20 Strong: Cloudspire - Discussion
Transcript
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Games Unlocked and today I'm doing a discussion over 20 Strong Cloud Spire. Uh, this is the newest version of Cloudspire. I guess it is the newest version of Cloudspire. newest version of 20 strong uh that has since been released at the time of this video. Uh previous to this, there was all the Tangle Woods ones, rose, gold, white, and red. Um and this came with all the stuff for the newest Cloud Spire. Um, and if you've been watching my channel and you've been watching my uh discussions over the 20 Strong Tangle Wood series that have been uploaded relatively recently, you would come to the assumption that I don't like 20 Strong. And you would probably be correct about that because I was not the biggest fan of really any of the Tangle Woods. Yeah, there were some I liked better than others, but ultimately it kind of came down to, man, I might actually hate this system. When previous to all that, the Hoplamachus, Too Many Bones, and Solar Sentinels, I was actually pretty high on. So, when this came in, I was like, this probably isn't going to be something that I'm going to enjoy because I don't think I like the system anymore. I am happy to say I am proven wrong. I really like the Cloudspire one.
For some reason, to me, the Tangle Wood series just added way too much to basically make the system of 20 strong enjoyable. There was, you know, the element of gold and then you have separate side actions to go to the market and you had to constantly flip cards and then it made the game way too long and then it relied way, you know, too much on the dice and if the dice don't go your way, it there was just so much that I was like, this series emphasizes the negative aspects of 20 Strong, which is its randomization of the dice. Um, and the Cloudspire version, while obviously, yes, it still has uh the dice element where you can succeed or fail pretty drastically based on how the dice work, there's something implicitly simple about this one. Um cuz all of the other the other three, Too Many Bones, Hopkins Vtorm, and definitely Solar Sentinels, all still held true to kind of the general rules with a few mod, you know, a few tweaks.
The Tango Woods ones just didn't really do that. It still obviously had the same format of, oh, okay, you have the strategy phase and there then the roll phase and then the resolve phase. That was all still there, but there was just so much extra that just made it to me cumbersome. Cloudspire I think fits right in with those original three. It's but and what's interesting about that is it almost makes sense because Cloudspire, Too Many Bones, and Hopkins Victorium are all Chip Theories IPs. They almost have the formula of the system based off those games that they've already designed. So, they really just had to kind of tweak that idea and throw in the dice. Now, the Cloud Spire one is a little bit interesting because in or like the actual board game Cloud Spire, it's a 1v one. It's not technically only one v one, but it's a 1v one uh tower defense MOA style game. You have a bunch of different units moving around. You have your spires that are placed out as your towers to attack mobs of enemies that are coming your way. Your goal is to defeat the uh opposing team's base or the opposing players base while also defending your own while gaining um oh what's it called? It's like mana.
It's not mana but it's called something else. You're gaining mana that you use to spend on dice. So the original cloudspire version had so much more. And if this was in the Tangle Wood series, they would have tried to add the base. They would have tried to add in the mana, you know, you know, use the the [ __ ] chip to be your mana, so you spend on bringing in dice. They would have done this dumbass system for this. They didn't do any of that. Literally, what they do is you pick it has I think all of the factions, I want to say there's 10 in actual Cloud Spire, but there's nine here. Maybe there's nine in the original or in the actual board game, but there's nine here. [snorts] You choose one of the the factions.
In this case, I chose the heirs because I like the bird faction a lot in the original uh like this this game. And then you choose like two other factions to be your allied factions. And you just shuffle all those cards into one market deck. And that's like your deck. And that's a combination of items and a combination of spires. Then you kind of do the same for the the enemies. It's you choose one enemy as the boss. So every single uh heir can or not heir, every single hero can be a boss. And that's similar to kind of the Hop Lamachas Victorium where every every uh character you play can also be a oh it's not a vassel. It's a uh I don't remember what the terminology is, but it's basically a boss you go to fight in Hopkins Victori. [snorts] Um, so there's, so you choose one of the bosses, then you choose the remaining uh factions that are available as their uh mini bosses and then their cards. That creates the deployment deck. So already from that alone, you have a huge variation of which faction you want to play, what you're going to go up against, and that's going to uh create a different market deck and a different enemy deck that you're going against.
Um, and that's pretty much the setup. The dial is only used if the uh if the boss calls for it. And the market deck is only interacted with when a reward lets you interact with it. Like a lot of will be like, "Oh, draw two cards from the market deck and uh you know, and pick one and then the other one, you know, goes into a discard pile or back at the bottom or whatever." Um there's no gold spending, there's no mana spending. the dice uh you know come back to you as regular recovery and or as a reward dep uh depending on defeating an enemy. [snorts] Um your items are well actually you start with items which is nice. So you just look at your uh hero's strategy and that's something that you draw from the top of the market deck and that's just what you have in your inventory.
Uh, but you, the biggest difference here is that you don't have this constant row or barrage of enemies. You don't have a million different enemies out that, you know, trigger and basically soft lock you to where you're like, well, can't really do anything. Guess I'll take damage and just lose. [clears throat] The way you utilize dice in this game is actually it's kind of confusing at first because it's like you you you're you're used to the 20 strong system of rolling dice and assigning them to [cough] assigning them to enemies. In this case, you assign dice to your spires. So, there's two there's technically three columns um [snorts] of three rows, top, middle, and bottom. And the left and the rightmost uh columns are where your spires go. And your spires are actually how you deal damage. So whenever you're rolling dice, you're kind of looking at what your spires can hold because they have a load out on them. Like this regal lookout for the heirs can have a blue and a green dye assigned to it.
And so whenever you're looking at dice to roll, sometimes you might actually not be able to use purple dice because you're some of your spires not might not be able to hold them. Now later on when you're drawn from the market deck, uh you'll get access to those, but you have to place them there. Uh and you're limited on how many spires can come out. But like Cloudspire, what happens is you have the you have to go through the entire deck. So this is if you played any of the Tangle Woods ones, this is closely related to Tangle Woods Rose that was kind of the a tower defense just like this one is except there's no [ __ ] movement around. There's no whatever of con of deploying as many as you want. It's a deck of cards that you've shuffled and you look at the top.
And what's great about this is you just there's a advance enemy step. So you advance one. If there's already one there, it moves down to advance another and that's it. And if it has that skull icon on it, which in all the other ones means, you know, draw another enemy. It's not like they just immediately swarm you and in two turns there's already an enemy up on you. Nope. What that means is you just add another one to the to the stack. So if this is an enemy, oh, it has a has a skull like on it. I draw the next one. It goes underneath. If that has a skull on it, then you just keep drawing and you can have a bunch of enemies in one stack that will just kind of advance towards you. So, it's going to chances are you might not defeat it uh defeat the stack in time before it gets up to your hero to do damage.
So, that's really cool. And then, like I said, the spires basically will deal damage if there's an enemy adjacent to it. [snorts] Now, there's a lot of leeway around it because the heirs have a really good one called regal lookout. It can only have a green and a blue, but in each spire fire phase, yeah, spire fire phase, this spire may apply one of its dice to any active enemy. Um, which was huge. That was like the cruc crux of me winning this this game was because I was able to roll, you know, the medium dice, but I kept them both near me because I could just hit anyone as they were coming in. Um, but it was albeit weaker dice. Well, a higher chance of them missing. Uh, not necessarily. No dice is really weaker. It's either a crit or it's a hit or it's a miss, but they have a higher chance of missing.
[snorts] Um, but you get to start out with spires already as well. So whenever the enemies are advancing towards you, if they do damage, so if you don't defeat them, then they will destroy your spires. And that's the main way you're going to deal damage. The only way your heroes actually deal damage is a you kind of have to load dice onto them like they're a spire, but the enemy has to be right up in front of them unless they have an ability or so that lets them, you know, attack further back, but they kind of have to wait. So, if you are rolling misses or you're not dealing enough damage to defeat them and they get upon you, you're kind of at your last resort of your hero. Um, I will say that this version can feel a little bit easier, I think, than most. But with this kind of system, I actually would prefer the game to lean a little bit easier because then the luck of the dice doesn't [ __ ] you as bad as like all the other ones where it's like a make or break every single roll.
Oh, if I don't roll crits, I'm losing. It's like, okay, well, every single die only has one crit value. So, there are so many instances of the Tangle Wood series where it's like I have to roll crits to do anything like in here. I mean, crits were nice, but I didn't need them that much because, you know, you can if you as if you kill like one good enemy that lets you draw from like the top two of your market stack and keep one. Oh, well, chances are it's probably going to be a spire, which I think to some people they might not like that. Uh, I will say having a plethora of items in all the other ones is inherently more interesting.
Um, I don't know the ratio of all the cards. If you know, ratio of item or equipment, I guess, equipment to spire. It feels like there's like three spires cuz I think there's five cards per faction. So, I want to say there's like three spires to two equipment or four spires to two to one equipment. Um, but the spires are the game pretty much. So, while the equipment that I got was good, yeah, you're not going to get a bunch of radically different items. And I would say if you don't really like the lane battling in this, then [snorts] I would completely ignore all the tanks and go and probably get the solar sentinels. That's the one that feels closest to almost a rogike where it's getting a bunch of different combinations of items. Here you're getting a different combination of spires. So that I mean they are like equipment except they stay out and do a majority of your damage. Um, one thing that I also enjoyed about this one was it wasn't long. It I mean it's longer. Like it's not as short as maybe Well, the Solar Sentinels one is the only one that feels relatively short compared to all of them. Uh, which is probably why I like the system so much originally and then I've kind of petered out uh until Cloudspire came back and pulled me back in. Uh, yeah, that one is
the one that feels closest. This one probably lasts, I don't know, 45 minutes to an hour. [snorts] Um, but yeah, like you have to go through the whole deck and eventually the boss will come out. You never attack the boss. It has a global effect uh that kind of so each boss will have like for example um my my hero has an ability after each activation I can load a die from the exhausted area onto an active spire set to a miss. And normally you can't do that. Spires can't hold misses. But the reason why she has that ability or the bird, I don't I don't know what the hell it is, can put misses is because whenever a enemy is attacking a spire, it will deal a damage to it and it will remove a die loaded or unloaded or hit or miss regardless. It it'll remove a die and exhaust it to absorb that damage. Now, if a spire ever takes a damage when it doesn't have a die, then it gets removed. So, the reason why the bird has that ability is because it it can only hold a yellow. So, it's not necessarily this this faction relies heavily on its regal lookouts for sure, but it's like, "Okay, cool. I'm going to load up these dice or these spires with blank dice so they can absorb the hit.
If an enemy rushes up to me to deal damage to me, well, you can redirect that to an adjacent spire because the enemy at the very bottom might be adjacent to your hero. Well, not it will be adjacent to your hero hero, but might be adjacent to spire. So, it's like cool, I can have my spires absorb that hit with a miss die while I work on loading up other spires to kill it. Uh, but all that being said, this hero as a boss, it says, uh, set the chip to red. So, this is one boss that utilizes a chip. You set it to red and, uh, criticals on reds are instead misses. So, it weakens the value of a die. Um, and then they introduce the new system.
I think it's new system. It looks like a new icon. Basically, it's like an activation uh event where whenever the the enemy comes out into the active row, it triggers an ability like a one-off. This one is exhaust all dice currently applied to enemies and then as a passive, all active enemies have plus two health. So that's its boss effect. though it will that the global effect is [snorts] that if I'm ever using the red dye, it basically has it does actually have a chance to miss versus the tried andrue, it's always going to hit in some way. Um, so I like the fact that the boss has a global effect, but it's just there. Uh that is again also similar to Tangle Woods Rose where the boss that came out for that one kind of went off to the side and you and it had like an effect that applied to the the whole tower defense area, but then you had to have range to go out and hit it. Uh you don't have range to go out and hit this. It will come out once the the deployment stack is empty. Um and I like that. I like the fact that okay, you got through all the minions. Now the boss is going to come out and march towards it and once you defeat all the minions and the boss you win.
So the streamline nature of this the fact that while it has the theme of Cloudspire I think they did as good of a job as they could have done to implement this like clearly it's pulled from their own game. Uh, the interesting thing about this is the fact that if you want kind of a MOA style 1v one game, but you don't have either a the money to buy into Cloudspire or B you don't have another person who likes those games, but you like these games, then this is a good alternative. like I have maybe two people in my gaming group who would enjoy Cloud Spire as like a person to play against. Uh I it's it's a to me it seems like it's kind of difficult to find someone who likes those kinds of games. At least in my experience.
This captures that that element in in a good sense. It's digestible. It's streamlined. It doesn't make a bunch of dumbass rules just overloading you into a game that is at the end of the day purely random. It doesn't matter how well you can strategize. It doesn't matter how many rules there are in the versions. At the end of the day, if you don't roll well, all that doesn't matter. And here, yes, it still might come into play where you if you roll like [ __ ] you're just going to get swarmed. But at least you didn't have to waste time learning a bunch of rules in a system that I think still 20 strong. It has always a bunch of like this feels like this should be simple to learn, but why am I second guessing everything? At least that's that's me. Every time I play 20 strong, I'm like, nope, I think I get this game. I'm pretty sure I understand the rules. And then it's like, all right, let's start to play.
And I immediately forgot. Okay, what what is it? What how does this work? Where does it? And the frustrating part is they advertise the dyed tutorial and every single time it's never ready. It's like here's here's our new new game. Here's Dragons of Etchin Stone. Here's the new Cloud Spire. Hey, load launch the dice tutorial app and learn how to play. Oh, okay cool. That that's a that's a good uh app. I'll use it. And it's not here. That's neat. [snorts] So, I guess I'll struggle through. Um, that's a side rant, but it it applies to kind of like the fact that almost all the Tangle Woods just felt just they were just overly complicated and not enjoyable in a way that the original trilogy and now this one was.
So, if you're like me and you didn't really like or vibe with the the 20 Strong Tangle Wood series and you're like kind of riding off the series, I would highly recommend checking out the Cloudspire one because it is right in line with the original three, Hoplamachus, Too Many Bones, and Victoria. Um, so yeah, like uh like and I mean again I like the fact that yeah, there could be more items, there could be more maybe spires, but the fact of the matter is that there's a combination of I mean because there's also many heroes that didn't even mention that each faction comes with. There's I think there's one. So actually there might be three spires, one equipment, and one mini hero that kind of comes into play. That is it. It doesn't even come out. you don't manage or and it's just like it's it's an equipment for all all intents and purposes who has a trigger that you can use. So I think with the different combinations of hero to boss to factions, allied factions and enemy factions, you you have a lot of game here that I actually kind of slightly enjoy that there's not a million items.
There's no fable cards. there's no, you know, whatever [ __ ] that over complicates this system. So, I'm hoping going forward that I know they're doing Awaken Realms next. I think it's Nemesis. I think actually this week, which this is probably not going to go up this this same week, but I think they're talking about that. So, I I I hope that this 20 strong system continues to be clean whenever it's already based off existing IP. So, I'm hoping that they do burn cycle. Elder Scrolls would be cool. If they manage to do Elder Scrolls in the 20 strong system, that one might be one that would have a bunch of rules, but they kind of already did too many bones.
Um, I don't know. I don't know what else is coming. I mean, those are pretty much all their games. Uh they I mean again they're doing Awaken Realms so they have a decent amount of their catalog to go through. So who knows? I mean this this uh box here has a lot of uh lot of space for for 20 strong system. So I imagine they're going to keep pumping out more. Hopefully it's existing IP games cuz I think that's the coolest cuz what's interesting is not the 20 strong system. It's 17 dice that you roll. It's interesting to see what they do with an existing IP and make it morph into this system. Which is why again I think the Tangle Wood system is mediocre at best because it's like well I don't really like the system on its own and it doesn't really work in these except whenever you turn Hoplamus into a dice game. That's pretty cool which I guess kind of it has dice but yeah I don't know. I'm I'm with this now being as good as it is, I'm excited to see what they do next. Uh versus previous before coming into this game, I was like I'm pretty sure I'm getting rid of this whole set for my collection cuz I don't like what's what it's doing. So now I'm excited. So that's pretty cool. Uh on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm giving the 20 Strongest Cloud Spire a nine. It is very very good. uh up there with um Hoplamaka's Victorium, which at the time I reviewed that one. I didn't even like
Hoplamaka's Victoris one. So, it's up there as one of my favorites. And um yeah, that's it. That's my thoughts on 20 Strong Cloudspire. Let me know what you think of it in the comments below. Other than that, like, comment, share, and subscribe. And have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you.