Spirit Train Board Game Kickstarter Preview
Transcript
All aboard. It's time to hop on the spirit train. The final journey. The train has chosen you as its next conductor, guiding lost souls through the realm between worlds. This is an awesome, beautiful, beautiful looking Kickstarter that I am so excited to check out. Um, this is their preview page. It's going live tomorrow morning. So, now by the time you watch this. Um, and I'm going to go over it and tell you all about it and see if you should back it. Um, so first up, if you back within the 48 hours, you get what I have called the Choo Choo Caribou uh for hilarious. And then, um, I laughed so hard when I saw that the first, uh, version of the game is the Choo Choo edition.
Um, so this is very Studio Gibli inspired. um even um Spirited Away kind of inspired uh where this train is going to take on these beautiful souls into the afterlife. Um and so you're going to take on the role of the conductor. You're going to build out your 3D train here if you get the collector's edition, by the way. But at $99 already, I can tell you this is worth it. Um because of everything that we're about to take a look through. I did take a sneak peek at this earlier. Um so, but you're going to see you get these cards here. You're going to draft them behind a uh hidden wall and then slide them into your your train here. And then the spirits themselves are acrylic standes that can sit inside the train. Um this is the base game version that you see here with the the dice tower and the uh cardboard with the standies.
Um look at all of this content. So this one here is the uh collector's edition. Now, there's a lot of sim simultaneous play and a lot of combos uh that look really cool inside of this. So, let's hop down to Oh, and of course, no AR AI art. This beautifully handdrawn art by Marissusa Gord. Uh I This is stunning. It's so amazing. Um so, there are 50 plus cardboard standies that come with the game. These will be replaced with acrylic standies if you get the collector's edition. Um, you get um the challenge cards, which I don't know what they do yet. You get the spirit cards, and this is you can see where your spirits can actually live inside of the rooms in the train, and you want to get them in their favorite rooms, um, which I think are depicted by these here. Um, they are going to be sending me a copy so I can actually learn the game a little bit.
Uh, which will be cool. Uh although I don't know if it's the super duper deluxy thing with the cardboard 3D train or if it's the flat 3D uh the non 3D version. Um and so here you can see the acrylic standies here. I think that's just a 3D render. Uh so why you want to back now the deluxe conductor's edition has the 3D train will not be available outside of Kickstarter. So, this is 100% going to give you Kickstarter FOMO if you do not back this version because this is going to be on the table. It's going to look amazing and everybody gets this train. It's not one train. Each player gets a train. Um, no AI artworks. You are supporting an artist. The conductor mini expansion um is available for purchase.
discounted pricing over retail. So 22 to 30% off of MSRP. So what do you get? The main board. Um we've got like a spirit track here, the death card because you know they're trying to pay for the afterlife. You've got your screens, your station, and your tower. Your train board. So here you see this is the basic version where your train board is just flat and you're going to be just putting in uh flat based your rooms here. The room scrolls. So, these are your icon references, your kind of your player aid here. 47 different room tiles, four sets of 10 starting rooms, and seven bonus rooms. Um, so you can put like a library in your train. Oh, of course, a game room in your train, an art studio. And so, there's a little bit of a tetronal puzzle here. See, because you see these are tetronomal pieces that you're going to put into your train here. So, let's see. We got a two by two. So, like boom, boom. There's a single one spot that I can stick the lounge up in there. Um, but then I don't have enough space for this library. If I put the library in here, here, and what's that? That looks like maybe one or two spaces over one space. And then I got this one.
Very interesting puzzle to be had there. Um, 50 different spirit cards. It looks like these are multi-use cards depending on which way they go. Event cards say you not have a game based off of, you know, passing in the afterlife without events. I think um interaction cards. Ethern uh ethereal challenge cards, punchboard standies, punchboard tickets, acrylic memory tokens, wooden memorial blocks. There's just a ton of content in the base game alone. Um with a lot of great production quality pieces here. So, they've actually come out with a very good price for this. Okay, so let's take a look at the conductor's edition. Um so, you get five train track boards. That's for your train to sit on top of with the 3D trains. Uh, no barking deer, just a regular deer. My choo choo caribou. Uh, the cardboard standies are upgraded to acrylic standies, including this real life doggo. I love doggos. Um, 57 chunkier room tiles. Um, so five sets of 10 starting room tiles plus seven bonus tiles. uh versus the first one was five bonus tiles, correct?
Uh main game four sets. Okay, so there'll be five sets and seven bonus rooms and then we're going to get from four sets to five sets plus bonus rooms. So I does that increase the player count then to five players? Wondering about that. It does because we got five trains. uh than the large storage box for the trains. Oh, so this is a twobox solution that I'm not as much of a fan of. Um but I'm imagining that's because you don't have to take the trains apart each time. Uh oh, literally right there, as I say it, once they're built, you don't have to take them apart again. Uh so that's actually kind of nice then. Although honestly, they're so beautiful. when I'm not playing them, I would probably stick them on my board game shelf and that box would maybe just find a new home. Um, so the Choo Choo Edition, 59 bucks. All of that stuff for 59 bucks.
Those wooden pieces, the um cardboard standies, all of that cardboard plus some resin tokens. That is a phenomenal price. $100 for that deluxe uh conductor's edition version. I think this also a phenomenal price for how much more cardboard you're getting there. But now we also have this other level, the golden ticket. Um, let's see if we need this one. So, you got the base game, the expansion, and the lasso. So, this one's adding a solo and a co-op mode. Um, I don't really like that that that's added that way, but you can back those separately. So, if you do want the base version and then you want solo and co-op modes, you can get these ex uh separately. Um, however, it's um all of the acrylic standes, the large room tiles, the applicable stretch goals. Um, so for 99 to 79, so for $80 more is the Kindred Spirits expansion and the Lost Souls campaign. That does sound like a lot, but down here in the add-ons, we're about to see why. So, that conductor expansion itself is only 12 of that $80.
Uh, if you didn't back in the first 48 hours, you can get the enamel pin. The Kindred Spirits is 30 of that $80. And then finally, the Well, that's a lot of content for that expansion. And then this Lost Souls campaign is $60. So, this is a solo co-op version of Spirit Train. So, you can decide and pick and choose here. Like if you don't want all of this extra content, you could go for your conductor's version plus the campaign or the conductor's version plus the kindred spirits depending on what you do. If you are a solo and a campaign type of person, I would suggest you get conductor plus the expansion. But if you are a uh solo and campaign person, I'd actually say don't buy the don't skip out on the expansion.
Instead, get the uh golden ticket collection version. Uh spend that 80 bucks extra and get all of the content. Then let's keep going down. What else we got here? Um, the campaign of course comes in spoiler-free boxes. So, how do you actually play this game? Um, you're going to interact with the spirits on your train, help the spirits cross over, and you're going to collect spirit tokens. The player with the most points at the end uh earns the honor of receiving a portrait on the wall of greatness aboard the spirit train as seen below. Beautiful. Um, so one event card is drawn at the beginning of each round. Uh, let's see. Someone unexpected slips away in the neighborhood. All players get minus two something two something to all players. So we get some events with some flavor text and some beautiful art. So you're like reading an entire story here. Start of each day, your conductors, which is us, choose rooms to add to their train behind the cover of their player screen. Um it looks like the player screen has a nice little player aid on top of it as well.
Oh, look, with a helpful player reference. They thought of everything on this. Um there are 10 starting rooms. the library, the observatory, the confectionary, the lounge, the art studio, and the ballroom, plus seven bonus rooms to discover. Very cool. All rooms are doublesided as well. Very cool. Uh rooms provide base actions according to their shape and size, while the number of rooms affects the train's speed, energy, and turn order. So, we can see here that it looks like we've got possibly the red being the action or these different colors being the actions because it's also saying that we have speed, energy, and turn order. Okay, so blue is the action most likely. Red is the speed tickets, green is the energy, and purple is the turn order possibly if we're reading that like gamers do. uh rooms will be dropped into your train from the openings above um or just placed flat on the board if you get the base version.
Then you're going to activate the spirits and provide additional actions with the number of spirits you can activate determining by their mood. Happier spirits are more active. One, two here. By strategically placing active spirits into their favorite rooms, you can maximize the actions available each round. So, the pig likes to be in the cafe. Okay, so the cafe here. So, looks like I'm getting three something. Um Um and if they're in the cafe, I get this additional action. Looks like So, it looks like you get this and this if they're in their separate separate room. I found an ancient room reference scroll for everyone. This should be helpful in the quickly remembering what each room does. Okay, so each room's icons are on there. Uh you'll go through the five phases of each day. During the first phase, players simultaneously collect tickets and memory shards as well as adjust spir spirit moods as needed.
Memory shards, tickets, and spirit boots. Okay. In the second phase, conductors take turns moving their train through different regions such as forest, meadows, cities, mountains, and the sea. That's where the main playerboard comes in handy. Uh they might pick up spirits waiting at train stops or challenge other conductors to a train prank war. Oh, so if we actually end up on each other's spaces, it looks like there's going to be some player interaction. That's very cool. Uh, in the third phase, players take turns interacting with the spirits on their train, keeping them happy. Uh, minus one spirit mood, plus two memory shards. That's you get to hear for scaring hush and hecko. Floria gives great hugs. A uh, and then during the fourth phase, conductors may fuse together memory shards. So, all of those shards that we collected throughout all of that, spending them to awaken a spirit's core memory. They then place a memorial block on the spirit's card to enhance and expand the actions available on it. Oh, that's cool. You can upgrade your cards. Uh, the spirit train will gain different amounts of energy depending on what kind of memory you have unlocked. Okay. And then we got the four different memories here.
Twilight can be upgraded with memorial blocks to provide plus one ticket per turn. I think that's N plus one strength. Okay, so it's down here when it comes to facing off with death. Then in the last phase of each day, players spend the tickets to house spirits from their hand or help spirits cross over to the true afterlife. So it looks like I'm going to have to buy my spirits out of my hand or they're going to be uh discarded. Uh, spirits are most comfortable crossing over in a region they are most familiar with, whether that be the forest, mountains, etc. Uh, so be aware of where your train is currently running through. New cycle begins once the conductor reaches the train station at the end of the map. Uh, and there is three cycles. Each player will gain rewards based on how far they are on the map at the time. Then reset the train depot to start a new cycle.
Then you're going to face death. At the end of each of the three cycles, death will appear in one of its many forms to lure spirits away from your train. These are the ethereal um cards that it mentioned at the front at the top of the thing. Uh conductors and their spirits must work together to send death away or collectively suffer the consequences. So that looks like there will be a little bit of um consequences here. Oh, there's a rule book I could have read ahead of time. Look at that. That would have been smart. We got the entire lore here. Stretch goals. So, linen finished cards. Yes, please. Thank you. Acrylic standes. Premium wooden pieces. Linen finish on the rule book. Very nice. A custom box organizer. Very nice.
Spot UV on the box. Very nice. So, that's all coming stock at the launch of the Kickstarter. Then, we've got some Conductors exclusive edition train depot illustration for the storage box. Very cool. um it's your first time on Kickstarter, which this is kind of a mass market um idea of a game. Uh so that's why they're explaining Kickstarter because there not everybody is um as well versus us. Um retailers are okay. Good. They didn't provide um retail information um freely, which is good because I don't like it when they do that because if they do and they say it's 50% off for retailers, I'm like, "Well, then I'll just buy it in retail because uh I'm getting it here." But you're getting 30% off on Kickstarter of the MSRP. So, that's actually uh beneficial to get it on Kickstarter than wait for retail. Plus, it's going to be very popular. Um we've got our timeline. So they are expected to fulfill in October of next year. Very cool.
Um so that is a long production cycle but that is to be expected because right now uh factories are about to get backed up. Um shipping cost 19 to20 US that is also pretty standard um for shipping cost. And then remember in Canada, uh, the UK, EU, and really much the everywhere else you're going to have to pay taxes. And in the US, you're going to probably have to pay tariffs. Yes. As required. You can learn more about their story. Uh, looks like the pledge manager will be done through backer kit at the end. Very cool. And then let's take a look at the actual backing process. So our rewards here.
So, as I mentioned, uh we've got the Choo Choo Edition, which is the base game, um to which you could add on an enamel pin, which you will get for free if you back within the for 48 hours. You can add on the mini expansion. You can add on this Kindred Spirits expansion. You can add on this uh an extra retail copy. Um vaccin doesn't look like there's any kind of group buy option. So, if anyone was looking at a group buy and the conductor's edition, you can also add on as your expansion or you can go straight to the conductor's edition and add on the expansions that you would like. So, this is probably where I'd recommend most people come in and back. Grab the conductor's edition, grab the mini expansion, and grab the Kindred Spirits expansion. And then if if you are a solo player and if you are a campaign player, I am not. um then pop on up to the golden ticket collection instead. Um because why not get all of the content that I just explained plus the solo and campaign version of the game. I wish them all the luck. Make sure you um take a subscribe and follow to my Twitch channel. We will live stream a playthrough of this once it comes in. It's on its way here. Um, but it's got to go to my US box and then to my Canada box. So, it will take a little bit. Um, but I'm very excited for this and I definitely recommend you backing
this. It does seem like it's going to be a relatively good game. We've got combos, we have got upgrading of cards, we have got puzzle, uh, and then we've got, of course, an amazing table presents. So, best of luck. I choo choo choose you, Spirit Train. Bye.