Drillers Review - A Mech Building Game
Transcript
Hey, I'm Alex from War Game Co. and today I'm reviewing Drillers from CG. Drillers is a one to four player deck building game in which players are going to be building a deck, gathering their mechs, making the way further and further down into the mines, gathering various gems, drilling into the sidewall, drilling further into the mine, building up their tableau over here, and doing all of this faster and better than your opponents before game end is triggered. Before we dive more into this, this channel is sponsored by Alplay. More about them at the end of the video. In Drillers, you're going to be building a deck. That's what this is. This is a deck building game and everything else is kind of layered around that that might be underelling the other things. It's a deck building game. You're going to start off with your hand of cards. You're going to have a different hand hand size depending on the player count, where you are in turn order. And then I'm just going to kind of walk you through a turn because you'll get a good sense of all the various things you can do by seeing a turn play out. So, right now, the main goal, the main thing you want to think about starting off is get your hands on gems. There's more to it, but get your hands on gems. To that end, we want to go further and further into the mine if possible to get our hands on better and better gems. So, right now there's two very basic gems we can have over here.
Let's see what we can do to get our hands on them. So, we're going to start by playing our cards. I'll note that I only have one movement I my starting cards, which is not great because you need to move at least two, one, and then two in order to get down to the first spawn of the mine. So, I need to get my hands on a second movement. The good news is our player boards have default actions. They're less efficient, but we can use them. So, let's kind of walk this through. We're going to start by playing this card. We can go ahead and pay zero fuel in order to gain one movement point. In general, when you are playing a card, you either play it for the bottom section or you discard it to gain the fuel shown on the top section. Then we'll go ahead and play this card. This card will cost us six fuel, but it'll give us three drill points. So, we'll move down to four over there. That's great. And then we'll spend this card over here and again spend another fuel to go ahead and get another drill point. That gives us four drill points. Let's see what we can do with them. The problem is we can't actually get where we're trying to go. So, let's go ahead and start by spending our first movement point. We'll spend that, go down to zero, and then we'll take our mech over here and move it down to the first zone.
That's the first movement point spent. We need to get our hands on a second movement point. So, what are we going to do? We're going to spend three fuel over here. That's a default action. We're down to zero fuel, which is kind of aggressive for the first turn, but it is what it is. And we'll bump up another movement point. And then we'll use that other movement point to go one further down into the uh the mines over here. Now, while at that spot, what can we do? We can go ahead and get our hands on those gems. But you'll notice we have four drill points. We'll spend two of them to get those two and we'll put them down into our display where actually, you know what? Before we do that, before we do that, we'll spend the first two to drill into the drill wall. In general, there's three things you can do with drill points. You can spend them to go ahead and pick up the various gems at one drill point per gem. You can also spend them to go into the drill wall, paying the cost shown, depending on the level, and then you're going to go ahead and take this token. First thing we're going to do is we're going to gather some gems shown on it and drop them into the zone. Then we're going to take this token, which is worth four points, and it goes onto this grid, which is the game end trigger and can be worth a bunch of extra points, puts plus some utility, which we'll talk about soon.
So, we spend two drill points to that, and then we'll spend the remaining two drill points to pick those up now that we dropped a gold into that wall over there. In general, when you drill into the wall, gems drop. Granted, other players might end up picking them up, so you might be benefiting them, but you also get those tokens, which are going to benefit you. That was a turn. And this my last movement point reduced this over here. And we have our hands gone. And we spent all our things. We gathered two gems. We drilled into the drill wall. And now we're all prepped to go ahead and get out of there on our next turn. That's a standard turn in drillers. You basically spend your cards to go ahead and gain fuel, manage your fuel to gain various uh, you know, drill points and movement points. And as you start to build your deck, you'll gain a bunch of other cards that will have a variety of utility effects. Just to show you how this plays out. Let's go to our next turn. We're going to draw back up. You draw three cards at the end of your turn. You are allowed to hold on to one card turn to turn without spending any fuel. So basically, if you have a hand of four cards, you can spend three of them and hold on to one of them because it might be useful for next turn. Maybe it's movement you don't need yet or drill points that you don't need yet.
You can hold on to extra cards, but at the cost of one fuel per card past that first card. We're up to our turn two over here. Let's pretend this guy over here went ahead. He went further into the mine. He drilled down into here. He'll get that token and he went ahead and flipped this card. So, we see what's coming. He also automatically falls down. When you drill into a zone, you automatically get a free movement point into that zone. You break through the floor, you fall down, you're good to go. back to our turn. I'm ultimately trying to get back home. So, right now over here, I have zero fuel left. So, I need to get my hands on fuel and movement points. So, I'll go ahead and discard this card in order to get this will be on our discard. So, we'll put those. That will be our discard. We'll play this card. We'll go up two movement points. Then, I'll play this card, which will cost me one fuel, and I'll gain two movement points. I'll spend those two movement points to go back up over here to the top of the mine. And then, this last card I can either hold on to or I could even discard it now that I'm in the surfacing phase. The surfacing phase is what you can do when you're ending operations on the top floor. Basically, if you're not just off the top floor, but you're ending your turn on the top floor, you can do a bunch of things.
Those things include filling up your fuel tank to max. So, you can do that. You can spend credits. You'll earn credits. Well, let's talk about how we get credits. You can sell You can sell gems. So, we can take these gems over here and we can sell them, putting them into our own tableau over here. For example, I'm going to get five credits for that one and then four credits for that one. So, I'm going to get a total of nine credits for those gems that I brought back up to the surface. So, I have all these extra credits that I can now spend. I can spend those credits on a variety of things. For example, I can spend three credits over here to increase my capacity to hold more gems, which will allow me to go further down before I have to resurface. I can spend credits. For right now, the cost is two, but that will grow in order to increase my fuel reserves. That's how much fuel I get every time I refuel the top and how much I can hold on to. And then you can also spend credits on a variety of cards. For example, if I spend seven credits on this over here, I'm going to spend seven credits right now. I'm not going to overly think about it. I'm going to take this card. This card is going to go directly into my tableau.
Cards that have that orientation are basically ways of upgrading your mech. Every turn, I'm going to be able to refuel fuel by one just for free, just by having this card. If I were to buy a different card, which I don't have enough credits for, then those cards will go on top of your deck instead. So, you can buy other cards that'll go on top of your deck, meaning you can draw them as soon as you possibly can. Those are the various things you can do, or at least most of the various things. Uh, looking at this sheet over here, you can do a few more things. So, you can sell, you can buy new cards, you can fill your fuel tank, you can upgrade your fuel storage cap. We've seen that you can spend this to refresh what's in the display. If you don't like the cards in the display, you can get rid of them and refresh them. That's once per game. And if you don't spend that, you're going to get a point at the end of the game. And then you can discard a card from your hand to get two credits. If I really need more credits, I could discard this to get those credits. But I'm actually going to hold on to this card for next round. It's going to be useful. And then lastly, you can spend five credits in order to make a repair. That's the only action that's limited to once per surfacing phase. A repair is basically a fancy way of saying trashing a card. You can spend five credits to trash a card, making your hand more efficient. Not to mention, nearly all of your starting cards are worth negative points just for having them. So, it's better to be able to go ahead and get rid of them when you can at some point or another. That's a surfacing phase. So, basically, the cycle of the game is you're going to be going down into the mine, spending your cards to go ahead and get drill points, movement points, and utility. Utility is going to come in the form of various things like uh drawing extra cards, burning cards, getting rid of cards from your deck, or using your drones over here. You have these drones in your tableau that you can use at any point.
You can flip a drone even while you're further down to the mines in order to either sell a gem right away even though you're down below or buying a card even though you're down below. It's a good way of basically helping yourself out of a pinch either if you need more space or you have a very good card that would be great to draw but you're down below and you need that card. Drones can be very helpful for that. And you can earn drones back through a variety of effects usually in the utility deck over here. These cards will often have various effects that will allow you to uh well do a variety of things. Uh none of these give you drones unfortunately. We have card draw. We have card repair, which is trashing, and we have getting more fuel. But lots of those will give you more effects that will allow you to replenish your various drones. And you can have up to three active at a time. That's basically it. There's a few small other things to cover. Basically, uh, as you go ahead and go further into the mine, you're going to gather more of these, which will fill up your display. You'll also gather these, which will fill up your display. Those are going to eventually trigger endame when they reach the end of the track or when they reach your gem overflow, which we haven't talked about. There's also going to be various effects on the cards.
These are cards that things that happen when you drill into the wall, things that happens when you fall into the zone at the end of your turn. And there's also going to be an entire deck of these extra cards. These are going to be very useful cards that are going to require certain battery components from certain tokens, but you can buy these cards. So, it costs money. Uh, and as you hit lower levels, you're also going to add more to the general display. Once you reach level four of the mine, you're going to add more of those. That is basically how you play a game of drillers. You are building up a deck. You are building up a tableau. You're trying to get your hands on as many gems as possible because points in this game are going to come from a few different areas. First of all, you're going to get points from all the gems you've acquired the entire game. Whether the gem has been sold, your overflow, whether you have any supply, you're going to get points depending on the value of the gem. You're going to get points for all of these tokens. That's going further into the mine, drilling into the walls, you get points for all of those throughout the game. You're also going to get points or lose points for the various cards, as well as losing points for how deep into the mine you are, as well as for various resources, coins at the end of the game. That is how you play Drillers, which means it's time to get into my review of what I like, don't like, and concealers not liking.
Starting off with what I like, which to begin with, this is the first thing. Uh, before I ever ever play this game, it has CGE's general production quality. They managed to make games that have absolutely gorgeous art, great components. Granted, this is using the uh the the extra metal coins over here. So, if you got your hands on those, that is an extra component, not part of the base game, but you could go ahead and get them if you want well better and cooler coins. But basically, even before you get to those, the component quality is great. The tokens are great. I think I would have rather have actual more gem pieces. The problem with gem pieces is they wouldn't fit as nicely into your board. So, there is an inherent trade-off as to how you handle that. But in general, the look, the art, the production, all of that. The insert, there's no insert. I'll say that. There's I mean, don't get me wrong, I probably would have 3D printed an insert either way at some point. So, like I'm not complaining, but if you expected anything, you basically had an empty box with a bunch of plastic bags and you kind of make it work. And it does mostly work. I guess it's fine. That's that's an area where I guess I won't give them points for. But for everything else, it absolutely looks beautiful. But that's not important that the game isn't good.
And so, how is the game? Well, first of all, I'll say that I was very excited when I first uh heard about this game because it looked great. It's deck building. I love Arnac from CGE. All of things were pointing in the right direction. I will note, by the way, if you like the art of this game, I believe Arnack, I can't remember which one's which, which, but like this has like four artists and Arnac has like six artists and three of those artists overlap. Like, I thought that this had the look of Arnac. It definitely has that look to a certain extent, which is not a bad thing for me. But again, my own personal journey with the game is I saw the game, I got excited. It felt like it was going to be another Arnack type game. It's deck building. Maybe it'll be great. My one hesitancy was it has that aspect where you're going down into a mine so you can return back up and drop things off so you can go down, do it better. That's kind of a pick up and deliver mechanism. And I've never loved pick up and deliver games. And even games like this where you're going down then up, down, then up. I I've always been a little wary of them. And then I had like both friends and other content creators I saw who covered the game and some of them were a little mixed in it and my my excitement went down a little bit. But then I played it.
I played it and I liked it a lot. And then I played it again and I liked it. Honestly, I liked it a little less the second time, but I still liked it a lot. And then I played it again and it's a very very solid game in which the deck building, the biggest thing I'll say for this game toward a point in this game's favor is you want everything. You want to do everything as you're playing. You want to gather all these cards. You want to buy them all. They're all incredibly helpful. You want to buy all these cards. They're incredibly helpful, but you have to get batteries. You want to upgrade your tableau, your beer mech over here. You want to purge cards from your deck. Every single thing in this game is so impactful, and you feel like you you can't do it all, which is that's how games work, but it feels like you want to. And yet, the the important thing is the things you do do feel incredibly cool. It's not one of those games where when you don't do the other things, you're like, "Ah, I can't do enough." Granted, you want to do it all, but it feels so powerful the stuff you do do. You can go ahead and cycle your deck a lot in this game. For those of you who are Ara players who feel you don't cycle your cards enough, you cycle through your deck a lot and there's so many things you can do from the drone upgrading, the card building. I didn't really talk about it, but these lanes have different feelings. This deck is more focused on uh drilling, more focused on movement, and more focused on utility, which is kind of everything else, but every card feels so powerful in your engine and everything works towards your advantage. And there's different ways to kind of make your strategy work. you can race to the bottom as fast as possible trying to get your hands on high value gems for a good return and making fewer trips back up to the top. Maybe if you do that, maybe you don't focus as much on building up your gas tank because if you're making fewer trips, you're not going to get that free refill quite as much. Maybe you want to do short jumps over here and try to get as many of these gems as possible. In which case, filling up your gas tank can be everything. Getting to 18 quickly on your gas tank track and making frequent
returns to the top, that could be a lot. In which case, maybe you want to focus very heavily on movement and movement utility cards, both from the special deck and the regular cards. There's different things you can do as far as the strategy you develop both based on what other players are doing as well as based on the cards and initial uh trajectory you build out. It is a very very satisfying deck builder tableau builder with shiny fun components and doesn't last too long. This game comes in at reliably under two hours at least for me. Uh the one time I timed a teach longer story but I was in a rush so I kind of timed how long it took. I was able to teach this game reliably the entire thing in 13 minutes with players being able to play it from a 13-minute teach. So 13 minutes each, less than two hours. I think every time I played it, remember my first game, my first game might have at a full player count, four players. That one may have drifted a drop over two hours, but overall it gives you a very solid bang for your buck across across everything. As far as what I don't like in the game, the first thing and the biggest thing is there's not enough content for the game. There's just not enough content. And I mean that in terms of things I want to see the game do, as well as literally I have played multiple games where players ran out of cards from these decks. If you run out of cards from these decks, and it's happening in multiple games, and this happened even at a three-player game. There was one three-player game where you ran out of cards, and I don't know if the game's designed to do that, but I don't feel the game should be designed to do that. Granted, you have that aspect of everyone goes for one type of card. That's more likely. I still feel you shouldn't be regularly running out of cards in a game like this.
It's just it's not it's not actually making the game bad to be very clear, but it feels like there's not enough cards. And in general, I want more variability and more craziness to the cards. Now, the one hesit hesitancy I have there is I don't know how many different ways you can make a car that has drill components and a variable cost before it's not interesting anymore. You might have to rely on a lot more text effects or new elements or components that the game adds for these to be more interesting. But I think that as much as every card in the game feels incredibly powerful and useful, the game needs more. It needs more cards first of all. That's the biggest thing. And it's for sure it needs more cards across the board. Although again, you'll have to be clever with how to make those cards actually feel meaningfully different. Outside of that, I feel there are so many mechanics the game can explore and dive into. You can have full elements of building out these chain walls and having little things going on over here. You'd have to balance the whole game around these things. Obviously, you can have asymmetric corporations, location cards. There's not enough variety to the location cards in general. There's just more the game can do and I want to see all of that. And this is not my general complaint like, oh, I want more content.
I always do that when I like a game. When I like a game, I want more for it. But I would say that usually I don't feel that a game needs more for it. This is one of those games where I definitely feel it needs more. I I think it did an amazing job with what they've done so far and yet it feels like if you told me like, "Yeah, this is the prototype, not component wise. Component wise is amazing." But if you said as far as content, this is the prototype. Obviously, we have more stuff coming. I would believe that. I think there's a ton of interesting things. Even like these tokens over here, there's more things you can do as far as what these do or how they impact the game or these. There's only one of these for each level as you break into them. I just think the game can benefit from more. As far as what I can see others not liking, uh, in general, this game still does have that going down then up aspect. Uh, as much as I was worried about that and it proved not to be an impact, primarily because there's so many different ways to play the strategy that instead of feeling like unnecessary, I'll give you a good example. When you play a game in which you have workers and you have to make more workers and get new workers, if that's the thing you have to do for the strategy to be viable, at a certain point it feels like if you're making me do the thing, just skip the thing. If this is the thing you have to do every game, don't make me do the thing that's tedious. give me choices and pathways and options. And I think they did a great job with that in Drillers. I think that the different ways you can push down into the caves in order to get things and the different cards you can build that augment your engine still makes that element of the game feel strategically something you have to balance and manage as opposed to just you go down, you go up, you go down, you go up. It doesn't feel wrote. It feels like part of the strategy, but you still go down and you go up. If that's going to bother you, it possibly could bother you here. Also, you start with a handful of negative points. That's definitely a factor. you start with a handful of negative points that again I love deck
weeding so that's not a bad thing I like getting rid of it but if you don't like deck weeding you almost feel punished for like you know doing that or whatever speaking of which by the way you don't really get points in the cards that means late game as you're buying cards you have to figure out purely the utility part and it is nice that they start on top of your deck so you do get them faster and there's lots of card draw and lots of things that will help you there but ultimately you know cards without points negative points on the starting cards that can be something that bothers you overall I really as far as final thoughts on Drillers I have really enjoyed enjoyed playing this one a lot. I think that initially after my first game and again I mentioned I came down a little bit after my first game I was like this is going to be another five out of five for me. I absolutely love it. But then multiple games showed that I definitely even my first game I knew I wanted more. I just didn't think it would necessarily stop it from being a five out of five. And it did. Multiple games in I do feel as much as I love what the game is doing I think it needs a little bit more to cross that. For me I'm coming in at a 4.5 out of five. I have had so much fun with this one. I'm excited to play it again and more. I really enjoy it. The one thing holding it back is I feel this is like I feel it's a really really really really well done starting point for what drillers can become. As far as other game recommendations, definitely check out Lost of Varnach. I mentioned it several times throughout this video. That same feeling of exploration of choice of different ways to manage your tableau.
That definitely is present here while they very much feel different at the same time. And also check out Super Motherload from Roxley. Super Motherload is the last time I played one of these games where you're kind of just digging further and further down as you attempt to gather gems. Whole different way of playing. but it's one of those games that was not as wellknown, so it might be worth checking out. I mentioned that Allplay is a channel sponsor. If you go to allplay.com, you can find a variety of games both from Allplay as well as other partner publishers. And if you're in the US, you can get everything for $4 flat rate shipping for as much stuff as you can get. And you should check out River Valley Jewelcraft. It's not out quite yet, but it is one of their upcoming titles. But if you like the idea of collecting gems and you want to do so in an entirely different uh sense of the way you build out your tableau and your board, check out River Valley Jewelcraft for another game like that. In any case, until next time, I'm Alex Radical from Board Gameco. Hope you found this review helpful and as always I hope you have a good one.