Radiance preview play and impressions

Hey everybody, this is Mike with the OneStop Co-op Shop. And today I'm getting to one that I know a lot of you wanted to see me cover. This is Radiance, the latest solo game of the month series game. And no disclaimer for crowdfunding coverage. I don't take any money from publishers. I just want to help you make an informed decision and show off the game.

And if you like the content on the OneTop Co-op shop, consider supporting us through Patreon. You get early access to our videos and exclusive videos every month you can't see anywhere else. I'm just about to hit at the end of this month 100 bonus videos on the Patreon. So so much content. if you want to uh go and support us there.

You can also listen to our weekly podcast for reviews and design discussions. We'll be having our top games of 2025 podcast in a few weeks or you can join the conversation and say hi on our Discord. So, Radiance is a primarily solo game. There is a two-player mode, but I didn't look into it much. I don't think I had enough components sent to me in the prototype, but this is a prototype just to make sure that's clear.

Even though it looks really great, it's not 100% done yet. I think they're going to have more unique art. Right now, it's one piece for each class, uh, profession and luminary, I think they're called. Uh, also, this game has a bunch of rules, and I didn't have a printed version of the rule book, so I might get some words and things wrong.

I might miss some details. Certainly, don't watch this when the game actually delivers and think you're getting a full perfect rules teach, but I'm going to do my best. Uh, I know the games seemed pretty complicated, but actually, I think it flows pretty dang smoothly. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play and I'm going to try to just explain things as they come up because I think the game again plays pretty well.

Uh there's just like a lot of kind of extra little rules and like extra things you can do, but they don't come into play most of the time. But, uh yes, I'm going to be playing as a solo character. This is uh this game's very similar to Mage Knight, Dragons of Etchin Stone, if you've played that one from the same designer, Joe Clipfell, and Lord of the Rings the LCG.

Those are kind of the main comps if you're getting uh wanting to get a feel for how the game works. And to create your character, you pick one luminary. I've gone for courage and one profession. I've gone for wayfairer. Uh each of them is going to make up half, as you can see, of your player board here.

And they're going to give you these different abilities you can unlock. And then additionally, they're going to each give you six cards for your starting deck of 12. Uh, courage is a luminary that's very focused on using what are called beacons for a lot of their powers. And the wayfairer is very good at traveling and using kind of things related to the location to help them.

So each profession in luminary has kind of its own focus. But I start with none of these unlock. Well, sorry, I do start with one unlocked. What am I talking about? So, I can either unlock spark, which is going to let me level up a little bit more quickly, or I can unlock flare, which is going to let me control the enemies more easily.

And both of them have the earth element on their little unlock symbol here, showing that they are currently locked. I'll just slide that over when I unlock them and gain access to them. Uh, you'll also see the wind element and the fire element. There are three elements and at the beginning of the game you randomly place these element tokens on these abilities.

So every time you play you're going to have different combinations and the key thing is that generally I can only have one element active at a time. So even if I've like unlocked most of these abilities I would only be able to use the earth when I have an earth card in my boost area. I'll only be able to use the wind when I have a wind card.

So you're not going to have like all your abilities active and having to be minded at a time. But yes, I do start out with one ability. I guess I'll go for flares because you start with a bunch of enemies early on and I don't want to be overwhelmed too quickly. And just to show why did I unlock one ability?

You start with two ways to level up kind of the roots and the leaves of the tree. This one's going to determine this track kind of your core stats, how much energy uh light you recover every turn, what your max card size is or hand size is. This one is all about unlocking cards and also upgrading your deck.

You'll see there's one little unlock symbol there. So, I have one ability unlocked. When I level this up, I'll have two more unlocked. Then, I'll get to add a card to my deck. It's all pretty straightforward. I also start with seven cards in my hand. Your real hand size is six, but at the beginning of the game, you're going to take one of these seven and put it as your starting explore card.

So, you'll only have six in your hand in a second. So, I'm not going to think too deeply about this. I want to be able to explore a little bit, but also maybe not leave my initial location too quickly. So, let's go for foresight. It's got a five explore value there. I just put in this little explore slot.

So, my actual hand is here now. These six cards, there seems to be a lot of stuff on them. Again, just bear with me. I'll explain it all. It's not too bad. I'm also going to start out with three threat worth of enemies. So, you have two types of enemy decks. You have Dusk and Doom. Whenever you are spawning five threat or more worth, you pull from the doom pile.

Whenever it's four or less, you pull from dusk. So, I decided I'm getting three at the start of the game. So, I'm going to flip one person at a time, see what their threat value is. In this case, it's one. So, I have two more threats left to spend. I'm also going to look at where this guy spawns in my little quest area.

If it's got an arrow pointing to the right here, like this one, then they're a fast enemy, and they're going to go to the front of the quest queue, which is one card right now, himself. [laughter] But yes, it goes there. If it's an arrow to the left, it'll go to the back. Okay, here we go. That's two more shadow.

And this has an arrow going to the front. So, they're going to jump in front of this guy. And I've now added up to three. Now, you can go above your spawning value. So, like if I had pulled a two and then another two getting to four, I still would have put them both out. It just would have been bad luck for me.

And this order here, the threaten swifter being in front of the soul scout matters because generally the rightmost enemy is going to engage you first. So, you'll be fighting them earlier. Now, I do need to see if there's any special powers. This guy has a when defeated power. We can ignore that for now.

And this guy has a when you attack this enemy. We can ignore that. [laughter] So, they're just hanging out. This is called my Q area, my quest area. If you've played Lord of the Rings, these are enemies who are basically going to be messing up your questing in the location, but not actually attacking you yet.

Uh, basically the same mechanic. I've also got an active treachery card, which does nothing right now, but if I don't manage my enemies in the quest area well enough, their threat is going to build up tokens on this. And if it gets to six, it pops, it gets completed, I get a negative effect, and then I get an ongoing negative power for the rest of the game.

So, I don't want to uh be too uh uncareful. That's not a word. I don't want to be too stupid in how I'm managing these guys. I'm also on an initial location, Far Home. I'm going to be traveling to try to find my villain. I forget what they're called. I think shades. In this case, it is Greed. I picked Greed because they're the fastest one.

They're kind of like the tutorial boss in the game. I'm also playing on normal difficulty, which I've been winning pretty handily once you get the uh core mechanics of the game down. I kind of should be playing on a harder difficulty, but I wanted to show you all a full game in a not crazy amount of time.

Uh cuz my plays have been like 90 minutes or a little bit more, maybe even 2 hours. So, uh, I figured a shorter boss and an easier difficulty setting will kind of show things off a bit more. But as you watch, don't be like, "Wow, this game is so easy." Because, yeah, I'm playing on an easier difficulty.

Of course, it's going to be easier. And then watch, I'll die horribly. But yeah, so Greed has some special. This is like the final boss I have to defeat. If I can find him and defeat him, I win the game before I die. Um, so set up, remove all locations with a six in their coordinates from the game. So this location deck has a whole bunch of places I can go to and they're all uh coordinates one through six.

Like far home where I'm starting is 1 one. So you could almost lay them out in a 6x6 grid. 36 locations and there'll be one for every you know row and column value of six. But greed is just shrinking the map taking out all the six value ones. So it's a lot smaller. And then you've got your target location.

This is where you need to get to to find the guy and kill him. So, if I can get to Northwood City 43, Soul 51, or Gared Death 15, then I will fight him the next round and try to win. Uh, it says when revealed, he's going to add more enemies. So, like there will be a lot of people guarding him no matter what.

I lose if I get to five corruption. This is something that's going to be building up every single time that I reshuffle my decks. This is a hard timer. Or if three treacheries have been completed, uh, like that tracked down one there. and he has a special thing that says you cannot travel to any of the final locations till you've done at least two other locations.

And fetch actions cost a bit less experience. So, it's a little bit easier. Fetch action is like a way you can get to one of those locations without having to draw it randomly. Uh yeah, so I'm basically trying to travel from location to location, trying to get closer to one of his coordinates, find one of his locations, spawn him, and kill him.

And the more I travel, the more I'm going to reduce his influence, so he's not going to be as tough when I fight him. And again, he's requiring me to travel at least twice. So that's uh kind of what the goal is. I got to explore Farhome whenever I've built up to its value. Again, this is a lot like Lord of the Rings LCG or Earthborn Rangers.

Whenever I get to that value or more, I'll get to travel to a new location. Once I've done that at least twice, I can get to one of his locations and fight him. Enemies will be spawning every turn. I'll be using my cards as I'll show you in a second. And that's the basic gist of what we're doing. But with all that put out there, [laughter] let's get to round one.

I'm going to talk through each phase bit by bit. Again, I'm not going to explain like every possibility and every tactical option available to you, just the core basics you need to go. So, first we go into the staging enemies phase. And I have this threat track right here. And you see it starts on the zero space and it's going to be moving around.

And I am looking whatever threat bar is above my current space. So while I'm on zero, one, and two, the threat value is three. It can eventually be four, five, six. So right now I'm spawning three points worth of enemies like I did at the beginning of the game. The location can also build up threat tokens and I would add those to the amount I'm spawning.

So right now I'm doing three, but if there was one here, I'd be spawning four. And this works out identically to what you saw before. So I've got a Terra Guard Watchman. He's a two and slow. So, he goes to the back. And I've got a Geredith Seeker. He is a one and fast. So, he goes to the front. And that is my full three.

Once again, I got lucky. This guy's got a Q ability, so if he is in the quest area, he's going to do some annoying things, but we're not going to worry about that yet. Okay. Now, I'm going to do my core thing, and this is right out of Dragons of Etchin Stone, if you've seen my coverage of that or seen that Chip Theory game by the same designer.

We're going to build what's called an action set. So, I've got six cards in my hand. I've got this one explore card. You will always have an explore card always already there because uh each turn I'm going to play an attack card and that card will slide at the end of the round into the explore slot.

So, I'm picking three cards. One for my boost area over here, one for my ability area over here, and one for my attack area. So, let's look at a card and kind of understand what we're doing. So, this is the attack value of the card. how much I'm going to get to hit enemies uh with or for. So, the higher the better.

This is the explore area. You already got that. Um and then this is very important. This is how much light the card is going to cost. More powerful cards will cost more light. And you can upgrade your cards later. They become way more expensive, but ridiculously powerful. Like look, five becomes 13 and the like abilities and things change.

Uh but yes, so the light value is very important because that's your kind of core uh resource you're managing to play your cards. So that's attack and explore. Pretty. Additionally, each card has its boost area cuz I'm going to play one card over here as a boost. And this is going to help my attack for the round.

It's going to add to whatever card I play to the attack area. It's going to help my explore for the round, give me more explore. It's also going to determine my element for the round, which can have a few effects, but the main thing, as I already said, is it will let me activate my abilities. So, like right now, if I pick a card that has, sorry, it's kind of at the top of the screen there.

If I pick a card that has the earth element, I can use my unlocked flares ability. If I don't, I can't use flares. Uh, so that's what the boost card does. And then finally, over here, you get a card that actually lets you use its little ability here. Uh, they can be a one-time ability that I can use in a specific phase, like this one that lets me attack harder.

Uh, can be an ongoing power that gives me a bonus. And this is where kind of the most reading happens. But often you can kind of figure out like what your abilities and values are and then just like pick the best ability to match things. You don't have to obsess over it too much. Now, before I decide my action set, let's look at what's about to happen.

I'm going to have the engagement phase in a moment where one or more of these enemies is going to come down into my player area where I can attack them and they can attack me. While these people left in the quest area are going to subtract from my exploration, potentially add tokens to the treachery and stop me from exploring the location to travel to the next one.

And your engagement value, how many people you're going to engage is based on the current light level that you have. Your resource, you start out at 20, but I'm about to pay for a bunch of cards. So, if it goes to 15 or less, I'll be pulling two enemies, engaging with two of them. If it goes to 11 or less, I'll be engaging three, and so on.

Eventually, you also get some like automatic negative effect. We hope not to go that low. So, another reason you want to pay attention to how much light your cards are going to cost when you build your action set. But then my flare's ability, if I activate it by doing the uh earth element, will let me pull one fast enemy or I can spend an experience, which I don't have any of to instead pull every slow enemy.

So, long story short, I might have two or even three enemies come down. Uh if I do, I want to be able to kill a lot of them. This is their health. This is their defense. This, by the way, is an icon they are going to change cuz it is so stupidly tiny. [laughter] But if you can see in that little shield there, move my thumb out of the way.

That's cross sword. So they have physical defense. Whereas these guys have like a little burst power. That's magic defense. It's not called magic. It has some other name, but whatever. Um, so yeah, that'll be bigger. It's a little bit hard for me to see. But yeah, so how it works is like your attack each round will have magic or physical.

And if it matches their defense, you'll have to also deal their defense to them. And then if you can deal the damage, you kill them. So I'm probably going to have two or three enemies coming to mess with me is my thought. Most likely, I think two. And each have different types of defense. It looks like the best I can do is like a magic attack cuz this guy has low or no, sorry, a physical attack cuz this guy has higher magic defense, which would then need two plus three plus two, seven attack is kind of the value I'm going for.

But I'm also going to move whatever my attack is to the explorer. So I don't want it to be like terrible at exploring. So, let's maybe do I don't want to do like a huge attack yet. Let's maybe do this. Light the path with five attack. Let's do hasten for my boost, which will give me plus two attack, plus one explorer, and will give me earth to activate flares.

And then just cuz I'm worried more enemies might come out, I'm going to use against all odds for my ability. Says once per attack phase, increase my attack by the number of enemies in your player area that have been pulled down. Okay, so that's my attack or sorry, my attack set, my action set, whatever it's called.

So, I spent two, four, five light. Notice that I don't pay attention to my explore card cuz theoretically I already paid for that the previous round. Now, in this case, I just added this one for free during setup, but I won't have to play for light the path next round. But yes, so I'm spending five, which does get me right to the engage two section.

And importantly, my current recovery stat is four light. So, I am working at a one deficit here. I'm only going to go back to 19 at the end of the round. Okay, now we go to the engage step. So, the Gared Death Seeker is going to come down because he was the most rightmost. And then the Threaten Swiffter cuz I was pulling two people.

And then once during this turn, I can activate Flares to pull another dude down if I so choose. Not sure if I'm going to yet. Okay, now I go to the darkness step. This is where I'm using my exploration, which to check again is uh five plus one, six. And I can freely split those six explore points between covering the threat value of enemies still in my quest area, which would be up to three, so I can't spend more than three, and putting it as progress on my location.

If I get to four, I'll travel. I actually don't want to travel this round. You don't want to necessarily travel right away on your first turn. So, I think covering them for three and getting three out of four on this. Oh, I forgot. Oh, shoot. I did forget. You may spend one free light once per round, which means actually my action set would have only cost me four, which means I'm only engaging one person.

You know what? That's okay because I'll go ahead and say I used flares. My once per turn ability to pull whoever the extra guy was to keep us in the same situation. So I would have only engaged one enemy, but I used flares to get another one. Although actually, sorry, sorry, sorry. So where was I? I think the Gus I think it was like that, right?

So, I would have had to engage him, but I can pull any fast person. I'm going to actually pull the full uh the soul scout because when I kill him, I'll pull the next guy. I'll engage the threat and swifter as well. And I think with my ability, I can kill them both. Sorry everybody, but okay. Now, getting back to it.

So, I have six explore and now four threat to cover. So, that's fine. I'll spend four of my explore for that. Spend two to put two progress on Farome out of the four it needs. Now, I could have chosen to not cover their full threat and like gotten all four on this to go ahead and travel now, but every unresolved or unlike matched threat from the enemies goes on the treachery again.

Building up to the six to make it completed and do its negative stuff. But yeah, so I spent four to handle there. 2 + 2, four, two to advance there. And yes, so that's the explore and travel step. So technically I do that first, the darkness step, then I do the travel step. I'm not traveling so I don't have at least four.

So, we won't worry about anything else on there. Okay, now I go to attack. So, I have five Oh, I meant to do physical. Whoops. Five magic attack. Okay, five. And that's the type. Uh, photonic. Is that what it's I think it's photonic. [laughter] So, five magic attack plus two for my boost is seven. And then I'm going to use my against all odds ability.

Thank Phil Collins. Once per attack phase, increase my attack by the number of enemies in my P, which is another two. So that is 579 photonic attack and I can freely assign this attack however I want and each like assignment of attack is one thing. So this guy has two physical defense which means he is blocking nothing.

So I'll go ahead and assign two of my nine to him which immediately kills him because he has his two. When you defeat him you get their experience value as experience tokens. So here I'm getting one. We'll get to what we can spend that on in a second. and he's discarded to the dusk discard pile. But when he's defeated, the next enemy in the queue immediately engages.

You may ignore this effect by dealing this enemy two surplus damage. So if I dealt four damage to him, but I don't want to. I'm ready for the next guy cuz the threaten swifter. Um, when you attack this enemy, choose to either take one damage or place two progress on the treachery. I'll take one damage.

Uh, you have a different life value based on your luminary. Mine only has nine. I am a weaker luminary, but it's okay. One out of nine. Not a big deal. There are ways to heal as well. Okay, so I've got seven damage left. This guy also has physical defense, so it doesn't help him at all. So I'll spend three of the seven, leaving me with four left to kill the thrift or threat threaten threaten swifter.

So I get two more experience. Okay, then sadly I have four uh damage left, but this guy's got three photonic defense. So I can only deal a single point of damage to him. So he is not defeated. He's about to attack me. I cannot attack the terra guard watchman uh because he is in the quest area. Okay, so now we go to the defend phase.

Any enemies that are left in your player area attack. This guy's attacking for one and his attack type is I believe the same as his defense type. So he's attacking me for one magic. Why does that matter? Because when you take damage, you can defend. What can you defend with? Cards in your hand or the topmost card on your discard pile?

Because uh the cards are double-sided. Basic side when you upgrade them. as I mentioned earlier, upgraded side. So, uh you can always see what's on the top of your deck and you never like flip the cards except when you're upgrading them. So, to defend with a card, it needs to match their attack. So, this is a photonic card.

So, I could defend with this. Its defense values equal the number of shields. So, I could, for example, discard this Tempest card for one shield to block his one attack. I could not discard force of will because it's a physical. Ever onwards a physical. Striking gold will be a little bit of a waste.

doesn't cost me anything. But remember, the faster you go through your deck, the faster you're getting corruption, which is very bad. So, you know what? Whatever. I'll just take a second point of damage. I don't need to defend, even though I could get rid of that Tempest card. I also really like this Tempest card.

I'm 99% sure I want this to be my ability next turn cuz look, when you explore a location, which I'm 100% about to do next turn, gain plus two experience from exploring it, which is going to make me stronger. So, I don't want to defend with that. Uh, just hit me guy. By the way, his ability is he would attack me twice if I was at four corruption or more.

I am not. I am at one. Okay. And that is basically an entire round. We just go to the refresh phase. So, several things happen. My boost and my attack. Oh, not my attack. My explore and my ability. I'm not sure if I'm calling that right. It might be like skill. Uh those all get discarded. Okay. So, three of the cards get discarded.

My attack for this round though, slides in to become my new explore card with its only three explore value, but I'm not going to have to pay its light cost again. Um, I also draw back to my hand size of six. I do not reshuffle when my deck is empty. I only reshuffle when I need to actually draw a card.

But when that happens, again, I'm going to increase my corruption. And I've mentioned corruption a bunch of times. What's it actually doing? It is this track. Oh, no, sorry, this track up here. and it's going to increase as we go. And this determines the starting point when I travel. I'm not going to say much more about it than that, but basically the higher your corruption, the nastier stuff happens to you each time you travel to a new location.

Now, I also have this three experience. I can basically spend this at any point I want. For two experience, I could unlock two more abilities. For three experience, I could raise my light generation every turn. And again, this one is going to like kind of give me permanent boost. This one's going to give me more unlocked stuff.

And sure, let's go ahead and spend two of my three experience to unlock two more abilities. Whenever you unlock abilities, they have to be orthogonally adjacent to already unlocked abilities. So, for my two, I could like do burning light cuz this middle one counts as adjacent to both of these starting ones.

And then I could do familiar places and your strongest one from your profession at the right counts as adjacent to all three of these. So, you could try to like sort of rush. But here, I actually really like spark. lets me level up a little bit faster as I get beacons, which is going to happen when I travel.

Remember, my character likes beacons. And then for my second one, burning a light lets me damage enemies when they engage me. Illuminate lets me ignore uh quest values when I'm trying to explore. And sun shield lets me disarm enemies so they won't attack, but it cost me experience. I'll do burning light.

So now if I'm in wind aspect next turn, I can use burning light. If I'm in Earth again, I can use flares and or spark, which is probably what I'll try to do. And yeah, I recover my four lights. I'm actually back to 20 cuz I remember that far home gives me a discount. And yeah, that's it. So, that is one full round.

Uh, let's get to the next round and show you how traveling and stuff works. So, first I am staging enemies, three points still. Oh, actually, hold on. One very important thing. At the very end of the round, you'll see this little new location token. If it's on your location, which it will be at the beginning of the game, and it also will be whenever you travel to a new location, it goes onto the deck during the refresh phase.

If it's already on the deck, then you add a threat token to your location. So, basically, the longer you uh hang around, the more Sauron or whoever triangulates your location, and you're going to get more and more enemy spawning. So, this turn I'm fine, but if I don't travel this turn, I will be in a nastier way.

Although, all those tokens get discarded when you travel. So, I'm still only spawning three worth. I've got the soul conspirator. He's fast. And I've got the Geredv Seeker. He's also fast. And I did go to four this time. Wonderful. And I've got the Threaten Swiffter. Okay, so we've seen pretty much all these guys.

Oh, this one is place one uh progress on the treachery at the end of the attack phase. I don't like that. Yeah, I don't like any of these guys. I'm trying to kill some of them, I guess. And I'm noticing that one, two, three of them have uh photonic defense and two of them have magic defense. Okay. All right.

So, um I want to engage at least two of these guys and maybe use flares. So, I'd like to have an earth card for my boost. That's pretty easy to do. Force of will would get me plus three attack as well. Uh, striking gold I probably want to play as my actual attack card. Although it is photonic, but I don't have any good physical attack options.

So, let's say striking gold is my attack. Force of will is my boost to unlock my earth abilities. Is this going to give me enough exploration to actually explore the location? I could just let the treachery build up some. And then, where was the one I wanted for my ability? Oh, the uh tempest to give me plus two experience.

Not sure if I'm going to kill everybody. might be uh playing it a little loose here, especially now that I've spawned four enemies, but so it goes. All right, so I have spent three, four, five light. Oh, which is only going to uh engage uh one person. Okay, what was my other earth option? Could do this one.

I'll definitely have enough explore then, but I'm worried I won't deal enough damage. Although, I'm doing nine. Okay, I'm gonna swap. Uh God, this is so much more expensive. Oh, well, I'm going to swap uh ever onward, I think. So, now I'm spending 378. That's too much. I'm not going to recover fast enough.

Oh, no. No. 367 minus one from location is only six. That's not as bad. All right. So, with Ever Home or Far Home, bonus, I only spend six light there, but it means I'm still engaging too. Uh, Threatton Swifter and another Gared Death Seeker. And then this guy's really easy to kill. I think I am going to use flares to go ahead and pull him down.

Okay, my explore value is 3 + 4, 7. That's way more than enough. So, I'll spend two to go over him. That leaves me with five. [laughter] A little bit overkill, Mike. Which means I'm now going to pause things and travel before we get to actually attacking and all that kind of stuff. So, uh, first of all, when I travel, I get experience equal to the value on the location one.

But because of Tempest, once per turn, when I explore, I can gain two more experience. So, that'll get me three. Pretty nice. And then I need to pay attention to the fact that this location has coordinates one and one. So I'm now going to start exploring by flipping cards from the location deck. Now in later travels, I could use beacons, which are like going to be locations I save.

And I'm going to try to save a bunch of them because my character is all about beacons. I could travel to a beacon. So like if I get one of the boss's locations like right now, it's actually a good thing I can save it for later. It's not like punishing me in where I have to like go through the entire deck again.

But yeah, I'm going to flip one location at a time. And this one's actually pretty decent for traveling cuz you are looking you're you're checking how far your distance of travel is. And it's equal to the difference for each uh ver direction of your like southeast location thing. So one one means zero distance and one to four means three.

So only a three distance, which is actually not that bad. But I want to get some beacons. So each time you draw a card, you can save it as a beacon, which will put it up here. This is a resource you can spend for a bunch of effects, especially my uh luminary, courage. Courage has a beacon max of five.

Let me show you. A lot more than other luminaries right here. Oh, there's their nine life. So I'm two out of nine for death. Great. But yes, I can hold up to five beacons, which can be very helpful and a lot of my abilities like spark will use. The other option when I flip a location, which you usually want to do when you already have your max beacons, is to defer it.

You put it to the side at the end of the travel, you put it on the bottom of the deck, but each of those is going to make your distance longer. It's like you're taking a more ciruitous path to your uh location. So, you don't want to do that too much. All right. So, I'm uh I'm putting spellwood as a beacon.

Okay, Northwood. Shoot is also pretty good. Two and three is only a three distance again, but I want some beacons. So, I'm going to try to get close to like four or five beacons. Okay, Hillrest also three distance. This is going to be terrible. Like I'm going to start flipping like five fives. Okay, that's three beacons.

Okay, I'll take the next one if it's good. And it's not great. That's a five distance. Two up to three. Three down to four. Okay, so I'll beacon that. It's my fourth beacon. And two five is a little bit uh bigger than I want. I'll make that my fifth beacon. So now I would have to defer if the next card is Oh, this is great.

[laughter] That was stupidly lucky. This is the nicest card I've drawn. One, three is only two distance. So, um, I have five beacon. This could not have worked out better. I got lucky here. So, I have five beacons. I don't have to defer at all. So, I'm going to say I'm traveling to the lake of um, so that goes there.

My former location gets discarded. If I had Oh, I get rid of all my progress, of course. Uh, the new location token goes back on here. So, I'm not going to be building up threat yet. I have the end of this round to still be safe. Um, some abilities will pay attention to like the keyword icons on locations.

Actually, my wayfairer's abilities do that a lot, but I don't have any of those yet. Uh, the abilities have special or sorry, locations have special abilities. This one says enemies in your P. Go back to the queue after the defend phase. And these are talking about their keywords. And I don't have any eye enemies, so nothing to worry about there.

And then the most important thing probably is that the shade influence goes down one. This is keeping track of how many times I've traveled. So remember greed, I need to travel at least twice before I can go to his final place. So that's telling me I can't do that yet. But then also if I went to the uh boss's final location right now, I would get 12 bonus spawn of enemy.

Not survivable. If I did it again, I would get seven, then three. So if I can travel like if the Let's see. So that's first travel, second, third. So if my fourth travel takes me to the boss's location, then I would get no extra spawn. And if you're playing like against a boss where you like want to really slow play things and level up a lot, you actually get bonus experience if you've traveled an insane number of times.

But yeah, Lake of Iron, that's where I'm going. So now I'm dealing with these are all my beacons over here. I'm dealing with my travel distance, which was two, right? 1 is zero. 1 3 is two. There could also have been path tokens on my location. Those would lower my total distance, although it can't go below one to zero.

And I could also have here's one obstacle tokens. I'll tell you how these get added when it comes up. Those would add to my distance. But here my distance is two. So I look at where my corruption is. I take my little distance cube and I put it underneath my corruption. So right now I'm starting on sort of this null space.

But if it was in 2, three, or four, look at the lines. I would start there. If it was in five or six, I would start there. So that's why going through your deck quickly makes travel way worse because these values are going to up these nasty tracks. But I'm only doing a two, which is great. So I go one, two, one threat track raise and one I for what this is called.

I don't know, obstacle, whatever raise. This one is controlling how many people spawn every turn. You know about that. And this one is a strict modifier to the travel value for each loc. Oh god, this is a seven. But yeah, this is a modifier to the target travel value to leave a location. So right now I still need 7 + 07 but then I would need 8 then 9 then 10.

So it just gets harder and harder for you to travel successfully. Okay. But then this goes back. I mean really you don't even need it cuz you're really tracking the corruption. And this just drops in wherever the corruption is. But that's uh all my traveling which means now we can get to attacking. And I don't think I have enough cuz like these guys have a lot of uh a lot of photonic defense.

But I've got nine plus one is 10 plus nothing from them. Yay. Right. the 10 photonic. All right. Well, this guy is a uh yeah, a melee defense guy. So, I'll go and spend two of the 10 to kill him, which also means I won't have to add anything to the treachery at the end of the attack phase. That's one experience.

I got eight attack left. He has physical defense, so let's deal three more to kill him and get Oh, right. This is one that hurts me or places. I'm going to taking too much damage. I'm going to put two progress on the uh the treachery. I Oh, wait. No. Oh, never mind. This guy's power is if he's in the queue after I explore a location, I take damage equal to the progress on the treachery, which there wasn't any when I traveled.

So, yeah, I'll put two out of six on there. And then I defeat him with three more. So, I have five attack left. I'm getting two more experience, but they have three defense. So, hate these guys with this big photonic defense. I will do all five damage to the new one, I guess, and kill him straight up.

But our friend from last turn is going to hit us again. Now, I've got a lot of experience. Let's spend some of it before we do anything else because you can kind of do that whenever remember. So, I haven't talked about spark to spend up to two beacons to reduce the cost of the next stage of this level up track by one experience for each you spend.

So, I'm going to get rid of two of my beacons out of five. Now, where am I going to? I didn't really look if I'd gotten it. 511543. I don't think I got any of those. Oh, 43, right? Way of madness. Anyway, they said Northwood City 34. So maybe that's the three and that's the four. Okay. So I've not found any of his locations.

So it doesn't matter which ones I spend. So I go and discard these two to lower the experience cost from three to one. And now I will recover five uh experience each time. And then I really like this next upgrade. So I'm going to spend another four to get this one because that is a permanent boost. And what I do is I have one of the other professions over here.

So you actually use three professions in the game. One is like your real one. One are the cards you can add to your deck in the sort of minimal deck building. And one is for these permanent bonuses. And where's a good This is actually awesome. I'm going to pick easy target. I can pick any of the six.

Uh and this has earth plus three attack plus one explore. Pretty awesome. And what I do is I put it here next to my boost area, but it's going to be there for the rest of the game. Now, when I do this, I have to immediately pay its light cost, but only this once. Never again. And now for the rest of the game, whenever I play as my actual element for the turn, the matching element.

So actually this turn I did it. I get this as a bonus to my stats. So actually I have plus three attack which is still not enough to finish off the stupid Gared seeker because I need four cuz he has three photonic armor. Gosh darn it. [laughter] But I could have almost one-shotted him too. But yes, if I can keep the rock love going, I can keep blasting the people to smithetheriness.

Uh but importantly, when I level up or if I level up enough to get another uh permanent marker card, then or permanent booster, I think they're called. If I pick another earth one, okay, because each of these profession decks has two of each thing. So, let's say I did that to get plus six attack whenever I play Earth, I would have to pay this new card's light value and the old card's light value as well.

So, they kind of encourage you to diversify and potentially get one of each permanent boost. Not that I'm going to level up that much anyway. [laughter] Okay. So, uh, cool. I only have one. No, wait. Shouldn't I have two experience left? I had six and I spent four. Yeah. So, I should have two experience left.

What was I doing? I think that's right. Did I just cheat? Maybe I cheated. Um, oh, so having two, I could add Yeah, let's go and do that, too, then. So, this lets me add a new card to my deck and flip one card in my hand, which means you go through your deck a little bit more slowly. So, I've randomly picked three cards out of six, and these are again coming from another profession.

Now, pretty importantly, most of these abilities on these cards won't really do a lot. Uh, some of them will, but many of them won't because they're inextricably tied to the board for the profession. So, you're mostly looking at the elements and the effects. So, like this one is another earth one, and earth is definitely what I'm going for pretty strongly right now.

But it also has pretty weeny boost values. Pretty weeny these values. Move any amount of movement from the loca or progress from a location to an enemy in your player area. And then if attached to an enemy, which I have no way to do because one of the core um one of the core mechanics of the hunter profession is to trap enemies and move cards to them.

So I do have a lot of wind powers and I already have burning light. So I guess a wind wouldn't be too bad. six attack and two explore and a plus two plus one. Oh, and actually arcing shot is quite a nice ability. Oh, and unfailing stamina is too. Both of these are actually very good cuz look, this one says during the refresh phase, if you'll advance your corruption, so if I'm going to shuffle my deck, I get to recruit another card for free.

Uh, it seems like it's the way to go because I should be able to use it. Uh, this recruited card goes straight to your hand and another card comes down. Although each profession only has six cards, you're not going to be able to recruit forever. Okay. and I get to level something up. It does become way more expensive though, so you don't necessarily want to do a ton.

And I will just warn you that like the upgraded side of cards often has a completely different ability. So it can just be like a lot to keep track of. So I really want to look for like an ability I don't care about is kind of how I usually do it. I mean, or I could just get blinding light, which is insanely powerful attack, although it costs four light to use it.

And actually like the power on this one. I kind of like [sighs] step lightly's ability is not that great and flipping it will give me a plus4 boost to attack. Yeah, sure. I'll upgrade steplightly. So, that'll stay upgraded for the rest of the game, but again, it is more expensive. Okay, I'm getting attacked by stupid Gared Seeker here.

And I think I'll tank it again cuz I'm looking I only have two cards left in my deck, which means I would have to uh advance corruption. I'd really like to get unfailing stamina into my ability area and not shuffle this turn. So, [laughter] said played on easier difficulty. There are way easier difficulties, by the way, where you have like a companion helping you and stuff.

Apparently, I might uh need that. Okay. And then we're discarding explore and our boost, not our permanent boost. That stays around. Uh striking gold goes over, which is going to give us a very weak explore value. That sucks. And this does already jump to the location thing. So, you are going to generally uh get [laughter] some threat boost on your location because you need to otherwise travel literally every turn and that's tough to make happen.

And I'm drawing my last two cards, which means my deck is empty, but again, I don't have to shuffle yet. We're going on. We're staging enemies again. Uh, we're still at the three value with no tokens. So, still pulling from the dusk. We got a Pyrus Razor. It's going to punish me after I travel. Seem to have a lot of that.

A Geredith Shieldbearer. And jeez. Oh, a Red Wraith who's X equal to your corruption, which is currently one. So, if I can kill him before I reshuffle my deck, he will be a little bit easier. Oh man, we got a ton of varied defenses here. Uh, he's got physical, only one. He's got physical, too. And the rest are photonic.

So, if I can do a big physical attack, which I still don't really have. My character is so much more of a photonic attacker. I should have gotten that arcing shot just to have a good physical attack card. Well, so it goes. But that's it for staging. All right, so [sighs and gasps] Oh, I forgot to get my light back.

Uh, so I went up to five light generations and went to 17. Man, I definitely lost a bit off my step there. All right, so I'd like to do an earth card again. Not even necessarily for the abilities. Ooh, actually, this is great. Look, it only costs one light force of will. Uh, it's adding now I'm getting six attack this turn.

Not much uh explore, just one from the again, Earth activating my permanent, but that's some three explore. Okay, not going to get much of anywhere this turn, but okay, six attack seems awesome. And I am going to be on Earth, so I can use flare again if I need to. All right, so I guess I should do Blinding Light just because it has more attack and I think there's going to be a lot of guys to fight again.

Although it's going to have a terrible explore again. I definitely want to do unfailing stamina to recruit another card for my ability. Yeah, I'm just not sure about that one. I could do fortitude. It's like so much weaker, but it also costs no light, which is beautiful. And it's got four explore for next turn.

And yes, it's five less attack, but it's physical, which means I could hurt more guys. Yeah, maybe. I mean, how much damage can I do with eight? Let me just look real quick. So, this guy only needs a single damage, and with physical, it would just cut straight through. This guy needs four damage, though.

Yeah, then they're both physical defense. Uh, but how much damage can I do with 13 photonic? He'd need four to kill. He'd need five to kill. Uh, so that's nine. He'd need three more. So that's 12, which is okay. So I guess I could kill a bit more if I do the photonic one. I'm just worried about my light generation.

I guess I'll do the physical attack. All right, so I'm spending 0 + 1 + one. Wow, that was maybe a little bit too low in spending. So okay, I'm down to 15, which means I get two engagements. All right, now I've got two plus one, three explore blah. And now there is something I can do with my beacons.

Don't forget my beacons. I can discard beacons to add two to my total explore value for the turn. So I could go from three to five or seven or nine if I spend all three of them, which would let me like mostly deal with this and travel right away. It might be worth doing. But every time you spend a beacon that way, that's what the main way to add these obstacles is.

Uh, I'm gonna have an obstacle and that would make my distance longer when I travel, which is not ideal. And also, I want to save my beacons to level up more, but I also don't want to die. Although, if I don't travel, remember, this thing is going to add more threats. I'll be spawning four guys next turn, which will make even more people to stop me from traveling, which will make it even more likely add to the treachery.

[sighs] And I could get more beacons if I travel. All right, here. You know what? You know what? I am going to use my beacons. But first, I'm going to do something called the search action. You can do this once per location. You flip the little beacon holder card to show it's exhausted. And what you do is you place a number of those path tokens, the nice ones that lower your distance, onto the location equal to the number of beacons you have.

So, I'm getting three of them. Then, I'm spending all three of my beacons to give myself plus six explore, giving me three, where are they? Three obstacles. But those cancel each other out. That's minus distance. That's plus distance. So, I'm just going to be back to a regular distance when I travel in a second, which I will now be able to because I have six for my beacons, plus three nine.

I will spend two of it to cancel out his, which means I am getting a single point there. But I am going to fully travel here. Although, crap, he's about to murder me, isn't he? Oh, and after you travel, put progress in the treachery equal to the distance you traveled. Then, please Oh, never mind. Never mind.

Rewind. Rewind. I mean, I'll still put the search thing, but I'm not going to travel this turn. I'll just spend my three to not have them add anything here. I forgot how nasty these guys were. They don't want to let me move. And hopefully, I can do like a big attack next turn to kill them. I don't know.

I've not been able to attack as big as I would like this whole game. So, I still have two beacons. Whatever. All right. So, I didn't travel. Now, I'm attacking. So, I've got two physical attack plus six from my boost. And it's physical. So, one damage cuts right through this guy and finally gets rid of him for one experience.

Uh, and then I have seven more attack. So, where is he? Four gets rid of this guy. That leaves me with three, which only gets one damage on this guy. Gosh darn it, man. I just cannot finish these dudes off. And he's going to hit me. Ah, okay. Now, by the way, you can also spend beacons at the end of each round in the refresh phase to heal two life per beacon spent.

So, this guy's about to hit me. I think I might need to do that or I'll be in big trouble. All right, so they're attacking. He's attacking me for two physical and I cannot defend with cards in my deck. I don't even have any. Oh god, [clears throat] all of my leftover cards are fatonic. Why am I so courage?

Get some physical in your life. [laughter] It's like the Olivia Newton John song. Uh, so I am going to five damage. I got to rest out of nine to end my game immediately. Okay, but now I am refreshing. So that gets discarded and that and that. Not my permanent. That slides over. So I'll have actually a decent explorer value next turn.

And now I have to draw. So several things happen. Well, I should say um if I'll advance this round, recruit a card in the refresh phase. I am going to. So I get to recruit a card. I am going to get the arcing shot because it's a good physical attack and it actually has a cool ability as well. So that goes to my hand.

But then I still have to shuffle to refill the rest of my hand. And that means my corruption permanently goes up, which means I'm gonna be traveling from the one space instead of the zero space, and all my travels will be worse. Okay, I'm also in the refresh phase. Let's I like the spark ability. I don't want to waste it.

I'm going to spend two of my three beacons and my three experience to go up to six light generation, which is actually more than I need because I was only at 15. And then I'll spend one beacon to heal myself back to three damage. But I am adding one obstacle to my path. Uh so we'll see if we're able to travel this way.

I'm out of beacons. That's not a good place for courage to be. And then w plus one threat. I'm going to spawn four people this turn, y'all. It's not great. Not quite enough to draw from the nasty doom pile yet. You need to have five, but close. So let's go into it. We are spawning four. We got two. Oh, and he's going to the back.

Uh interesting. That's right. And he's nasty when a treachery gets completed. And we got another two. All right. Well, at least that worked out. Oh, when defeated, add progress of a treachery equal to your Okay, that's not great. And I think I'm still going to be able to travel this turn because of getting rid of all my beacons and everything.

I'm making some bad choices, y'all. So, my action set arcing shot is pretty awesome. It says at the end of your action set phase is if I play with my ability, the leftmost enemy in the queue engages you, which means it won't be present for the shadow phase and I'll be able to travel a little bit easier.

And then it says attack phase. You may choose one enemy in the queue to include in your attack. So I can like spread my attack out a bit more. And I get plus X to my attack where X is the shadow value or the threat value of the enemy that engaged you which would currently be two. So it would give me plus two to my attack.

And yeah, we're doing that. So that's going to be my ability. Um I do have a rock card to get the plus three attack. I guess I want that. Although I'm not going to be exploring enough. And then with that, let's maybe do step lightly. I know it's not quite enough attack, but it's going to get me a ton of explore cuz I don't think I'm going to explore enough this turn.

So, I really need to get my exploration going next turn. So, that's three plus two plus one, six. Oh, which I now recover automatically. So, that wasn't even like an expensive turn. Does mean I'm engaging two people. Oh, but at the end of the action step, I also engage this guy. Okay. And then they're engaging as well.

So, I only have the Terra Guard Watchmen. That actually worked out pretty well. And don't forget, I do have plus two attack cuz this is a guy that I free engaged with the arcing shot, but it's still not going to be enough. I'm exploring four + 1 + 1 6, which even if I ignored this guy would not be enough.

Gosh darn it. [laughter] Okay. I wish I put even one on there last time. All right, so I'm going to wait. No, I'll cancel his two and just do four, right? That's a little bit safer. Should make it easy for me to travel next turn, even though I'll have a billion shadow. This is great. Everything's great.

But my treasure did go up. Give me now. Gosh, I hope I can kill a lot of people. [laughter] Four uh six nine plus two from its power. So 11 photonic and I can attack one person in the queue if I want. 11 photonic. Okay, that guy's melee. So we'll kill him with two. Let me grab like some extra tokens.

And that's one experience. So I've got nine left to assign. All right, so he's got photonic, he's got melee, he's got melee. So it looks like three to him and that's six. So, three to him, right? So, they're both dead. That's two more experienced. Oh, when defeated, right? I have to add two more treachery here because I have two corruption.

And then I have three damage left, but both of them have photonic defense. I can at least get two damage on him. Um, cuz he's only got one photonic defense. God, that guy's just living forever. I just cannot get [laughter] over the hump with killing these guys. Oh god, he attacks for four. Oh my lord.

At least it's a phutonic attack. Um, can I have to uh block some of that? I'll block with terrible and swift for two futonic. Um, should I block two more? Now that's a melee. I don't want to discard two cards. I'll I'll tank two of the damage. Man, this is going so much worse than my last time playing greed.

I thought this was going to be a quick, easy play. I should have taken a uh companion to help me out. Yeah, I mean, at this rate, I might not get to the end of the game in the video. Uh, we'll see what happens. Okay, but refresh. I'm going to have a huge uh explore next turn. That part's really nice.

I'm also at four light. I really need to I need to level up this track to get more expensive, more powerful cards. I'm realizing like this is already fine. Like having a seven card hand, whatever. Um, yes, I'm going to spend three experience to unlock two more abilities. And I probably want to get more wind.

Um, although what would this rock be? Secret ways. When taking damage from any attack, remove a path, which I have to cancel two. That's actually pretty good. And field advantage. If your attction card shares a trait with the location, choose three enemies to disarm. That means they don't attack. Wow.

Wow. We're going for that. Boom. Then we also got familiar places. Uh when you travel, reduce your distance by two if your explore card shares a trait with a destination location. Oh, and my explore card is ridiculous this turn. So, I think I might, even though I lose my awesome bonus, I think I might want to do a wind card this turn.

Yeah. And I'm drawing some cards again. But now this is nasty. Here we go. We're going to see some [laughter] bigger customers cuz we are staging five, which means doom is coming to town. Four 12 life. [laughter] For every card you defend with against the enemy's attack, lose one light. Oh my gosh. He's a He's a melee defender.

And I still have one left. Oh god. Soul assassin. Okay, he's not that bad. What is it? This enemy makes an immediate attack if you travel distance greater than three. It'll engage you first if it's in the queue. Okay. Okay. So, at least it's only two guys. Two really nasty guys. These guys both have melee defense, though, so I guess I could I think I just got to let him sit there and and mess with my exploring for a while cuz I have such a huge explore card this turn.

It shouldn't be a problem. All right. So, what do I want to do? I want to I want to level up. That's what I want to do. Do I have any cool Oh, tempest. When you explore a location, gain plus two experience from it. Thank you. Don't mind if I do. And then I should probably attack big. Oh, but that's photonic.

Uh, which is probably not the best honestly with people I have. Yeah, two of the enemies have photonic defense. And the one of the two enemies who doesn't has very low defense. So, as long as I'm not trying to kill the big guy this turn, I should go physical. But I suck at physical. Um, [laughter] yeah, the best I can do is three or three.

Oh, unless I Yeah, if I guess if I do if I do rock, although it's not giving me a lot of defense, that'll give me plus three, and then I can do foresight for my physical attack. Sure, this might work out. All right, so that's two, five, six, which again is all of mine. It's not even a problem. And I'm engaging two.

I could use flares to engage more. I do not want to. Curse Bannerette, you stay over there and just look at me. All right. So, I'm exploring a ton. [laughter] It is what? Oh god, so much more than I needed. Uh 10 15. Why? So, I can certainly cancel out his four and do more than enough to travel. So, I'm going to get four experience thanks to Tempest.

Love that. Oh, I forgot to check for enemies. I don't see any right now. I fire. They mean fire enemies. This must be Lake of Fire. I'm not seeing any. I saw one fire. [laughter] Well, whatever. Probably a misprint. Okay, but yes. So, this thing is going. I am getting plus one and minus3 to my distance.

So, I actually have a much easier time traveling this time, but I still want a lot of beacons. So, let's h go for that. And I still want to look out for the bosses thing. It's actually a very nice travel thing. But nope, I'm going to take it as a beacon cuz I want to get at least three. Terra Lake. Was that one of his?

No, I'll take it as beacon, though. Uh, it's my second Helm's Peak. Take it as a beacon. Okay, now I'll start actually looking 21. I'm actually going to take that as a beacon, too, because I don't want I wanted to like go toward the southeast where his actual places are. 43. Oh, Northwood City. That's one of his.

I don't want to. Yeah, I can't go to his location yet. So, I have to take that as a beacon. All right. So, this one, sheer valley. That is pretty close to Northwoods. Actually, it's not that close. What is that for me? That's two plus one. Oh, that's only three distance. Yeah, it's great. Okay, so we will do this.

So, it's three distance plus 14 minus 3 is one. So, the absolute minimum because you can never go below one. So, it starts here and I'm going up one and up one again. So, still have not raised these up. That's really nice. And then all this stuff clears away, but but for every two paths you had because you were like making yourself obvious looking around, you start with one uh shadow, one threat token, and then upon arrival, place two.

Oh my gosh. At least I'm not going to increase it by more, but I got to travel from here as soon as possible be and it's only a five. That's not too bad. Uh, player cards provide half of their defense this round. Well, hopefully they'll be dead and that won't matter. But yeah, it's a lot of threat, but I can uh this is advanced again.

I could travel to the boss next and it'll only be plus three threat. I might need to because I don't think I'm going to survive otherwise. But at least I got somewhere. Great. All right, now let's go to attacking. So, three physical. Uh, 67 physical. It doesn't seem like enough. My action skill thing is not going to help.

Okay, so two would kill him and then three more would kill him and I'd be one short of killing him. Gosh darn it. Well, oh, uh, I did not travel a distance greater than three. Uh, that guy's defending. After you explore location, take damage equal to the but he's not in the queue whenever treacheries competed.

Okay, none of those happened. Um, yeah, I mean these guys are the worst, right? He's only attacking for one, so I'm definitely going to kill them. So that's two of my seven. Three more of my seven. Finally get rid of these guys. It's also four experience. Very nice. Then I have two attack left. He blocks one of it.

So, one more time. Not quite enough to kill a guy. Then he's attacking me for one physical, which I could block with unfailing stamina. Another way to rest, by the way, is during the refresh phase, you can spend three experience and then you rest equal to your current rest value. It starts out at two.

That's like that little healing potion there, but then becomes three. But speaking of leveling up, let's level up a bit before we go to the end of this round. So, I'm going to get a new card and flip a card. And I actually forgot when you get a new card, you're supposed to So, you take one card and for the other two, you pick one to put on the bottom of the deck and then you keep the other one.

There's only six cards. I don't think it matters that much. But I think I want more attacking. Well, actually, you know what? It would matter cuz I would have an eight attack on top instead because I've already done it twice, but I don't remember which card it was. So, whatever. Okay, that doesn't do anything ability wise, but it is another rock.

And that's another rock. And I like this one more. It costs more, but it's got better abilities overall. So, I'll go and take that. And I also get to level something up. It has to be in my hand. So, not many options, you know. Let's go to Blinding Light and just have a giant attack to make. Seems like something I need.

And it's a giant photonic attack that can that can wipe out the cursed banner guy by itself. Basically, I could level up more. I could also heal. I'm not sure. Unlocking two more skills, I'm not sure, is going to be useful with where I am right now. Oh, wait a second. If my field action card shares a trait with a location, choose three enemies to disarm.

Oh, my action card last turn had no traits. So, never mind. Couldn't have used field advantage to stop the soul assassin from attacking me. That would have been nice. I mean, in the wind is a crazy good ability. It lets me push a bunch of enemies who are about to attack me and then deal damage to them equal to their shields piercing through, which is pretty darn nice.

Like, it would instantly kill the soul assassin that's on me. But, also, it's based on how much I match the locations trait. And I'm like looking at all my cards and none of them have this symbol. [laughter] Why is this place like the only place I cannot match? It's weird. Well, like for real, I'm literally looking through my cards and I don't see that icon anywhere.

I guess that's just like magical enemy power land. And I get all my energy back. Um, I'm going to draw some more cards. I Okay, I did not uh go past my limit yet thanks to my leveling up. That's good. And I think I will spend two cars. Not Northwood City. I got to travel there in a second. I'm going to spend whoop two cards to heal instead of spending experience.

That'll get me back to one damage. Although it will get me two of those, but I can now that I've traveled, I can search again and get three. Oh, wait. That's the wrong thing. There we go. But now I can get three travel from doing my little uh search thing because I have three beacons left. Let's go another round.

See if we can survive. So, we are at Oh my god. six threat. So, hey, another doomboy. Oh, I know you. [laughter] He would technically go to the back of the other one, but who cares? Uh, then two more. Okay. Moltan spellcaster. Choose remove two from the location or take one damage. Well, can't remove two from the location, so I have to take one damage.

You always have to do the one you can fully resolve or partially resolve if neither can be fully resolved. You can't take the one that doesn't do anything. All right. Now, I do want to travel. So, what would have to happen for that to go? Cuz I just don't want to keep on drawing a billion enemies. The location is five.

So, if I get two of them down, I would need nine. If I get uh all three of them down, I would need five. Oh, wait. I didn't discard. That's pretty important, Mike. So, I have five. So, what I need nine if I only pull one of them down. I mean, I want to do my giant blinding light and blast the one of the bannerets.

That'll give me a ton of experience, too, which seems like a nice thing. Okay. And then to get to nine experience. Ooh, if I did this card, lay of the land, it's earth, so I would get to nine. Okay, over here. What if I spend a little bit more? Do striking gold, and that'll get me two extra attack as well for a single extra light.

Ooh, and then increase my attack by one for the number of enemies my P, which will be a lot. Okay. Okay. I'm feeling this. I'm feeling this. I'm still doing rock. I should use like I got some really good um wind abilities, but oh well. How much was it? It was Oh god. Nine. That's Oh, shoot. That's everybody.

Wait, no, never mind. Uh, hold on. Uh, where was that other one? Yes. Okay, we'll do lay of the land again instead of striking gold cuz that costs one less. Eight, which gets me to two pools cuz I don't want three pools and definitely not using flares. So that pulls both of these guys down. Okay, now I've got four versus my five six 9.

So I'll cancel as four, add five here. Just what we wanted to do. So I'm going to travel. Uh so this time I'm going to travel to a pre-save beacon. Yeah, I'm fighting the boss as early as possible. So, he's going to get extra shadow and it's probably going to be terrible, [laughter] but that's okay.

Oh, and I got no experience for traveling here. What a stupid location. [laughter] Whatever. Oh, and player cards probably half there. Oh, rounded up. So, I blocked with a one and I got one. That's fine. All right. Now, you only have two beacons because I traveled straight to a beacon I already had.

Okay, so it's uh Wait, two to four is two. 5 to three is two. So, that's four. Plus two is six minus three is three. Oh, that's farther than I thought. So, uh, one, two, three, plus two. We're now spawning four every turn. Plus three, we now add one to the location, which is going to matter for the final thing, as you'll see in a moment.

All right. What else? Every two you produce during the refresh phase. Every two light adds one to the treachery. You may choose to forego any amount of your light production. Why does this location suck? [laughter] Jeez. Well, we'll deal with that later. Okay, that goes away. that goes away because I had two or two or three pads.

I get one new shadow here. So gosh, I'm going to have a lot of enemies. But we'll see if we can kill the boss anyway. If I have gone too quickly for now though, let's kill these guys. 13 photonic, 16 photonic, plus one for every enemy in my piece. Uh 19 photonic. Say the word photonic as many times as we can.

So we're definitely doing 12 to this guy because he has no fatonic defense. That leaves us with seven left. We get four experience. Okay, seven left. He's got uh melee, so we'll just do a single point to him to kill him. So, we got six. Oh, nice. We killed everybody finally, [laughter] which is good.

Right before I spawned 8,000 guys. Oh, of course, I've got this buddy still sitting there waiting for me. And I got a lot of experience. Got a lot of experience. What is that? 10 12. So, let's go ahead and use spark my last two uh beacons since I'm in earth this round to make that only cost three. So, I now get a seven card hand size.

Whatever. I'm about to reshuffle anyway. And I can heal three if I rest. And then I can spend six more to get seven light generation because I just went down a bunch. I don't know if any of this is smart. Is that smart? Maybe I should just get bigger cards to kill things with. Yeah, you know what? I I will do the first one, but let's get that six back.

spend four of it. So, I have five left and five more I'm going to unlock two skills, level up another card, and get two cards upgraded. So, I'm broke of experience, but I'll get in the wind just because it can be potentially awesome. And then I don't need all terrain if I also have in the wind. Both those push people.

This spends experience to disarm enemies per beacons. I don't have any beacons. Um, secret ways would reveal p remove paths to protect me, which I could get. Oh, no. I don't have any beacons. So, the search action is not going to work. Why did I get rid of all the beacons? Um, I don't have any experience to use.

Oh, that's right. It doesn't work anyway. Oh, here we go. Infiltrate. If your explore card shares a trait with a location, which it doesn't currently, but I could try to set up. Remove four from the treachery with this location's new ability. That seems pretty darn good. Okay, then I'm getting one card and upgrading two.

Actually, you know what? wait for that until um yeah, until I end the turn. So, let's say I didn't spend that five yet because that way I'll have more options and I can upgrade the exact ones I need to have an awesome turn. All right, my corruption is going up. Uh these are all getting discarded. All right, now I'm drawn to seven cards, my new hand size, and I'm about to get another card from leveling up.

So, I'm going to and then I'm going to get to level up two of them. So, we should have a lot of options to murder. And what do we have to do to win? because this guy's about to spawn. We need to uh explore the location and defeat Greed. So, we don't have to feed everybody. We got to kill Greed and then we need to fully explore the location, which means now obstacles add to the location's target value.

But if I can pull enough people and then kill Greed and then push them all back within the wind, like maybe I could win this. I could win this just by kind of kiting around. All right, I'm going to spawn my people first, which is currently four is my base, plus one is five, and then um what is it? When the shade is revealed, I add three more.

So, I'm going to spawn five first, then I believe I reveal greed, then I'll get three more even. Okay, so five is doom. Soul Starcaster, he looks tough, too. Oh my gosh. Okay, so that's three of my five. And then soul conspirator. That's one. And then of course I get two. Okay, great. Uh it's at the end of the attack phase when there's enemy attacks.

You don't have to do anything for that yet. Okay, then greed shows up. Uh he hides in the back. He's got four block against everything. Eighth life. Once per round, you can spend three experience to push or pull greed. Well, that would be great if I had any experience, which I don't. [laughter] Although you can like do some attacks, get experience, and then spend it.

So I could pull him in the middle of combat. Um, and then because I spawned him, I'm doing the one-time location thing and doing three more cuz I traveled to his location too quickly. Pyrus razor gets one and Pyrus lobber gets two. Yeah, that's that's more enemies than I wanted. That's more enemies than I wanted.

It's okay. It's okay. All right. So, like I said, before I do anything, let's let's play it out a bit. I'm going to add a card and I'm going to flip two. And I want to have like a good fire card now. So, this one's pretty great. Trap of Madness. Look at the three plus three plus two and it gets me fire and it's an 82.

So I'll get that for my added card. Whoops. Over here. Oh, and if I flip it, it's a plus six plus three. And yeah, my light's going to go kind of crazy, but so it goes. Oh, speaking of light, last turn I was supposed to get six light. I'm just going to take all of it, I think. But that means Oh, whoops.

When completed, the last two enemies in the queue immediately engage you. And then there's still uh So I got three. There's actually still one point left. So, okay. So, the who was it? The cursed banner would have engaged me. He was the only one actually around, but it was after attacking. So, that's not too big of a deal.

Uh cuz it's during the refresh phase. Uh then I get a new one, which already starts with one. When completed, lose four. But now, uh I get an ongoing power. So, only the ongoing powers of the completed ones matter. It costs plus one to play a wind as your attack or action card. That's annoying. We're still going to win.

So, what do I want to level up? What was that thing I wanted to level up? That card I just got? Traps of Madness could get me plus six plus three fire or plus 14 attack in general. Seems pretty dang good. Speaking of a big attack, what striking gold do? 17. Oh, that's seven light. [laughter] Uh, but it just seems too good not to get.

All right, so I'll upgrade both of these. Whatever. I just want to kill things. Okay, so that's 17 and that's going to be plus 6 plus three. Although it's not earth, but I do have um in the wind. And I didn't play any uh wind cards, so that part's fine. Ooh, and then let's do arcing shot. It's going to let me immediately engage greed, which will make less crap.

And he'll be in my queue. And then I get plus4 attack from the queue because he's got four value. Yes, we are shooting an arrow at his face. Okay. Um but god, this costs a lot. 7 9 uh what? 14. Oh god. Okay, so four are engaging me and I think I add a automatic dusk enemy. I think that's right. So I think I do that first maybe.

Uh when revealed choose X uh or remove X from the location or add X to the treacher X is a number of uh these enemies in play. Two, three, four. Um okay, cool. So I I guess I guess I immediately complete this and lose four. [laughter] Enemies now heal three at the start of each refresh phase, which takes me down to zero light, but I don't think I resolve that cuz I already resolved it, right?

Cuz I already like did my spending light phase. I think that guy's effect was separate. I don't know. And actually, would I have pulled them down first? Um, I'm thinking just to avoid all of that, maybe you get these enemies down first. Then I would have also pulled greed. Of course, I'm going to die.

Then this guy comes out. Okay. Okay. Uh, so now we could do our location stuff. Um, [laughter] my life. Uh, so this guy's got three. He's got one. Four. And I've got four explore plus three cuz it's not a match. Uh, so seven. So I could do five of the seven. So I have finished the exploration, which just taps it.

Uh, which means like you finish it, but the like the travel stays on there. which does mean though that I didn't cancel two of theirs. So, we got that. But if I can kill Greed, which I got to be able to kill Greed, right? Like, he's going to die because if not, I'm definitely dead. But if I can kill Greed, then I think I win.

I think I win immediately. Uh, so I've got uh plus four from arcing shot 21 with striking gold. Um, oh no, no, wait. You do have to survive until the end of the turn. Shoot, I should have remembered that rule. That's a pretty important rule, Mike. I got a lot of life, though. I got cards to burn. But so plus four from pulling greed, 21 photonic, plus six, 27 photonic.

All right. Anything when he attacks for every enemy card you defend with against his attack. Oh, after you travel, put blank on the treachery equal to the distance you travel, then place one. Oh, is I supposed to do that? I don't know. I've definitely messed some things up. When this enemy attacks, place one in the location.

That's fine. Place one in the treachery at the end of the attack phase. Okay, whatever. So, none of them are like really doing anything super terrible. Um, and he's not in the P. Okay. So, what was I saying? 21. Was it 21? No, I think it was more than that. Uh, 27. 27. So, I got to do 12 to him. Four plus his defense.

Eight. So, 12. So, I got 15 left. Let me grab my stuff. Okay. 15 attack left. Photonic. Where are my melee dudes? Um, oh god. If I defend him, I will die immediately because if I think if you ever go below zero light, you immediately lose. Okay, so I got to kill him, which is 12 my 15 because he doesn't have any photic defense at least.

Does get me four experience though, if that matters, which it might um Oh, wait. Uh oh, I can't uh Well, I can do in the wind. I can do in the wind in a second. So, is there anybody else I can just kill? He has photonic. I I'm attacking photonic. I can kill him and I can kill him. They both have one attack.

Uh, this guy makes the treachery go up, which I don't like. So, sure. We'll do two damage to him to kill him. And then I guess we can do our last damage to him, which is not enough. Uh, but let's use some abilities. We're not done yet. Cuz I had in the wind. Uh, push X plus one enemies and deal each of them damage equal to their own defense.

Push means push them back into the queue where they won't be attacking me. X is the number of traits in play that match the location's trait. Uh, so in play means explore, bonus, like any of those. and they're a zero because I didn't play any of my Wayfairer's abilities and they wouldn't have matched the location anyway because it's like a little mountainous thing which I didn't have any of.

Uh, so I'm pushing X plus one. So I'm pushing one enemy. Well, these guys do by most by far the most of damage. So let's push one of them and they take two damage from their own defense. Is there anything else I can do with fire? I've got infiltrate if my explore card shares a trait with a location.

Nope. Uh, nope. I got nothing else I can do. Oh, I forgot. Super important. I totally forgot to explain this. Um, every time you do stuff, you can activate an ability that you've unlocked but does not match your round's current element by exhausting it, which means you can never use it for the rest of the game.

You can also, if you have activated ability because your element did match, use it a second a time by exhausting it. So, let's exhaust in the wind. We'll push the second pyro py. We'll push that guy. And that also means I totally forgot about this. Um, I can pull enemies. No. Burning light. When enemies engage me, I can discard beacons.

No, I didn't travel. Um, my action card isn't share. Yeah, I mean, none of these work cuz I'm not like using my wayfairer abilities well and I could level up better. Okay, well that was one, which means I'm only taking one uh melee attack, which is fine. Um, this great. So, I blocked it. Now, during the refresh phase, tons of terrible stuff happens.

This thing's a bit That's right. I could give up all my light generation to not trigger that. And I think I would win uh by the slimmest of margins ever because I'm at like zero light and everything is crazy. But uh I'm sure I cheated there some at the end. The designer can pop in and let me know just how much.

That was supposed to be a clear and concise uh playthrough of this game. I don't think I quite achieved that [laughter] at the end there. I kind of lost my mind. But uh what's great about Radiance? Well, if you love Mage Knight, I think you're going to dig this game. There's lots of kind of strategy.

If you like Dragons of Etchin Stone, this is basically a leveled up more complex version of it. If you like Lord of the Rings LCG, I think this one is also up your alley. Kind of the management of enemies and exploration and attack is really cool. It's got a lot of variety because you can switch in your luminary and your class.

I think there's at least four of each. They didn't send me all four in the prototype, but I believe I've heard them saying at least four of each. So, that's already 16 combinations. And you can see they change a lot because your cards change, your powers change. Now, you're not using every power every time.

Um, you can see that I definitely did not leverage these as well as I could have, and I forgot the possibility of exhausting them for the entire game. That probably would have been a useful thing to remember at least once. But yeah, the the powers are cool. The cards are super varied. Now, it is a mathy game.

It is a thinky game. You can see how like crazy the combinations become. You do have to read a lot when you're figuring out like which power to use. I mean, you'll get to know them because it's only six cards per type of character, but certainly this can be an intimidating game. That's why I'm comparing it to like Mage Knight or Lord of the Rings LCG.

It's not like a light little quick playing game like maybe Dragons of Edge and Stone to bring that one up again. There's also tons of difficulty modifiers. So, even against the easiest boss, I kind of struggled there. So, you could start with some free experience. They have companions you can add in that can also level up and give you like even more tactical options to make the game easier.

But then they also have mini boss versions of the bosses you can add in. There's also going to be side quests. Those are in the rules but not in the prototype I was sent. Uh and just lots of stuff. And the cool thing is it's all modular so you can mix and match. So like if you want to play with a mini boss but you know you're going to get your butt kicked, you can also start with more experience and also have a companion to back you up.

So yeah, if you're into complex adventure games with kind of meaty strategy and tactical choices, I think this one is awesome. Now a little warning. You can see I I think I survived it and maybe didn't cheat too much, but you can see how things can ramp up and if things go badly and you're like not able to travel for several turn, you're going to get more enemies which is going to make it tougher for you not to travel.

So, there is the potential for a snowball effect, especially when you're first learning. That's why you might want to play on an easier difficulty and just have more things kind of backing you up. There's also a decent amount of luck in which location cards you pull. Like, you might just get all the wrong things at the wrong time and travel in a bad direction too quickly.

You do have this fetch action that lets you pick the exact location card you can use, but that's only usable mid to late game. So, you know, you might already be in a bad way. Uh you saw that sometimes you'll draw like the wrong dust card at the wrong time and get two points instead of one. I mean, that's kind of as bad as it gets.

Or you might have like all photonic uh defense enemies, but you only kept physical attacks. Or, you know, I guess that would be good. You only kept photonic attacks. But to be fair, pretty much everything is open information besides that. So, you can see what's coming. like you're choosing which cards to use this turn, which means you'll know what you have for next turn.

It's just that that's a lot of strategy at first. So again, this is a thinking person's game. This is not a light quick adventure game. Even at the lowest difficulty, you still have to read and think through a lot. So I'll just emphasize it one more time. If you like Mage Knight, you're going to love this game, I think.

But if uh Mage Knight or those heavier adventure games break your brain, maybe stay away. This will not be that easy for you. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Hopefully that was a clear teach. Hopefully I didn't get a billion rules wrong cuz I know a lot of you are backing this one and are trying to decide to keep your pledge or not.

So hopefully that help you make that decision. And a special thank you to our biggest Patreon supporters, Jay William F, Steve Ren, Pedro Lucas, Miles, Casey W, Andrew R, and Chris C. We'll see you at the next