Rebels Against Rebellion w/ David Thompson | Preview
Transcript
Hey gamers. I'm here with my board game bestie, but work he's done with someone else. This is David Thompson and we're gonna be talking about Rebels Against Rebellion, which is a co-design with Trevor Benjamin. How you doing today, David?
I'm good. How are you?
I'm doing great. Uh, so tell us about Rebels Against Rebellion.
Yeah, so like you said, this is co-designed with Trevor Benjamin. Um, it's being published by Flying Pig. Illustration is from Quant, which is amazing. And the graphic design was by Gina uh Rutder who uh I think did a really good job working with Quansshi. So uh super happy with the total package. This is a two-player uh like sort of area control deck building game though it does have a solitary system um where you can play one of the sides and I guess we could talk about that more but um I mean yeah that's that's the sort of like super zoomed out view. It's it takes place in East Tennessee during the American Civil War. And we can dive into that as much or as little as you want, I guess, to set the stage.
Uh, let's do a little bit, but um, everybody stay tuned for a board and book episode later in the month where I make David tell me about all the things he read and researched for this. Um, but the basic premise.
Yeah. Yeah. So, basic premise. Um, okay. The, like I said, the game is set during the American Civil War, uh, towards the beginning of it, and it's specifically set in a county called Scott County, uh, Tennessee. It's in the far northeastern part of the state, so in the in the Appalachian. And so, um, the very beginning of the Civil War, when the states were in the South were deciding whether they were going to secede or not, Tennessee originally voted not to secede. uh the the state was divided into three regions, west, central and uh east. And the west wanted to secede, the middle and east did not. And then after Fort Sumpter, there was another referendum on secession and the middle part of Tennessee swung. And so the west and middle voted to secede and the east voted to stay. Uh and it was pretty much overwhelming wanting to stay with the union in eastern Tennessee. uh of the eastern part of the state, Scott County was the most overwhelmingly in favor of staying to the point where the vote for secession was like 500 people voted to stay and uh to stay with the union and like less than 20 people I think it was 19 people voted to secede. So it was by far the largest margin uh in favor of of staying with the union. And so that's the sets the stage for the game because this the uh people of Scott County declared themselves a free and independent state. They just said, "Hey,
you know, we didn't want to secede. If you can secede from the Union, we can certainly secede from you." So, they just basically declared themselves independent. And that launched a two-year conflict between not the traditional American Civil War game where you have Union fighting Confederacy, but rather just the people of this county fighting for their survival against the combined forces of the actual Confederate States Army and their uh like a gorillas that were pro- secession aligned to the Confederacy but not technically part of it.
That's really cool. What a like this is I feel like uh this is sort of like the value defense series like you you you're very good at finding these interesting little historical topics or situations uh and then turning them into cool games. So I'm really pumped about this.
Yeah. Yeah. This is something where you know when you look at all of the American Civil War games that exist um almost all of them are sort of like at the strategic or operational level. we were controlling if not multiple armies at least like an army in a big battle and they're all Union versus Confederacy and there are all these big pitched battles, right? But that means that there's a lot of stories that never get told of like normal people, not generals but like average people and what happened to them during this horrible period. And at the same time uh we usually think in these sort of like generalized terms about the people like people from the south were in the confederacy and it's like well actually there were a lot of loyalists or unionists um in the south who did not want to join the confederacy and so I just wanted to tell the story of one of those examples.
Nice. So uh how do we play?
All right. All right. So um this is real quick just for people. Um what we're going to look at two aspects of gameplay actually here. Um so the first we're going to look at is just the two-player versus mode and then we're also going to have a look at the solo mode. So if you're a solo person, stay tuned. I'll put it in the show notes and if you just want to look at two player, this is it now.
All right. So like I said before, uh people will call this a deck builder. It's the same way that that like Undaunted is a deck builder. meaning uh you're not doing the typical Dominion thing where you start with a really bad deck and your goal is to make it really good, right? Instead, you start with a deck that represents something uh and then over the course of the game, you're going to modify the deck, not necessarily improve the deck to um do the things that you're wanting to do in the game, right? So, first we should say it's also an area control game. And what we can see on the board as set up, there are blue counters on six locations. These blue counters represent the presence of the people of Scott County who have the ability to basically fight for those locations against the incoming Confederates and their, you know, their guerilla allies. And so this is an abstract representation of just those forces being present there. Um, if you look closely at each of those locations, they have stars with them. And the stars is essentially like the victory point value of those locations. And if you were to add all of those locations and the stars together, you'd get 11 points.
So the Scott County player starts at 11 points and the Confederate player who's not present at all because like we just talked about, there was no Confederate presence really in the county, they start with zero points. The goal of the game is to have the most victory points when the game ends. And the the game is measured by food. So in this these bags over here, we have food. There are 40 pieces of light food. And this food is the fuel of the game. And the reason for that is um at the end of the the conflict at the end of the civil war the best historical records we have about this area and and you can imagine that because this is such a a small niche topic there's very very little secondary literature that exists about this. Right? So what we have to do is look to things like the um records that were filed by people from this area against you know to the to to the US after the war claiming um uh like compensation for their farms being destroyed and their farms were destroyed by both sides fighting for this area.
And so what became clear is that by the end of the two-year period where they fought, basically this county had been almost stripped of everything of any sort of practical value, right? Um and so food, that's why we use food as the re the key resource in the game. It drives almost every action. You're going to be using it constantly. And so when the 40 food runs out, that triggers the endgame. And we can talk about that in a little bit more detail. It it goes into this period of sudden death. And essentially what happens is at the beginning of your turn, if you're winning, meaning you have more points than your opponent, you win the game. So there is this period where if you get ahead, your opponent has a chance to catch up, and it's there's a period of sudden death. But that is that is how you win the game. You you spread out, you control more areas, have more victory points, and if you have the most when the food runs out, uh then you win.
So how do you get victory points? Um, we have our decks of cards and there are two different types of cards in our decks. Now, at the beginning of the game, each side just has six cards. I mean, eight cards. Six of those are location cards. So, the ones at the top here, and there's one card for every location where you are present. Uh, and then you have these two uh unit card, what are called unit cards, which basically are the sort of abstract representation of the people fighting on your side. And so essentially what happens is you're going to draw a hand of five cards. You can play as many of those cards as you want. There's no limit to the number of cards or actions you can take. Play as many as you want. At the end of your turn, you can discard any cards you didn't want to use. Uh you can keep any cards you do want to use, but you're just going to draw up to five more cards. Um, and like I said, uh, you're going to use the location cards to actually trigger actions, and you'll use these unit cards to augment the actions you're taking. Usually, that means you're augmenting either an attack or you're helping take control of a location. And so, I'll just walk through a couple of very simple actions that you can take. Like, if you look at these unit cards, you can see almost every one of them or location cards, every one of them has uh like a little food symbol.
And that is very straightforward. You just take that amount of food. So if you look at these, most of these allow you to take one food. Um, and then the next symbol is the sort of little arrow that stands for movement. And movement is how you do the two most fundamental things in the game. It's how you spread into a new location and it's also how you initiate an attack. And so I'll just talk about that very quickly. So let's take this example of Huntsville, right? Let's say we are present in Huntsville. We know that we have a cube here. We can move from Huntsville. That means that we can move into any connected location. And we see that there are roads and trails and and creeks. Um, so let's say our goal is to move into Homestead. We would play the Huntsville card. We have to pay the amount of food equal to the victory points of the location. So we need to pay two food to do this. So we would already have to have had two food.
So let's say we did. Um, and then we need a card, a unit card that has a little control marker on it. So, the little person with the circle. So, this is this is the process we would we would take to uh spread our influence into Homestead. We would place a marker there. We would immediately score two points and then we go and we find the Homestead card and we add it to our deck. So, this is the core um the core action in the game, right? in terms of how we advance and I don't know where the card is. It doesn't matter. So, we'll get to that later.
All right. Um, does all that make sense? I just
Yes, it does.
All right. If if we won't do this, we won't do this now. Uh, we can do this as an example, but if there if you were to be present here, we would start that same process. I would play Huntsville and then I would play a loca a unit card face down to attack you. and we'll walk through an example combat because that's probably better to just
Yeah.
Oh, I get it. I have to play the Confederacy. Got it. Thanks.
Oh, we're both from the South and neither of us wants to play the Confederacy. Okay.
Look, I came from and it's not pretty. All right. So, um I do have a a Confederate side question though. So, I'm assuming like you got to start on the map somewhere. So, are they starting these gray spots around the edge?
They are. So, they start on these gray spots. Now, if you look at this map, this gorgeous map that Kwani made of Scott County, all the locations are pretty much where they actually are. These Confederate locations are much more abstract. It's like, yes, in that direction was the town of Montichello, but you don't put your markers.
No.
Um, you don't put them there because you don't get victory points for those locations, but also
if you look at these arrows, these arrows only point to one direction. So you are considered to always be present here and I can never attack those locations. So um so your deck will have six location cards. You'll have all six of those.
You just won't ever have to put any cubes in them.
Does that make sense?
It does. So basically I'm choosing my points of attack from around the edge and you're trying to hold on to the inside.
Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah. You're coming from every direction around which is exactly what they really did. Um, one thing we tried to do and and Trevor and I do this a lot and then and I think you and I also do this when we design, um, there's a lot of like historical accuracy built into the game without any sort of like chrome rules. And so what I mean by that is like Morgan's Raiders really did come out of Somerset to attack this way. Now, there doesn't need to be any rule about that except that's where you get this card from, right? And so it it like sort of elegantly represents that historic historical like
activity. Um, all right. I'm just going to walk through the last couple of actions real quick and then we'll just get started because I think it's easier to teach that way.
So, there's another couple of actions we haven't talked about yet. So, if you look at these cards, there's these little like um symbols with the pluses on it. And that means you can improve the location, right? And so, the most obvious example of that is like the the town of Huntsville, which was the county seat. Um, it was improved by them building defensive breast works around it, right? Some of these locations are improved by you recruiting people that were key people from that area to your cause. So to recruit or to improve a location, you would pay the play the card. So let's say we we want to improve Chitwoods, which is right here. We would always spend one food. It always costs one food to improve improve a location. You would put a second victory point marker on it. And when you do that, you gain one victory point.
And then we take the improved version of the card. So, every place that can be improved in the game has an a better version of the card with different uh action options or capabilities or whatever. And so, you're basically upgrading the card, right? And so, you would you would discard the old one and add the new one.
Okay. So, that's improving location. And then the last thing we'll talk
I have a real quick question about improving a location. Yeah. What happens if somebody takes that location away from you? Do they go back to like the base card or do Okay. Yeah, they go back to the base card. And one thing that's really important, this game has an an insane amount of asymmetry, right? In all sorts of ways. One of the ways that it's most uh represented is for the most part uh only the Scott County player can improve locations because they're recruiting local people from those areas that fought for them.
Uh there are a couple of exceptions where the re the Confederacy can improve a couple of places.
Um but that's one of the areas. So, so I can improve locations, but if you go in there and you smack it down first, you're going to get extra victory points. Um, and then second, you are uh yeah, you'll have to start like you said, you'll go back and get the base card if you take it over. Um, and then, uh, the last thing I wanted to talk about was how you add extra unit cards. So, we can see that all around this board are these unit cards, meaning people that will fight for your side, and they are associated with the location they're next to. select these are associated with Huntsville, these are associated with Wartburg, etc. So if I want to add one of these, I would play the matching location and then we look at the card I want to add. So this one at the bottom says Huntsville, meaning I have to play the Huntsville card and two food. So if I play two food and I play Huntsville, I can now add the Home Guard to my deck. So this isn't a case where I'm exchanging cards. This is literally adding a new card. Um, and so in that manner, you can see that we add new cards by adding units by bolstering like like I just described and by expanding into new places. Um, I should say this is probably obvious to anybody that's ever played a deck builder, but there is an immediate tension in the game.
Obviously, you want to expand because by expanding, you score victory points, which is how you win the game. the more you expand, the more location cards you're going to have, the more difficult it is to manage your deck and do the things you want to do, right? So, um, that's a trade-off that the players will have to navigate. Okay, that is a highle overview. The only thing I wanted to talk about before we get started is before we talk about um uh combat, I want to talk about the last part of the unique element of the Confederacy. So uh what the game does and we'll see this in example of combat is it abstracts this concept of guerilla conflict because that's what this was all about. It was a gorilla battle for two years basically, right? There was no concept on the Scott County part of like conventional armies doing conventional army things. On the Confederate side, that's a little bit uh different. They do have massive regular Confederate military units that would occasionally come into the county, slap the rebels, you know, that the the Scott County people around a little bit and then and then leave. They would never stick around. And so the Confederate player has access to these super powerful arh confederate units, but they have to trace supply. And what I mean by that is, let's say you play as the Confederate side. You play Warberg, and you buy one of these powerful cards.
First, you add it to your deck. And I know that you've added it to your deck. And that's super important because now I know, hey, this super powerful uh unit that Liz now has, it came from Mortg. It's coming from Mortg. when you play it, you have to be able to get back to Wartberg when you use this card.
So, at the beginning, you would play a card from Wartberg and you would either go into Brimstone Creek or New River along these roads. Now, later on, let's say you've taken Brimstone Creek, you could play a Brimstone Creek card with this unit and attack into Huntsville. But no matter what, you always have to get back to where this card came from. And it says on the card where it came from. And so that little bit of, you know, the concept of supply, it becomes super important in the game because you have extra limitations that you have to operate with, but you have these very powerful cards.
Cool.
Okay. Should we play a couple of rounds?
Yes.
All right.
All right. So, I'm drawing five cards.
Five cards. And we're just going to play with our hands face up to
Yeah. Everybody can see mine. So,
Okay. Yeah. And I'll play with mine face up, too, so we can talk through this. Yeah.
Now, you as the Confederates go first.
All right. So, let's look at what I got. I'm I don't care if you see it since this is for instructional purposes. So, you can look at the shared screen if you want. All right. So, um I've got four locations. I've got Monachello, Jamestown, Jelico, and Warberg. And I have one Scott County Rangers. So, what is bad in this hand is that I can't really take over any spaces with this.
That's right.
So, I have locations to play from, but what I don't have is one of those settlement markers on a card that would let me actually take control of a new space. So, this is a tempo that I'm not loving in this first hand. However, I'm going to make the best of it because that's what you do. Uh, what's my starting food? Do I have food to start with?
We do not have food to start with.
Okay,
so
gotta ask. I can always hope this. Uh, okay. So, let me think about this. I have four locations. I can spend them all to get some food
or I can spend some to get food and then maybe try to pick up a new card. So,
and you can also, even though you can't take control of a location, you could use the Scott County Rangers to attack me. Um, you could attack Chitwoods from Do you have Somerset?
No. No.
You could attack You could attack New River from Warberg.
Right. You could attack Do you have Jamestown?
Uh, yes. bas you even if I can't get myself correct like in there.
Correct. And often times you'll want to do that.
All right. Okay. So, uh oh, one other question. Does this terrain mean anything like the the roads versus the rivers?
Excellent question. So, let's let's talk about combat at extremely high level because that's what it informs. you as the attacker can play a number of cards equal to what the the you know line of communication you're attacking across. And so if we look over here on the right hand side, we have a little legend. If you're attacking on a road, you can the attacker can play up to three cards. If you're attacking on a creek, river or creek, it's two. And on a trail, it's one.
Cool.
The defender can always play two cards. One of which can be the location and one of which can be like a normal unit card.
Cool. Okay. So, here's what we're going to do. I'm also just going to look at my options. Okay, so I've got Jelico.
Uhhuh.
There's a Confederate militia here. That's kind of neat. They have a settlement thing on it, which I like.
Mhm. Yep.
Uh we've got Morgan's Raiders. They are probably a little too expensive for me right now, but they're cool. I'm going to maybe mess with that at some point. Uh let's see. Captain James Rule of Machello. That one I actually can get because I didn't have a subset card. I'm being silly. Okay, but I do have a Montello card. So, I can get this dude.
What is that? Um, put a card down symbol on him. So, yeah, two attack value, one settlement value, and one something.
Yep. So, let's talk about um what that represents. So mechanically what's happening is when you use Captain James rule, this little card return symbol means if you use him successfully to attack, okay, he has to go back to this location. And thematically what that means is he's not from here. He's a gorilla that is a like a secessionist Confederate aligned gorilla, not from this area. So he'll come in, he'll help you for a while, but once he does his deed, he leaves. right now. You can use him to control, you can use him to defend, or if you unsuccessfully attack with him, all of those things, he'll stay with you. But if you ever successfully attack, he he comes back here and you can rerecruit him. Now, let's go back to the Confederate militia.
Yeah, I was like, wait a minute, there's another symbol I got to catch here. Okay.
So, so this for one thing, there's actually two cards here, and you get them both for the price of one, right? So, it's like when you bolster this guy, you also get this. So, you get two cards for just one food, which is awesome. These guys actually came out and they just like pillaged into uh Scott County one time and went away and never came back. And so what happens here is if you use these guys to successfully attack, they go away forever. So these are one-time use cards never to be used again, but you get two of them.
Nah.
All right, let's see. I'm just looking at my options here. Warper, what do I got? These are the big guys, but
yeah, these are these are big ones. Yeah, these are big ones. So, remember these the most obvious thing is they have to trade supply. The other ones do not because they're like gorilla combat combatants.
Yeah. And then I got Chant Ferguson over here in James Town. That's a hell of a name.
He was a horrible dude. There were only a couple of guys after the Civil War to be hanged for the crimes they committed during the Civil War because, you know, most people were just kind of like hand hand wave forgiven.
He was hanged because he was so horrible.
Jesus. All right. So, here's what we're going to do. I've got a plan. Okay. I'm going to play Jelico and Wartberg for two food.
Okay.
Boom. Then, so basically for people who are out there watching, I played it for the food symbol that's at the top because I could do one thing with each of these cards. So, I decided to do these for food. Then I'm going to uh I'm gonna bolster Captain James rule by spending the Montichello card. So I'm spending this Montichello card that has that plus card on it. I'm using it to add this card to my deck, right? I put the discard.
Oh, to your discards. Yep.
So he'll go here and I have to pay one food because he has one food at the bottom.
Yep. Yep.
But that doesn't go
It goes out of the game.
Out of the game. This food is just off somewhere. Bye.
Uh because we if it's a limited food supply, I can't put it back in the food bag.
So I got two food, spent one, got a dude,
and then now I'm going to try to attack New River from Jamestown.
Okay.
So I'm going to play the Jamestown card to indicate that this is what I desire to do.
Yep.
And then now we're going to have fight.
Yep. So play your So play your card face down. you know, I only got one, but I'm, you know,
and so you have to play a legitimate card face down. And legitimate just means a combat card. Uh, you could not play, if you had had a like one of these Confederate guys with supply and it didn't have supply back at Jamestown, you couldn't play it. You couldn't play like a location card. You can't do any kind of like crazy stuff,
right? Like you can't bluff.
You can't bluff. Yeah.
Yeah. I have to really have the goods.
Yep. Okay. Now, I have as the defender, I have um two options. I can't.
Let's even see what you have like.
Yeah. Yeah. I if I had New River, I could play it, but I don't, which is really bad for me. I could also play one and only one combat card. So, I have these Scott County loyalists. Now, I know because I've played this game 48 million times that you have two combat cards. You have one with a two strength and you have one with a one strength. So, of course, I know what you just played because I saw your hand, but I think I might think that you play the one attack. So, I'm going to play this face down. Now you're out of cards, so you have no more. But if you had more cards, you could keep playing them up to two more because you're attacking on a road,
right? So basically, I wouldn't be putting all three down right away. I put one down, see what you do.
That's right.
Put another one down. Kind of see what you do. So that we get a little stare off across the table.
That's right. And and honestly, when you decide to do what you decide to do during your turn is super important. Like you when you started attacking you let me know that you only had one card because your hand is empty. But if you like if you took one food at the beginning or two you know whatever and and attack and kept a card back I wouldn't know what you have left. Right.
I'm dumb. I get it.
No.
So so I've played my one card. I don't I can't play New River. So I that's all I can play. And so we reveal.
All right. And if it was a tie, I would win. If the defender wins, nothing happens. Like our cards are just discarded. Nothing changes. But since you won, you get to take my my control marker. And that's an that's a permanent victory point. You can never lose that.
Oh, sick. I can get points by hurting you. There we go. I thought it was just control. All right. And you're also going to lose points, though. You lost New River.
That's right. I'm gonna lose two points because New River is worth two. and I have to go find the new river card and I have to put it in the available location deck now. So, it's now available to either of us. Um, and that's it. The other
was looking bad, but now
now one thing that's really important about this game is um oftent times you will, and I just want to kind of try to describe this for people because we might not get far enough for people to see this sort of nuance to the combat system.
Yeah. Sometimes you don't even care about winning the fight because let's say that your goal, you didn't really have anything else you wanted to do with this card. You're just like, screw it. I want to take David's cards out of his hand. I don't start my turn with five cards. Now, I've now lost this card because I used it to defend. So now it gets to my turn and you've taken my ability to use this card to settle a new location out of my hand. So even if you had not won the fight, you're still like, you know, impacting your opponent's turn, right?
Right. So basically, for those of you who are wanting the details, um David only has locations left in his hand. So he can do he can't do anything that involves fighting me because he doesn't have any guys left. And he can't I mean I'm not anywhere on the map that he can attack, but still uh he also can't take over any new spaces because he doesn't have a person to do it with. And so I basically just screwed up his tempo for his turn.
And now he's got to figure out just like what are you just gonna take some food like get a card.
Right. Right. And if we were playing this game like and I was like competitively and I was trying to win uh I probably wouldn't even play this card. I probably would have said you know what Liz is almost certainly going to win the fight. I'm just going to let her have it so that when I start my turn I have this card still in my hand. All right.
Yeah because you could have just come back in from somewhere potentially.
Yeah that's right. All right. So, let we'll just play out my turn to kind of show an example. So, I am going to play um Buffalo. I'm just going to play Buffalo, Chitwoods, and Buffalo Creek. All three for food. I'm going to take three food. And then I don't want you to beat me up. So, I'm going to play Huntsville. And I'm going to spend two food. And I am going to take the home guard here because it requires the Huntsville card and two food. So, now I have a better combat unit. I can hold my own against you
at least for a little while.
And that is that is my that is my turn.
Um and you would have drawn up five cards. Yeah.
So this will be three and then we'll see what I get here. Yeah. Because I have to have cards on my side to for you to waste.
I know. Yes. Exactly. Okay. So, let's just do like another turn or two and then we can look at solo. But get into it now. So, we got I got to like say we're gonna stop or else we won't.
Um got my dander up. Okay. So, um, and again, this is this is open, like what ours isn't super like. Um, so basically I've got Scott County Sessionist, which I like because it means that I can come with them from somewhere and take over a place, which I want to do this turn.
Uh, I've got Jboro, I've got Somerset, I've got Captain James Rule, my boy. I don't know. He's probably an And then I've got Warberg. Um, okay. So, what do I want to do? Let's look at our options. So, if I come in from Jax Bro, I'm going to have to attack you there. I'm seeing if there's like an easy grab. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, so actually, I could just be a little jerk. And I I like the connective possibilities up in here. So, I am going to start by playing the Warberg card. I want to come from Warberg.
Mhm. And I'm gonna play Captain James rule to settle so that he'll just kind of hang out in my deck. I'm not tempted to spend him too soon.
Yep, good call.
Um, and what'll happen is, so I have used the card as my location and I've used the captain in order to settle and I'm going to take New River.
Yeah. So, uh,
wait. No, I need more food. I need more food. I need more food. Hang on.
There you go. You caught.
Let me do my math. But this is See, I'm just doing it to be instructive. Um, so here's what I'm going to do. Okay, I'm going to spin Jboro and Somerset for food.
So, we'll get some foods. Now, I'm at three food.
Yep.
Then I'm going to go from Wartberg as a movement. So, I'm playing it for that second symbol. And it has to be paired with a person who can settle the area. So, that's Captain Rule. He's got a little person on him. So, then when I come here to New River, you can see two stars. That means I got to pay two food. And then I could put one of my markers there. And I get to take that new river card. This is it. Yeah. Yes.
And that goes into my discard as well. So I now have a new location from which to irritate David. And so I have this Scott County secessionist card. I'm keeping it. I'm going to hold it until next turn because I know that I'm going to get another at least one more soldier card this next turn. And so I can do some damage or I can take it. The other thing that I want to talk about is if I take something from David,
I also have to have an additional card left over if I want to go into that area afterwards.
Yeah.
So, if we get in a fight and I want to take over and I use all my cards of the fight, that means that I can't take over the area right away. But if I hold somebody back, this is correct. Yeah.
Yep. That's right.
If I hold some So, like if I use if I get Captain Rule again and I use my other guys and we do a big attack and take a place and I've held Scott County secessionist, I can use them to come in and take the spot. That's right.
So, I'm trying to be smart here. It's difficult for me, but we're working on it. Um, so that is my turn. And then I'm going to draw four cards.
All right. And I gave you two victory points for taking a new Ricker, too.
Yeah. So, I started out way behind, but you know, this game things tip really fast.
Yeah. Yes. Yep. Okay. Um, I am gonna I am going to O, what am I going to do, Liz? I don't know. I think what I'm going to do is go from no business into No Business Creek. So, I'm gonna play
No business going there.
Sorry.
That is so so like this place. This place, no business like you can see the board because of Quanchai's amazing art. this topography, this area is so remote and so wild even to this day that this place No Business and No Business Creek. The lore is that the reason it's named that is because the family, the one family that lived on that creek, the wife was like, "We have no business living here." And so that's what gave it its name. Now, who knows if that's true, but
but it's so good. I want it to be true.
All right. So, I'm going to go from no business with the Scott County loyalists. I'm going to spend a food and we're going to go into no business creek. So, I'm going to take it and I just want to walk people through a little something here. So, when I took it, I get a victory point. I get the card. Now, this is the tension I talked about before. My long-term goal is I'm trying to establish the ability to get to here. I want to get to Big South Fork River because this is the best card I can have in the game. Right. This is Tinker Dave Batty. He's a he's a gorilla that fought on the side of the Union, right? But it was not Union Military. Best card I can have. But I got to get there first. In order to get there, I had to go to No Business Creek. If we look at this No Business Creek card, it is a horrible card. All I can do is defend with it and move from it. So, I have to make this choice of like, do I really want this location? Not really, but I'll take it. It's worth a victory point, but it's going to be a a card that I don't really want to deal with later on. Now, I can attack from it and that kind of stuff, but um but it is a trade-off. And then with Chitwoods, I'm just going to take a food and I'm gonna hold the other two cards in my hand.
We fighting. Okay, this is fun.
All right, want to play like one more?
One more. One more. And then and then we'll team up and do solo together. We can make amends. Um, okay. Uh, what have I got? I've got James Town. So, that's over on the left. And that's the one with like the jerk guy that has a lot of
Yep.
a lot of guns. Um, okay. I got our secessionist. I've got Jelico. So, I could come into TLS from Jelico.
I could just get an easy grab. So, one thing I always think about in a game like this is like, okay, I see a lot of open things. What is the Do I want to make some easy grabs or do I want to mess with David? It's like always the always the uh the thing, right? So, okay, we've got Monachello. We can come in and mess with No Business if I wanted to. I can come right in from behind and just start like taking things away from him. Um we can even chase him down in No Business Creek if he doesn't get that card back soon enough and prevent him from getting Tinker Dave. Um so I could be a little butt and do that. might be fun. What would be good? And then from Jamestown, I don't really have anywhere to go in. So, okay. So, Jamestown is an automatic. Let's spend that for food because I'm not moving from there. I've already moved from there into this area. So, I'd want to wait for New River to come. So,
yeah, you're either you're either spending for food or getting Champ Ferguson, right, as the only two options.
Oh, do I want Champ for how expensive is this guy? This jerk. Let me think about it. Hang on. Now I've like flipped my whole card around. Never said I was good at TTS. All right. All right. Champ's a cheap date over here at one food. Uh, it disgusts me. I'm going to get him. We're going to put him in my deck. Okay. He'll crime him.
Everybody heard it here first. Champ Ferguson is is Liz's favorite ACW personality.
Yes,
that's her man. So, so great. Uh, so, uh, let's see. So, I used Jamestown to get Champ Ferguson. All right, champ. What you going to do for me, buddy? Uh, and then I've got these other location cards and some trouble I could make. I think what I want to do,
so basically, I know that David can't defend. I'm pretending I can't see his hand at all. I know for a fact that David played the no business card last turn. So, I know that he at least can't defend it. If he's going to play cards to defend it, they're going to have to come from like, you know, actual gun symbols he has on his cards.
But you could only attack with one card on this path.
Correct. Um,
that's the trade-off. But basically what I could decide to do if I wanted to be difficult about things is I could attack here and just dump a card and hope that David also has to dump a card.
Yeah. That what you just said is a really important part of the game. There are there are times in the game, especially when you have a full hand that you might faint attack here. You might be like, "Oh, I'm going to attack here with the intent to pull out a defensive card from me and then follow it up with a different attack somewhere else after I've already expended my, you know, best defense card, right? That definitely happens quite a bit, too.
But, uh, the other thing I could do is knowing that also, so I just took New River and I know you didn't have Huntsville last time, so I'm being good. I'm not looking like looking at the tiny version of screen. may have that this time. And so I want to maybe maintain enough to defend this and make you work.
So it's like a matter of like okay like what do I want to So I think what I'm going to do actually is I'll take the easy path. We're going to play Jelico. Wait, I got to do Montichello first. Okay, we're going to play Montichello for one food. I know order of operations. Uh and then I'm going to play Scott County secessionist in pairing with Jelico. So I'm gonna put a to move
the Scott County secessionist because they have that settlement symbol
to come into TLS. So I'm going to spend one food
and then I'm going to go here.
I get a point and I also get that location card. So the other thing that happens in this game is that I'm getting these locations and it's bloating my deck out.
Mhm. Yeah. because I've got some firepower in here, but the more locations I have, the less firepower I have because it's just going to keep coming back around and around and around.
Yeah, it's a I mean, everything in the game is a trade-off. Every, like you said, every time you expand, you're making your deck less and less efficient. But one really huge benefit of you expanding into here
is there are two locations on the board here at Traml and down here at Brimstone where those cards if I get into those locations and then I improve those locations those are the homes to two of the the most influential uh leaders for my people and their improved versions actually do something that no other card do no other cards do. Uh, they have improved versions that are both locations and people. So, I could use this card like to defend or I can use this card as if it was controlling or a gun or whatever. So, by you going in in here before I did, you denied me the ability to get this card.
Eat it. I'm kidding. And so, I'm going to draw four cards. And that is me. And yeah.
All right.
One more turn from you and then let's do some solo.
Okay. All right. So, let's just play one more fight then. I want to liberate New River from you. So, I'm going to play uh I'm going to play Buffalo for food. And now I have a choice. And I just want to walk people through my choice. This because this is like a a a very real tension that you would have in the game. I'm coming across this creek. So, the most cards I can play is two. I'm going to launch my attack from Huntsville. I have to play at least one legitimate card. I'm gonna play this home guard card first because all it can do is attack. So now I've generated two attack power. Um, and so Liz, do you want to defend that?
Yeah, I'm at least going to make you bleed.
Okay, now here's where the real problem comes for me. I have another card, the Scott County Loyalist. I can add another combat, but if I do this, I obviously have a better chance to win the fight, but I have no ability to control it after the fight, which is what you were describing earlier. if I hold on to it and if if I win the fight, I can then play this card to control it with. So, I have to make this choice. Do I think you've successfully defend it or not?
I think there's a really good chance because you have champ, you have James Rule, you have your starting two strength card. I think there's a really good chance you've probably already uh tied me at at least two. So, I'm going to play this and get up to three.
Right. So, because it's, you know, this is a demonstrative one. Uh, I did play a two card.
Okay.
So, now I'm thinking like, oh god, like what has David played? Do I need to keep going? Like, can he beat that two? And so, now if I want to fully defend, I could play Captain James rule.
You can only play one unit card. So, you can only play uh New River and one combat card.
Oh, I can only play one unit card. Yeah,
see, we caught a rule thing. Okay. So, I can't do anything about it.
Yeah. You don't have New River.
I don't have New River.
Okay. So, now you might have played, knowing that you'd only be able to play one unit card, you might have played James Rule instead, right?
No, because he can go into places.
Yeah. Okay. All right. So, we reveal
and I have three. You have two.
So, I win it, right? So, that that means you I get this victory point for for removing it.
Gross. And then it's not fair.
You would lose two, but I can't then take control.
Right. Which means that depending on what I have, I could just take it right on back next turn, maybe.
Right.
I don't have it, but David doesn't know that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, sometimes you'll get in these tit for tap, but the problem with that is like each time you take a v a control marker from an opponent, it's a permanent victory point. And so, at least through combat, you're going to constantly propel the game forward that way.
Yeah. So yeah, this is a game where it's not it's not super complicated to play. You got to watch that you need to know how many cards and food to pay for things. I would say is like the thing that you got to pay attention to. You got to be watching your economy of cards and of food. Um,
but a lot of decision space emerges from these things because of the fake outs and the, you know, do I want to maintain something that I can do next turn or do I need to defend myself on my opponent's turn? There's a lot of like cool stuff going on.
Yeah. All right. Should we play the solo?
Yeah, let's do a solo.
All right. So, I'm just going to reload the module.
All right. So, for the solo, um, all the rules are the are identical. No rules changes. I think the solo does a really good job of like sort of, uh, modeling the the experience that you get from a competitive play game.
Yeah.
U, we could only play the Scott County people. We did not want to have players playing the Confederates attacking the people of Scott County in the solo game. So,
what? You didn't want me to get to be Champ Ferguson again? All right. So, we have our What we're going to do to set up the Confederacy is we will put the two unit cards they have in this row, the unit cards row, and we are going to put the location cards in this row. I'm just going to turn off. Okay. Um, so I think rather than describe it in detail, we'll just let's just play it right now.
Yeah, let's talk about the good. So, uh, the AI is going to drive what they do. And what's going to happen is you're going to play four location cards every turn for them. So, we're going to shuffle. We'll play a location card. We look at it and we look at this order of operations for this card. So, if possible, they're going to move, right? But they can't move because they don't have any food. Then, they'll bolster at the location, but they can't because they have no food. Then, they'll improve the location, but they can't because they have no food. So, they'll take food, right? So, they've taken a food. Nice.
Now we go to Jelico. So they would they would try to move, right? Can they move into Traml with one food? It's possible they can. Yes. So they're going to attempt to do that, right? They're going to try to move from Jelico into Traml with one food. So two things have to be true for them to try to do this. They have to have the food necessary to do it, which they do, and they have to have at least one card left in their draw deck, which they do. So they flip it over, and they had what they needed. They had a control marker. They had a food. So, they're going to spend their food. They're going to take control of Traml. So, we would add that here to their discard pile. We give him a victory point and we put a marker there.
Is it Traml or TML? I interviewed Aaron Trel like recently. So, it's like I don't know.
Well, I mean,
the first time I met him, I mispronounced his name as Traml and I felt really bad. Well, I can say this because I'm from Georgia. It's probably Traml.
I don't know.
Is the target or the tar, you know.
All right. So, we just continue on. So, now Warird will go again. They don't have any food. So, you can kind of quick, you know, if they don't have any food, they're going to take food, right? So, they take food.
And then James Town, they would look to see, can they attack New River? They don't have enough food, so they won't do that, but they can get Champ Ferguson. So, they're going to bolster Champ Ferguson by spending a food and adding it to their discard pile. And then we just take all their cards. We throw them in the discard pile and they're ready to go. Now, we just take our turn. And, you know, let's just play whatever we would want to do.
All right, let's see what we got. So, we've got a bunch of locations. I like that I can just tell without even zooming in.
Okay, we got Buffalo, which is where
Buffalo's right here.
Okay, we already own Buffalo, but we can go up into
We could We could attack them if we wanted to.
Uh, Chitwood. What's up with Chitwood? That's a nice board gamery sound sounding sort of place over here. Okay. Uh, Huntsville, of course. Huntsville is looking pretty nice. We could maybe make a little move into Homestead and just grab something easy for two points. Uh, because we got the Scott County loyalists and we've got uh, no business. Okay. So, what do you want to do, David? Do we want to We definitely need to use some of these locations to get food, but I think we should move from one of them and settle in it. I so I my suggestion would be we either get food and take the home guard so we can fight with the home guard or we start trying to do what I was doing last time. We go from no business and and go get Tinker Dave. One or the other just to get some fight power.
Okay. So do you want the immediate fight power the home guard and then we can
Yeah, that's probably good.
I mean it's a quickie. Tinker Dave requires more effort.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm lazy. No, not actually. Okay, so how much does the home guard costing us? Oh, it's two food, which is why we need Okay, so
we would do just Whoa, where did that card go? What did I do? Here it is.
That was odd, but okay. Um, so is there anything else that we Jesus is there anything else that we can do?
Um, well, we could. So, it depends on what our strategy is, right? If we wanted to, if we think we can defend Chitwoods, one thing that I like to do early is to improve Chitwoods because Chitwoods, there's only two places in the entire game that will produce two food.
Chitwoods and this Welsh farm right here. So, we could improve Chitwoods on turn one, and from then on, it's going to produce two food. Now, the problem with that is it's super vulnerable to attack from Somerset and now Traml.
So, and it becomes a juicy target. Hm. Do you want us to do like the no guts, no glory thing? Uh, can we do both that and get the home guard?
We don't have enough food.
Okay, let's get the home guard first.
Okay,
so then we have stuff to defend Chitwoods with.
Okay. Yep. That's cool.
Okay.
Okay. So, basically, we could just spend No. Okay. You're gonna have to do these cards.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, let's just spend all three of these for food, right? No business, Buffalo, and Chitwoods and get three food.
Food. All right.
And then we're going to use Huntsville and two food to get the home guard.
Right.
Cool. All right. We got the Home Guard.
Do you want to hang on to Scott County Loyalist or want to just ditch it and try to get back to our location cards faster?
I'm always tempted to hold on to any sort of firepower or ability to settle things. So, I think we hold on. Okay. All right. So then we just draw back up to five.
Okay. Now we go back to them. They will continue with their current draw decks, but as soon as they need to, they will shuffle them. Right. So it's not like they have some finite amount of cards they can play with,
right?
All right. So they're going to go they're going to look at Jboro. Again, we can shorthand this. They don't have any food. So they're going to take a food.
Yep.
Montichello. So
they could try to attack no business because they have a food, right? And so now what they're going to do is launch an attack against us. So
basically they only attack if they think they can take it all all over.
Yeah. Um yes, there's technically that is true except at the end of the game if we're in the period of sudden death, they will try to attack even if they can't take control. Interesting. Okay.
Yeah. Yep. So, okay. So, they're going to try to attack. They're going to play one card. Now, we know we know from the AI they will always try to play more cards than us if possible.
But in this case, they're limited to a single card.
Yeah. Also, their their draw deck's empty. Although, they just
if if they like let's say they were attacking along a road, they would just shuffle it and draw more, right? But now one thing is if we're good players, we know that this card has a two combat strength because that's the only card they have left that hasn't been used,
right?
So we can use that to our advantage.
Okay. So as defenders, uh, we don't have that no business card, so we can't use that.
And we also can't and we can't produce two combat. So there's no reason for us to play a card. We know we're going to lose it.
Yeah.
Yep.
Okay.
So we
Bummer.
Yep. So, we let it go. They hit it for two. So, they win. They get a victory point. We lose a victory point and we got to go find no business.
Possibly dumb question. Is it possible to run out of all your cubes and the other player wins by just killing you everywhere?
Yes, there is an instant victory condition. The Confederate can the Confederates can instantly win if they remove every cube from the the rebels uh from the Scott County loyalist. Now, I will tell you this, that rule exists because it has to exist. Because there's probably some world in which the players collaborate so that the loyalist player plays as bad as they possibly could. It's never actually happened in a game. So, the rule basically exists as a fallback in that eventuality that would never happen in the real world, but technically that there is that. And there's also an instant win like mercy rule. Yeah. If you ever start your turn at 20 and your opponent at 10 or less, you win instantly win the game. Again, I've seen that happen maybe like in like two or three games ever in the history of testing, you know, hundreds of times. So, but they exist basically to kind of those hyper aberrant plays.
Um, okay. And so they've they've now won the fight. And so we put the card there, but they get to try to draw now and see if they can take control. So they draw a card and they do take control. So they spend their food, they get to place their marker, they get to go up a point, and they get no business.
They got no business being there.
Mhm. That's right. That's right. Uh oh.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, now we shuffle it and continue their turn. So, Jamestown takes a food and Somerset. All right. Somerset cannot attack into Chitwoods because it's two. Yeah.
So, instead they will uh see if they can bolster. They can't because this is two food. So, they will take a food.
Take another food. Okay. Got it.
All right. Let's do one more round.
Yep.
I think that's just We got to show off this a little more. Uh, okay. Um, all right. So, we got New River.
Okay. We've got Buffalo Creek, perhaps. Um, we've got Huntsville. So, H Buffalo Creek is here. I think Buffalo Creek is a food card. And No, wait, wait. No, those are all Huntsville, guys. Okay. So, Buffalo Creek we're just clearly going to use for food right now. Yeah.
Yep.
So, let's go ahead and just set that one aside. Here, let's just discard it.
Yeah. And then let's see. New river is where? Here. Okay. So, we could use New River to expand
to perhaps Brimstone Creek, which is worth some points. Um, and or we could go to Homestead.
Yep. Now, another
go to No Business Creek and continue our blocking up here perhaps.
Yep. Yeah. One other thing we might consider doing is with Huntsville, we can get down to Brimstone.
And this is one of those cards where it's like a dual if we improve it, it's got uh a a unit basically a half unit half location card. So that's not a bad one. And the other thing that I really like about being in Brimstone, if they they will eventually if they were to take these powerful Confederate cards from down here and come up this road to Warpurn, being here is awesome because we can attack them, but they these powerful units can never fight off the road. So, they can never attack along the creeks. So, it's kind of nice to be sitting here in Brimstone to conduct those attacks.
Let's do it. Let's let's let's use that Huntsville card to go into Brimstone. So, it's one food. Yep.
And then we got to go get the brimstone card.
Yeah.
Boop. Okay. So, that's nice. Do we use a Who did We had two loyalists, right?
Yeah. I just
So, we got one more and we've also got New River.
So, now if you wanted to, we could go into No Business Creek. It's up to you if you want to get food or if you want to Uh
expand up in there.
The problem is that we just aren't we don't have enough guys.
Yeah. The only way we can get more people is we can recruit the seventh Tennessee with the Huntsville card if we want to do that next time. Or we can go back and reccon our turn. Or we can continue our our gra for Dave. Tinker Dave.
You know what? Let's let's go for Tinker Dave. No guts, no glory.
Yeah. Okay. So, we spend our food. We use No River. I mean, New River and the Scott County Loyalists.
Yes. We take NoS Creek.
We get a victory point and we get the card.
We're coming for you, Tinker Dave. We're coming.
Let's see how it is.
Dave is a nice big old three attack. Got to put him back. You can just keep getting him.
Yeah.
For and then one food. That's not bad.
Not bad. All right. What do you want to do? You want to call it there?
Let's do one more AI turn because the Confederates started, right?
That's right. Yep.
So, we'll let them like Well, let's Yeah, let's just do one more so they see it one more time and then we'll leave it in a state of mystery.
All right. Plus, they start with two food. So, they're going to do some stuff this turn.
So, no business. They are here. Okay.
So, they are going to try to attack us for what we just got. Now, we're in a bad state because like you deduced last time, we just got this card. Oh, you're going to shuffle. So, we have a chance to draw it. I was going to say we wouldn't be able to defend with it. So, there is a chance that we were able to draw it and defend.
Let's hope.
Yep.
Uh, no.
Sorry.
Okay.
You left the scuffling in my unlucky hands.
So, they are going to attack it. They are going to be able to attack with up to two cards. And like I said before, we know that they're always going to try to play one more card than us, right? So, do we want to try to defend No Business Creek?
I really don't want to lose No Business Creek. We gave up a lot.
Well, I will tell you, I don't think we can hold it because what's going to happen is all the cards right now, they can use all of them. So if in their unit card deck there were these like confederates that need supply
those and this is what's really important about this AI system and about the efficiency of it. Once they start taking those cards those cards need supply.
So if they were to draw those as cards, they're just dead cards that wasted their turn. So they start become inefficient, right? But right now, all of their cards are valid cards, and we know they're going to draw two. And we know that the lowest possible strength they can have with two cards is three. So, we cannot successfully defend it.
We wasted my food. Oh.
So, let's just let him have it, right?
All right.
Now, now, actually, hold on. There is there is something there is something we might want to do, though. We also know that if we force them to play two cards, they would only have one card left to try to control it, and they might fail to control. So, we could force them to play multiple cards.
Okay.
So, that's that's a that's there's no right or wrong. That's just a gamble. Do we want to play make them play as many of their cards as possible?
Let's gamble. This is the last bit of the of the tour of this game, so let's just let's do the more dramatic thing. All right. And let's use let's play the home guard because we might want to keep this guy for our to control with. Right.
Agree.
All right. So, we're going to force them to shuffle their deck and draw another card
and then they reveal the two.
That was awesome. So, they look at they
they I think Yes. So, we forced them to play their control card. Also, we forced them to play champ Ferguson and they win the fight. So, now he goes back. That's right.
Good.
He goes back. So they win it. So they take this.
Okay.
They score a point.
We lose a point. And we lose.
Are you sure nobody's ever run out all their cubes, David?
No, we're doing good. We're doing good.
All right. We lose. No Business Creek. But they
But they didn't get it.
That's right. They will not try to control it and they can't.
They They worked really hard for something they now don't get.
That's right. Yep.
And it's only one point. So like, okay, pretty good.
All right. And so this goes into our discards. All right. So we'll continue the turn for them.
So
now they're in warberg.
So they have two food. So now they're going to spend their two food to buy these big gnarly Confederate units.
Oh no.
So just to let people see what's happened, they don't get just one, but they get two. These are super powerful units, but they have to go back to Warberg when they do anything. attack, defend, control. They always have to go back be able to go back to warper.
Yeah. Well, that third Tennessee cavalry is like one time use. Yeah,
they're both one time use.
Okay. So, basically also you they use them one time and it's if they're effective one time, right?
That's right. If they if they win a combat, they go away. And so, um, again, there's a lot of nuance here. Sometimes we want to attack them, not even to try to win a fight, but to pull those cards out of their hand and force them to defend with them so that on their turn they can't use them to attack.
Yeah.
But yeah, if they come in and they're successfully attacked, they they are permanently removed. And thematically, what that represents is, and I mentioned this at the very beginning, the Confederacy would send these big units in and they would go like fight for a second and then they'd have to leave because they have all this important stuff they need to be doing in the surrounding area. So they can't just station and garrison these big units in Scott County,
right?
So they would only stay around for a short period of time.
All right. Jelico we know has to take food because they have no food.
Yep. They got nothing.
And Traml. So Traml has enough food to attack Buffalo.
But oh this is interesting. So they will attack because they have cards.
Yeah.
We know we know that both of these cards are the Confederate cards. they cannot use. All right. So, they're going to try to attack us with a card and we can just not play a card.
Just calmly be like, "Yeah, okay. All right.
Yeah, whatever, dude. You You got nothing."
And so, it flips over, the attack fails, and their turns over.
Incredible. All right. I like this. This is a really nice little system. Very efficient.
Yeah. I mean obviously it does you know like I said it models I think the play very similar to the experience of the two players. Now obviously if you look at what they're doing they're playing more than five cards which a player can never do. But you have examples like that last one where it's like well that that's you the player as long as the player is really closely tracking what's going on just like you could in a two-player game you can start to really figure out what's art of the possible and and play to your advantage. Awesome. All right. So, uh, for those of you who are out there, I am running this on Thursday, July 23rd. Uh, but you should know that the campaign for this on Kickstarter, uh, goes live on the 28th, which is next Tuesday.
There you go.
So, uh, check out Rebels Against Rebellion by David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin. Uh, and hopefully y'all enjoyed this little preview. Thanks for coming on, David. Thank you. Thanks for having me as always.