Stress Botics: Odyssey - 3p - The Rules
Transcript
Before I get into it, I do want to point out this board is double-sided. This is the Odyssey side. The other side is just base game stress botics. Now, most most of what I'm going to covers both games, not all of it. Some of it is going to be uh Odyssey specific, but if you learn this, going retroactive is going to be a breeze. Okay, it's going to be considerably easier. All right, so we got a little theme here to start off because you know what, Fernando Oh, by the mentioned this, but it's sponsored. So, a big thank you to Two Tomatoes. All right, who sponsored this and published the game. If you're here in the States or North America, you should be getting your copy here within days, if not a week. Uh, from what I've heard, it should be imminent. All right. Uh, from what I've been told. So, big thanks to everybody over at Two Tomatoes and Fernando, who I have no doubt. Fernando, yes, he is currently in chat. He's there. It's token signaps. So, uh, that is Fernando. Thanks for joining us and thanks for all your work on this. All right. So, with that said, one more little thing and I promise we will get started and be smooth from this point on. I hope. All right, you ready? Here we go.
In stress botics, players play as beta bots, neurotic, easily stressed, battery operated robots whose mission is to obtain various minerals and substances from the planet and deliver them to the passing ships in orbit. The game takes place over roughly 13 rounds, could be a little more, could be a little less. Uh, with each round having the same six phases. The red freighter ship is usually the timer of the game. At its core, see what I did there? Stress Botics is an action planning game where you're planning out two to four actions each round. With those actions, you'll be moving through the planet's core, mantle, and crust, gathering the eight resources, and out maneuvering other players while also dealing with other autonomous robots.
all the while trying to time your deliveries to the passing passing ships in orbit. The key here is that there are fewer actual deliveries available than there are potential deliveries. While it's not a race game, there is an aspect to timing where a player may have to make alternative plans if another player manipulates turn order and action efficiency better and beats a player to a specific delivery to a specific ship. Life is stressful and things are inevitable. This applies to both you and your betabot. A lot of things in this game are going to stress out your poor little hardworking beta bot. stress equals negative points and a few other not so good effects. But yet more stress means acting sooner than others which can be beneficial. So it's a fine line to walk and it's just one more system that you have to negotiate and manipulate in order to win a game of stress botics.
At the end of those 13 or so rounds, players tally up their victory points predominantly scored from making deliveries both during the game as well as at the very end of the game. And whoever scores the best will have their beta bot be the model for mass production while the losers are scrapped and discarded to history. No stress, y'all. All right. So, now that we know a rough big picture of what we're trying to do, let's take a tour of everything out here. And there's a lot. Now, the main board area consists of the main board and five extension boards to form the common main board area. So going forward, I'm just going to refer to all six boards as the main board or the main board for simplicity sake. Just know that it's really six boards adjacent to one another. Now, this main board area is essentially broken into nine or so general areas, which might not be obvious at first, but it's an important thing to conceptualize. So starting out area one is the zoomed out view of space and the planet which also includes the core vault and the pressure gauge. So we have the planet here we have the space which is the timer and stress track but that also includes over here the core vault and the pressure gauge. So
basically everything right here is all the planet. Okay. Area number two is the extraction and production vaults on the planet which mirror the planet itself. So these here have to do with the extraction production vaults that are right there. So you'll notice the lava the acid and then the battery one. So it goes lava acid battery and that's in the middle sector. So these mirror those zoomed out zoomed in zoomed out zoomed in. Okay. Now area three is the console. This is a zoomedin view of the alphabot location and more. Now this is the console in stressbotics odyssey. This is the alphabot. The alphabot is in the first main vault. That is represented by that little little marker right there.
That is the alphabot. Again, this zoomed out. This zoomed in. All right. Now, area 4 is exclusive to Odyssey. This is Alphabot's internal area. It It's guts, if you will. All right. This includes one of those sideboards. So, this board right here, so from here to here, that board doesn't exist in the base game, so it's not used, but it's needed in Odyssey. All right. So all of this area right through here, all of that, not this, but all of that is the internal area of this. So zoomed out, zoomed in.
Okay. Area five is the action card draw decks. That's right there. Just those four little decks right there. Area six is the delivery area. So that board right there. that when delivering to the passing ships, this shows the deliveries and the rewards. Now, moving over from that, we have the cylindroid belt. Those are where the bad guys come from. So, all of those uh cylindrical things, those are cylindroids. Those are the bad dudes. And then there's the elite cylindroid. The elite
cylindroid board or the boss info. So, the boss dude, all of that, that is the information having to do with the elite cylindroid. And then finally, the ninth area are the items in the stress boy board. These are enhancements for your beta bot. So, all of these are going to actually go onto your player board, stuff like that. Okay, so those are all the nine main areas in this game. Now, we're gonna kind of go over this in detail. the planet where the game takes place. Technically, if you if you care, it's STR 355. So, there are three port three parts. There's the core, the mantle, and the crust. There are three sectors within that that are randomly assigned.
So, sector C, sector B, sector A. There are pathways between the various locations on the planet. Some of these are locked. You're going to notice that there are little locks out there and there are now two tunnels in Odyssey. So out here, so this is the primary tunnel and this is the secondary tunnel. There is the mini alphabet that I mentioned earlier, affectionately called mom or the mother of machines, if you will. We we started calling her mom and Fernando kind of takes that, although you can beat up your mom in this version, so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Then there are the mini beta bots. These are the players. So that's Ken, that's Paul, that's John right there. And locks obviously are saying that those locations are locked or impassable for right now. All right. Then moving up into space up there at the top there are the ship and stress tracks. So if you look each uh ship has its own track and you'll notice also that there is a stress track. The stress track is negative points during the game, possibly possibly positive points at the end of the game. And finally, there is game uh orbit tile. That is this tile right here. And this is just based on player count. When all the ships arrive here, the game ends. We go into final scoring. Okay. All right. So, next we
have uh the quartortile. Now, we're not talking about this the core tile or the vault, if you will, for the for the core right there. That's lava that's inside the core. The number the amount of lava is based on player count. It has space for the beta bots where two beta bots are cuz they're in the core. And there's also the pressure track with the gauge. That gauge is going to move whether up or down, whatever, ranging from 1 to four. All right. And while we're here, we'll go ahead and talk about the console Alphabot and its movement area and the tiles is all of that area. There are spaces for beta bots, the Alphabot, cylindroids, and boxes. And you can sort of see those. And by sort of, I mean I'll go ahead and bring it up there. So, we have boxes, cylindroids, as well as the elite that may come in as the game progresses. All right. All right. Now, moving over now to guts, if you will, the internal area inside of its hull, if you will, right?
So, Alphabot shield track and the battery tracks. So, there are three battery tracks. It's a little hard to fit them all onto one screen. So, the battery track for Titanium is that to coincide with the shield track. And then down below over here uh next to the action cards are the other two uh battery tracks. So we have the uh black which are carbon batteries and silicon battery track as well over there. And then moving back up to the Alphabot uh AI or I'm sorry their tank area. This is Alphabot storage area. So, as she gets resources both for herself as well as players, um they'll be stored there. And you'll also notice to the right of that or John's left, Alphabots tile and card and AI cards. There are two types. There are aggressive, she's going crazy, and standard. Everything's chill.
Everything's fine. And you'll notice the AI tile right here is on its a side, which is its more chill side, if you will. All right. And also the AI marker is going to coincide and that's basically going to tell us how we go about drawing those cards as the game progresses. All right, moving on. Now over on the right hand side over here, there is Alphabots uh control tile and their betabot spaces. So there's spaces for two betabot areas. And in fact, because one of the locations is unavailable uh until a certain point, a threshold has been met, we're just going to go ahead and use a little vote for women x to put it on there to signify that's not an active space available for beta bots. But this spot has to do with the control. And then when we move on down south, if you will, down here, this spot right here is the server has to do with that tile and these cards down there. Okay. Then again, we have the action card uh draw decks. In Odyssey, there are four decks to just three. Players are going to be drawing those. Then the extraction and production vaults. I've already talked about that. These nine mirror the nine that are out there. And those have spaces for beta bots. The one thing that I will point out is not all of the tiles have room for two. If you see two mining
spaces, that is room for two beta bots. If you see a plug, which is a connect action, that only has room for one betabot. That is not a location. That is not a location. Nor is that or that. Those just tell you what the main action is going to be. Uh, but it's only only the hatching behind it shows that it's an active spot available for beta bots or player areas. All right. And I think just about the only other well yeah the only other place we're going to talk about in detail are the delivery area up there. So that's the main objectives for each of the three ships. There are one or two deliveries available for each ship. There are spaces for delivery markers down below each of those. The A, B, and C. Down below that there's uh spaces for delivering Alphabot which likely won't happen in our game. just it it's less uh it's hard to do um unless somebody is specifically going after that strategy.
All right, then the other areas and we'll just again uh so the cylinder and elite those do not conveyor those are just bad guys that are going to come out here and if they spread from here they will come out to there um and go other places. Um yeah, then also there is a phase tracking card. Now, this isn't called out in the rule book, but all this is is, hey, what phase are we in? That's all that is. All right? It's not a round tracker. The round tracker are technically the ships themselves. There are hatch reference cards. These two reference cards are going to have to do with that hatch, and that's going to be random as it comes up. And finally, there's a discard area, which you don't need the tile over there. You could put them in stacks wherever, but we're going to go ahead and use it since we have it.
Okay. And then obviously there's the resource supply of all the different resources that are available. There are eight of them in the game, but just take our word for it. They're all out here. All right. All right. So then there's the player tableau. And you know what? John's here with me, so we'll go ahead and use John's uh here. So we have a player board. There are four locations to plan and play action cards. So there will be one, two, three, and then a fourth one there. Uh there are four tanks for holding resources. In a two and three player game, there are three locations for Alphabot items, one of which can also hold advance items. So there's those as well as those. There's storage for dangerous substances, acid and gas.
There's a holding area for up to three captured cylindroids. There's the battery production area right there. There's the shield track and the battery track which are interspersed and related to one another. There is the Betabot AI spaces. There's the Betabot status tile which also holds the three delivery markers which if you are doing poorly enough that'll have to flip over. And finally, there's a turn order tile that you can see that's well based on turn order. Finally, off camera, there are three cargo cards as well as a random secondary uh objective right there. All right, y'all don't need to see that on on a regular basis, so don't worry about it. All right, so stress bottoics is played over again approximately 13 rounds with each round following the same phases or steps. So, you'll notice we're using the Stressbotics Odyssey player aid. So those six uh phases are the events phase, the programming actions, which the meat of the game is all right here, maintenance, the cylindot activation. This is arguably the most complex part of the game, but also now that I have it down to a science and I have a little cheat sheet, makes it a lot easier. And finally, a little status check as well. So those are the six phases that are in this. So,
the best way I know how to teach this bad boy is to go through each of the steps. So, here we go. We're going to start off with the events phase. All right. The very first thing that happens in the event phase is we're going to go ahead and flip over the top event card. Now, you'll notice that card has a zero on it. For the uh first few games, it recommends you play with those. There are three of those. It makes it a very stable, very chill start before things go to absolute crap. So, just be prepared. So, go ahead, flip that bad boy up. All right. So, now it's got a ton of information on it as you can see. And we're going to go through it in a systematic matter. Okay. So, the first thing that happens is advance each ship as shown. Well, it says every ship advance one space. So, go ahead and do it except in the first round. Nope. Not true.
No, that's only in the base game, not in Odyssey. Uh, all right. Now, you'll notice that on that track, each dot or letter on a ship's track is a movement space. I say letter because you see that A that's right there. Those are actually delivery spaces. So, when a ship is on that space, it is available to be delivered. All right. Um, when a ship makes its final movement onto the end orbit tile down here, um, if there are any unfulfilled demand tiles, we're just going to get rid of them because you missed your opportunity to, uh, to, uh, deliver. And then in that case, if you did do that, everybody is going to get some amount of stress. What were all the deliveries fulfilled? No. Lose five points. Stress is negative points. Uh same with the se the second ship and finally the third ship. All right, that's how that works.
All right. Now, the second piece of information that's on that event card is the core rotation. So, in this case, that says rotate clockwise. Okay. So, let's go ahead and take a look here at the planet itself. So, the planet is made up of a bunch of different tick marks. A tick mark is a rotation. That means rotate like so. Done. So, what that basically means is these pathways are tunnels that exist. It is possible to uh go a different direction, but you're going to damage your shields, but we'll talk about that more here in a little bit. Okay. So, on that event card, that core rotation is one step in the direction shown. Sometimes it's anticlockwise, sometimes it's clockwise.
On the A side, which is what it starts with, it's one tick mark. However, on the B side, it's possible to flip that core later in the game. One tick mark. They're just further spaced apart. So, it's a full tick mark. Okay. Wherever that is, there are just fewer of them. Yeah. All right. So, the next thing that happens is you're going to adjust the pressure as shown. So, you'll notice that pressure gauge is it rotate that card a little bit. 90 there. Keep going. Yep. There. That's the pressure gauge. So you see that little arrow is pointing up. So therefore, we need to actually adjust the pressure up one tick. Okay. Done. Sometimes it'll be down one, sometimes it'll be zero, sometimes it's up one. Next is the autoroduce. So you'll see in the bottom right hand corner, this one is autoroducing lava.
You add the pictured resources into any vault that matches them, only one of each, up to the max of that specific vault. Flip any tile that has all the pictured resources and or pictured tile on the event card. So, okay, let's go ahead and do that. I mean, we're effectively doing step one of the game while I'm teaching it here. So, if we take a look, these are the vaults, right? Again, zoomed in spaces of them. And we have the lava supply. At the bottom of these bolts, you're going to notice there are different resources pictured. This one shows a lava. It does not have any lava on it. So therefore, we go ahead and throw lava on it. This one has two lava, but it doesn't have any. We put one on it. If it had one on it, we would put one more. If it had two, we would not put cuz it's full. It has hit its capacity. And then when if and when a tile has all the resources listed on it on that tile, it just flips over. Okay, so there we go. But that is production. So autoroduce. Okay, that's done. Now the other place that we could possibly autoroduce is up there on the stress boy. And you'll notice that symbol, that little snowflake, the asterisk says, hey, autoproduce up here.
But there's no lava shown, so we don't need to worry about that. So therefore, auto production is done on that. Next, you're going to see that there is a spawn cylind boxes and eventually the elite cylindroid. So the cylindroid belt is not a conveyor. Only the closest to the board moves onto the board or the closest to as it were. All right. The letter that's pictured right there, you'll see that that letter is A. It could be A, it could be B, it could be A and B, or it could be an X. If it's an X, it doesn't, no cylindroids come out. So, in this case, uh, it dictates where to spawn onto the main vault. Uh, place everything in the belt space on the appropriate space on the main vault.
We're not actually going to do that step right now. We'll do it when we when we talk about it here in a little bit. And then the final piece of information is the vault. I'm sorry, is the hatch. The hatch is either red or green. That means either close it or open it. If it's red and it was already closed, stays closed. If it's green and it open, it stays open. Otherwise, you flip it. So, okay, cool. So, what does that mean? That vault, that hatch is going to flip over closed. Okay, done. That is that's the events. So, that is all of phase one there. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Okay. All right. Moving on. The next part pretty simple phase as well. This is the action programming. Okay, so it consists of two parts. You're go the players are going to draw cards and then they're going to program their cards. They have four options of the different cards that they can draw. I'll talk about that here in a minute though. So in turn order, players are going to draw cards based on their location in regards to where Alphabot is. Okay. And in fact, I'm going to go ahead and show y'all the uh the player aid for this because it does a really good job of driving this point home instead of me trying to show you.
It's it's actually just drawn right here. It's a little bright. Let's try it that way. All right. If you were in uh the exact main vault, the same spot as Alphabot, you may draw three different cards or you may draw two of the same. However, before you draw, you must say, "I'm going to draw two of the same." You don't get to draw one. Look at what's underneath and then draw maybe the same. So, three different or two of the same. If you were in the same sector as Alphabot or in the core, you draw two different ones. So, again, what is a sector? A sector is that. So, uh, Alphabot is right here. John is in the same sector. John is still in the same sector as mom.
Okay? And these guys are in the core. So therefore, everybody is going to be doing both of the or uh that choice, meaning they're going to draw two different ones. You don't have to declare which one before you take because they're all face up and it's pretty obvious. Finally, if you're anywhere other than what I just talked about, anywhere, you draw one. Anywhere is you're in a different sector of the mom. You're in a uh you're in a tunnel. You're in Yeah, that pretty much is it. So there you go. Those are your options. You draw one in that case. Yeah. Which is a different sector technically, right? Yeah. All right. So then after each player draws their cards, then they're going to program their cards. And what does that mean? So, let's say for argument's sake, John went ahead and drew a couple of these cards and he looks at him and he chooses, "Hey, I'm going to go ahead and program that and that." Now, we're going to zoom in a little bit and we're going to talk about very briefly that battery track right there.
So, that battery track says how many cards you are allowed to program. Everybody has a base of two. And then you'll notice when that fourth battery when there is one there, you'll see that that says you can program a third card. Okay? And then finally, there is a fourth card option and that is right there on the eighth battery. However, you'll notice that that is also doubles as the shield track. The shield track in this case would have to be all the way maxed to be able to have a battery there. You can't have a battery on the outside of the shield if that makes sense. Okay. Okay. So, that's both programming cards or drawing cards as well as programming cards.
Uh, pretty easy. I think that's straightforward. And do you have any questions on that, good sir? All right, cool. All right, moving on. Now, we get to the meat of the game. Okay, let's go ahead and move this bad boy out the way. Here we go. Phase three is the meat of the game, the actions. Players are going to reveal and perform sub actions. They may boost and return to hand and or return to hand and then finally return to hand any unrevealed cards. Okay. So, how does this work? There are four main actions in this game. It is move, it is mine, it is connect, and it is interact. For the base game, connect and interact are combined into connect, but in the expansion, they are broken out into individual cards. Okay. All right.
In a turn, a player has two options. they either reveal their leftmost card and carry out the action or for free take it back into their hand and skip that action. So on John's turn, he's third. As you can see, it's his turn. He either is going to turn it over and do the action or he's going to pull back the action. Now, if in that case, if he were to instead, he wouldn't reveal it. He would just take it back into his hand and he can do that for free. If a player though wishes to take that uh carry out that programmed action, they do some or all of these five steps. They flip the leftmost card, then they carry out the action. They may boost it uh via a card or a battery uh which basically is doubling the action or taking an action that requires a boosted action. So a a double action. The third thing is if they have any captured cylindroids on their board, they may then take another action. And fourth thing is they either once they're done, they either discard that card to the supply or they pay to keep it. And I'll talk about that more in detail in a little bit. And then finally, if at any time a player is in a vault or at a location that has resources on it, so if John were to come on over here, you may take any and all of those resources that are right there.
Okay. All right. So now, since John's got that card flipped up, we're going to go ahead and uh talk about those cards. So there again, four types of cards: move, mind, connect, and interact. There are two versions of each card. Go ahead and flip the other one over as well. They're different actions, but you're going to notice the two versions. One is a regular, that one, or a what I'm calling pre-boosted action. In a three-player game of Odyssey, there are eight regular and three pre-boosted of each of the stacks. All right, they show you four different things. It shows the action you can take. It shows if it's a regular or a boosted card. It shows the retention cost down here down below right there. And it shows the color of the battery to boost the card if it's not pre-boosted. So you'll notice that this one is not pre-boosted. So therefore, it's going to require a titanium battery to be able to boost it. Whereas this one doesn't show a battery because it's already pre-boosted. All right.
Now, boosting actions again allows you to take double action. Some actions require being boosted to take actions. As I mentioned earlier, each action though may only be boosted once per card. No double or quad actions. Sorry about that. If a card is a boosted card, and I've been referencing them as pre-boosted, there's no cost. Just yay, it's boosted. Double action. Awesome. All right. Otherwise, it requires you to spend the matching battery. All right. The payment battery must and again that battery can come from one of two places specifically. It comes from inside your Betabot. So, if he had a titanium battery in it, he could take that battery out, put it to the supply, and boom, it's boosted. But alas, he does not. The other option is if the bottom location, so where his black battery is, swap the spot on that and the titanium if it were along the lines of that in here. Throw another How many do you need for that? You need for that. You need three more. So, two more. If this were the situation right here to where that space is activated, that says, "Hey, you can use that battery in that black spot to boost an action." So, in other words, to take that boosted action, he could discard
that battery back to the supply and hey, we're ready to rock and roll. But as soon as he does that, that whole layer, that whole line of batteries slides on down. So, literally just like so. All right. So, if you don't have six batteries on your battery track, your only option to boost it is this or have a pre-boosted card. Okay. All right. Cool. Any questions on that? No. Good. Using a captured cylinder. Look, we'll talk about that when we actually get to that. All that means, again, looking at John's board, grab a cylind. There we go. Captured. If it's captured like that a as it when he's done with his action, he could discard this back to the supply and take the associated action. Each different color cylind provides a different option. So, we'll cover that later when we're actually playing the game. Finally, the last thing that is going he's going to choose to do here is either discard the card or pay to keep it. Now, if he chooses to discard, discard it. Okay, done. if he chooses to keep it. This is one of only two time or in fact this is the only time the card has to do with the storage tank that it's associated with. So you'll notice you must pay in this case is one black cube or one carbon and take two stress. So what does stress look like? Negative points. Okay. So he would
have to pay it from here. He could not pay it from there. Therefore on this action he would just discard it. But if it were his second, this card would have already been discarded. He then takes the action whatever. Do you want to keep this card? He has two options. He either pays that uh titanium back to the supply and he keeps the card in his hand or he d he loses one shield moving that down and hey that's the payment and he keeps the card in hand. Okay. Hand limit is only checked at the end of each round. So follow your heart. do whatever uh feels good to you in that regard. All right, but the important thing on that is it has to come from the tank that it's associated with. All right, good. All right, picking up bonus resources.
I've already talked about it. They go into any tank. So, if John were here, he takes a lava, he can throw it into any of the four tanks that he wants. All right, so done. Easy enough. If he doesn't have room for it, he can't take it. You got to leave it where you found it. Uh you can never discard resources that are in your tanks. You may spend them, but you may not voluntarily uh discard them. Uh yeah, easy enough. So, that's the basics of how you actually take the action. Now, we're going to dig into what the four actions are. Here we go. All right. So, the first one, and we're using John as the guinea pig, so we'll go ahead and give him a move card. So, get rid of the other card so it's not confusing. Just There you go. There we go. All right. So, that's a move card. You may move spaces up to the limit based on your battery track. So, John, how many can you move currently?
Two spaces. Exactly. If you'll notice, it can go up to three spaces per move action. If it were boosted, do that twice. So technically he stuck to two right now. Otherwise, if it's boosting could be up to four. Movement is moving your mini beta bot uh to uh location to location uh and following the pathways. Usually all lines are two-way pathways for your beta bot. The gray arrows arrows uh are to show how Alphabot will move. So if he's here, he could move one, two, something like that. He could move just one. He could move one, one, two. If he were there, he could move one, two. He also could go one, two, and end up here in the tunnel. However he wants, it's always an up to the amount of movement.
Locks and broken pathways are impassible. And moving to and from the core also follows pathways. But since the core moves, as you already saw that it's going to move in the first round, if no pathway exists, you may always move from the core to the crust, I'm sorry, to the mantle if you wish to do so for one movement point. However, it will damage your shields as shown on the core tile. And that says you're going to take two damage to move directly from here to there. However, you are never ever ever allowed to move vice versa. Okay? Think of it this way. Your beta bot has a kind of a w this way up in it. So, it can always move up to the mantle. But coming from the mantle towards the core, you're not exactly sure where the vault is down there. So, you can't find it. Therefore, you can't move from there to there. But, you can move from there to there. All right. Easy enough. the other side, you take more damage. But we'll talk about that if and when we get to that. All right. So, now moving into and out of the main vault. And when I talk about that, that is where mom is or where Alphabot. Okay. So, I'm going to just move mom for a minute. But there are three types of spaces here in the main vault. There are entry and exit spaces.
Okay. So, there's one. So for Alphabot entry and exit for us and by us I mean the beta bots there is one two three four uh entry and exit spaces. Where you come from to enter into the main vault dictates where you're going to start or you're going to be. Okay. Each of these spaces may hold four beta bots and one box. So you see that there's a little box there. It's implied to be able to have them in those. And no cylindroids will ever be in these four locations there. Then there are what's called combat spaces. It is the other four spaces. They kind of look like they have targeting circles. That's how I keep them straight in my head. There are four things that can be in there at any given time. Four items. So whether they are beta bots, whether they are cylindroids, whether they are boxes, whatever it might be. Okay. Only mains uh vault spaces. Uh these are the only main vault spaces that cylindroids can be in. Okay.
So targeting, you want to target bad guys, bad guys can only be in there. That's how I remember it. All right. We can move those back if you would please. There is the hatch space here. Four betabots can be on that total. No cylindroids, no boxes. And the other thing in this game, adjacency is orthogonal. By the way, that comes from Bomberman for all us old school old people. Uh everything in that game's orthogonal. So therefore, it's or orthogonal in this game. That's how Thank you. Correct. So the direction you came from again dictates what is going to be where you're going to go into there. Uh moving to any space within the main vault is a movement point including on top of alphabot. So if we look at this and I would like to zoom in on this because I feel like this is an important point. You'll notice that moving into here into the main bolt from up here, you're gonna need my caffeine. That is gonna be a long day. Uh moving in from that direction, look for that icon.
Moving in from the core that direction. So on and so forth. Okay? Otherwise, the entrance and the exit, it's always the pathway of the gray arrow in that regard. So if John came in here, remember that icon there. Moving over to the main vault, you're going to notice that icon is pictured right there. So therefore, when John moves in, he moves in right there. And then if you had an extra movement point, which he did because he moved from here to there. That's one movement. The second one, he can move to any available space on this. What's an available space? Any of those nine, including on top of Alphabot. It's important to note this is on the same spot as Alphabot. You are immune from uh cylindroid damage as well as damage from other beta bots. Uh but you move where she moves. So on and so forth. And uh whether the vault is open or closed, you can go onto the vault space. I'm sorry, I keep saying vault. I mean hatch. Okay.
All right. All right. Now leaving from any vault space many any main vault space does not cost any extra movement no matter where you are on this board right here to move from there. So let's say on John's turn he's chilling whatever he's right there let's say he says he has two movement he wants to move two one two very simple it doesn't matter where he is here when we talk about being in the hall of Alphabot that's going to change but as it is if you're anywhere here then good to go free or free no extra cost movement in that case all right Good. If you end your movement on a delivery location, we haven't talked about deliveries yet, right? That's kind of one of the main things that we're going to be doing in this game. But if you end your movement on a delivery location, there are two in each sector.
Uh you also incur stress as shown on the locations. And yes, they are each a location to move to and through, but you only incur the stress when you end your movement. They are not just passing through one stress and five stress for ending your movement respectively. That's the same for all three sectors. If you end your movement in one of the five colored extraction bolts and another beta bot is there. So for instance, these guys say Paul comes on up, he moves on up and oh hey, I'm over here with you in the same extraction vault. You compare your AI with the other beta bot and it's e either going to be good or bad for one or both of you, but we'll talk about that more later on. All right, that's only checked after a beta bot takes movement. Okay.
Finally, when you complete your movement, move your beta bot to the location that matches where you moved. Well, you just saw me do that. The beta bot here moves one, two. So, wherever the Beta butt is out here on the board, it moves to that location. Again, zoomed out, zoomed in, right? All right. Excuse me. If you're in the core, you're on the core tile. Y'all can go ahead and point for me now. Uh, if in the main vault with Alphabot, move on to the console. So, I've done that. If you're in an extraction production vault, I've already covered that. And finally, if you're on a delivery space or in an empty main vault, show them what an empty main vault is. So, anywhere there isn't Yeah. Alphabot, you're going to end up there kind of in the ether, so to speak. All right, that's movement. Any questions on movement? Okay, good. Moving on. A mine is a terrible thing to waste, but it's a great action to take in this game. That is that action right there. There are two options when you take this action.
You either extract resources from an extraction vault, the core, a tunnel, or the hatch in the main vault if it's open. Or, and this is important, attack cylindroids or other beta bots, John. Hey, or Alphabot. Okay. Now, let's go ahead. Before we get into that, let's talk about resource holding now. All right. Now that Paul's here, we'll use his board since it's right side up. Yeah, there are eight resources in the game. I'm not uh carbon, titanium, silicon cubes. There is beta matter. There is exomatter. There are uh gas and acid.
And there's lava. There are 10 spaces per tank. And by spaces, I mean some resources take up one, two, or four spaces. Uh there's a dangerous substance tank mix and match seven gas and acid. It's the only place that gas and acid can be stored unless you have a rule breaker card, which we'll get into if we get into it. All right. Everything except for lava can be star stored harmoniously together. Lava's hot. Real hot. like damn hot. Melts everything in its same tank with the exception of exomatter crystals. Instantly melts the other resources and turns them into lava one one regardless of how many items it melted. It makes one bonus lava. So it's n plus one. All right. So in one lava tank with three cubes, it becomes a total of five lava. The lava it was the three cubes plus the one. All right.
Okay, so now let's go ahead and talk about extracting from a vault. All right, extracting from a vault, provided there are no cylindroids in the location, otherwise you've got to attack them, and attacks are always successful. So, you're either going to destroy them or capture them, you can either extract the resources shown on the tile according to the current pressure of the planet. All right, so to be able to do it, we look at what the pressure is. Well, at the beginning of the game, we saw that the pressure is going to rise, so we're at pressure three. So, pressure three says you're going to extract two carbon. Very simple. If it were two, it would be two beta matter. And again, they can go into any uh storage space on your board, any tank. If you extract batteries, batteries are like you create batteries like right there. Those go onto the battery track. Gas and acid go in. You get the idea. All right.
If you extract from a tunnel, and I would like to point this out for those that just joined us, Ken and Paul, if you extract from a tunnel, you can take any resource that's listed there. Your choice. Not in order. Okay. If it's the last resource, remove the lock on the pathway here. I'll go ahead and move it that right there. You would remove the lock right there. and you would flip the tile over to its really cool other side like that. Okay, there we go. If you extract from the hatch, go ahead and set that back up if you would please. Will you? Uh, the hatch must be open and your beta bot must be on the hatch or adjacent to it. What's adjacent? Hh.
Yeah, there you go. There you go. Okay. Um, you take whatever the pictured resource is. So now if you take a look and I am going to a moment. Hold on. I don't have this one saved. I apologize. Talk amongst yourselves. Go ahead. How you guys doing? Yeah. How you how you doing? Good. Great. Ready to go. Good. Yeah. Ken apparently needs sleep. We went over a lot before you guys got here like the board and everything. Yeah. Yeah. All right. There we go. I probably should have started watching earlier so that I can learn how to play so I can learn how to play this game. Yeah, I appreciate you. All right, so depending on which hatch it is, it says when you take a mine action, take whatever it is.
So, in this case, a lava, but you'll notice you're also going to take two shield damage. All right. Now, these three you don't take any shield damage. These you will uh those you won't either. Uh that one you will, but those are uh connect actions. We'll talk about that in a little bit. If you are on top of the hatch and you extract, you get plus one. So instead of one lava, you would take two lava and that comes from the supply, not from there because you were on the main vault. You are not in the core. All right. And likewise, if you from there, you're also that's from it's from supply, right? Any anywhere except here, you don't take from there. Right. Good. Correct. Yeah. All right. Also, if Alphabot or the Elite Cylindroid is on the hatch, you cannot extract. They are big and they are will not allow you to reach underneath them.
You got to take them out on dates first. All right. The other option you can do with the mining action or extract action is attacking cylindroids, another beta bot, or even Alphabot. It must be a boosted action to attack anything. must be boosted either via a boosted action or a pre-boosted card, right? You must share the location with your beta bot. Um, so in other words, if there's a cylindroid out here, you have to be in the same extraction vault or if it's out here, you must be in the same space or adjacent to it to be able to attack. That same goes for attacking other beta bots and alphabot as well.
If it's a beta bot that you're attacking, first off, you're a monster. Second, you choose one that shares a location with you. So, if everybody is chilling over here in this location like that and yellow's action, they choose. They get to attack one of those. Okay. The attacked beta bot is going to lose one shield. The attacker gains two stress cuz that's just wrong. Oh, yeah. I mean, did I mention that stress is negative points, right? Mhm. Also determines turn order, though. So, there's that. All right. If it's a cylindroid that you're attacking, it must be again what I just showed, right? Has to be adjacent or whatnot. Regardless of how many are present, this action, the boosted action, allows you to attack one. There are three options when you attack. You can either capture, scrap, or disintegrate it. capturing it reduces your stress by one. So Paul will go ahead and uh say you're the one capturing it. So you captured this.
You're going to reduce your stress by one. So on the track that would go down by one. And then can it go below zero? It cannot. Okay. Uh in other words, to positive points, not during the game. Then you're going to take that and choose a matching location. If you don't have a matching location, so sad you can't capture it. Yeah. Each color has two matching locations, right? If it's a red cylindroid, you get a bonus move action whenever you choose to use it. If it's yellow, you get a bonus minor connect. If it's purple, you can attack for a shield damage one other beta bot where you are. Again, did I mention monster and specifically a beta bot? Yes. Okay, John. Uh, in lie of capturing it, you can disintegrate it, meaning it just kaboom, it goes away back into the supply. You lower to stress for you because busting makes you feel good. Yeah, it does. Or finally, you may scrap it. And if you scrap it, you may choose the resources that are available depending on the type that it is. If it's a laser, you get there. So, you'll see here, if you capture it, you get that action. If you scrap it, you get those things. Same goes for the uh the yellow and same for the explosive the the red ones. So you scrap it, you get a whole bunch of other stuff. All right. Now, speaking of red ones, let me go ahead and have it zoomed in real quick. You'll note that the red
ones have two sides. They have the inactive side. You'll see it. Looks like a power button, right? And once they're powered up, they they have the kaboom side on them there. Okay. If you attack a uh kaboom side, it's going to uh kaboom. It's going to kaboom. Um you cannot capture and you cannot uh sorry, they can't be captured or scrapped. Yeah. If it's armed, it just goes boom and you take two shield damage. But hey, it's gone. So there's that. But you can disintegrate an armed one. Does that Does that mess with you? you. Well, it disintegrates by blowing up on you and taking two damage. So, there's that. Yeah. If for some reason you want to attack Alphabot, you must be adjacent or on top of Alphabot within the main vault. Reference monster.
Alphabot loses one shield and you take two stress. Then you resolve an aggressive AI card for Alphabot. More on that later. Okay, that's the mining action. So, we've covered the move, we've covered the mining action. Any questions on those? Nope. A moment while I take a drink. All right. It's where Paul Schaefer would play a little bit of piano. Well done. I appreciate that. All right. Moving on to the connect action. It's the plug action. All right. There are, wait for it, seven options when you take this action. Sounds insane, but it's limited by by where you are, what you can actually do. All right. So, it's not so bad. So, I'm I'm going to just list the seven options right now. Number one, produce in a production vault. So, in other words, instead of a mining action, it's a production action. Okay? You can activate uh I'm sorry, activate uh an item card that you have installed on your board. So, if you'll notice, like this one has a little connect action. If that's on your board, you can do whatever that is, for instance. All right. You can arm or disarm an explosive cylindroid. You may open a box. If there's a box out here, there are box supply cards. You may produce on the hatch. Now, only in certain cases because again, certain ones have the
production one as opposed to the mining one. Right. Yeah. uh you can produce uh or mine in the core when this is flipped over. There is production options in there or connect actions, sorry. Uh and finally, the last thing you can do is we're going to go ahead and zoom in on the planet a little bit and you can make a manual delivery, meaning this space specifically, but that is replicated on each sector. So, a manual delivery there, there, or the other one over there. So, now I don't think I need to cover what goes into all of those things except I'm going to talk about a delivery because that is really involved and I feel like that's important. But past that, we're going to we're going to skip the rest of it because we here know how to do all that and we'll explain it as we play it. Yeah. All right.
Making a manual delivery. So again, you have your beta bot right there. You will have taken one stress to do that. This is after all a game about making deliveries somewhat. We are finally here. You have three possible deliveries on your board total in the game and three cargo cards A, B, and C. If you ended a previous move action on a manual delivery location, you can take this action. it will have also given you one stress. So you had to move there. Okay, done. This action must be boosted. Now we know that because it shows a little battery and a boosted action for a connect action is a yellow battery. So all that makes sense to me.
Okay, easy enough on that. In addition to that, the ship here we go. So walk us through and move all these things for me. The ship you're delivering to must be on a lettered space. So if you're on this, a ship has to be on the C space. If it's there, it's A there or it's B. The ship must have a demand card remaining. So if you take a look over there, the demand cards. Oh, that that was my bad. I There you go. Those there is one. Okay, good. your stress level cannot exceed the level that is called out for uh for that specific delivery. Now, we'll just talk about the A deliveries because that's where the camera is. So, um your stress can't be above 10 for to deliver to that A. However, to that A, you'll notice, and we'll go ahead and zoom this out a hair, show you all this. That is stress number 25. 26. It can be 26. It can't be 27 however or higher for that for a but good luck.
Okay. If it does you can discard a lettered cargo card to lose two stress but that's at the law at the uh cost of losing three shields. Get rid of this bad example for the A. I apologize. That's my fault. There we go. Here. Take three shield damage. Lose two stress. Now you're under that threshold hopefully. Right. All right. Can you do that? You can never make a B delivery. Yeah. Correct. Can you do that more than once? Can I do a B and a C to lose four stress in case John did something to get my stress up too high? That's a good question. I don't know. Hopefully I won't need to do that. Okay, John. Uh, you must have a matching lettered cargo card remaining cuz again, remember what he just said. If you discarded that, you can't make that delivery then. Okay. You must have a delivery marker remaining.
You must have at least one shield remaining on your board and you must have two batteries on your battery track. Provided you got all of that squared away. Congrats by you. You can skyhook the delivery up to the passing ship. Score some points at the end of the game. The ship's objective card says uh what can be and how much can be delivered. So in this case for that first uh scout ship there, the probe, sorry, it says a max of 10 gas or acid. Those are going to be worth two points at the end of the game each and or four beta matter and those are for uh a point a piece. All right, so that that ship could get you uh 24 points. That's exactly how math works.
Well done you. Oh man. You would take the top demand card, flip it over, flip your manage your matching cargo card to create a cargo bay. So, for instance, uh John, sure, go for it. Do it. Grab your A. Yep. Grab your A, John. Up above your book. Yeah. Right there. There. Sure. You would take the delivery card, the probe. Oh, right. Demand card. That one. Flip that over. There. Put whatever resources, batteries, whatever it's calling for on it. Okay. Good. Done. All right. Finally, he's going to place a delivery marker on whatever the delivery that ma it matches. If it was the probe, he would put it on A. And in that case, take that off for a second. Everybody not named John would gain five stress. That last one, if nobody delivers to it till C, everybody including John gets five stress. And if it shows just you, you get five stress cuz you worked yourself so hard to get that. you overachiever, you okay?
And then nobody else can make that delivery. Now, you'll notice there is no demand card for that probe left out there. So therefore, nobody could make that any more deliveries to the probe the rest of the game. Yeah. Okay. Uh now, all that being said, I would also like to point out the other delivery space on the board. The other delivery space is the automatic delivery. you move. Instead of stopping there, you move there. You would take five stress immediately. And then instead of having to take a boosted connect action as soon as you're done moving that triggers and you get the skyhook and do the delivery provided all the criteria are met, but it saves you an action. All right. So note, if the ship is not on the matching lettered space, this is a wasted move and just adds stress to your life. So, no, you can't be clever and just go there early and camp. Those are unlimited. Multiple beta bots can go there. However, you cannot like go there early. You have to actually make the delivery. For clarification, you can discard two. You can. Thank you. All right.
Good. Thanks, Sean. All right. Now, we're moving on to the final action. The final action is the interact action over here. So, oh, there it is. I got it. All right, we're good. Lost my notes. All right, so the interact action there are a total of taking the or I should Why don't I just read my notes? Taking the action allows you to enter Alphabot's hull and either access the control panel or the access server. You must be on the same spot as Alphabot in the main vault. So in other words, you have to be on top or adjacent. And again, adjacency is orthogonal in this game.
Um, yeah, you choose which location to access either the control or the server space. Okay. When you play, when you uh use the interact card, when you trigger it, the control location, it influences Alphabot's AI, its movement. You can repair Alphabot or equip its standby item. So, that's everything that's shown on this card. I'll go over that in detail here in a minute. Or if you come down to this location, that is the Alphabot server. This allows you to equip Alphabot items. So, these right here onto your BetaBot or draw action cards, which is shown right there on the card. All right. When you play an interact card, you can freely move between the control and server spot. So, John played it and he wanted to come here. On a subsequent turn, he hasn't moved. He's still in that location. He can play another interact and he can do that again without moving or he can freely without moving because you're inside of Alphabet. It's not real far so it doesn't constitute a a grand move like a move card would be. However, if that is So here, uh Ken says, "Hey, I would like to interact." Cannot go there. Can only go to that location. And then at that point, they can't swap because the other one's occupied. This one we'll talk about as the game progresses. uh unlocks as more batteries
get placed out there. Okay. All right. You can boost any of the actions for the interact by spending a battery any battery. Mhm. Any battery. So, I would like to point out, you notice on the action cards, it doesn't really show a color of a battery. It just shows the top of a battery, meaning whatever is follow your heart. And then whatever that battery is, they're you're going to add it to the respective battery track. So if it's a silicon battery, if it's a carbon battery, if it's a titanium, you immediately will do whatever it says, lose a stress, and you always go top to bottom in this case. However, if it's the other one, this one has also ties into Alphabot Shields. If you add another titanium battery, that will boost up. you will lose a stress and then that gets unlocked so on and so forth etc etc and finally the fourth spot is how we remove that X right there. Okay, there are four control options and two server options respectively. So briefly I'm just going to list what these are again in detail.
So a standard reaction card that's the top one meaning we're going to flip this. That's the main way that Alphabot actually moves. Yeah. Okay. Cuz we haven't actually talked about I mentioned briefly at the beginning, Alphabot, when she leaves the main vault and goes to another main vault. How the hell does that happen? Well, Alphabot's going to meander her way through here. When she exits this vault, this is going to advance. She's going to end up back at the beginning of the next vault it six times over the course of the game. unlikely to happen. But if she were to make it all the way out, then Alphabot will get here and she might be able to get delivered by a player for a stupendous reward. I'm just saying it's unlikely that it happens in Odyssey. It almost assuredly will happen in the base game. You have to try and make it happen. Correct. So, with all that said, the main way that Alphabot moves is through these AI cards. So, the first action is turn over and do. It's usually a positive thing. Move Alphabot or maybe get a benefit for yourself and all other beta bots that are there. The second one is change the direction of Alphabot's movement. So, Alphabot is going to move depending on whether or not that's left, straight, or right. Now, it's not exactly a perfect science. It follows this on the player aid right here. So, just look at that depending on what arrow is and that's the direction that mom moves. Okay, good. Easy enough on
that. The third option is distressing repair. So that's here. Hey, you take a titanium from your board, give it to mom, and help her fill her shields. If her shields filled, you can't do that. But if you do that, um, doing that feels good. Um, you gain up to three resources from Alphabot's tank or reduce your stress by one. So take her from mom. She's like, "Here, thanks for helping out." Yo, appreciate it. And the fourth and last thing you can do here is equip yourself with the standby item. The standby item is that card right there, right next to the control. And if depending on where this track is, you'll notice that this says you can use the discount of anything that is here to help pay for that. Okay. Otherwise, you got to pay for it out of your own pocket. Yeah. So, there's that. All right. So, those are the four options for the control. It's actually relatively simple and it's laid out pretty well on the tile. Now, bad things happen as mom gets damaged. These tiles are going to flip. It's going to change these. I'm not going to go over all that because then that we're getting way deep into the weeds. Oh, well, if it happens, we'll talk or as it happens. As it happens, probably better. Uh, now the server, this location, you can do two things. You can either equip yourself with the available Alphabot items, these four that are available right there. You
pay the cost shown on it. Um, if the silicon battery is full, you get a discount of I think it's any one cube maybe one less resource of your choice. Okay. Okay. So, this is a wild any resource. So, oh shoot, I don't have the exom matter, but I have the batteries. Okay, you can go ahead and do that. All right. The second option that you can do here is you may draw one card of your choice. However, if the carbon battery track is full, you get a benefit of that. And what that is is you get to draw two cards. However, I would like to point out that these come in buckets. If you want a mining card, your other option and your only other option is the connect card. If you want to move, you have to take a interact. I mean, it's bonus cards. It's not terrible. All right. So, those are all of uh the available AB options with the Interact card. So, now we've covered all of that.
Now, you might be thinking to yourself, self, oh my god, wait a minute. We're only through phase three. Well, good news. Yeah, phase four, phase five, and phase six are all while this isn't automated. This is and this is. We're gonna cover that when we actually go through the game in the first turn because otherwise I mean we've already been rocking and rolling almost an hour and a half. I think we're good. This I'm just going to walk these cats through how all this works and it will make sense. I have some really good player aids that I've made in addition to the ones that came with the game. But how do you actually win the game and do all that stuff? Well, now I'm paying attention. Okay, you ready? Hold on. Wait. Take a deep breath. You ready?
Yeah, that was a Did you hiss? Are you okay? Yeah. Do you need Blink if you need it? Okay. All right. When all of the ships have reached this tile, so the third No, that could be on the 13th round, the 12th round, the 14th round, somewhere around there. When they've reached that, you do not play another round. You don't finish that round. The game ends immediately. And then we're going to go into final scoring. So final scoring is basically five things. I'm not going to go over these in detail. Just know what they are. The main objectives, okay? Uh so uh your deliveries, in other words. Okay. A secondary delivery. Everybody has one wild and crazy delivery. No.
Well, now the whole internet knows mine. There you go. So you may do this. You may do this. And if you do that, I'm sorry. If you do both, you do both, you get an additional four points. Okay? And this is the only time you can do this is at the very end of the game. And you need to have delivery markers to be able to fill those spots. So, if you've done two deliveries throughout the game, you can only do one of those, which means you can't get the bonus points. So, you don't need to be in one of these spots. you don't. It just happens automatically if you can at the end of the game. The third way you're going to score is if somebody has delivered Alphabot. Again, unlikely to happen. Um any equipped items. All of these and all of the uh other items come with victory points even if they've been covered. I didn't cover that on the board. We'll cover that when we do it. The atomic symbols, the points. Thank you. And finally, uh remaining shields. You get one for every two shields. Whoever has the most points wins. If tied, go plant a tree. Come back in five years. Whoever has the most points or whoever's tree is the tallest wins. And that it's pretty tidy. Stress Botics Odyssey. Wow. Y'all made it this far.
That's awesome. Appreciate that. Thank you. Truly, thank you. Uh maybe watch one or 200 of those other videos. That's helpful. As is subscribing to the channel. that that's really helpful as well. Maybe maybe support us over on Patreon. Also helpful. So any and all of those things appreciate y'all.