Boss Battle Ash and Bone - Start Playing in 15 Minutes. Concise Board Game Tutorial
Transcript
A chaotic Q and fight where everyone plan their card timing in Boss Battle.
And today we're diving into a quick start tutorial for Boss Battle. We'll explain everything you need to know if you want to get started quickly and pick up the details and icons as you go along in 15 minutes or less. And we'll link to the project page in the description.
And hi everyone, it's Stella.
And Tarrant, welcome to Meeple University.
And hey, if you enjoy this video after watching, like, subscribe, and comment. You know what to do. Now let's get to the classroom.
In Boss Battle, a trio of heroes works together attempting to defeat one of the mightiest bosses of Galdor. It is a card driven lane battler. As players craftily use, move, and manipulate their cards in a world where speed and precise timing are everything. Reduce all of the opposing side hit points to zero to win. By strictest design, Boss Battle is a four-player game pitting three players working together cooperatively and with full and open communication as heroes against a fourth player taking on the role of the boss. And these are the rules which I'll focus on in this video.
There are rules automate one or more roles so you can play any player combination from one to four. Also available for Boss Battle is the expansion Slime and Souls featuring the new Slime Boss and the Monk and Bard heroes. To set up, lay out the main board. Each of the three vertical divisions is called a lane with each half of that division being either a boss lane or a hero lane. The lanes on each side are collectively called the hero queue and boss queue. On the round track you'll lay separate markers for the heroes and the boss. Each hero player picks a hero and takes all of its cards, splitting them into their character cards, and then by level, which are special showing no number, and then level 0, 1, 2, and 3.
Set the character and special aside and make your starting deck with all of your level zeros, and then shuffling and drawing three level ones and adding two. Shuffling them all together and returning unused level ones to the box. Set level twos and threes aside for now. Your large token will serve as a turn tracker, and the small tracker on the health board at your starting health. This is both starting and maximum. You can never go above. Each hero picks a lane. Through the game, you'll be able to fight and play cards into any lane. However, if your lane takes damage, then it's you alone who loses health.
The boss player takes their character, any special cards, and the level 1, 2, and 3 cards shuffled into face-down decks. They likewise have markers for starting health and turns and begin with the amount of power shown here. The boss fights over all three lanes, so damage dealt to any boss lane will come off the boss's health. You're ready to play.
Okay, Tarrant. It's time for us heroes to show that boss what's what.
But I'm playing the boss.
I know.
Well, the game plays up to seven rounds and we'll take you through the round sequence first. A round plays in four phases. First is draw. All players, both hero and boss, draw up to a hand limit. Second is placement. Each hero takes one turn and the boss takes three turns to place a card from hand into their queue. Third is resolution. You'll resolve only those cards which are in the zero slots and this is where you'll do the bulk of your attacking, defending, and damaging. And fourth is countdown. Cards in the queues will advance towards the zero slots and you'll advance round markers and possibly level up.
The first phase is draw. Each hero from their deck draws cards until they have reached their hand limit, which is whatever is shown here plus one for each time the heroes have leveled up. If your draw deck is empty, shuffle your discards to form a new draw deck and continue. For the boss, you can draw until the total power value of the cards in your hand is equal to the power in your pool or a maximum of 12. Each card has power equal to its level and you can only access decks at your current level or below. If a boss deck empties, it is not reshuffled. In the first round alone, all players may mulligan up to two cards to the bottoms of their decks.
Second is placement. In this phase, first the boss takes a turn, then any hero, then the boss again, then another hero, and once more until each side has taken three turns. On a turn, you have two options, place or rest. To place, reveal a card from hand and pay its cost shown here. This could be nothing. It could be to discard a card from hand or it could be to bump back. Meaning to pick any occupied slot in your queue and move it one step backwards in its lane. If you bump something into an occupied slot, it cascades the bump back. And if you bump back out of slot two, whatever was there is discarded.
Next, place the card into any slot in your queue matching this number on the card. You can pick an occupied slot, but discard what's present. If the new card has a when place effect, resolve it now. Through some card effects, you may get a damage token on one of your slots. You cannot place a card on a damaged slot. You can bump a damage token back, but not by discarding it from a two slot. Your other option is to rest, and when you do this, choose two different among these four options. You may discard any number of cards from your hand, draw one card, heal up to three health, or discard a damage token.
Third is resolution. Resolve all cards in a zero slot in speed order, starting from six and going down to one. When tied, resolve boss then heroes. And within a side, it's the team's choice. How the cards resolve in detail, I'll explain in the next section. The final phase is countdown. Tokens in zero slots are discarded. Cards in zero slots stay put. All other cards and tokens advance by one space towards the zero slot, unless there is no room to advance. Players lose health for each damage token in their lanes.
Clear the turn tokens, advance both round markers, and level up if applicable. Now, proceed to the next round's draw.
So many different card combinations, Tarrac. I want to maximize them all to defeat the boss, which is you.
Now, let's learn how each type of card works. There are six different types of cards distinguishable by these colored icons. The green sun is a resolution card. Each of these cards has a one-time effect, which is resolved when the card is in a zero slot and resolved in speed order during a resolution phase. Discarded immediately after resolving. When resolving this type of card, resolve any when resolved text, as well as the banner in the top left. There are two types of banner on these cards, swords and hearts. The swords deal the printed damage to the opposite side of the lane. Hearts heal up to that much health on that side of the lane.
Double swords target all opposing lanes, double hearts target all of your lanes, and some cards may have both. The purple icon is a field card, and this is a defensive card. When it first enters play, it is not active and it has no defensive ability until it's been activated. And this occurs only once it's reached a zero slot and been activated in speed order. While active, any damage dealt to that lane is instead dealt to the field card, thus protecting the lane's owner from that damage. Once the field card has received damage that equals or exceeds its health, then it's destroyed and discarded, resolve any when destroyed effects, but excess damage from that attack does not break through to the lane owner.
Field cards carry over damage from round to round and when active cannot be bumped back to pay a card cost. Gray cards found only in the boss decks are minions and these share elements of resolution and field cards. While upright and until resolved, the card has no effect. But then when resolved in speed order, the card resolves and immediate resolution effect, here it's six damage to the lane, and becomes active as a defensive card. Unlike field cards, the minions then deactivate during the countdown phase, meaning it can go through the activation sequence again on future rounds, but is not defensive until it does.
A blue card is called an active card. This often comes into play in slot two, and activates immediately. Each of these has an ongoing general ability which applies for as long as the card is in the queue. It advances in each countdown phase and can be bumped back to pay the cost of a card. The effect remains active until the card reaches a zero slot and is resolved in speed order. That point of resolution is when the card is discarded and its effect no longer applies. Active cards also have icons in banners, but unlike the swords, hearts, and shields, these don't have an automatic effect. Instead for these, you'll always resolve just the card's text, and this icon shows you at a glance the type of effect the text will have.
The other two card types are skills and counters, and you'll see that these do not have a slot number next to the icon. That's because these are never played to the queue during the placement phase. Instead, if it's allowed by the trigger printed on the card, you play it directly from hand, paying the cost, and resolving the text before discarding. This could be in any phase or in any player's turn, and it never expands your turn token. Skills generally trigger off a general game condition, while counters respond to something your opponent has done. Sometimes a card's strength or speed is altered, and you mark this with a buff token.
Players may have special cards. These begin the game face up and never go through their hand. You can resolve it at its cost as if it were in your hand at any time without discarding it. You may have token cards which aren't shuffled into your deck, and which follow their own rules. If you have a special ability which doesn't have a cost to play, this is an ongoing passive effect, and bosses may have an ultimate effect which can be resolved once per game. Your heroes and bosses will evolve and strengthen as the battle goes on.
And this occurs through leveling up. Achievement unlocked.
This occurs by the round track. When the heroes level up, each hero draws three from their set-aside cards of the new level, looks at them, and chooses two to shuffle into their deck. Their hand size increases by one, and they heal up to the amount shown on their card. When the boss levels up, they gain three power upon reaching level two, or two power for reaching level three. They may access their new deck in future draw phases, and then heal again according to what's shown on the card. The battle will be waged over up to seven rounds.
And in the end, heroes all bosses will fall and a winner may be crowned.
A hero whose health has dropped two or below zero has been weakened and after the card which caused it is fully resolved, resolve the following penalties. The boss marker advances by a round, potentially causing level up. And then count up each of that hero's cards in the queue. For each of them, that hero must discard one card from hand or bump back any one card or discard the unpaid card from the queue. While weakened, your hand limit in the draw phase is reduced by one. Healing back above zero restores your full hand limit, but be warned that if you're weakened again, you must again suffer all of those immediate penalties.
The game can end only at the end of a countdown phase. If at that point all heroes are weakened, then the boss wins. If the boss is reduced to or below zero, then the heroes win. If both are true, the game is a draw. The game also ends in boss victory if the boss marker reaches the game over slot.
Thanks for watching. We're using prototype of the game, so things are not final. And if you like this video, maybe you'd like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.