Lairs Adventurers Pack Review: A Deeper Delve
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Transcript
Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vasel and today we're taking a look at Layers. Very specifically, we're taking a look at Layers the Adventurer Pack. Now, Layers we've reviewed this game just last week as a base game. When I got Layers, I got the Kickstarter edition, so that came with the adventurer stuff inside the base box. But we talked about it without that stuff. Layers is a two-player dungeon back and forth, almost dungeon battleship, where you're trying to guess go through the other person's dungeon. It's a very basic game and I enjoyed it. I gave it a seven out of 10. But I got to be honest, I want the stuff that's in here for myself. I think it's a basic it's a good game for people who've not played many games to get into, but honestly, if you are a gamer and want more, then you really want this Adventurer's Pack. So, here's the deal.
The way this introduces stuff is by opening boxes and envelopes. And I'm kind of a little over this whole spoilers stuff. So, in this review, I'm going to show you what's in here, not everything in exquisite detail, but I'm telling you what's in here. It walks you through this. It changes the base game to the full game by opening boxes and envelopes. But it's to do so, I think, more as a teaching tool rather than a ooh, what surprise will you find next? So, if you don't like spoilers, stop the video now and just know that I really like this expansion and think you should get it. Um but here we go. This expansion comes with boxes and envelopes. The first box just says, "Don't open until you're comfortable with the introductory game." Then you'll open it and add what's in there.
The envelopes themselves, like here's envelope B, says, "Don't open until you've opened box one." When you open box one, you can open A and B right away or you can play games between each opening and learn gradually. So, they give you kind of your own pace. And then box two will say, "Don't open until you've opened box one and envelopes A and B." An envelope doesn't have as much stuff in as a box, so you'll open the envelope will have some stuff in it, and then it will explain you the rules inside here. While the each of the each of the boxes comes with their own little rule sheet that explains what's in that box. But then, there is a full-sized rules reference, which has everything in it, so that you don't need to keep looking at all the little things. This explains everything. And this is a little bit about what I'm going to be telling you now. So, there are three new color cubes. There is the orange, there is brawn, there is the blue here, which is know-how, and then there is purple, which is guile.
So, at the beginning of a game, you're going to get three white cubes, and then you can pick any three of the five colors that you want, as long as they're different. So, you're going to start with six cubes. And then what the game has is whenever you, for any reason, move a cube from fatigued to spent, I can spend a white cube and change it to another color. It can be a color I already have. There are plenty of cubes of all the different colors to do that, or I can pick a color I don't have. Traps are done the same way. There's all kinds of different traps that you can find, except that traps the purple cube is the cube that was they're always weak to that you'll roll that extra die on. And traps will have all sorts of things that happen to you. They might even have some specificities, like the crushing walls needs to be put into a hallway.
And it's only divulged if you go into that spot. And of course, they'll do negative things to you also. Because of this, there's now a charge and a sneak, where you can spend an orange and a purple or two of any cube, where you can move and get an extra die against them if you know what's in that spot. Or if you don't know what's in that spot and you move in there, you will ignore the unknown trap or ignore the damage from the monster. Also, the orange cube can be used to unfatigue another cube. And the purple cube lets you roll an extra die and add it to your total uh during any check. The appraise gives you an extra die. So, again, this stuff is not particularly hard. There's basically two different new abilities for each of these colors. And that's it.
There's new tokens. There are new figures for all the different monsters. There's the extra dice. But that is basically I've just shown you everything that's added to the game once you've gone through this expansion.
I want to say that the Layers Adventurer Pack is a wonderful way to jump into the game. So, me and my son, we played through this and we started with the base game. We love the base game and then we opened the first box. We played with that. We could have opened both envelopes right away, but we chose to just open the first box. Then we immediately opened both envelopes and I think the second box
and added more stuff. And so, it kind of lets you go things through things at its own pace. Now, what that means in a positive and negative way. In a positive way, it takes you through the game step by step. In the negative way, there are a few components in the game, for example, a monster card or a treasure card or trap card. There's some intermediate things, like the monsters aren't full monsters till the, you know, you get to the end. So, you have some intermediate cards that you'll play some games with and then you'll never use those cards again. Not a huge deal, but just as a heads-up. There is a lot of content, a ton. In fact, and I don't know if this is the Kickstarter exclusive or not, there's a boss monster, which it didn't talk about much, but I know that that's dealt with even more in their other expansion, but I'm talking specifically about this one.
The full game of Layers would be a lot to lay on someone at the beginning. So, I certainly understand why this was separated out into an expansion. That being said, I've a hard time imagining not playing with the full game. I like the fact that every game feels different, that there are three different monsters and three different traps. It never feels overwhelming or difficult. You both have the same monsters. You both have the same traps. You both won't have the same cubes. It also looks like there's a ton of actions there, but there's really not because at the beginning of the game, you're only going to have three different colors, so you don't even have all the actions that you could possibly do. There's lots of different things. There's interesting treasures. There's interesting of that lost loot, those little loot cards that you find. And it feels like there's all kinds of cool things going on. This takes the game really and cranks it up to an 11.
There's so much extra stuff. And yet it doesn't feel like there's a ton of extra stuff. In fact, this game comes with a box called the vault box and you can fit everything in that vault box, basically. So, pile miniatures and a bunch of cards. But what it does as a game, I think, is exceptional. For me, like I said, Layers is a seven without this expansion. With this expansion, Layers is a nine. In fact, this expansion on its own, I'm giving a 9.5 to. It is that good. There is that much excellent stuff in here and it feels like I would never need more content because I can play different stuff all the time over and over again. There is another expansion at some point, maybe I'll get a chance to look at that. I haven't seen it at all. But I think that if you own Layers and you like it, but you wish there was a little more, then this is what you need to get.
This is not just a little more, it is a lot more. I feel like there's double the amount of content than there was in the base game. So, very enjoyable. I think, again, they made the right decision, the company, on splitting it. If you just want a very base simple game, get Layers. But if you are someone who wants more than that, honestly, I would buy Layers and the expansion pack at the same time. Play a the game one or two of the basic ones. For most people, probably one game is fine. And then jump into this. And you're going to play through a lot of games just learning this advanced game. And once you get to that, you have just so much over and over diversity and different things to pick from. So, definitely check out Layers. I'm Tom Vasel, the Adventurer's Pack, sorry. Fantastic, almost essential expansion. We'll see you next time on the Dice Tower.
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