How to Teach Duel of Meloch
Transcript
Hey, I'm Jamie from Stonemaier Games, and I am the designer of a game called Jewel of Mellock. And today, I'm hoping to share with you how I teach this game. This is one way that you can teach this game. This isn't a rules video. I'd recommend going to the Watch It Play video for Jewel of Mellock if you want to understand how to how to play this game. Um And this game is many things. It's an expansion for Scythe. It's It's an expansion for Expeditions, and it's also a standalone dueling game for one to two players. It essentially adds a duel mode to both Scythe and Expeditions, and allows you to play as a Scythe player against an Expeditions player. And that leads me to my first point, which is I would probably recommend playing as Scythe versus Expeditions the first time you play this. And if this is the only product that you have in this world, that is your only choice.
However, if you own, for example, Scythe, and you just want to play Scythe versus Scythe, a Scythe versus Scythe duel, you can do that. There's a variant in the rulebook uh that explains the a few different nuances, but otherwise it's consistent rules throughout Jewel of Mellock. You can play a Scythe player against a Scythe player. Same with Expeditions. You can play an Expeditions player versus Expeditions. If you have either if you have Expeditions or if you have the uh Gears of Corruption expansion. Same with Scythe. You don't actually have to own all Scythe stuff to play Scythe versus Scythe. You can even just own Invaders from Afar, and that would give you uh factions and player mats to use against the faction in Jewel of Mellock. Um so, but if for your first game, I'm going to talk about this as if you were playing Scythe versus Expeditions, which is again probably my recommendation if you do that. And if you do that, I would recommend assigning whichever player is more comfortable with Scythe, they should play as the Scythe player. Whichever player is more comfortable with Expeditions should play as the Expeditions player.
Both players have their own reference guides. So, there's a a Scythe rule summary and an Expeditions rules rule summary. They're both in here. And we condensed the rules down to a single double-sided page, so it's pretty condensed compared to what's in the original rule books. Um and if either player is learning either of these games from scratch, they may need to reference the original rule book, but everything they need to know is all is here. Um so, you can potentially learn these games from these rule summaries. Uh and that's the first step. It's a big step because you are deciding what the correct match up is given your level of expertise in these games. And you might be approaching this game as a as someone who has not played Scythe or Expeditions, the learning curve will certainly be higher then. And if that's the case, I'd recommend checking out my videos about how to teach Scythe or how to teach Expeditions.
Point number two is that you can choose really choose either side of the board. There's a big neoprene play mat or not neoprene, but rubber play mat board included in the game. It's double-sided. There's a jungle side and a desert side. Either side is perfectly fine for any game, uh whether it's your first game or your your 10th game. Either side. Also, you're going to put either side of the triumph track on the table. Again, either side is fine. There's no like advanced side or or standard side. Both sides are completely viable. It just leads to replayability in the game when you have these two different board sides and two different triumph track sides. Uh also, you will put one Mellock card in play. You don't need to explain to everyone or to the other player what the Mellock card does yet, but you will put one of those in play. We'll talk about that in a minute.
Point number three is that uh you should emphasize to all players I say all players, it's really just two players here that this is a race to four stars. You are trying to put four stars on the triumph track, and you are only looking at we're really only focusing on the side that is facing you. So, for example, as I orient this, uh you are kind of facing this side. So, let's say you are the Expeditions player. So, you care about these categories down here. You care about getting to these thresholds and then boasting about them, as is a rule in Expeditions. So, these are your goals. These are what you're trying to do. You are racing to get four stars. The game immediately ends when a player reaches four stars. And critically, each of these spots here can only hold one star. So, if for example, uh we'll look at the combat category here. On this side of the board, the first player to win a combat puts a star here and no other player can win stars for winning combat for the rest of the game because they'll have combat, but you cannot put a star on this on this category. That is one category that's that's off the off the table for a player to gain.
Last, uh I'm going to talk about a few important rule differences or or things to keep in mind in terms of rule differences for Duel of Meloch compared to Scythe and Expeditions. The first is that combat is a choice in this game. So, if my Expeditions mech uh moves onto a territory where you have one or more combat units, my movement stops. My movement has to stop. But, for me as an Expeditions player to actually initiate combat, I need to take a vanquish benefit. I need to use vanquish on that territory to actually have combat. So, it's a choice and I even then I actually have a choice. If there's corruption on that territory, I'm deciding, "Do I want to vanquish the corruption or do I want to vanquish vanquish you, the Scythe player?" As for the Scythe player, if they move a combat unit onto a territory where I have my mech or an Expeditions mech, uh their movement stops.
And then, unlike in Scythe, they have a choice. They have the choice to initiate combat or not. Usually, you probably will initiate combat, but I think it's important for players to know that it is a choice in this game. You don't have to do that. The second thing about combat is that there is a completely new set combat cards that you use in Jewel of Mellok, and those combat cards you can also use in games of Scythe. You won't use the original combat cards if you do that. Uh at this point in the game player should or the Scythe player at least will probably have started the game with some combat cards. You can look at them to look at what they do because each combat card has a number, it has a I'll pull it out while I'm talking here. Um it has a number, it has a little ability, and it also has a discard benefit that that either player can use. So if either player has a combat card, and the Expeditions player in duel mode can get combat cards and can spend them in combat.
There's always a discard benefit up here at the top of the card. So on your turn, not in combat but el- elsewhere during during your turn, if you discard a combat card, you can gain that benefit. And actually I pulled a lucky card here because this shows a new icon that is not in Scythe, and so a Scythe player would need to know what to do with this. This means refresh. It means something specific in Expeditions that's already explained in Expeditions, but in Scythe what this means is that you will move your action token onto a different section of your player mat. So you're not removing it from your player mat, you're just moving it to a different section. And what that actually means depending on the timing of when you use it. So if you take like a top row action in Scythe, and then you play a card like this and gain a refresh benefit, and move your token to a different section, you would then perform, if you want to, the bottom row action of the new section. So it lets you potentially combo a top row section a top row action on one section of your player mat, and a bottom row action on another section of your player mat. That's how refresh works for the Scythe player.
And last, uh for related to both combat and and most importantly the the triumph track itself, whenever a player places a star on the triumph track. The other player, as a catch-up mechanism, will draw a mellow card, and I'm going to pull one out here to show you. They will draw a mellow card, and they will place it on the table. And here's what a mellow card looks like. Where are they? Lots of cards in this game. Um they will gain a mellow card. Here we go. Uh and and put it on the table. So, the game started with one mellow card on the table. So, say we started like this. It just It's randomly oriented. Uh we'll have it so this worker is facing me. So, if you placed a star, my catch-up benefit is that I get to draw a mellow card, and I get to place it overlapping this card so that two benefits are facing me. I'll do it this way. So, I can place it like this. You can see from the arrows that these two benefits are facing me. So, I would then gain a worker of my choice, and I would gain a combat card.
And then say it happens again. Say uh Actually, say on your turn then. Or say I am the next player to place a star. And so, you get to place a card. You would then overlap on the top card. You would then overlap a combat card like this. And we'll turn this around as if this is facing you so that these two things are facing you, and you gain these two benefits. So, it's kind of stacked benefits uh and as a catch-up mechanism after the other player has placed a star in Duels of Mallow. Those are the main things that are different about this game in this race to four stars on the triumph track. Uh I'd love to hear your thoughts about how you end up teaching this game because there are different ways to do it depending on how experienced players are with Scythe: The Rise of Fenris Expeditions, and whether or not you're playing Scythe: The Rise of Fenris Expeditions, Scythe versus Scythe, or or Expeditions versus Expeditions. So, I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks.