TEND - Should You Back It? | October '24 - Fresh From The Cellar!

they say in space no one can hear you scream but can they hear you moo today on this episode of fresh from the seller a series where I preview new and upcoming board games we're going to be talking about what may be the coziest game to ever take place in space and certainly the first one to breach the subject of space cows it's tend tend is the newest game from Ivy Studio it's an X and right game on a massive scale it's absolutely dripping with theme and I can't wait to tell you all about it so if you want to know more about tend then might I suggest [Music] hi I'm Alex from M I suggest a game a channel devoted to helping you find your perfect board game and on today's episode of fresh from the Celler we're going to be trying our hand at space farming and talking all about this new game called tend tend is an idilic planetary farming themed Rolland ride or fliping right or blank and right game whatever you want to call it for one to six players from IV Studio who helped sponsor this video Once You' made it all the way through this video and you know everything there is to know about 10 you can go and check out their Kickstarter Campaign which you can find at the link in the description below and while you're there don't forget to hit subscribe and that little bell button so you can get notified when I post new content anyways in today's video I'm going to give you a brief overview of how to play so that you can get the general gist of the game I'm going to talk about some of the things I liked and maybe some of the things I didn't like about the game and then I'm going to talk about the types of people that I think would really enjoy this game my whole goal with all of this is that when you get to the end of this video you should have a great idea of whether or not you want to get this game so anyways let's get into it well 10 be the perfect game for you let's find out shall we [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 10 you'll be playing as space Farmers working for the prestigious Zenith Corporation and your ultimate goal is to craft the perfect Homestead on this new alien planet you'll be carving out your place in the landscape and Gathering a wide variety of resources to load up your cargo manifest and ship it back to Zenith headquarters and whoever can accomplish their goals and put together the best collection of goods over the course of three seasons wins tend is at its core a flip and right game and this means that every round you'll flip over five new tasks that will be available for the whole group to choose from each round requires you to choose the actions on two different cards from the Tas row and resolve them on your own player sheet and everyone at the table will be resolving these actions simultaneously so you don't have to worry about your action getting taken by someone else there's only four main actions that you can take so let's knock them out one at a time the first action is the most open-ended one and that is the tend action when you choose to 10 you'll get to pick one of three different choices you can either till your Fields plant some crops in those tilled fields or water your existing crops and this action is important if you want your homestead to produce valuable and recurring Goods I mean it is the name of the game after all as with all of these main actions you can upgrade your tend action to be able to take more than one option later in the game but you'll have to work your way up to that on your farm you can also fence in some areas to start your herd of space cows or space chickens or even Space Sheep and having animals is a great way to generate more income but it's not technically a part of the tend action so I'll leave that for all of you to discover down the road the next two actions are pretty similar in execution so I'll talk about them at the same time it's chopping and Mining the base game comes with these really cool scratch off cards that have the woods on the top and the m at the bottom if you take either of these actions you'll be able to scratch off a space on the respective area and gain the resource from that space sometimes that space will give you another chop or mine action but more than likely it'll give you a resource that you can use this round you'll have to upgrade your chop and mine actions if you want to excavate efficiently in the bottom half of each of these areas as it takes two chop or mine actions to scratch something off down there but if you make it to the end you'll unlock a new fishing spot which is a great segue to talk about the fourth and final action fishing to fish you'll choose your preferred body of water at the beginning you'll only have the pond to fish in but you can can unlock up to three more areas throughout the game and then you'll roll your black and white diey whatever your result you'll collect the item from the space that the coordinates point you to and you've got to be careful because there are spots on every map that are blank which means you could return from your fishing trip empty-handed but if you want to improve your chances you can always upgrade your fishing rod and add some lures to make the fishing action way more valuable and gather some quality goods for your cargo manifest speaking of the cargo manifest let's talk about what you do with all the stuff you can acquire on your turn when you get a good whether it's a piece of wood or a coin or a fish or whatever you got to spend before the round is over and you can do that in one of four ways first off you can spend it directly on your player sheet to further your progress on the many tracks whether it's action upgrades or energy bars that can get you extra actions or even badges to earn you endgame bonuses it's always good to spend some of your stuff making sure that you can get more stuff later next you can always sell your goods to the corporate commissary to get some quick cash coins are an important way to unlock some key items on your board so especially at the beginning of the game you'll want to Shell out to improve your engine as soon as possible next you can start adding things to your cargo manifest and seeing as your goal is to send back the best collection of samples to Zenith HQ this one is super important as well almost every good has a polyomino shape associated with it and you'll have to puzzle piece those together in your cargo manifest to score you the most points and even earn you extra actions plus you get to use these really cool custom stamp markers that come with the game what a treat anyways the cargo manifest is where the majority of your endgame points are going to come from so make sure you're paying attention to this throughout the whole game and lastly well you could do something nice and give a resource to your neighbor but don't worry there's something in it for you too at the beginning of each round you'll have two neighbor bonus cards one to your right and one to your left that act as orders that you can fulfill throughout the game if you produce a resource that's on one of those cards instead of spending it on your board you can complete the neighbor bonus your neighbor will get that good at the beginning of the next round but you will get the neighbor rewards immediately which can give you some hard defined resources that can really boost your engine you'll also score some points at the end of the game based on how much better of a neighbor you were than the people next to you so in this game it really pays to give things away anyways you'll keep taking turns simultaneously choosing two actions per round and scoring the different seasons objectives at the ends of rounds 5 9 and 12 and at the end of that final round you'll count up your points from those objectives the three areas of your cargo manifest as well as neighbor points and points from completed Badges and whoever has the most points wins anyways that's pretty much all you need to know about the game play so let's jump into my initial thoughts on [Music] tend here's what I think about tend first off as someone who loves a good combo I really enjoy being able to see how different actions helped you gain different resources which in turn unlock new opportunities on your board and I just found myself getting lost in all the different possible combos it really reminded me of another combo e roll and right game about farming called three sisters which I love but it even took that to the next level I think that's a common theme with most IV Studio games is that they're not afraid to push the boundary of what a game can be and say why not more which in this case I think really works in their favor speaking of more this game is not left wanting in the slightest in the production Department I mean between the beautiful art the amazing scratch off cards and the tokens to go with them and the custom markers that double a stand I mean are you kidding me they really threw everything at the wall on this one it seems like everything stuck I mean there were several times while I was playing with folks when we just had to stop and Marvel at the sheer scope of this game and having that with a fliping right is wild but anyways going back to the gameplay one of the things I love the most about 10 was how each task felt really intuitive I mean of course you have to till the fields before you can plant your seeds there and of course you can improve your catch rate if you add a fishing lore even though there's a ton going on on your player sheets the game helps you understand what to do and how to do it really effectively and that is no small feat for a game of this scale plus because the natural progression of your actions makes so much sense it leaves more room to make decisions about the resources that you gain each round and what to do with them and speaking of resources I really liked how the same resources can have different uses as the game goes on I mean at the beginning of the game you got to sell goods for coins so that you can grab some quick upgrades but you always have to be paying attention to your progress in the cargo manifest because if you neglect it for too long you'll be missing out on some big endgame points once you've done all the upgrades that you want to do though coins become way less valuable and finding the Tipping Point of when to switch from coins to Cargo is one of the best challenges in the game and while we're on the subject of cargo I also love the cargo manifest because I am a sucker for the mental gymnastics of a good polyomino game and the fact that they just casually snuck in a great feast for Odin polyomino style puzzle into this game as just like one of these side challenges is crazy work I mean it's even got this awesome little positive player interaction Loop that's nice enough to make those non-combat folks jump for joy but competitive enough to make it worth it for those who prefer a head-to-head face off I generally find myself somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of board game players but I thought it was a great element that makes this game accessible to both parties oh and speaking of parties I didn't even get to mention all of the digital applications that this game is integrated with it's got a digital scratch off app that you can use if you run out of scratchers or if you just want to keep your game table a little bit more tidy and it's got a party mode app allaha jackbox where you can create a unique seed so that you can play with an almost infinite amount of remote players and use the same action cards and same objectives I think both of these ideas are brilliant and really represent the future of what board games can be come now I've been talking for a while about all the things I liked about 10 but there were a few things worth noting that gave me pause and that hopefully will be improved as the game moves toward production first off the hardest part in the game for me was keeping track of all the resources you've gathered and spent and around it's a terrible feeling to realize a turn too late that you actually had one more coin last round that it would have completely changed your whole plan and in my experience this happens more often than it should because especially towards the end of the game players are racking up combos left and right I'd love to see if they could add in some sort of inventory sheet or resource tracker that could help you make sure you don't forget anything and relieve that feeling of accidentally missing out on something and then wondering for the rest of the night how that could have totally changed the outcome of the game I mean not me of course I would never do that anyways the other factor that I ran into is that as with any combo heavy game it's really easy to fall into analysis paralysis even if that's not your usual style I think some of it has to do with the point that I mentioned earlier about having to keep tabs on all the stuff you acquired this round so maybe a Tracker would help this out as well but I also think the player sheets offer that perfect sweet spot of information overload where you feel like if you just had five more minutes you could really analyze all of your options and choose the most optimal one but in reality there's so many options that you'd be there all night that being said on the party mode app I mentioned earlier they've included a roundtime countdown which I love and if I knew that I only had a certain amount of time to make my decisions it would certainly help me be more decisive so it seems like they're already thinking about this one too all that being said 10 still kind of blew my mind [Music] a I mean I might have had steam coming out of my ears by the end of the game but it was totally worth it I had a great time playing this Mega combo making fliping right but this isn't about me so let's jump into my suggestions where I talk about the types of people that this game would be perfect [Music] for this is who I think tend would be perfect for number one if you play video games or board games just to get that surge of dopamine when you hit that Perfect combo and you want to ride that high all night as you see everything you plan out connect just perfectly then you should check this one out number two if you love cozy games that make you think chill games that reward you for helping out your neighbors or just games that include some adorable space animals then you should definitely check this one out and lastly if you're just looking for the next big flip and right game that takes everything that the genre has innovated on over the last few years and provides it to the nth degree and on an absolutely massive scale then might I suggest 10 from IV Studio thanks so much for sticking around for today's episode of fresh from the seller I hope this video gives you a great idea of whether backing tend is for you like I mentioned before tend is crowdfunding now so if you want even more info about this game don't forget to check out the link to the kickstarter campaign below anyways thanks so much for everyone who's supported me so far please don't forget to like comment and subscribe so I can keep growing this Channel and keep helping you find your perfect board game once again this has been a might I suggest a game production and I'm Alex your board game smia signing off [Music]