The Last of Us: Escape the Dark | Solo Playthrough

0:00 Hello everyone and welcome to Meet Me at the Table. This is Colin and today we are going to do a playthrough of The Last of Us Escape the Dark. I recently completed a playthrough of Escape the Dark Sector and fell in love with this system. It's light but really enjoyable. You've got this black and white art theme. I really enjoy it. So, this is the newest version of these games and you can see with the mechanics what they've evolved. We now have some choices on which locations we want to move to. Combat has become even slightly more interesting, I'd say. So, I'm really excited to show this to you. It's a bit of an evolution that you're seeing with theme games. This one is based off of a TV series called The Last of Us. We have zombies all around. We're trying to escape. And the fun part is we'll be making choices on which locations we want to go to next. Taking out threats, aka zombies, and then of course fighting a boss at the end. Just like always, make sure to turn on those cling on subtitles just in case I make any errors and miss them in editing. And with that, let's just jump in, do our setup, and start our playthrough. After placing the board on the table, which I do have the neopre mat, and it's really nice. Uh, we grab the item deck. We shuffle that up.

1:14 There are crafted items in this game. That's something new to the other versions. Those you don't have to shuffle. Just set over there. We have two more sets of cards. We don't have to shuffle. The upgraded weapon cards and the special ability cards. Just put those over on the right hand side of the board. Next, we'll grab our boss card. There's three that come in the game. We'll shuffle these up and choose one. And we'll place the boss card at the top of the board along with the boss tokens that we've shuffled up. There are five total locations on the board. the suburbs, downtown, lakeside, and university. Each one is going to get a location clear card. Each one has a unique backside. So, you shuffle those up and then I'm going to grab four chapter cards for each of those locations out of the seven that are available and place them on top of that clear card. After doing this for each location, we'll have four chapter cards and one clear card in each location. We start in the quarantine zone and we grab the quarantine cards based upon the amount of survivors we're going to be playing as two. That's what they recommend for solo. So, I grabbed the two three survivor cards. There's three or four of them. I've chosen two randomly. One to place on the west and one to place on the east. In each of the different locations, we have camp cards that we have to place. Once again, I've grabbed the two to three survivor camp cards, shuffled them up, and placed one into each of the locations. We also need to set up the stashed item cards. Now, certain locations have stash one cards and certain ones have stash two cards.

2:45 On the actual board, it'll tell you which ones you need. Uh you shuffle all of those cards together and you place four in a stack randomly for each of the locations. We have the level one stashed items at downtown suburbs and sewers and level two at Lakeside and the University. You'll then see I've placed some zombie miniatures here. If you don't have the deluxe set, these will just be threat tokens, uh, which will have these exclamation points looking like this. These are essentially blocking our path. In order to continue moving, we need to clear out at a minimum to here so that we can then move ourselves over to the sewers. We start with three zombies or threat tokens at both the downtown and the suburbs, two at the sewers, and one at the lakeside and the university. Our final setup for the board itself is the calendar. This is going to track the rounds and every time we hit an exclamation point, there's an outbreak and more threat markers are placed on the board. You'll see how that works during our playthrough. If ever we get to the 17th round, we straight lose the game. We now need to set up our two survivors. We have Joel and Ellie on the other side.

3:55 So, each of them will have a miniature that starts in the quarantine zone. You'll see that in a second. We have health of 14. That's what we start at. If anyone ever goes to zero, you lose the game. So that's the two ways you lose. You run out of time or a character is killed. Each survivor has a character flaw. So for Joel, that's disillusioned. He has to complete these three items here in this specific order. Once he does, he can gain a special ability for the rest of the game. I love that idea. It's fun. It's cool. Each survivor has their own die. This tells you how good they are at the three different test types: might, cunning, and wisdom. So, as we can see here with Joel, he's the best at might. He's not very cunning, and he's about middling for wisdom. We have a location to hold one melee weapon, one ranged weapon, and three items. We start the game with four starting items because we're playing with two to three players. We've decided to give Joel the plank for his melee weapon and the 9 mm pistol for his range weapon. This range weapon can have additional ammo cards which are placed here and then item cards can be placed down here. This tracks our ammo. It always starts at the capacity. And for melee weapons, something that's new, we have durability. Every time we use this, we discard our durability token. And then if we've discarded all of these cubes, we then actually discard the melee weapon itself. You'll see how those work during our playthrough. Let's meet Ellie. Ellie has two might, four cunning, and three wisdom. So much more

5:26 cunning than Joel. It's kind of helpful to have a balance in your stats. 14 health. She's lonely, so she needs to do these three actions in this order to be able to gain her special ability. She also has a plank and a revolver. The only difference with the revolver versus the 9 mm. It does not have a two capacity. Can only hold one ammo, but if we hit with that one ammo, it can take out two chapter dice instead of only one. And that completes our setup. This game takes literally 5 minutes to set up, which is one of the things I love about it. Great to play with your kids cuz you can jump right in. We start with the Prelude. It's called the Quarantine Zone. We're going to reveal these two quarantine zone cards and determine which way we'd like to go. We could each go different ways, but I'm going to be keeping my two survivors together. Uh really, it's helpful to have both of you there for one thing, but second of all, it's a lot easier from a recording standpoint. You can play this with up to five characters. So you may, if you decide to play this with a lot of people, like five, you could have three go one way and two go another and then meet up at the end, which is actually kind of cool. You can't do that with the other games. So we're just going to flip these over over. Our two options are we can either contact the Fireflies or interrogate a Fedra guard. If we decide to contact the Fireflies, we'll gain a single intel at the university. That means we could flip over the top stashed item card and maybe find one of the events. As you can imagine with a zombie apocalypse game, any events are going to

6:56 be bad, right? So, if we can reveal them beforehand and then discard them for free because we've revealed them, that intel is helpful. We might also reveal an item and then we know we want to go to that location to pick it up. So, we can gain intel at both the university and lakeside and just draw one item. Or we can gain intel at any two different locations with interrogating the Fedra guard and draw three items. But then we each have to take two damage, whoever decides to go that way. I like this one. We'll deal with the damage. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put up at the top of the screen our damage or health tracking. So, you'll see me track it there so we don't have to keep looking at the player boards for that. This is going to knock us both down to 12 health, but we can now gain intel at any two locations and draw three item cards. Because we chose to go east, we have to go to the suburbs. So, let's go ahead and gain some intel here. Oh, we have an event. So, normally if we drew this, we'd be tracked by hunters. We' lose a day and add a boss token. That's actually terrible. Uh, but instead, it says on reveal, danger avoided. Just discard this card. So, that's why gaining intel is so important. In order for us to get to the boss, we always have to go through the sewers, whether we're going through downtown or the suburbs. So, let's do this one. And we have another event. That's awesome. Uh, danger avoided. Discard this. Otherwise, we'd lose the day and add a boss token.

8:14 It's another bad uh event that we just avoided. We then get to draw three item cards. And we drew a brick, some ammo, and some more ammo. The ammo is super important for your ranged weapons because unlike the other games where you could just take a refresh or a reload action, you have to have ammo in order to do that. So, I'm actually going to give each of us one of these ammos. And then I'm going to give Joel the brick. Something else that's unique about this game is let's say I decided to give both ammo to Joel. We could do that. We can stack like kind of items together. So if I had three bottles or three bricks, I could put them all together in one slot. It's awesome. That means you're not just discarding items that you can't use all the time. Also, we can craft certain items together to make unique items. And we'll see that as we play. Right now, I don't have any crafting uh elements, but soon I will as I gain more items. We've now gained some intel, took a little damage, gained some additional items. We now have to move to the suburbs because we chose to move to the east. Once you move to a location, you then need to reveal your camp card. This is going to give us additional actions that we can potentially take here. So, we have a junkyard. We can have one person go here and they can draw two items. and it specifically states for one survivor only. So, they gain those items and then they can use a preparation action to trade them if possible. For each round, you're going to choose one of the two, but it's actually three daily actions

9:45 you can take. One is explore, one is camp, or the third one is just do nothing. But generally, I don't do that. I like to have our team together helping each other out if possible. Exploring is just like the escape the dark sector. You're going to reveal the chapter card, resolve it. A lot of times going into combat or having some sort of non-combat experience. If you camp, you can use the camp effect in the suburbs, which for us is the junkyard anytime before or after your daily action. You can do these preparation actions. You can use an item, trade an item, you can reload, or you can craft. And there's a crafting menu here. So, if we wanted to make a health kit, we'd have to have alcohol and rag, a Molotov cocktail, alcohol and rag, nail bomb. You can see all the different things that you need. But, of course, we need to find those items in order to make that. For our first round, we're going to have Joel take the lead and explore this card. Now, Ellie could choose to camp, but she's going to come with Joel. So, we're both going to reveal a single card. You can only ever explore once per round. So, you can't go through multiple cards in a round in order for Joel to heal his disillusionedness.

10:56 Is that a word? I don't know. Uh, he first needed to take the lead. So, we're taking the lead here. He's going to flip the chapter card. That is onethird of this complete. Next, he has to take an unrevealed stash item. Slipping through a gap in the chain link fence, you emerge into an expansive yard where hunters have established a command post. The lookout spots you and we have to begin combat. We're going to start with combat right away. Interesting. Just like in Escape the Dark Sector, we need to set up our dice pool. So, we have to first determine, are we going alone in this? No, we're working together. So, this is going to be a group combat. We have an exclamation point here. That means we're going to have chapter dice equal to the threat of this location. And at the beginning, our threat is three. So, we have three chapter dice.

11:43 Then we need uh dice here equal to the amount of people that are doing this challenge. So let's say we were playing this with five people and all five went here. This would be times five. For us it's times two. So we for sure need two of the might dice and then two more random dice. This means we'll be rolling up a total of five dice and adding that to the total health for this enemy, the hunter. We'll roll up our dice and we have some wisdom. We have some might. And then you're going to see two of them that have multiple symbols on them. Those are harder to get rid of. You either have to, if you're in a melee combat, roll your crit on your uh die itself, your uh crew die as they call it, or survivor die, or you have to work together with another team member to be able to have one roll of wisdom and one roll of cunning to get rid of this single die. In range, these dice are a little bit easier to get rid of. You'll see how it works as we play. After setting up our chapter dice, which think of this as the health of the hunter we're fighting, the moment that all of these dice are removed, we have one combat and we can move on to the next chapter card. We now need to determine, can we do a listen round and a sneak round before we go into combat? And neither of these are crossed out, so we could if we would like. Listening allows us to manipulate some of these dice and change them from maybe a dual side like this to a single side. Or maybe I can turn some of these to cunning because we know Ellie is better at that. But in order to do that, we would have to roll

13:15 wisdom in one roll. And I'd have to choose which character. And we could do both if we'd like. But if anybody fails that listen test, which means we'd have to roll a wisdom, that wisdom symbol in one single attempt. We'd have to roll in another chapter die if we failed. Neither of us are great at wisdom. So I'm going to skip the listen. Sneak though. Sneak is looking at cunning. And I think I'm going to have Ellie try and do this. So, she's going to roll up her die. If she can roll a cunning symbol, she can remove any one of these dice cuz she does a sneak attack. If she rolls a crit, she's actually able to remove two dice, which would be absolutely perfect cuz we could get rid of both of these. And what's nice is they have all this information on the player card. So, you can see here, listen, roll a wisdom in one roll. If you get a success, you can change three. If it's a crit, change five. If you fail, add a chapter die.

14:05 and sneaking. If you succeed, it's a one die. We can remove crit. We can remove two dice. Failure, we take the highest damage, which is two. Let's see if Ellie can do it. We're looking for a conning. And we got a crit. Actually, that's even better. That means we can remove two chapter dice. Don't mind if I do. She does this conning strike, taking out those dice. I do want to call out when you do a sneak attack, you can choose whether to use a weapon or even do a range sneak attack. When you do a range sneak attack though, you have to be uh rolling this hit die and you have to get a success. Otherwise, you miss even with that sneak attack. And let's say both Joel and Ellie wanted to sneak attack. Ellie succeeded, but Joel fails. That means we all failed. So that's why I just wanted Ellie to do the sneak attack. We've now completed the sneak attack. We'll move into the first round of combat. Unlike in Escape the Dark Sector, you can have individuals choose melee and shoot at the same time. you can go from shooting back to melee or throw something. There's no issues where you have to be at range until you move into melee. Because of that, I'm thinking of having Ellie take a shoot action and I'm going to have Joel do a melee action. We can also do a reload, but if someone is reloading, someone else has to do some sort of attack action. You can't both be reloading.

15:24 Withdrawing and bypassing is something new in this game as well. You're hardly ever going to use it unless you get into a combat you really don't think you can defeat. For Ellie to take that range attack, she needs to spend at least one ammo. You can see the max firing rate is one ammo. If she hits, you can she can remove two dice with this. Joel will just be rolling his survivor die, hoping he can get the shield so he can block any damage. We'll roll up each dice simultaneously. That is great. So, that's dealing two damage. And that one is dealing one might damage. The two damage from the revolver will remove the two wisdom dice because we're not great at wisdom. And then Joel can remove one of the might chapter dice with that might roll. After removing the dice though, there are still dice remaining in the pool. That means this hunter is still alive and can attack back. For Jewel, his die does not have a shield symbol on it. If he had rolled, let's say, this crit, that's a shield. he'd block the melee attack. He did not roll that. So, he'll take the damage equal to what's on the card for a melee attack.

16:31 On the right hand side of the card, you can see the lower section is for melee attacks. The upper section are for range attacks. So, he's going to go from 12 down to 11 health. For Ellie, we have to roll a hit die and she is hit. And the hit value for range is two. So, she actually gets knocked down to 10 health. That's going to end the first round of combat. our second round of combat. I think I'm gonna have Ellie just do a reload action. During a combat round, you can discard this to add one cube to your ammo track. And since there's only might chapter dice remaining, Joel will do a melee attack. He'll roll up his die. And he does have a punch with a shield, which would mean he doesn't take any damage. But I think we're also going to use our plank. Our plank melee weapon states, "Whenever you hit an enemy, you may discard one durability cube to remove an additional chapter die. Don't mind if I do." The melee weapons, unlike the range weapons, the moment all of the durability is gone, though, you have to discard them because essentially they break. This will mean we can remove the final two chapter dice and we have now defeated the hunter. So, let's say we had not rolled the shield and we had just rolled the fist and we did that extra damage. We would still take no damage because we've defeated the hunter before they could attack us back. So, that was a great round of combat. We now can resolve the benefit. If you defeat this enemy, discard a threat token, then search. In order for us to travel to the sewers, we need to remove at least two of the threat tokens because threat

18:02 tokens are always removed from right to left. So, we'll remove this zombie. And now we can do a search as a group. We can take any two bonus actions whenever we search or we can lose a day and add a boss token to take four actions. I don't want to do that. I don't want the boss tokens right now. So, we're just going to take two bonus actions. Our actions are gain intel. We could reveal any one stashed item card at any location. We could raid a stash, draw one revealed stash item card in our specific location. We can draw blind. Draw one unrevealed stash item card at this location. Or we can just scavenge and draw a basic item card. Both of our characters need to draw blind for their next flaw. So, I think I'm going to have them both draw blind. I just saw two events, right? So, I'm hoping this will be an item. So, let's start with Joel.

18:53 Joel is going to draw this stashed item. And it is it's a plank. It's another plank. Uh, you know what? We might as well discard the one that we have and hold on to this one because it will come with two durability versus the one that we have. This will allow us to remove the draw blind. Now, all we need to do is fight alone, explore alone, and defeat an enemy to then gain a special ability. Let's try drawing the stashed item card for Ellie this time. And she finds a switchblade. Now, this is an item. It's not a melee. So, we can have both the plank and this switchblade sneak attack. When making a sneak attack, remove an additional black cube. Do not discard this card when doing so. Every time. That is perfect for her. This will mean she's now drawn blind and she has her switchblade. The next thing she needs to take the lead and flip a chapter card. That wasn't too shabby of a first day. We'll track our marker up to two. We're going to have an outbreak at the beginning of the next turn. For day two, we are going to have Ellie go to the junkyard. She's going to draw two items. We drew both a bottle and an explosive. So that explosive we can't do anything with on its own, but it is crafting material that we can add either to a sugar or to a blade to make nail bombs or smoke bombs. Kind of cool. We have also this bottle which helps with sneak attacks or we can chuck it during combat. We'll hold on to both of those.

20:16 Those are both items. So we'll place them in our item slots. This means we're being a little bit risky with Joel. He's going to explore on his own. But the advantage of doing that is if we find an enemy and defeat it, we then can get a special ability for the rest of the game. Ah, we didn't find a combat. Instead, we have this once grand house has all but fallen in on itself as you pick your way through a hand suddenly thrust up beneath the rubble. A survivor taking their last breaths trying to tell you something. Nominate one survivor, so it's got to be him. To try and comfort them by rolling two wisdom or one crit in three rolls. Let's try it. We get three rolls for this. Our first one does have a wisdom. So that's one. We need two and three rolls. So I've got one here. And our next one is a crit.

21:06 That'll work. Apparently Joel is soothing and he calms them and they impart valuable information before passing. Discard a threat token. So, we'll remove this one right now. That means we could move to the sewers for our next turn. You'll see that won't happen. Then we can search with our first search action. We are going to gain some intel at the sewers. And we have another event. So, we can just discard that. Uh, and then uh let's go ahead and draw an item. So, we'll just scavenge for the other. And we found some more ammo. That means I can place that on top of my other ammo card. And I have two ammo now that I can replenish for my range weapon. Day two was certainly faster than day one will move to day three. And now we have an outbreak. This means every location that hasn't been fully cleared, we place one additional zombie or threat token. If a location is full, you don't add anymore.

21:59 And if a location is cleared, you don't add any additional. Unfortunately for us, this means at the suburbs, we were just about to open up access to the sewers and now it's blocked. Again, I do want to mention we could, if we wanted, there's a line here. We could move at any time over to the downtown instead of being at the suburbs, but I feel like there's a good benefit when you clear a location. We're going to keep pushing through the suburbs. We aren't going to travel at the beginning of day three. We're both going to explore together. And we're going to have Ellie take the lead this time so she can continue to move through her lonely uh flaw and hopefully get that upgraded soon. Maybe we can even pass a sneak check here and she can level up. As you pass a vinecovered porch, runners burst through the screen door and sprint towards you.

22:45 You must roll cunning or a crit in one attempt. She's the best at doing that. You dip clear of the runner's wild lunge. Begin combat or failure. You're dragged to the ground and barely manage to kick your way free. Lose two HP, then begin combat. And you can see here, listen and sneak is not going to be available. So, we can't sneak. And also, what's different in this game, a lot of enemies cannot attack range. What that means, we can still attack them range, but they can't attack us back. So, that's why the range weapons can be super uh, you know, helpful because that would mean you could shoot them and take no damage. Come on, Ellie, be cunning. And she is. There's cunning right there. We're good. For this combat, the threat value is two. So, we have two dice. And then there are two of us there. So, we have two extra dice we have to roll.

23:32 We'll roll them up. Oh boy. Two of them. Actually, that's not terrible. Whoops. Two of them are double symbols, so those are slightly harder to kill. As the threat level of the suburbs is only two, that's why we only had to roll two dice here and two dice here. If, let's say, that threat level was four, there'd be more dice. I do like how that interacts. So, when you go to a higher threat level location, it's a little bit more nerve-wracking. What we're going to do, we're both going to do a range combat. We both have ammo, so we're both going to discard those. And we know we can't get shot back. We can also use that to hopefully get rid of some of these dice. We'll roll Ellie's first and she gets a hit. She can remove two chapter dice. And then we'll do Joel. He'll be able to remove one. He also gets a success. Joel can only take out one chapter die, but Ellie's weapon can take out two. So, we're going to take out these three dice. Okay, the three that are left, I think we're going to go into melee combat. That just means we're both rolling our survivor die. Each of those are successes. I am going to have Ellie use one durability from her plank so she can remove one extra chapter die and that will mean we'll take no damage even though neither of us rolled shields. We had one might and one cunning symbol and then here's the extra one for that plank usage and we just won that combat. We took them out no problem. We get to discard another one of the zombies which allows us now to move to the sewers if we'd like and we can perform a search.

24:59 with our search. I think we're just going to grab two more items. We certainly are finding plenty of ammo right now. You know what that means? Later, we're not going to find as much. So, I've got to be careful. I'm going to give the ammo to Ellie cuz she doesn't have any. We have more explosives. Ellie also has explosives, so we'll stack those on top. I really need some sugar or a blade. Day three has completed. We'll move to day four. The first option for us for each day is travel. And we now technically could travel to the sewers. We have an opening, but if we can take out this card, we get to the clear card, and I kind of want that. There's some benefits there. So, I think we're both going to explore here. Let's have Joel be the one that leads us. And this is not combat. The streets here are unnervingly quiet. Suddenly, you see why. A shape, a glint of light in the top window. Sniper shots ring out as you scramble to withdraw, scurrying between the abandoned vehicles that line the street. All survivors present must roll a hit die equal to the threat level.

26:00 That's only one. Losing one HP for each of those symbols rolled. If you survive, discard a threat token. And then, oh, we still get another search. Just think if that had shown up when there was four threat in our location, we'd have to roll four hit dice. That one is for Joel. So, he will take one damage and so will Ellie. Each of them going down. That means Joel's at 10 and Ellie's at nine. I got to find some healing. You're going to see I almost never choose the boss token and take four actions. I'm just going to keep the search at two. It just never seems worth it. The boss tokens are horrible. So, what we're going to do for our first one is we're going to gain intel at the sewers. Oh my, it's another event. So, we can discard it. This is why you do that. That means very likely this is an item. Uh, and then we'll just draw an item for our other one. Oh, we have binding.

26:48 Binding states you can take binding plus a blade and you can make a shiv or a binding a blade and a melee weapon means an upgraded melee weapon. We'll now remove our threat token. So all the zombies have been cleared from the suburbs. Yay. And then we have discard any remaining, which we already did. Discard any remaining cards in the stashed item deck without looking at them. So I've just discarded that. And then we'll turn this card over. As a group, you may immediately take the bonus following actions. We're going to use a medical supply, so we'll each heal by two. And we can draw three items. And then we'll just discard this card. We found more binding. We have some more ammo, which I'm going to give to Ellie. And we have sugar. Sugar plus explosives equals smoke bomb. I think I can make that. This binding, of course, will go to Joel cuz he already has one binding, so now he has two. We have both explosive and sugar. So, we're going to discard both of those. And we now have a smoke bomb. Can be used for a sneak attack or sneak check to auto succeed.

27:51 Or we have a combat round effect. We can throw it. And if we get a success this round, the enemy's range attack value is at zero no matter what it normally is. We're giving that to Joel. That means we're all full up. Just so you can see, Joel still has his plank that he found, a brick, two binding, a smoke bomb, that 9mm meter pistol with two ammo cards. I could discard one of those to gain one more ammo. Probably should just put this here. Doesn't really matter, but I think I'm going to hold just in case I find another weapon. Weapons always come at the full capacity and then I waste the ammo card, so I'm going to leave it. Ellie, on the other hand, has her plank with only one durability left. the switchblade, our bottle, one more explosive, two ammo, which I am going to discard one so we can refill that revolver, and then her revolver here.

28:41 That ends day four. We'll move to day five, and we have another outbreak. Lucky for us, the suburbs are clear, so no threats need to be placed, but the sewers is going to have four threat. And Lakeside will have three. The uh downtown is already full, so we don't have to place one, but we will place another at the university. To start day five, we're now actually going to travel. We're simply going to move along this and move ourselves to the sewers. Once you do that, you can immediately flip the camp location. We have two actions here. We have manifest, gain intel at any two different locations, and we have medical supplies. Restore 3 HP for one survivor only. That is cool. I have a plan for day five. I am going to have Ellie do the manifest action.

29:31 We're going to gain intel in any two different locations. The first one will be in the sewers. Come on, give us something good. This is another event. All there was were was events in the sewers. I guess that makes thematic sense. Let's try the university. Another event. Are there any items in these things? These are all just discarded. This means Joel is going to go it alone and try and fight alone. Hopefully, this is an enemy. Although, if it isn't, I won't be sad because look at that threat level. No, it's enemies. The tunnels here are open into a vast maintenance area where the groaning of runners echoes in the darkness. He can't turn back. You'll have to clear them. So, now we're going to do the solo. That means four random dice plus one fist and two more random dice. Six random dice. Let's hope we can do this. We'll roll up our dice. Okay, lots of might. That's good.

30:24 But one, two, three of these that we need to get rid of either with a crit or with some sort of range attack. We have the ability to do a listen and a sneak round. We're not going to do the listen. We're going to do the sneak. Discarding this brick to automatically pass. That will mean we can discard one of these dual health chapter dice. Then I think it's time for a range combat. We're going to use our pistol. Remember, with this guy, they have no range attack, so we won't take any range damage. This is our last ammo. We do take out another chapter die, which is great. We don't have to worry about getting attacked back. But now we do have ammo, but we can't take a reload action cuz no one else is here. So, it's on to melee. With that melee attack, remember, we have the plank, which could help us. So, we'll roll up. We get a crit. The crit has the shield, so we don't have to worry about damage. We can choose any one die. We'll choose this one. And then we'll use our plank, one of the two durability. So, we can get rid of this wisdom die. We take no damage because of the shield. Let's roll again. We now just need some might.

31:32 Ah, no. That is cunning. So, that means we will take one damage. We'll go down to 11 health. We'll try it again. Let's roll it up. We have a crit. That will get rid of one of the fists. I could use the other durability, but then we have to discard that plank. I don't think I want to do that. We take no damage. There's only two dice left. Just need might. That's a wisdom. We're going to go down to 10 health. It's okay. They only deal us one damage. Uh let's roll up again. And we have a might on that die. So, we'll take out a might here. But we do take a damage going down to nine health. Oh, this a battle to the death. Uh let's see. Come on. We need a might. There's a might. We take out the last die. We have now defeated an enemy alone. We'll remove one zombie with that. And we have two items that we can draw from our search. We have a bottle, which we can give to Ellie, and a rag, which if we can find some alcohol, we could get a health kit or a molotov. But we'll just place that in our inventory. We've also taken care of our disillusioned flaw, and we can choose one of these five special upgrades. I think the one I'm going to grab is this ferocious. When taking the melee action if you roll any single or a crit, it counts as two of that result. Yeah, let's definitely do that. When you gain a special ability, it goes right over your flaw area, which is really cool. I like that. We are also going to discard an ammo to get one of our ammo back. Just that way, if we need

33:02 to do a range attack, we can. Uh I have only one durability on the plank, but that's all right. Okay, that's going to end this day. We'll move ourselves to day six. Joel is most certainly going to use the medical supplies in camp for day six. He heals by three, so he's now back up to 12 health. That means Ellie is going to uh go ahead and go alone for this card. We do have a three threat here. A little nerve-wracking. Oh no. And she found combat. In the dark passage ahead, you hear the sound of rapid footsteps splashing through the fill towards you. More runners. Runners. Oh, you know what? She has to roll a cunning. That's great. We'll roll up her die. And no, she doesn't get a cunning. She gets a wisdom. This means she's dragged to the ground and barely manages to kick her way free. She loses two health, so she'll go down to nine health. And then, of course, I was hoping for a sneak so we could gain a level up, but no, we can't sneak against them. This is a solo combat. We're rolling three random dice for the threat level plus one more because of solo, so that's four dice. We'll give those chapter dice a roll. All four of them are doubles. That's terrible. We have one ammo left for our revolver. So, let's do that for our first attack. That will deal two chapter dice damage. We'll remove these two dice with that attack.

34:24 We don't have to worry about being attacked back. They can't attack range. So, let's for our next one, let's throw a bottle. This one could also take out one die. We need a hit here, though, to make it work. That'll work. We'll get rid of another dual dye. We have another bottle. Is it worth it? Uh there's another dual die left. So, let's use it. We're going to discard that other bottle. We're going to throw it at them. And it hits. So, that's going to take care of the other dual die. Now, we have no range combat. It's melee that's left. That means they can attack us back. We need I'll just put them up here. We need one cunning and one might. Might is our worst. Our first roll, we get wisdom. That's not going to do anything. We're going to take a damage. We go from nine down to eight. Let's roll again. We have a cunning at least. So, that will remove this die, but we'll go from eight to seven health. We need to heal. We need to heal. Next one. It needs to be a crit. Well, that will block. So, we're good. We really just need a crit or a might here. Neither of those work. We're going to go from seven to six. Oh, no.

35:31 Ellie, don't die. Our next one. That's a crit. That'll take this out. And we have defeated those runners. Our first search will be this stashed item. Oh, we have a machete. So, we'll place that here. That's a better melee weapon. And for our second search, we found some more ammo. We're going to discard that immediately. So, our result revolver has more ammo. We also can remove one of these threat tokens. That was not a great day. Uh, she wasn't able to sneak, so she couldn't get her upgrade and she took a ton of damage. We're on day seven. We're gonna explore together. We just need one more threat token to be removed so that we could go either to the university or the lakeside location. Uh we're going to have Joel be the one that explores because he has more health. Oh no, we have more enemies. You are confronted by raiders ordering you to hand over your weapons and gear. We have our special for combat. Each time a survivor would take any amount of melee damage this combat, they may avoid it completely by discarding one item or a weapon. and they deal two damage for either one. We have two threat, so it's going to be two plus two, four more dice and two of the might dice for the chapter dice. I am a little bit worried about Ellie here. Uh, three out of the four are harder dice. We're going to skip the listen step, but we're definitely going to have Ellie try and sneak. If she can do this, we'll be able to gain her uh special ability as well.

36:59 Come on, Ellie. I believe in you. We have a crit. With a crit sneak attack, we can remove two of those chapter dice. And only that, she has a switchblade. When making a sneak attack, remove an additional die. Do not discard this when doing so. So, we will actually remove three dice. And why the heck not? Let's use our melee plank here to remove four dice, but then we have to discard this. With four dice removed with that sneak attack, there's only two dice remaining. Joel is definitely going to do a melee. Why don't we just have both of them do melee? We'll roll up their dice. And we have a fist here. Is that from Joel? That is a fist from Joel. We're going to use the last durability of our plank. So, we're discarding our plank. That can remove an additional chapter die. That way, nobody takes any damage.

37:50 We took care of those raiders. No problem. We decided to scavenge for both of our actions. And we have both alcohol and a blade. We can now make a shiv and we can make a health kit. I think I'm going to do both of those with the alcohol and rags. We can make the health kit which has a preparation action for healing. We're just going to use that. And this shiv is all about sneak attacks. So I think I'm going to give this to Ellie as well. So I'm going to as a preparation action discard the health kit to heal up Ellie and then give her the shiv. We'll place that shiv here. She will heal four. 1 2 3 4. She's back up to 10. and we're at 10 and 12 health. We would then remove this threat token, but I'm just going to place it back here because during that eighth round, we have another outbreak. There's one more outbreak we have to deal with.

38:40 And the university and the lakeside locations each are full. That means though, we'll have to deal with this last sewers card and then this one will be discarded and we'll be able to go to either one. Ellie can also choose a special ability. Why not stealthy, right? Look at this. It says, "For a sneak round, when making a sneak check, if you fail, you can reroll, which is good. But the second thing, when taking a melee action, if your first roll includes a cunning, you may roll it again and choose which of the two results to apply." That seems kind of awesome, right? For our final day at the sewers, we're going to explore. Joel will be the lead explorer. What did we find? You hear a hideous flame from behind and turn too late to avoid the clutches of a hideous stalker. It leaps on you, knocking you to the ground.

39:27 Okay, he's going to go down to 11 health. We can handle that. You kick it off and it disappears, but you can still hear it scampering in the darkness. Preparing for another attack. After the first round of combat, shoot and throw actions can no longer be taken. We can't sneak. We can't sneak on any of these guys. Okay, we're going to roll two plus two more and we have two cunning. That's great for Ellie. I just wish that we could sneak. She could take this one out with almost no problem. We'll roll up the four dice here. Only two of them are harder. We're definitely going to skip the listening round. I don't know if I'm ever going to do that with a wisdom of three for each of them. Eh, we're going to go right into combat. So, we'll use the revolver for Ellie and we'll use a melee attack for Joel. Here's the range attack. Oh, and we miss. That's a bummer. Then it's Joel. Joel, don't forget he's ferocious. So, he's going to roll this up. It is a single die. That's a fist. That could be counted as two for him, but that doesn't matter because there's only one fist die. There's no range attack for this enemy. And we've got a shield here, so no one takes the damage this time. But now we're going into melee. Neither of us have melee weapons. So, it's just going to be all about the dice rolls. Let's pick them up and give them a roll. Joel rolls a single eyeball. Because of his ferocious, that can be considered as two. So, he'll be able to take out two of these chapter dice because we have a cunning symbol for Ellie. She can reroll this and choose which result to take.

40:56 Uh, let's do this one because she then takes no damage. So, that will be another eyeball. So, that's three. She takes no damage. Joel will take two. He's at 11. He's going to go down to nine. Uh, then we'll just roll again. This is what's left though, these two. And they're going to be hard to take out because you need two symbols. So, let's see if we can work together. We'll roll these two up. We have a crit. A crit can take out any die. And the punch is going to be useless from Ellie. Uh, yeah, we'll just take out this one. Yeah, we'll take out this one with the crit. And then Ellie is simply going to take two damage. She's going to go from 10 down to eight. Let's roll these two back up. Come on. Someone needs a crit. Really? Oh, that's a crit. That'll take this one out. We're good. We found a brick and a bottle. We're going to give the brick to Joel. And then we're all full up on both sides. So, I am going to discard this explosive to give the bottle over to Ellie. Then, because this location is totally clear, all the threat tokens are removed or zombies.

42:00 And we can flip this over. And we have, as a group, you may immediately take the following bonus action. Use medical supplies. Restore 2 HP to all survivors. That means Joel is going to go up to 11 and we'll have Ellie go up to 10. Then we can draw two total items and we have a workbench. We can upgrade and fully reload one of our weapons and we are certainly going to do that. The two items we found are both canned food. We can't hold them, but we can certainly discard them right away and use them. So that means Joel will go up to 13 and Ellie will be at 12 health. We'll then upgrade Ellie's revolver. Look at this. One die only, but if we get a success, it takes out three chapter dice and it comes in with full ammo. Only one, but that could be super helpful. That ended day eight, and I am super happy with where we're at. We now have to travel.

42:58 We know there's a machete over here at the university. Don't ask why. Uh Lakeside, we don't know. So, I'm thinking of moving to the university. Now, just for a recording purpose, I'm actually going to move university down over here to the sewers to make it easier for us to see. Because we've traveled to the university, we get to immediately flip this. We have medical supplies for more healing. We actually don't need it. 12 and 13 health. We found a ton of healing. So, I think for our day action, we're just going to explore. Let's have Joel lead the way. What are we going to find Joel at the university? We have a giraffe. The unexpected sight of this giraffe roaming free is breathtaking. You approach cautiously and begin to offer it branches to feed on. It gratefully strips them from their leaves and its long rough tongue stirring up an almost forgotten sense of simple joy within you. The animal seems to be at peace here, and for the briefest of moments, you feel it, too. Discard a threat token, then search. Why the heck not?

43:58 We'll get rid of one. With our first search, we're going to grab the machete for Joel. And then with our second search, do we want to do the stashed item? It could be a This is a good time as any to potentially have a negative event. So Ellie is going to flip this one. It is. Oh no, we have to lose a day and add a boss token. Then discard this cuz we're tracked by the hunters. That was a terrible idea. Losing a day means we have to place this here. Grabbing a boss token. And we're going to place a fourth threat in the university. The other ones are all full up. The nice thing is there's no more outbreaks on the calendar. So, we are going to have to move to the next day because we're going to end this day and start the next one. We're at day 11. Ellie is feeling pretty terrible about the fact that she caused them to lose a day. So, she is going to lead for the next car, but we are going to explore together. This one also is not combat. You hear a low rumble getting steadily louder, and the building begins to creek and tremble.

44:55 The sound grows to a deafening roar as the corridor begins to collapse around you. All survivors present are struck by falling debris and lose two HP. Then Ellie must choose. Either get out now, you react quickly and sprint to safety, discard a threat token, or search the room. You can scan, you scan for anything of use, then dive to safety just as the roof comes down. Lose an additional HP, then discard a threat token and search. I don't feel like that's worth it. We have a bunch of good stuff. So, I think I'm just going to jump out of the way. Discarding a threat token. So, there's only three remaining. Uh, yeah, that's good. That means we're moving to day 12. The time is running. We have three more threat tokens and two more cards. We're going to have to get through the university. We could go over to the lakeside as well if we wanted. I don't think I'm going to do that. We're going to have Joel lead this time. Yeah.

45:47 So, let's have him flip this one. Oh, we do have a combat. Crossing the upper walkways of the library, you suddenly spot movement below. A group of hunters are searching for you. They fan out, taking up positions to cover the exits. You'll have to fight your way out. We can though with this one listen and sneak. So, the threat level is three. And then, oh, as a group, it's going to be three, four, five, six, seven total random dice and two of these might dice. Wow. Nine chapter dice for this one. Let's pick them up and roll. Oh, one, two, three, four. Four out of the seven are harder dice in some ways. I'd love to show you a listen just so you see how it works. But it works just like a sneak. And there's no reason for us to do it because if we fail, we get more chapter dice. And that's a lot of chapter dice. We are going to sneak with Ellie. And she gets two rolls. We're looking for a cunning. And we've got the cunning. So that's a success. We have the switchblade, which will make it be one additional chapter die. And we're going to discard the shiv, so we can uh discard another chapter dice. So that's one, two, three. Three total chapter dice with that sneak attack. That's almost all of the harder chapter dice. I love it. I then think we're going to do a melee attack with Joel and a range attack with Ellie. She only has one ammo, so we're hoping this thing hits.

47:09 No, it doesn't hit. His does hit. it'll count as two. So, we've got two chapter dice that we can take out here, but he is going to take two damage from that. So, he's going to move from 11 down to nine. And we have to see if Ellie takes damage. And that was going to take out three of the dice. Oh, at least they missed, though. For the next round of combat, we'll discard our ammo so Ellie can refresh her revolver. And let's have Joel try and use his 9 mm pistol. We really want a success here. We get a success and no damage to Joel. So, we can remove this die. That means we only have two cunning and one might left. So, I think we're going to go into melee for the rest of this combat. So, I'll pick up our two dice. Just roll them up. Uh, which one? This one is Ellie. So, it's a cunning. She can roll and take either result. So, we'll roll this up. Uh, well, it's going to be the same thing.

48:07 That cunning will take this one out and we can have Joel take this one out. And unfortunately that means they each take two damage. Ellie's gonna go down to eight and Joel is going to go down to seven. We only have one die remaining. We're both going to melee attack. Come on cunning. Oh, there's a cunning. Takes out this die. We're done. We cleaned out the riff raff in the library. Removing that threat token for our search. Let's gain intel here. Let's see if it's an event. No, it's a flamethrower. That means we are going to raid the stash with Joel. He's going to grab the flamethrower and discard his 9mm pistol. Who wants the 9mm pistol? If you can have a flamethrower that has three capacity. We're also going to trade the ammo over to Ellie. Let's move ourselves to round 13. For our next day phase, we are going to have Ellie get some medical supplies. It says restore 3 HP up to two survivors. So, that mean both of them can gain that if they both camp. I think we can both do that. Yeah. Uh, one use.

49:14 I actually am not sure, but I'm I'm gonna say we're both camping just for this round and we're uh going to restore three HP for up to two survivors. That means Ellie has 11 health and Joel has 10. But that's going to take a whole day. That's right. We can move to day 14. We can take care of the university card, go to day 15, and go and take on the boss. All right, let's do it. Ellie has one more health than Joel, so she'll be the one that explores. Ooh, what is this here? A group of infected are breaking out of a barricaded storage closet. You'll have to act fast to secure the doors. All survivors present must roll in unison, keeping track of any wisdom rolled until they've rolled wisdom equal to the threat level, which is two or one crit. After each collective attempt, if you have not succeeded, all survivors present lose one health and you must make another attempt. If you've not succeeded after three attempts, you fail. If you succeed, you reinforce the barricade with a filing cabinet, searching the in uh sealing the infected inside. For now, discard a threat token and search. If we fail, the infected escape and you barely get out of the building alive. Discard a threat token.

50:23 We will roll our dice in unison and we do get one wisdom, but unfortunately we need two. So I'll place that there. We each will take one damage. That means Ellie's back down to 10 and Joel is down at nine. That was our first try. We get a total of three tries. Come on, wisdom on one of those. There's our other wisdom. That means we have two. We have succeeded. We can discard a threat token and we can do our final search. We decided to scavenge. We have alcohol, which is going to be useless now. And a snack bar, which we'll just discard to heal Joel. We're both at 10 health going into the boss fight. I feel pretty good about that. Oh, wait. We do have our location clear effect as well. So, we'll flip this over. We can each restore two HP. That means we're going to be at 12.

51:11 And we can draw two more items. We found another binding, but we don't have a blade, which is a bummer. And a snack bar. We'll just discard that for Joel. So, he's at 13. Ellie is at 12. You know what that means, right? It is boss time. I'm actually feeling okay right now. At last, the safe haven of Jackson is in sight. It's warm, welcoming lights shimmering in the valley below. One final challenge stands in your way. What is it going to be? It's going to be the infected swarm. You must defeat all three waves, one at a time. So, our first one, we can listen and sneak, but we have to use the boss token. It deals three damage in melee. Uh oh, just three additional dice. Oh my goodness. And then these two, we can't. So, we're going to have four cunning and we're going to be rolling 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven dice in seven dice. Let's do this. Only four of them have dual symbols. Not terrible. We're definitely not going to listen to this infected swarm. We're just going to try and sneak attack.

52:15 Let's see if Ellie can do it. She gets a crit. That would be two total successes. And we're going to use our switchblade for three before they can even do anything. That was awesome. All three of these are gone. Let's do a range attack. They have no range uh attack back and we know we're going to have to do this three times. So, let's use our range attack first. Joel is going to spend all three ammo for his flamethrower. We'll roll these three up. That will take out three dice. One, two, and three. All that's left now is cunning. We will have Ellie attack. She needs a success here. Oh my gosh, her revolver is useless. It does nothing. Okay, that's our range attack. For our next round, Joel is certainly going to throw the brick. And then we'll have Ellie do a melee attack. The brick, we don't have to worry about Joel getting hit. And he does take out one chapter die. Ellie will roll up her die and she gets beautiful. That is a symbol that we want. That's two of these down. We've got three remaining. That was our second round. Our third round. I think we're both going into melee. Come on. We'll roll these up. We have a crit. That crit is for Jewel. That is fantastic. When he rolls a crit, it counts as two results.

53:35 That will be these two. Unfortunately, Ellie doesn't have enough. That would be three damage. You know what? It's as good a time as any to use the machete. We're going to have to discard it, but that would take out two additional dice. It's gone, but that means that first infected swarm did no damage to us. We're going to move right into the second one. We have to roll in two dice for that. And then we'll have four more of those cunning symbols. This time, no sneak attack is available, but they only deal two damage. And we only have this many dice we have to deal with. It's a lot of cunning. I want Ellie to attack melee. I think I'm going to have her attack melee with this one. And Joel, he's going to have to attack melee, too. So, we're just going to go all melee for this one. The third round, then we'll have Ellie. I don't know. I've got that gun, but we just can't seem to shoot it worth beans.

54:30 Uh, let's just go melee. We'll roll our dice up. We've got a crit, and that crit is for Joel. That's two dice. He's going to take this one out plus another one. And we have an eyeball with a defense for Ellie. That was an amazing roll. Next one will roll up. Joel, he doesn't take anything out, but he takes no damage. Ellie has a cunning, so she can reroll and she can take the result she wants. No, we're we want the cunning. The cunning will take out a die, but she will take two damage. That's okay. She's at 10 health. That's not bad. Uh, that means we only have two dice remaining. We'll roll these up. Neither of those do anything. Ellie's going to take two damage. She's down to eight. I'm going to roll these up again. And oh, Joel. That's not good. That means he's going to take two damage. He goes down to 11.

55:17 Ellie has a crit, though. That will take out one of these. That means there's only one of them left. There's no way I can get rid of it. No. Uh, let's just pick him up for another attack. There's only one die remaining. Neither of those are going to work. So, we each take two. That means Ellie's gonna go down to six and Joel is gonna go down to uh nine. I almost went down to seven. All right, let's roll them up again. Come on. There it is. That'll work. That's the last die. That's our second set down. We have one more to go. We have to roll in two dice for these. Oh, they're both doubles. And then we have two of these cunning dice together. So, this is the health that we have. Let's just go full-on melee. I believe in us. So, we'll put these here. Each damage now is only one. I feel like we're doing great.

56:07 This is a crit. Is that a crit for Joel? No, that's Ellie. It's an Ellie crit. Ellie will get rid of this one. For Joel, he's going to take just one damage. He goes down to eight. That does not take out anything. No. All right, we'll roll these up again. Okay, neither of those are going to take out anything. They each take a damage. That means Joel's down to seven. Ellie is down to five. Oh, I got to watch out for Ellie. All right, we'll roll these up again. We have a crit. That crit is from Ellie, so that will remove this one. And Joel takes no damage. All right, pick them up. We just got two dice remaining. That's it. One, two. Beautiful. We just took out that infected swarm. Well, there you have it. That was Last of Us Escape the Dark. That was super fun. I do enjoy the story in this one, but I've got to say Escape the Dark Sector to me is pretty much better in almost every respect. I do like that you have the options of different locations to go and the camp is cool. I like how the challenges become more difficult with more threat, but that's pretty much it.

57:11 The combat I think is better with Escape the Dark Sector with the flanking idea. The sneak and listen kind of work, but they feel a little clunky. you have so many more bosses, so many more chapter cards when you have the expansions. This just feels like it's it's missing a little bit there. The stashed items are cool, too. But if I could only choose one of them, without a doubt, I would get Escape the Dark Sector. I haven't tried Castle yet. I'm trying to find a copy somewhere so I can play all three. But right now, I can safely say unless you love this theme, I would go with Escape the Dark Sector. This is still fun. I do like your character boards are fleshed out. You've got crafting. The crafting is cool. I wish there was more ways for you to upgrade your weapons. You got that upgraded weapon stack. I upgraded one single weapon. And for each of these locations, you only have seven chapter cards. So, I've played this three times now. I've already seen multiple cards multiple times. It'd be fun. The the nice part about Escape the Dark Sector, there's so much more variety. Oh, there is one more thing I do really like in this one, the crit side of the die. that's fun where it's an automatic succeed. I think that's cool. You always have that chance. I will say if they do decide to do an expansion for this one and they add more chapter cards, more bosses, I think this could definitely have legs. And then I would just choose whichever theme uh speaks to you most because the game play is close enough to being, you know, similar enough. But right now, we don't know if there's an expansion for this one. Hopefully, this helps you determine

58:43 if this is for you. And I want to give a huge shout out to our patrons and subscribers. It's because of you that Barrett and I do what we do on this channel. And if you're excited to see what Baron and I have coming next, then I need you to meet me at the table. Goodbye, everyone. The master went to set me up against your enemies.