The Adventure Store: A Deck-Building Trick Taker
Transcript
Are you a fan of trick taking games? Because we've got a new one from Inside Up Games. This is called The Adventure Store. If you're a fan of Inside Up Games, you know they've had some experience doing some trick taking games. Even very recently. This one has a twist. It's a bit of a deck builder and trick taking game. It's got some, like I said, interesting twists because you're going to be you're kind of effectively fighting one another while you're taking the tricks. You can actually pull off some combos. Dare I say co-co-co combos.
It says that in the rules. This is from Taylor Reiner who is just a fantastic trick taking designer. And this is it is interesting. I've not quite seen a deck building game merged with a trick taking game like this before. Because what you like David mentioned, you're fighting in this arena. You're battling. And point of order here. This guy, this adventure store owner has created the perfect scam because that's basically what's happening here. This guy's running this tournament, but in order to be successful in the tournament, you need gear. And so you're coming to him to buy the gear. So you're basically paying him to then go fight in his tournament.
That just sounds That just sounds like a good business model.
like a great business model. So the cards that you're buying are coming into your deck in the form of either like these different types of attacks which are like your normal cards or you have like some augments that will augment your other cards you're playing which is kind of a new twist as well. So there are there are suits in the game. There are three suits which are the three different kind of combat styles you can fight with. There's brawn, wisdom, and magic.
Yeah, effectively.
And so you're going to start with a set of those cards. One thing that's different between this and maybe some other trick taking games you've played, everyone starts with a pretty similar deck. You're actually going to start with one through six in all three of those suits. So the fact that I have a blue six doesn't mean I have the blue six. Everyone has a blue six. Now it may or may not be in your hand because that's where the deck builder part of the game comes in. Each player is going to start each round by drawing 11 cards. So, you start with 22, you draw 11 of them, and as the game progresses, you're going to be adding more and more cards at different rates to your deck, and they're going to get more and more asymmetric as they go.
Yeah, you're also going to be getting rid of some cards. One way to go about this game is to really try to call out some cards, which is a thing you can do um to hone the deck, but also that's kind of kind of carry over a little bit to as you're playing. You're not exactly calling, but there is a reason to want to try to get out of cards while you're playing. It's not I wouldn't say that's it's a ladder game in that respect, but it almost gives you a little dash of that sort of card hand shedding.
It does It does feel a little bit like a hand shedding.
of hand shedding. That is not the overall goal, but there's a little flavor of that during any given round.
Yeah, and there's there's eight rounds in the game. Each round represents one of these rounds of the fighting arena. And then as you progress through, after each fight, you're going to be able to buy new cards to add to your deck. And you're getting these cards by earning these crowns, which are coins. You can get $5 pieces, you can combine two to make a $10 piece. However you do it, and effectively you're using that money to buy cards. Every time you win a trick during the hand, you're winning $5. So, you're taking $5 and you're putting it in front of you. At the end of any given round, whoever has the most money accrued gets kind of two bonuses. First of all, they get some renown, some victory points. And it's going to escalate. As you go through the rounds, by the time you get to the eighth round, you're getting like 15 points for being in the lead. But, you're also going to have more money to then spend on cards.
So, those cards you're getting are being added to your deck for future rounds. But, like David said, there is maybe a little bit of a benefit if you can shed out your hand, if you can run out of cards first, you get the initiative for the next round. Which, you know, you maybe you're foregoing some points, but going first can really help you.
I mean, if you play the trick-taking game, leading is generally a good thing. However, in this game, sometimes it's just as fun, if not more fun, fun to follow, because you can actually add cards to this. So, there's a couple twists here, and these are along the lines of some of the things we've seen from some other Inside Up trick-taking games. But one of the things you can do, for instance, if Ryan plays, say, a five-value card, uh he alluded to earlier, I might have that same color five. And you do have to follow suit. But even if I don't, I could play any five, and if I match a card that's already in the trick, or the last card that was played, I can actually add another card to it. So, if he played a five and I played a five, he would normally win that because he played it first. But I could play a five, and because I matched, I can add a four to it. And then effectively now I have a nine. Now, if we're playing with more people around the table, and there aren't, you know, necessarily nine-value cards, although there might be, because there's lots of cards you can buy. Uh the next person could match me, but they'd have to match a nine.
Yeah, and it's interesting because I I mentioned that some of these cards are straight-up like suit cards, like you play them, there's a number, there's a value. Some of them will have powers, some of them will have abilities, but some of them are augments that will modify. So, if David plays a a six, and I have only have a four, I could play a four plus a three augment, now I have a seven, I'm winning that trick.
Yeah.
There is, you know, still like a whole trump system, what they call favorite styles. Uh and it's actually it it's kind of interesting because at the end of the round, after you've done all of the game play, everyone's earned, you know, the money they're going to earn, they've earned the points they're going to earn, whoever is in very last, whoever has the If If you are in the very, very, very last position, you get an offer from the shopkeeper to set trump for the next round. If you do that, then you get a free card, and you get to set trump, but you don't get to participate in the buy phase. So, you're kind of deciding, okay, I'll just take one card instead of maybe the two or three I could have bought, but in exchange you're getting to set Trump for the next round. And if you kind of are paying attention to what's in your discard pile, what's in your deck, you know what you have left, you're watching what other players are playing, you're going to choose a Trump that maybe benefits the cards you've been buying.
That means, you know, you're going to go into it with a stronger hand. For example, I knew I had all my blue cards in my discard pile, so I was like, well, I've only really got purples and yellows left, so either one of those is going to be a pretty good option for Trump.
Yeah, an interesting decision comes up too, though, when you get that, and it's called a helping hand when you get that. A couple things go into that decision because you might have law you might be in last place for renown, but you might also have a lot of money from that particular round. And if you accept the helping hand, you're just getting one card.
Yeah, maximum one card.
Whereas if you had enough money to buy three cards, you might want to do that. Now, one of the things that factors in there when you get the helping hand, you can buy from either of the shelves. There's this top shelf that you would know not normally have access to. Uh And if you wanted to buy more, you could buy them, but you'd have to buy them from the bottom shelf. But that can be good because having a few different cards is really, really appealing because some of these, like, you can buy a six here that's matches the highest value in the base cards, but it has a power, or there's an eight and a 10,
Yeah.
which will really set you up really well. And again, we do I don't know if we mentioned this, these cards out here, there's a lot of different cards to choose from.
about to mention that because when we talk about how the shop works, you're going to choose 12 sets of cards. And there's a few ways you can choose these 12 sets. For one, uh the book actually breaks it down. We're using like a starter set they suggest for your first game, use these 12 cards. There's an advanced, there's an intermediate, there's like a for a quick game, whatever. But then they also have this giant stack of randomizers, and this is how many different sets of cards there are, at least in the base game that I have. There's a ton of sets, and they all come with these little dividers, so you have everything kind of in the box with with the dividers, you can grab what you need and you can set it up. But once you've got your 12 cards, you're going to put them out randomly in these different shelves, that the top shelf and the bottom shelf. And, you know, being able to have access to just what's on the bottom shelf, as you're looking you're saying, "Okay, some of these cards on the top shelf look really, really good. I want them." If you buy out all of the copies of a card on the bottom shelf, you get to choose what comes from the top down to the bottom.
So, you're effectively getting to decide now, "Okay, this card is available to everybody." But if you have if you do take that helping hand, you can maybe maybe the best card in the game for you is in the top row, and that might be the only way to get it early on in the game.
Yeah, that's an interesting element because it also feeds into why you might buy what cards you buy because if you're wanting to be the person who dictates what card comes down, you might just go heavy and buy a multiples of one stack just to sort of drain it of its cards, so it empties that space. Now, when you're doing that, you're really, you know, calling your shots for what kind of deck you're going to have. You might have a ton of yellow cards or something like that, which not only is something that you can employ in your strategies, but everyone else at the table also kind of can pick up on.
Well, yeah, and we're using, like I said, the starter set here, which not a lot of these cards have abilities. A lot of them are just like, "Okay, they're augments that give you some bonuses." Uh or they're just like really high-value cards. In this deck, like within all the other different sets, some of these sets have crazy powers that will really cause you to think about the game a little differently. And so, every time you play the game with a different set of 12 cards out, it's going to be a different experience. Your strategies are going to change. And I did mention that everyone kind of starts with the same deck. It's mostly the same. Uh they are character-specific cards that go into your deck and they've got your little icon on them. Some of the augments are a little different to start with, but you can actually like really increase that asymmetry. On the other side, they have more of like a a veteran mode they call it, where you start with a power. So, not only are you looking at the different powers of the cards you're adding to your deck, you've got a different character power as well that's going to interact with the game.
What's your power? It's a long one.
Uh yeah, so at the start of every round I can take any card from the lower shelf shelf and just add it to my hand. But, [snorts] just for that round. Once it's done, it goes back to the shelf. So,
it's on loan.
It's on loan. Basically, it is. It's called just borrowing actually. So, it is it's on loan. I can borrow any card from the shelf.
I have feng shui and it is at the start of each round you may draw and or discard an extra card.
Oh, so that's so you can kind of control your hand a little better.
That is very very cool. So, all of the characters have different powers.
of them. Four different characters I have in the base game.
And a lot of uniqueness like we said to all of the cards that are in the game. I think this thing is going to give a lot of variety to play after play after play. Not only with the amount of cards, but the ones you happen to choose. Oh, and one other thing that I think makes it unique and this is kind of a hard thing to describe. We touched on it earlier about basically going out, getting rid of your cards. There's another element that's sort of along those lines, but if instead of that, you kind of linger and stay in until the last track trick. If you win no tricks, sometimes if you win no tricks in a trick taking game, there's a bonus, right? There is here too, but you also have to kind of like hang out in the fight which is a trick makes it very very challenging to do.
But, if you happen to do that, kind of like shooting the moon if you will in reverse, uh you get first place automatically when it comes to tallying up the renown at the end of the round.
Yeah, it's it's an interesting twist.
I played this Ryan and I played it together just two players, but I played it before too at four players.
at Gen Con.
And I can tell you that is a tricky, no pun intended, thing to do uh to to go broke and lose tricks is one thing, but to do it and kind of linger where you're not getting rid of extra cards and it's very tempting to get rid of extra cards cuz sometimes you can pull off some of those combos where you're like, "Oh, I'll match your five by playing a four plus an augment card for a plus one that makes it a five and because I matched it now, I can add another card." And I'm playing three cards into a trick and which is very satisfying in and of itself and if you really want to get that initiative token, it's something you want to try to do. Um but, it's going to make it so that you can never like get the auto first place.
Yeah, well, it's it's interesting how all of these decisions are being balanced because taking that first player token or taking the initiative token, if you if you take it from someone, you get two points. If you have it, whenever you get cards, those cards go straight to the top of your deck instead of your discard pile. So, there are it's a huge benefit to want to go out first, but if you're going out first, the rest of the players continue playing. So, it's not like most trick-taking games where everyone plays a set number and if one person goes out, the round is over. You you're out. Everyone else plays. They might play three or four more tricks than you, which means they're making maybe 15 more dollars than you could have made, but the cards you're buying are going to the top of your deck. Conversely, if you find yourself not winning many tricks, like you've won zero, you might want to stick it out because getting to the very end with zero points and and stealing that first that first player point pool is really really appealing. But again, yeah, it's hard because you don't know when other people are going to go out.
You can look at what a person has in their hand and they might have four or five cards, but as David alluded to, you could play three cards in one go. Some of these special cards might even let you play more than that in one go. And so, it looks like you're going to be holding out for like have to hold out for a while and next thing you know, you're the last man standing in a turn or two because somebody just dumped all their cards.
Yeah, and the game can remain pretty tense. It goes over eight rounds. Um but, the renown, like Ryan said earlier, escalates. So you're scoring a lot of renown if you win the last round. So any it's kind of can be anyone's game. People can kind of come back, which is I think a good thing for a trick-taking game like this. For sure. Sometimes, you know, classic trick-taking game, someone can just have a huge lead.
All right.
you're you feel like, well, we've got a long road to come back. This one you're like, you know what? I'm going to just sort of like spend my time building up and then hopefully make a run in round six through eight. By the way, speaking of which, in round six through eight, the shop is closed. So you're done buying cards. After round five, your deck is what it is. Unless you have cards that allow you to call during it, but that's generally not going to affect the cards in your hand.
Sure. What you've got is what you've got for the last three rounds. And you touched on this, but I want to reiterate how interesting it is that you're not dealing cards out from a pool.
Yes.
It's not like all the cards are coming back and you're get you you have your own deck. So you get to shape. So it it is not so much like, oh, well, he of course he drew all the sixes. He was dealt all the sixes, so he's going to win. You have control. You don't necessarily control what you draw, but you do have control of what goes into your deck, just like any other deck-building game. And it feels like you do have more of a strategy. It's not so much just play what's in your hand. It's what am I building to? What am I hoping I have? And you know, based on whether you have that initiative token or not, getting to play some of these cards directly on top of your deck, knowing that you're going to draw them for the next round can be incredibly beneficial when you're setting your strategy.
Yeah, calling cards in this game can be very interesting cuz you can do it for a variety of reasons. And you're not going to do it necessarily a ton, but it it depends again on the cards that come out because you might get a bunch of cards that allow you to do it. You might start thinning things. You might thin them really well. You get rid of low numbers.
Yeah.
Or you could try to get rid of a whole suit by calling suits out of your hand effectively, you know, so you don't have that suit, which is of course always good and often good in a trick-taking game.
style, so you want to try to control that, too.
Well, unless it's the favorite style, but if it is the favorite style, then the good news is you might have a chance of going broke and getting first place that round. So, like any trick-taking game or any good trick-taking game, there's a lot of different things that tactically come up in this game where you're like, "Okay, well, now I'm going to I'm going to have to pivot and do this." Um and of course, this designer
knows his way around trick-taking.
Yeah, and and the way that he can weave all of these different systems together and make them all kind of rely on each other, and just make it so that every hand when you draw your 11 cards, you're thinking about so many different strategies or or how you want to approach that hand, but of course, you know, as soon as you play two or three cards into that that hand, you're like, "Well, my original plan is just out the window now. Maybe you won too many or one too few." Like you have to kind of change things up on the fly. It's It's a very interesting take on on trick-taking games.
And the last thing we totally forgot, there are some cards out here that give you kind of an objective for the end game. Our prototype here, and it should be said this is a prototype, it doesn't have a second type of card, which is a card that's kind of a different scoring opportunity.
sets of like scoring cards. There's just in-game scoring cards or during the game scoring cards. And again, this is going to add another layer onto the strategy because as you're buying cards, for example, we have one that says, "Have the fewest cards in your deck." So, maybe you don't want to buy a ton of cards because that's worth eight points if you have the fewest cards in your deck at the end of the game, which can be a significant amount of points.
It is, and and it's very tempt- Like it's very difficult to like go after that because you're like, "Well, I've got I just won a round really well. I've got I could buy three or four cards." And then the other one says, "Have the most cards in your trash." So, that's giving the opportunity Those kind of These two I don't think would ever be out together cuz they're from the same set because they kind of like synergize so well. But yeah, it just adds another layer to the game. But that is the adventure store. If you have any questions at all, please make them in the comments below. We'll get down there and answer whatever we can. Until next time, make sure everyone has fun at the table, and we'll see you then.