Revenant - Review and round the table discussion

0:00 So, we've just finished a full fourplayer game of Revenant. It was Rob's first game. It was my second game with the final version of the game because I did play it when it was in prototype form.

0:16 Mark, remind me you my first game.

0:18 Your first proper game of it.

0:20 And Fran, you've played a solo game, but you've never played the multiplayer game.

0:24 I know half the rules wrong.

0:25 Okay. Um, it's it's been epic. It's taken us four hours, but All four hours, has it?

0:30 Yeah, it's taken us four hours, which I thought it was going to do. Um, we'd all knew the rules beforehand, but we were looking things up along the way.

0:39 Round one with a score of 110. Me and Rob then came joint second, although I think the final turn order does break it. And then Mark followed up with 93, but one slight thing different and you would have actually come close to us. Um, so we normally start these round the table discussions with the winner of the game. So thought I mean you've bought this game. You own this game.

1:02 This game off your early

1:04 Oh, so you watched my earlier play through and you bought it because of that.

1:08 Not because it's voidful related.

1:09 Not because it's Void related. Okay. Because the game, as we talked about during the playthrough, so we'll say it again because this is going out as a separate video. This game is set in the voidful universe. Full stop. That's it. There is no no comparisons whatsoever between the two games at all other than they're both competitive.

1:31 You don't even have any corvettes in this which is very

1:33 dis every mechanism is different. It's a completely different game. So anyway, thoughts on the multiplayer game at the full player count.

1:41 I really enjoy it. I've got a splitting headache now.

1:47 Um [clears throat]

1:47 it's a lot to think about. It is a lot to think about. And I'm not the sort of, as Mark will tell you, sometimes if someone ruins my turn by doing something like killing my ship, I I can get a bit upset. This does not do that to me. Okay. It's It's fine. I don't mind. I mean, I'm I'm going to not talk to him later.

2:05 Okay, that's fine.

2:06 But

2:06 you won. You're not allowed.

2:09 But no, I I do really I really enjoy the kind of trying to figure out what people are doing, what they're going to try and kill. Um,

2:19 yeah. And I love the additional player powers and how that can all make things.

2:24 Yeah, we talked about this in in the playthrough is that you you've got the game, you've got the complexity of the game, which is

2:32 I would say heavy. Well, may maybe medium to heavy the game itself. And then all of a sudden you add in all of the cards and all of the cards are unique and they've all got things on them, but they're what make the game really interesting.

2:47 Yeah.

2:48 Um and that makes it into a heavy game because suddenly you have a lot more to think about.

2:53 Decision space becomes larger.

2:55 Yeah. Uh the game is a big game. It takes up a lot of space.

2:58 I can't fit it on my table.

3:00 You can't? No. This is this is a 6x3 table and we've got a four player game on here. Um

3:06 just

3:07 just um

3:10 having to film it made some made a bit more challenging filming.

3:14 If we weren't filming, we could have we could have spread out a bit and things would have been slight slightly off camera. Um

3:21 Rob, first game of it. Now you unlike us cuz Mark had actually watched us playing it. All you did to prepare for today, all you did uh was watch the video.

3:30 Yeah. So I went through you went through your videos. of the cat. So,

3:36 did it play how you thought it was going to play? You

3:39 did. So, I got I was aware of the general flow. Like a lot of things, first time you're playing a game, it's the specifics and the details, you just until you've actually played it through at least once, you're just not aware of what's really going to matter.

3:51 Yeah.

3:51 Whether I've burnt too many of these early on to get bonus resources,

3:54 which you were doing, weren't you?

3:56 Yeah. And each one of them

3:58 well one point if you got rid of that one because I got rid of one of them at one point because I knew it was only worth a point.

4:03 Yeah.

4:03 But getting rid of a card early on when you don't know how that's going to play out.

4:08 Yeah. More of a risk. Allow me to get some of the engines going. I mean that works relatively well.

4:12 You your cadets I mean I didn't improve my cadets at all but you did and they were they were really good.

4:17 I think it just probably took me longer to get things going than I originally intended. if I just focused on getting him to there ASAP

4:25 may have been again different. So

4:27 yeah, a lot of moving parts, a lot of things to be sort of constantly like thinking about and just some elements of map control.

4:37 That's it. And that's what sets this game apart, I think, from everything else is the fact that you've got the game within the game. You've got the game where you're taking actions and you're doing stuff and you're playing cards and you're moving up tracks and you're doing all of that, but then the other game behind that is trying to engineer the situation on the board so that the ships that you're invested in are protected while the ships that other players are invested in are are blown up. And at the start of the game, the tracks are all down at the bottom. It's not really obvious what's happening, but by the time you get halfway through the game, for example, you two are zooming up house Xenor. So me and Rob, whilst we're invested in it a bit, if we blow up one of the House Xenor ships, it costs you six or seven points.

5:25 Yeah.

5:25 Whereas it only costs us two points. And that's what you've got to keep an eye out for this game.

5:30 Yeah. Except it's not as straightforward as you'll be able to blow them up. No, because

5:36 the Well, you tried well. Yeah. the sense the sensible rule of you can't move them from a low risk to high-risisk location means you can't just throw them into danger.

5:45 Yes.

5:45 Only with with certain powers.

5:47 Yeah.

5:48 But most of the time, like we saw in the last turn, you deliberately moved that in there to blow it up,

5:53 but then you were going afterwards in turn order.

5:56 So, you prevented that from

5:57 I was going I was going to do exactly the same thing, but I was just going to do it here and just kill the things off.

6:02 But also me doing that, that was a Oh, I changed my mind. I just built that. You built that which got

6:09 that up to four which and I'm really happy you did that because I had loads of hidden influence with Bellatan so that helped

6:15 but then we lost the one ship but um

6:17 but that was again it was a it was someone's done something I was like

6:21 oh I can't do that now. So there's there's definitely quite a lot of you have to completely change your plans. There's no point turning at the beginning of the round because

6:29 and going last is generally not good because your choices are being removed. But it meant

6:34 you had the ability to move that ship into there which got it blown up.

6:38 Yeah.

6:38 Yeah.

6:39 And and we couldn't do anything about that because you went last. Now that doing that what did that what what type of ship was it?

6:46 It was the Bellin ship.

6:47 It was the Bellaton ship.

6:48 So it didn't actually wouldn't have made any

6:50 So it cost you five points cost me about five or maybe even more.

6:54 And it was only the secrets. Yeah. Yeah.

6:56 So, the difference would have been between second and third for you two. Yeah.

6:59 Given how close he was behind you, that could have been the difference between last and second, couldn't it?

7:04 Yeah. Thoughts, Mark? You got anything?

7:07 Yeah.

7:08 Specific?

7:08 I I love it. Um,

7:10 you'll play it with me then.

7:11 Yeah. Although

7:12 it does play two player quite quite well, which I didn't think it would, but it does.

7:15 Yeah. I must admit, I'd rather play it more. I mean, I might give it one try, but the shared influence part is the thing that grabs my interest because I like it where you have a thing of it's not just about everyone has their own little interest and they're all doing their own thing, you know, a bit heads down and this is the sort of thing of

7:34 we're kind of cooperating a bit for certain things. Like Fran and I are cooperating to work on because we're both quite hurt there. So that meant I could make decisions like I don't need to worry about that because I know that there are multiple ships that can be targeted. She's going to pick not Xenol because it's so use. So

7:54 yeah,

7:54 doing those sorts of things and being able to sort of like

7:57 and near the end when I chose that card, I was thinking about going on that thinking then Rob might do stuff to help Fenrax and going well that will then help me my proxy. I didn't end up pushing up as high on that as

8:10 as it turned out. But that's sort of the thinking that I had behind that. And I love that element of you're getting other players to do a little bit of things for you if you can get it right.

8:23 Yeah. Like the thing in here is that we knew Rob was making the decision on where the damage went

8:28 and it was like, well, we know Rob's going to put the damage on that one. I'm not bothered about that. No. Right. I'll ignore that. So, you've got to you've got to set your mind apart from the this is a cooperative game because it's not a cooperative game, but thematically it is a cooperative game. You think, "Oh, we're being attacked by bad guys. We've got to kill the bad guys." And it's like, "Well, actually, am I bothered if Rob blows that up?" No, I'm not bothered whatsoever. So, I'll I'll just let that happen.

8:52 So, that's the actual one area where it is kind of similar to void full in that you're all trying to kill the bad guys at the same time, which can help other people or hinder them. Yeah.

9:04 Um

9:05 because it's the same bad guys who are just trying to kill us all.

9:07 Yeah. So Rob, you made a comment when we were setting up that this board could be half the size and these could be smaller so that the game take up less space. Do you still feel that now having played it? Yeah,

9:17 you do. So if this was half the size

9:19 that's with with smaller components.

9:22 I mean, yeah, these would be tiny. But I I get what they need to be.

9:25 Well, these wouldn't have to necessarily be smaller, would they? But

9:27 no, these be absolutely minor. You don't need anything.

9:30 They could be. It could be, but it wouldn't have the same table presence.

9:33 The important thing is these. I mean, I've got the cardboard version, which is effectively just that.

9:38 It's it's it's that that's the cardboard version. And you put red cubes in here instead of these.

9:42 Yeah. And it works just fine.

9:44 Yeah. You don't need the miniatures for this game. They do look nice. They've done a good job with them cuz in the prototype, these were too tall.

9:50 Yeah.

9:50 So, you couldn't see the actions.

9:52 Yeah.

9:52 Or what they've done now is they've done it so that it doesn't get in the way.

9:56 Um Yeah. They've done a they've done a good good job with it. I think

10:00 I do like these. So I do not I do those. I wish I had those. These are nice. They are horrifying and

10:05 nice. Um, so yeah, it was a long game,

10:09 but I think four is probably the best player count for the shenanigans that's going on on that board.

10:15 This this style of this style of game needs.

10:18 Yeah.

10:19 Well, I played with two, which is fine. I think three might end up being the optimum for gameplay and length of time. I am wondering whether you could add the solar bot onto a two player.

10:29 Possibly. I've not played it.

10:30 I'd have to have a

10:31 I'd worry in a three player you get two people going for one and therefore they just basically coordinate

10:36 wreck the probably there end up fighting over something else.

10:39 But the hidden influence then might make a difference, might it? Cuz you might think cuz you know you think I'm going up this but actually I was also secretly going up there as well.

10:48 Exactly. That's another thing I very much like about this is that you're talking about you look at it and go well they don't care about that. They might. They might.

10:56 They might. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Because you don't know.

10:59 And you might look at it and go, "They were going to want to do that one because they got more of that." And the others because of their hidden influence, it might be less. Might blow the other one up.

11:06 It isn't completely obvious because of the hidden influence.

11:09 Yeah.

11:10 Yeah. So, yeah, that's that's it. We're We're done. This game is staying in the collection. I enjoy it. I will play it again.

11:17 This one's being given to us.

11:18 Oh, sorry. Yeah, this one is being given away. Thank you very much for that reminder. So, just final shout out. I am doing a giveaway contest for this copy of the game. This is the Admiral edition of the game. And if you want to be in with a chance to win it, you've got until September 3rd to enter the contest. There is a link in the description of this video with the full details on how you enter. Basically, you have to fill in a form. You have to leave me a comment on my how to play video and you need to leave me a comment on my previous playthrough, not this one. I mean, you can leave me a comment on this one if you want, but that won't help you. And uh if you are a patron supporter, as a thank you to you, you get extra entries. And speaking of my patron supporters, today is not a paid video. This is a day off work for me and uh a day of work for all of you. So, thank you very much for taking your time out to play this. And thank you very much to all of my patron supporters for making all of this possible. And if you like the content that I create and you want to support me directly, patreon.com/gaming rules. Thank you very much. Again, thank you very much to everybody watching.

12:16 We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Heat. Heat.