action. But that's cuz I haven't upgraded it yet. If this were an upgraded spell, I would um also get to draw an enchantment card, which means more special powers that I've got, which is a really big deal. And also the the movement changes as well. Normally, it's just move from one air tile to another air tile. But instead, it changes. It becomes like pandemic. You know, move from wherever you are to any air tile or if you're on an air tile, move wherever you want. You know how pandemic um air travel works in the two different ways to fly. So, the movement comes upgraded and it becomes a source of extra powers. But I just did a regular soar. I'm over there. That was my turn. Pretty simple and easy one.
There's some bigger ones coming. It is now Jen's turn, right? Jen is now going to call some wildlife. She uses this ember and says, "Hey, pick any animal not where you are and move it to where you are and then move forward on the track that matches the animal." And so here's what Jen's going to do. Jen's going to say, "Hey, other owl up there in the sky, come over and join me. Let's get a conclave." Is it a conclave of owls? Is that right? Somebody let me know down in the comments. Anyway, we've now got two. It's a It's a hoot nation over here of two owls. And because Jen moved an owl here, she gets to um I'm sorry. Oh, no. No. It's not the um progress. If this were upgraded, she'd move the owl, she'd clean up, and she would move on the track, but it's not upgraded. So, she moved the owl, and she is going to restore the sky. So the owl, she basically called the owl over here and the owl is doing the work. So Jen takes one of her little feathers that indicates restoring the sky. And there are um one, two, three. This is earth or sky. That's earth or sky. That's earth.
These are sky as well. But those are corruption. If Jen does those, she gets corruption. She doesn't want corruption. She'll just go on ahead and do that one right there. All righty. Which, by the way, this is worth one point to her because she has moved one step on the sky track. If by the end of the game she can make it all the way to the end of the sky track, that um cleanup, that restoration will be worth four points. All righty. So, that was Jen's second and she's starting to get the owls into a group. There is potential to score big points based on how the owls are deployed. So, she is starting to exert some influence of the owls. Okay, that was her second turn. Right, it is now my third turn. And I uh I'm pretty much well I can't whisper. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do some advanced transmutation. Remember this little X here means I said goodbye to this water.
I've lost it. Now that's that's the only water I've had. But that's not quite true because I've got this as well. This could either help me use Ren or I could use it as water. But anyway, I've trashed a water to get two resources and one of them I can deploy immediately because that is not covered by corruption. So I get to do this. So what are the two tokens I'm going to get? Well, one of them is going to be air and it's going to be the one I deploy immediately. So that boom, it goes right there. Right. Oh, I forgot to read the small print. I can't put them however I want because if you look over here, it says, "Oh, when you talk, it's going to be the moon that gets trashed, not the air." So now I've got two air. The one I started with plus this other one I've grabbed. I'm trashing this moon to whisper, but okay.
So I've taken one and deployed immediately. I get one more which is going to go into my discard pile. Since I'm about to trash a moon, how about I get another moon to replace it. So, I did advanced transmute, gave up my water to get an air, which I put there, and a moon, which I'm saving for later because I'm about to lose another moon. Right, that was um that turn. And now we come back over to Jen. And um Jen cannot whisper. There's only one thing left for her. She is going to restore where nothing gets trashed. It is a white and a purple. So that means she is um restoring more air. And where's her little feathers? So she will go on ahead again. She doesn't want to take the corrupt one. So she'll just put that right there. Handy dandy. She's pretty happy with that. And this one says, "Hey, because there's no corruption, move forward again on the progress track." So Jen's going to get to move forward on the air track again. And she's got a decision to make. she can move on the lower track and that would let her upgrade any of her air powers, her soar, her inscribe or her cleanse.
You can see there the air color instead of the blue or the green color. That's if she goes on the lower track or she can go on the upper track. If she goes on the upper track, she can recruit a fairy um which gives her a matching token and that's a really big deal. So, you may wonder what are these cards here? Basically, as part of setup, actually the rules say to do it differently, but Jen, I found the best way to do this is everybody gets a full set of cards representing the golems, representing the three animal types, the bears, the owls, and the otter, and representing the I think it's eight. Yeah, the eight different fairies. Everybody's got a card for everything that they can make an ally in the game. So, if Jen moves along the upper track, she can recruit either um uh Tixel or uh uh Taiishi the Willwisp or Velift the Quickling. And so she'll get that card. She will get a token that matches the card. So that means this is like an extra air token or a token to activate this. And then in future turns, these will be additional things she can do. Uh the Willwis says, "Hey, draw um five enchantment cards. keep one, discard the rest. So, if Jen was not happy with the enchantment card she drafted from the beginning of the game, she could say, "Oh, give me some more."
Plus, the farther she goes along the air track, the more opportunities she gets to play these cards. And these cards are crazy powerful. Like super, you know, gamechangingly powerful. All righty. And um this one says, "Hey, immediately restore anywhere. You restore any type of terrain. The quickling will do it." Now, I believe it has to be where you are. So, if you're in a place where you want to restore some air, but you do not have the tokens, well, he'll do it for you. They also have a bonus action. Remember, I keep talking about the um harmony tokens we get. If we have these harmony tokens, we can um spend them when we do their main action to get to do a bonus action as well. So, right now, Jen's got to decide, is she going to move forward to upgrade a worker or to get herself an extra token and an extra buddy who will help her for the rest of the game. And here's the deal.
Oh, there's one other thing. So, when you use this, you get that power and then if you spend two harmony, you get this bonus power. Do it from left to right. Also, when you get this, if you spend a harmony, the moment you hire uh the Quickling, when you get the token for uh the Quickling, you can deploy it immediately. So, the token doesn't go in your discard pile and you have to wait for a further round. This becomes an extra action you can do immediately this turn if you're willing. That's why collecting harmony is such a big deal if you're going to do a lot of um FA if you're going to get a lot of FA bonuses. So, that's a tough choice. Which is Jen going to do? Get the extra helper, which is an extra worker, an extra action she can do, or upgrade one of these.
[snorts] She's tempted to do the upgrade. You saw how I mean what my big deal was that I had this upgraded. If Jen upgrades inscribe, inscribe is incredibly power. Everything's incredibly powerful, but this is the hardest thing to do in the game. So, it's the most powerful because it takes three tokens and you have to trash one. If you upgrade this, you only have to spend two tokens and trash one. So, it gets 33% cheaper to do inscribes. And inscribe is how you deploy your little runes to score big points at the end of the game or it's also the main way you get your enchantments played. So, if Jen were I mean know that's tough. I think I think Jen's going to go she's going to go on the lower route and that's going to get her an upgrade. Does she want to upgrade Soar? That means Soar lets her also draw more cards. She's got enough cards. Is she going to upgrade wildlife? That mean, no, not wild. That's a water one. She going to upgrade cleanse. Upgrading cleanse, you haven't seen me do it yet, but cleanse normally lets you unlink or purify. Upgraded cleanse means, hey, do it again, but then if you haven't been corrupted, do it a second time. So, you get twice as much out of you spend that fire, you get to do two things instead of one. Those are all very cool, but I think Jen is going to upgrade her inscribe because she's going to want to get some runes and she would like to make it cheaper to do for the rest of the game. Nice, nice, nice. Okay. Oh, and by the way, the next time Jen moves forward, I totally forgot to do this. This is the way we mark it is when you cross this line, hey, you're going to get to put
another owl out and uh and so on. So, Jen, next time she goes up, she's going to move forward again and she's going to befriend the owls, which means she'll get her owl card out. Oh, she could do that now. Could she? Wait a minute. What was that? Air elemental. That That didn't give you progress, did it? Oh, it did. Base one air region or advance. No, she needs two to be able to get that. So, it wouldn't quite get it now. All right. All right. She's sticking with her plan. So, that was it for her. Jen's next turn, she's going to pass because there's nothing else she can do. She's only got half a thing here. She has no more action tokens. But, I'm not done. coming back over to me. It is time to cleanse. And I'm going to cleanse to turn this into harmony. Now I've got two harmony, which means if I got one of those fairy creatures, I'd have enough harmony to really take advantage of them, unlike Jen who only has one harmony. [snorts] But more importantly, I have now made whispering full power. Now we're over to Jen. Jen is done. She says, "I'm resting." She has passed. She's out for the rest of the round. So, now it's just me, but I only have one more action. So, uh, but Jen is going to be first player going into the next round because she passed first. We are going to whisper and I have to trash the moon. It's good thing I collected another moon to replace it. So, I am going to whisper to the air golem who I have gone to visit.
So, I get to do all these things from left to right. First of all, I get to befriend the air golem, which means I got to find the air golem card. Here it is. Is this it? Yeah. Breeze. Breeze the air golem. All righty. So, uh, Breeze the air golem gives me access to three different powers. So, the first step I'm going to do is take one of my little Oh, my golem buddy loves me and put a heart and unlock one of these powers for the rest of the game. Now, if I befriended Breeze and I did not like these powers, I could instead just get three points. And that's what you do at the end of the game. At the end of the game, if you're befriending them and you don't have time to use these powers, just take the points. But early in the game, get one of these powers.
And they're all great, but I think I like this one best. Every time you soar, um, you can do a free restoration action of any type where you land. So that's just that's just scoring points without having to, you know, do the restore action or summon animals. To me, this is a big deal. These other ones are nice, too. If I every time I would get a wildlife token, uh, if I spend harmony, I can get I can make it active immediately instead of waiting for it to come up in my bag at a later time. It's kind of the same thing you can do with the Fay. This one, um, before drawing for my bag, I can get the air tokens for my spin pool. So, if I have a lot of airbased stuff, I can get those tokens faster. So, I can I can duplicate them up. But, this one, I think, is going to be the one I want. So, I'm going to take that. Also, if I get three hearts on Breeze the air golem, I will unlock this in-game scoring of having four points for every one of my runes I have placed.
And by the end of the game, it's not a bad strategy to get all six of them placed. Uh because that's six opportunities to do your enchantments or six ways to score points. So anyway, um, so I probably want to befriend him two more, whisper to him two more times, get those other powers or points, and also unlock this in-game scoring, and make sure I get all my runes done. So that was the first step. Whisper, get one of your hearts on there, get a power or points. Next up, tell the Gollum where to go. Hey Gollum, go wherever I tell you to go. They will go there. They will then restore that zone and then I will get to make progress on that track. So, so it's the air golem. It wants to go to an air zone. Can't stay. And remember, I'm going to get to um make progress on the track.
So, this is a way that I could actually clean up the corrupt zones without going into the corrupt zones. But except if I send a golem into the corrupt zone, I'll take a corruption. It's if I move into the corrupt zone, I move a golem into the corrupt zone, or I move an animal into the corrupt zone, I will get a corruption. So, at this point, still trying to avoid the corruption if at all possible. Here's the interesting thing. I noticed Jen has put a couple of heirs over here, and there's like three more for her to get. I don't know if I want her to monopolize those. So, how about we send the air golem over to this neck of the woods? Hello. uh I've come here to uh at the request of Tormund to um help you out. And so all of a sudden, hey, there's one of Jen's opportunities. I just went and jumped on it. And um so that's one less that she could do because well, for the way you score, it's you know, well, here's what Jen was thinking about. One of the if Jen, which one is it? If Jen could get this rune with this endgame score right here, and if she were to put that rune right here, what this says is you will get what is it? Three points for every air restoration you've done in that zone and every adjacent zone. So, if Jen could have totally monopolized, there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
If Jen could have done all of these and put this air rune in that spot, that would be 21 points for Jen. Now, she'd have to get some um you know, there's a there's three of them or one, two, or yeah, there's four of them that she'd have to get corruption. So, she'd have to deal with that. But still, that would have been a long-term plan. Get the rune here, get all of these heirs that are adjacent to that rune taken care of, and Jen would score 21 points at the end of the game. But I just grabbed one of the non-corrupt ones. So that's one less that Jen can do now. And she says, "It's still three points. This is a highscoring game. Uh, make no mistake, you know, mid mid 100 to 200, you know, kind of thing in in just my experience." Anyway, so it's not that Jen's not going to do that. It's just I potentially made this worth three points for her because that's one less place that she could clean up the air in this part of the world. All right. So, I sent him over. I had him do a thing. And now this is potentially worth points to me. But also, it says, "Hey, move forward on the track." So, now I'm moving forward on the track just like Jen did. And I get a moon just like Jen did. And I place an owl to be my best buddy over here. It doesn't go over there. It goes over there. Okay. Not bad. All right. So, that was my big whisper. Um, okay. Cool.
Cool. Cool. And uh it is Jen's turn, but Jen has already passed. It is my turn. I am done. Uh I've literally have used all my tokens. Jen did not use one of her tokens. She's setting herself up for the future. So, we have done. Everybody's rested. And Jen is now the first player because she rested first. And now it's time to recover. Advance the round marker. And um you know, potentially when we go to round three, we get more powerful. But instead, we're in round two. So, it's time to draw. So, I go back to my bag. I think mine was empty. No, I had one more. I had the Earth that I never drew. And so now everything Oh, wait. Oops. No, no, no. That's right. Yeah. So, everything else I take this and I just slide them into the bag and then I draw four more.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. So, I got two air and two um moons. And uh the only other thing I've got Oh no, there's more in here. I didn't get my fire and I did not get Oh my koi. I didn't get to use my koi this turn. That's a bummer because I only have seven rounds and I would have liked to have drawn this. I won't be able to get this until the third turn. No. Oh well. Um all right. So that was it for me. Jen is doing the same thing. She refill. She gets everything out of her bag. She's drawing four. So, she gets some water and some fire as predicted. And then the rest goes back in the sack, Jack. And she draws three more.
One, two, three. Okay. And so what got left behind? Her ember got left behind and a moon got left behind. That's kind of a bummer. But Jen did get her horsey horse. So, Jen can um go for a ride again or she can use this for a stride or a convoke or something else, but she'll probably use it to go for a ride and teleport wherever she wants cuz that is very handy indeed. All right. And so, once again, we need to start planning. And Jen reckons, hey, now I could cleanse. And what would she need? She needed her. She did not get her ember, so she can't do this. Oh, now here's the one thing I should have said because Jen hadn't done this before she started drawing if she wanted to. She could have said, "You know what?
I don't know if I'm going to get my ember. I'm just going to recall this and then she would have drawn one less." But nope. Uh, she hopes she get her ember. She didn't. She got her fire instead. So, this is just sitting there. That is a bummer. So, I got a bummer. I don't get to use my special familiar. Jen got a bummer. Um, but hey, you better believe I'm going to soar cuz remember every time I soar, I get to but I only get to soar once per round. So, I got to figure out what I do with my other air. And then I've got two moons and I've got Earth. But I'm definitely going to soar because soaring basically uh gets me stuff cleaned up uh ASAP. So, what is Jen going to do? What am I going to do? Is Jen going to cleanse and get rid of that corruption? That is a bummer. Or well, the main thing it combines with it could combine with her. So she could restore an earth or right uh because it's no it's no it's fire only combines with ember to talk to the wild and the wild golem is nice because the wild basically let you do any of the three.
So yeah, this red is pretty much the best thing she do. So, she's going to corrupt the only She's going to clear the only corruption she's got, which means she's not so worried about getting corruption if she's clearing out the only one she's got. Plus, remember, clearing it out doesn't make it go away. It if she had cleared this out before, she would have had the two she needs to activate the bonus of a fay. So, I think that's definitely what she's doing. But, she's not going to whisper until round three of seven because um her ember didn't come out. That's a bummer. And in the meantime, what is she going to do with these three? Well, she's got a blue and a purple that would let her restore water or whisper. Well, no, but this is in the way. And remember, I I said, you know, while you're placing, you can move stuff around, but if it's something you placed on a previous round, you can't move it.
So, this is stuck here. She would have been she could have recalled it before she drew, but when she started drawing, it was too late. So, she could do a restore and restore some water. Um, she could Oh, she could do an advanced Oh, she wants to do an advanced inscribe because she's really good at that now because that's her superpower. And then she's got this. What is she going to do with a single water? She could flow. Um, but unfortunately, she can't because there's no water where she is. She could get ready to transmute later. Unfortunately, water and earth doesn't combine to let her do anything. So, she could get ready for a transmute. She could get ready for a restore. But, and the main thing she's going to do is she is going to do an inscribe.
And that's a big deal because that's either going to let her um you know, put a rune out, get a benefit from where she put it, and either lock in one of these in-game scorings or use one of these special powers that we haven't even looked at. Although Jen looked at these as part of setup, so she knows what they are. I think she's definitely going to do that. But here's the deal. If she were to inscribe a rune where she is right now, it's a terrible place to do it. She gets two points. That's it. That's nothing. So, here's what Jen Jen wants to go someplace first using her mare. She could go anywhere except here or here or here or here because the mayor doesn't like other animals. and she wants to go to a place where if she inscribes a rune, she gets something big like this. That's where she's going. All right. So, Jen is going to use the mayor to go up there, which is going to give her corruption, unfortunately.
But when she inscribes the rune, she will be able to recruit either well, her choice, get five points or recruit a fairy. And I think that's what she's going for. She'd like to come over here, but there's an animal and her horse won't take her to this space because that would let her get another upgraded spell. If she comes up, she can't come over here because of that animal, but she could come here. She could get another um harmony and a potion. Potions are nice cuz one, they're worth a point at the end of the game and they are a wild for any of the regular tokens. They cannot replace moons or suns, but they can No, no, no. They c they can replace anything except for the special animals like your familiars and uh your creatures once you start recruiting them. So, but Jen can't come to that one because the animals scare her horse away. So, Jen's going to go over there, recruit a fay, cleanse, and she's going to get corruption, but she's going to cleanse corruption. She'll have to so that she'll be able to get the maximum use out of that fay immediately. And then she's still got this water. Oh, she is bummed about that.
Now, here's the deal. Instead, she could go like this. The horse would let her go to limited places, but if she wants to, she could go like this to convoke, and that would let her go to these places that the horse won't go because it's scared of the animal. So, but here's the problem. All that does is moves her over, lets her do the thing. Whereas, if she uses the horse, she also gets to make progress on a progress track. So, that is more powerful, but it's more limiting. So, she's still got to figure out what's she going to do with this thing. She's got to lock it in now. She could set herself up to walk to flow down the river or to go visit, right? But her only green is tied up here. But next turn, she knows for a fact that that cinder is going to come out because it has to. Round three, she is going to whisper to somebody, which means in round three, she'll have to be in position to whisper to them. So, it kind of makes sense to set up to flow later on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz here's what she's thinking. She's going to come up here. She's going to get the ferry.
Next round, she'll flow down the river to get over here to whisper to this. Oh, wait. No, no. What's she whispering to? She's whispering to the earth. She's whispering to the earth. Oh, she has to come over there. Arg. So, she won't be able to flow. Oh, why did I lock this in? That was a mistake. Um, but I it wasn't a mistake. The original plan, we were just going to go over and we were going to talk to it because Jen wanted to move up on that track as well, which she didn't. All right. Anyway, so she's setting herself up for two. She might do this turn. She might do it in a future turn, but she's definitely going to cleanse and and inscribe. She's definitely doing those two things for sure. Meanwhile, what am I thinking about? Um, right.
I've got I've got I could I could whisper to the air golem again and it'd be full effect, but I'd have to get to the air golem. How could I get to the air golem? Oh, I don't know. By soaring. That's not a bad idea. How about I do that? How about I soar over to my buddy the air golem and I whisper to the air golem and tell him to go do something else and I'll get the full benefit of it. I'll move on the track again. Like it a lot. So then that leaves me with a purple and a green. And I want to always be advanced transmuting, but I have to trash it. So I'm going to trash this green to get other stuff. And one of those things could combine with this purple. What is this purple going to combine with? Let's get ready to do another inscribe, which I'll ultimately trash this, but I'm getting ready to do it later. Fine. Okay. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Boom. So I have chosen, Jen has chosen, Jen is first. And so right out of the gate, Jen is going to Oh, wait. Oh, wait a minute. Jen can get to a golem. Astra will not come visit this or this golem because the animal will totally come visit the wild golem. Talking to the wild golem. Uh, but still this green is in the way, so that's kind of a bummer. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, never mind. Right. So, Jen is first of all going to uh use Astra to um to ride up here. There she is. She entered a corruption zone, so she takes a corruption and it goes in her discard pile. She'll have to clean up later, but hey, it's just an opportunity to turn this into harmony. All right, so she uh did that. There was no animals, so that was fine. And she moves forward. She can move forward on the green track, the blue track, or the white track. Her choice. And they're all good choices. If she moves forward on the green track, she'll get another ember. So, she'll be less likely to be stuck in this situation, and she'll be able to deploy a bear. But if she moves forward on the white track, that's what she's doing.
She is going to move forward uh on a white track, which gets her her second owl. She will put the owl up here. And she gets an owl token. But not just the token. Since this is the first time she's gotten an owl token, she befriends the owls. So Jen has got her first helper card. Right now, unfortunately, like always, this go she won't be able to use this, but on a layer turn, this can either be an air token or it can activate the owl power. And there are two choices here. This one, well, first of all, this is wrong.
This is literally a mistake with the prototype. This implies that you could just move an owl wherever you want, but it's supposed to be like the call action, like call wildlife. This symbol should be this. bring an owl specifically to you, do the restoration associated with an owl, an air restoration, and then move up on the air track. So, uh, whenever she uses this, she gets a really nice she gets to control where the owls are. She get she gets more restoration on the board, which is more points, and she makes more progress on the path for air, which gives her other bonuses. Now, instead, this little owl can come over here. Although, if you use it here, you lose it. But this is how you can score owls. I started to talk about this earlier. Owls like being um spread out in adjacent zones. And um the more adjacent tiles that have one or more owls on them, the more points it's worth. Like in this example, hey, here's four zones that have at least one owl. So that is three points. If you if one of these two owls were right there, that would be five zones. It'd still be three. But if you can get six zones with owls in them, that's five points or seven points. This uh you know, this has some owls, but they don't apply because they're not part of the contiguous group. So remember earlier, Jen was bringing owls from over here to over here. She was thinking long term about trying to spread them out. I mean, she's just put an owl over there. She gets an owl over here, over here. If she gets owls spread out into four areas, she could
ultimately score more points for those owls. Um, and in the meantime, using this is letting her move and manipulate the owls to get into position. So, um, all three of the animals, the owls, the bears, and the otter work the same way. You can move it's it's like an upgraded version of call wildlife and or if I because you can collect more owl tokens. This is the first one. So, we got this when we got the first one, but if you you've got multiples, you could do one or both of these actions depending on if you pull them out of your bag. So anyway, this has to wait for later though because it goes into her discard pile. Hopefully she'll draw it soon. But in the meantime, Jen now has a friendly horse and friendly owls to join her crusade. Okay, so all of that, how did that happen? Oh, because it was Yeah, because she moved up here and mayor let her move forward and that was her turn.
Okay, it is my turn. I have totally forgotten what I am doing, of course. Oh, I am soaring over here to visit. I can go to any uh air area, but I want I don't want to get corruption. So, I'm coming over here. And remember, when you soar, you may place a restoration of the type of any type where you land. So, hey, how about Oh, here's a problem. So, I can restore over here. It's a freebie. Normally, you have to spend two tokens to restore. I'm getting to do this for free thanks to Breeze. Here's the problem. The only ones I can do are corruption. So, I'll do it. And guess what? I just got a corruption. Boom. I'm going to have to cleanse later. Okay. Say love. So, I got that as a free bonus thanks to Breeze. And that was me soaring over so I can whisper to Breeze again the same way I did before and move up more on that track. Okay.
Um, that was my first turn. It is now Jen's second turn. Jen is going to advance inscribe and she has to trash this moon and the air goes into discard. And so this is the first time Jen is over here. She can put her one of these six runes in this spot to get five points. Um or this spot to get a fay helper. She's going to do that one. And now here's the interesting thing. Two of these are um whatchamacall. Once they're both gone, this corruption will go away. Um, but both of these have to get eliminated before the corruption goes away. So, Jen is going to take this. So, the corruption isn't gone yet, unfortunately. But she immediately gets any fa creature she wants because it doesn't get specify a color here. And she is going to put any of these tokens in that spot. Um, let's get the fay first. Fay first. No, no, no. Here's the deal. Let's figure out which token.
Remember, she was thinking about putting the air token, but she wanted to put that here or here. Actually, the best place to put the air token would be here because then, hey, there's air air um air air. And then another air over there. So, this one could have more air. So, she's still thinking about putting this air one in this zone, which will get her three points and set up for a bunch of air um restoration. So, she's got to pick one of these other ones, and they all do different things. This air one, there's one for earth, and there's one for water, and there's one for wild magic as well. They all work the same. Just have it in the epicenter of a lot of earth, water, air or magic restoration. These ones are different. This one is have this rune as part of a chain of just more and more places. Just get at least one restoration in a long chain and put that rune somewhere in that chain and then you get two points for every tile in that chain. That's what that one is. This one is four points for each of your runes um in this location and adjacent. So that's interesting because if Jen were to put this one here and use it for this scoring. So, if Jen does that and then she puts a rune here, here, here, and here. Um, she would get one, two, three, four, five. Five time four. This would be a 20 point scoreer. If she puts all her runes in these areas, but as soon as
she does that, I can see she's done that. And then maybe I want to put runes in there. But that's the thing. She doesn't have to do that. She could wait. There are two runes here. But here's the thing. She's got to decide. Is she ever going to do any water cleansing? If not, she could say, "Hey, I'm going to put this one in." Not because I plan on cleansing a lot of water around this area, but instead because I want to override that power with one of these six powers. And these are all amazing. Let's take a second and look. And let's not forget, in addition to choosing which of these powers Jen is gonna override this power with, she also has to pick a um a fair a fay creature for herself. So, she's got three instant powers. These mean she'll play it and it'll just instantly do something and then it's done. So, make a magic.
Advance one space on any path. Upgrade any spell but get one corruption. That's awesome. gain one water or air um fairy and two harmony. So, you could use it immediately. Wow. Um and remember she I mean so she could get two fairies this turn. One for that token and one for the splash cast or whistle route. Um get it get an air fairy specifically which we already looked at them. Upgrade one of her earth spells so it'll make um you know spells a different spell more powerful and get two corruption. So, she could do one of those right now or she could get one of these permanent powers. All righty. So, healing travels. When you move your druid, you can purify or gain one point once per turn. Whenever you move, doesn't matter how you do it. Remember, Jen's going to move a lot with her horse. She gets to So, if she moves in, right, you can purify or gain a point.
Purify means um get rid of corruption. If Jen has this power, she's moving all the time. She'll be clearing out that corruption all the time. So, she won't have to worry about going into corrupt areas anymore if she's doing healing travels. If she has an elemental return, anytime she does the unbind action, she gets four points instead of two. So, that's another thing, too. You could get rid you get a lot of corruption, you can get rid of it by binding it. And this means turn corruption into four points instead of two points. That's nice. Or a foundation of power. When you place an earth restoration, you can purify. Okay, that one she's she's decided she's decided she's really focusing on air. She doesn't know if she's going to do a lot of earth restoration, so I think she doesn't care about that one. But then she's still got five more to choose from. Oh my goodness, that's a tough one. Honestly, these are both great permanent powers, but I think Jen's looking at these instant powers.
Um, get another upgraded. So, um, she would upgrade her soaring power or her, what's the other one? She could upgrade her soar or her cleanse. [clears throat] So, cleansing could double up. So, she could get rid of corruption that way really well. But, no, no, no. This is too much fun. Jen's going to do a splash cast. All right. Nice, nice, nice. So, Jen has placed it here. She is going to override the basic power with an advanced power with a with an enchantment. So there it goes. And um this says gain one water or air uh fairy and then after that get anyone she wants. So Jen's got some decisions to make. Does she want to air or fairy? We already saw the air. Here are the water ones.
Um, oh wait, no, no, that's an air one. That's a water and an air one. Where are the other two? Here's the other water one. And here is the other air one. Right. So, we've seen those air ones. What are these guys? So, get the little whisper or the glimmerglide. Oh, I know Jen loves this one. Unbind zero one or two tokens whenever you activate glimmerglide. So, this is a way to thin out your deck, get rid of up to um, you know, a ton of corruption all at once. And then also, if you have enough harmony, in addition to that, you can choose any fully prepared spell and perform its action without so you get to do that spell twice in one turn. Boom. Or whisper, advance your lowest path. So, just advance on paths and get bonus to the weakest one. Or advance on it twice.
once and then a second time if you got the stuff to spend. And then remember we already have these two that she could recruit. Oh my gosh. And then because this lets her recruit anything she wants. You know what? This is too much. Maybe she should take the five points instead because now she can pick one of these two which is hey move to any forest you want and if uh you know so this just get around fast. Got another way to get around. Um, and this one is, you know, just do any kind of restoration wherever you are. And as an upgraded thing, if you got the harmony, place restoration of any kind on an adjacent do where you are and adjacent so you can start making those chains if you're trying to score for those. The bunny purify um from your token bag or spent normally can only purify the stuff that's on the board. This is purify from anywhere and then use the ability of any other fairy including its own ability again or the ether drake. So this will give her another these will both give her magic tokens which I think she would like fire so she can do more cleansing and do more um yeah I think she's going to take one of these two because remember she gets anyone she wants. So, this one is, hey, advance on any track and then, oh, it's very expensive for harmony to gain a reward from a different path um at the same position as the moved marker you just moved.
That's really cool. Jen just wants to climb those tracks, right? Okay. So, she gets this, right? There's a token for all of them. So, she gets a little dragon token. And normally, this would go on her discard, but if she wants to, she can spend her harmony. So she can do that this turn. So let's do that. So there went her harmony. So she's doing another action this turn. BUT THAT WAS JUST ONE OF the two um fairies from that. Now she gets again one of the water or one of the air fairies as well. Oh my goodness. Which means she's bag building like crazy. So she's getting more colors in her bag. She's getting more powers. Which one of these is she going to take? All right. All right. All right. Um, I think Jen likes g getting super unbinds rather than regular unbinds because since she didn't take that power that lets her get rid of corruption as she moves around, which I I'm starting to regret not taking that power. So, oh, by the way, the splash cast, I forgot she has two harmony. She has more harmony, right? Don't forget that. So, that means she'll be able to, you know, lock and load these animals as well. Let's Leah, let's go on ahead and get a whisper All right. And so the rest go back here and we get the whisper wag token and she will spend a harmony. So she suddenly has two more action she gets to do this turn boom boom boom
right right. So yeah, Jen, even just we're only in the second of seven rounds and Jen has set herself up for a big she's practically got an army of forest helpers now um with associated tokens that she'll be able to use for the rest of the game. And she still has to cleanse as well. Yeah, she may not be whispering. That'll come next turn, which means she's got to get over here to have that guy to whisper to, but oh man, this is a big payday. And she's going to get to do both of these actions this turn. Um very, very nice. But we come back to me and I say, "Hey, time to whisper and say goodbye to this to my good buddy who says,"Oh, would you like another power?" And I say, "Yes, buddy, please. And which one of these do I want?" When you gain a wildlife token, I haven't gained any wildlife tokens yet, but you know what? I'm about to. And that means you just get to deploy them immediately. Or after drawing from my bag, I can Yeah, I'm less excited about those. But I I'll go ahead and when I get uh wildlife tokens, I get to deploy them immediately. Oh, but only if I spend harmony, which means I I can't do as much with fairies. But maybe I'm not going to do very much in the way of fairies. Maybe I stay away from the fairies. And then this becomes another way for me to spend harmony. Sure, let's go with that. So I whisper. I get my second power from him.
I tell him to go someplace else. And I'll just tell him to not go very far. I'll just tell him to go here. And then I tell him, "Hey, go on ahead." Because you know what? I could be going for putting my air token in the middle of all of these spaces. I could totally go for that and there's a token for me and I just move forward and I can get a ferry or I can upgrade a power. And if I just decide I'm not going to go for the ferry so much then I'm going to upgrade an air power and I think it'll be the inscribe even though I've um you know so my inscribe used to take the fire now it doesn't and you'll notice this stays here. So now, and I've got air tokens of plenty. I just need one air token. And then I can start inscribing down here and try to lock in the big points for all these air before Jen does the same thing since now I've got three air that I've restored in this area. And Jen's only done two. So that was it for me.
And um right. Oh, and I I put that and I moved forward and I got that bonus. And then it's Jen's turn again. And so she can start moving forward on the lowest path and on any path she wants. She can still cleanse to get rid of this. Um which means boom. Now when she activates this one, she can spend both of these and move forward twice on her lowest path. Nice, nice, nice. Things are starting to speed up, folks. And we're just getting started. What's next? I'm not quite sure, but I think I'm going to stop right there because that should give you a pretty good idea of the overall flow of Whisperwood. And now, if you'd like to hear some final thoughts, well, first of all, please remember folks, this was a sponsored preview. And with that out of the way, oh my goodness, folks, this game is gigantic.
Um, both in terms of table presence, it is a monster. So, you got to know that going in. And if you're playing with just two players like me and Jen, it's it's reasonable. But I would imagine playing four players, oh my goodness. One of the reasons that I mentioned just briefly in the rule book that even though what you're supposed to do is spread all these familiar cards all out, so there's stacks of all these cards all over the place, I found it's much more cost or space effective to say, "Hey, give everybody their own set of cards and then it's just a single stack instead of like 20 stacks all over the place." But even still, even with little uh space saving tips like that, this game is a devourer of tables. But that's okay because it's worth it. because I am tempted to say this is the heaviest, most ambitious bag builder the board game uh hobby has ever seen. I have played most bag builders, not all of them, but most of them and this is so far above and beyond and Orlon or you know a Warp's Edge or Life of Amazonia.
so many of them out there and you know um you know back building is a wonderful super compelling uh gameplay mechanism. You know it it provides you know the fun and you know you know kind of push your luck drama of a deck builder with just the tactile joy of reaching into a bag finding what you're going to find and hoping for the best. You know that really elevates it. And um you know, while this game definitely borrows from, you know, I'm not going to say the original bag builder, although it might be, but certainly the game that popularized bag building, Orlleó, this game goes so far above and beyond. This is like Orlone with every expansion for Orlon all on at the same time. I I should warn you, you might think because this from Cardboard Alchemy that, oh, the Flamecraft people, the Critter Kitchen people, I love those games.
Those are fun little gateway or gateway plus games. AND OH MY GOSH, this is certainly just as pretty as those games. I should totally don't or at least hold on because this is as far away from a gateway as you can get. This is a big sprawling beast of a game that is going to take you all afternoon and there are so many different ways. I have not seen a bag builder except for maybe life of Amazonia that gives you so much variability of how you can use those tokens that you pull out of the bag and as you build and you know and and and deck thin as well or bag thin as well to try to control so you can get exactly what you need when you need it. Um I mean it's just your your options expand exponentially over the course of this game. You start out drawing five, then you're drawing six, then you're drawing seven a turn. You've got powers that will let you get extra ones. You've um if you've got enough harmony, you can get extra ones that you can activate on the same turn when you recruit.
Everybody starts with a handful of six super mega powers that replace the mega scoring opportunities if you want to or you can focus on mega scoring. There are three different progress tracks that are full to the brim of really cool things. You only got to see I only made it up so far on one of them, but they all have unique feels. Um, that means if you specialize in otter as opposed to owls, you're going to be getting access to different bonuses, you know. Um, and it's just amazing. It is stunning to look at. And I just got the regular edition with these cool little um, you know, standies and whatnot. If you go check out the crowdfunding page, the deluxe version has gorgeous looking miniatures that actually light up, which is super duper cool as well. It This game is absolutely brilliant. And both Jen and I, well, here's the deal. Jen and I, these days, we find ourselves having a tougher and tougher time mustering, no matter how good a game is, mustering enthusiasm for a game that is long, like all afternoon long. And I mean, what is the official uh length of this game supposed to be? Let me let me look on Board GameGeeek. Uh, right.
Supposedly uh a 2 hours to two to threeh hour game. And you know what? Maybe for regular players, yeah. But a two to three hour game for me and my wife Jen, that's a three and a half to five and a half hour game because, well, my wife is a very slow player who really likes to crunch through all the options. And it's rare. I've seen bag building that gives you more flexibility of how to tweak and massage um you know, and you know, deal with luck. I mean, you can lock something in and save it for later. You can recall it if you decide that's not going to work for you. there. You have so much control over the bag building in this game, but you are still at the end of the day, you know, at the whim of luck. But, you know, take the super amazing overpowered um unique powers of a game like Voyages of Marco Polo, give you a whole handful of them to unleash at various points throughout the game. A very compelling Oh, another nice thing too. I really appreciate this game because we are working in a shared board. I could totally imagine the designers might have gone down a road where players were bumping each other and knock each other around, but nope.
This is a very peaceful live and let live game. I mean, the most we can ever do is, "Oh, you thought you were going to heal that forest? I got there and healed it before you." And that's about it. I mean, this game uh, you know, doesn't really have a lot in the way of hate drafting. All of the different animals and forest spirits are available to everybody. Nobody gets frozen out of anything in this game. So, nobody's going to prevent you from doing much more than maybe scoring a few little points here or there that really don't add up to that much in the grand scheme of things. So, it's very, very satisfying. It's very deep. Players are constantly making the board evolve and creating opportunities for you. Oh my god, you cleared out the corruption of that area. Now, I can go in there without getting corruption. Oh, and by the way, the corruption, too. You know, you don't have a good deck builder or a good bag builder or a good X builder if you don't have something that will occasionally go into your deck or your bag or whatever.
that um had that it has the potential to gum up the works and here it's corruption but I love that the fact that dealing with corruption in this case the main two ways to get rid of the corruption so you don't weaken all your powers which doesn't stop you I mean you can afford you know I'm just taking tons of corruption it all just means is all my powers are a little bit weaker and maybe I'll lose a few points at the end of the game or maybe even throughout the game but the nice thing is the corruption does not take up your draws you still get to draw your full amount of tokens every turn. And if you draw some corruption, you just have to weaken some of your powers, but you still get to do everything you want to do. But then getting that corruption, that's just an opportunity you have to turn that corruption into harmony via purify power. And harmony is an incredibly valuable resource if you are going down the route towards recruiting more fairy creatures because they let you activate them faster and make them more powerful.
So maybe you want to collect a bunch of uh corruption because you're really good at converting it into harmony so you can get the really super use of your I mean there's just so much so many interlocked systems that just dovetail into each other beautifully and thematically as well. I mean this does feel like a very very strongly thematic game. Um, and uh, yeah, I I was just starting to say, generally speaking, Jen and I these days were a little bit hesitant about a game that's going to make us sit down all afternoon, but um, what is it? Brad and Aaron and Christian, you got us. You have hooked us in. And I don't think we would ever turn down an all afternoon game of this. And there are a few games like that means this game joins Ark Nova. It joins Galactic Cruise as an allday game that won't scare me and Jen away or make us say, "Why can't it have a a prelude expansion to speed it up?"
Again, don't feel like we need it here because it's always moving so fast. Even if it's an epic experience, it is a blast from start to finish. It is satisfying from start to finish. Every time you play, based on the enchantments you get, um you are going to it's going to push you in very different directions. Uh, it's it's very impressive, let's just say. And that folks was the preview for Whisperwood. Thanks so much for watching. Have a very nice day. Talk to you later. So long. Bye-bye.