Gamefound Preview | Beast: Ashfall

0:00 If you need to move across the map quickly, there's almost no reason not to use them. And if you combine the boats with cars that the hunters really like to any settlement, they become a very strong asset.

0:19 Hey everyone, this is Aikas. Today, I'm giving you my review or preview of Ashfall, the third and last expansion of the game Beast. I have reviewed this game on my channel just recently, so if you want to catch up on how Beast plays, like a quick overview over the game and what I think about the core game, uh feel free to check out that video and then return here for that expansion. The expansion will go live on Gamefound on May 5th. Um and I will show you like part of what you can expect in that campaign. Before we get started, grab yourself a cup of tea and let's do this. All right, there we go. Before I get into my actual thoughts on Ashfall, I will first give you a quick high-level overview over what this expansion adds to Beast. This is not a full rules teach, just enough so you understand what kind of expansion this is, what new ideas it brings, and what I'll be referring to in the review.

1:15 Also, this is a preview version, so some elements may still change and some tease content, like Omar, the Den mechanism, and other things, is not part of this preview version. I only got like a partial preview with some of the new rules and some of the new components. A very quick reminder of what Beast as a base game does. Beast is a hidden movement one versus many game. One player is the Beast moving secretly around the map trying to kill enough settlers and animals to complete its objective. The other players are the hunters working together to track the Beast, reveal it, attack it, and either kill it or survive long enough. The game is played over several days. Each round has a dawn phase where players draft action cards, a day phase where players take actions, and a night phase where rewards and upgrades are. But what does Ashfall now change? Well, Ashfall is presented as the final expansion for Beast and it is meant to be a bigger, more sandbox-style and better expansion.

2:09 It adds new hunters, new mechanisms that change like how the map behaves, and also new beasts, of course. The important thing is that Ashfall does not completely replace Beast, just builds on the core system and adds a bit more variety, more asymmetry, and more ways for both sides to manipulate the map and each other. What comes with this expansion, at least from what I know at the moment. There will be three new beasts, three new hunters, then accordingly the new player boards and standees. We will have new beast and hunter ability cards. We now have these hidden path tokens. I'll be getting to those in just a few moments. We have boats, and also we have specific trail tokens and fire tokens um that we use during the game as well.

2:54 And of course, there's also more content that wasn't part of this preview copy, such as a new double-sided contract. So from a corner perspective, this is like a character expansion and a map modification expansion and a new mechanism expansion all at once. Ashfall brings players back to the existing Beast maps, mainly Drench Lands and Northern Expanses, but with a few added setup changes. Now, hidden paths are added to specific locations, boats are placed on the map. On Drench Lands, we have one boat um on a hunter's starting location. On the other side, for four players on Northern Expanses, hunters place boats in three different settlements without hunters. So the geography of the familiar maps changes and movement is not just about the normal path anymore, because Ashfall now adds shortcuts and long-distance travel options. Let's start with the first big map mechanism, the hidden paths. Hidden paths are shortcut connections between locations. They can make two distant places count as nearby, but only if the entrance matches the character's preferred habitat, which is for the beasts, the one here you can see in the left, or for characters, it's always settlements. Because each entrance can have a different habitat, a path can be open from one side, but not from the other. They now create new movement possibilities, they are habitat-dependent, and beasts can also use them for summoning as long as the usual summon restrictions still apply.

4:16 And also, entrances can be changed by transformation effects, which is necessary for the hunters to be able to use them. This means the map becomes more dynamic and depending on which habitats are transformed, certain shortcuts may open or close for different characters. Also, we have now boats. Boats are tokens placed during setup. A hunter on a boat can discard a card and use the boat as either type of action and relocate to any untransformed named settlement. The beast or summon can also attack a boat and remove it if it deals damage. So boats are basically a fast travel tool for the hunters, but they're not permanent safe infrastructure. The beast can destroy them and transformed locations can also interfere with them. Then we have three new hunters. The first of them is Bram. Bram is a hunter focused on controlling movement. Bram has access to these barriers here that are placed on paths between locations. No being can move through them, including Bram himself. While a barrier is there, the path is treated as if it does not exist.

5:18 And barriers are removed during night, but they can be attacked if they are adjacent to the blocked path and be destroyed. So Bam Bram is basically a board control hunter. He can temporarily block routes, restrict the beast, protect areas, or shape where the action can happen. The next hunter we have is Drog. Drog is a more aggressive, death-defying hunter. When Drog dies, he can pay a grudge to avoid normal death. Instead, his corruption increases. He lies down where he died, and on his next turn, he stands back up with his wounds removed. But there is a trade-off. Each corruption level makes one of Drog's abilities stronger, but also more dangerous, because using those abilities can cause him to just have a wound. Corruption can also be spent for upgrades, but Drog's upgrades are not unlocked with normal grudges. So Drog plays with this push-your-luck idea.

6:10 Dying can actually fuel him, but if he goes too far, he eventually dies like a normal hunter. Also, we have Nora, a wild huntress. She mainly works with animals scattered on the map and with summons. She's able to move animals. She even has one ability that makes a sheep attack uh attack the beast, which is absolutely hilarious. Thematically, this is probably my most favorite hunter in the new expansion, most situational one, I would say. Then, we have the first of the three new beasts, which is Ragnar and the Horde. This is a dragon-like beast that does not use grudges normally. When Ragnar gains grudges, they are stored or they can be stored in hordes connected to specific ability cards. If an ability has two grudges stored, Ragnar can use the stronger bottom effect of that card. So as you can see, um these cards look similar to the action cards, because they have two sections and the lower section can be used if two grudges are tied to that specific card. But when Ragnar suffers a wound, the hunters may choose one stored grudge and just discard it. So Ragnar's building up power in specific abilities, but the hunters can knock that power away by wounding him. Also, these grudges are not available to upgrade any of his abilities. Also, Ragnar comes with these fire tokens here. Ragnar can place these fire tokens on locations.

7:37 When a fire token is placed, beings there move to a nearby location without fire, although hunters may choose to stay. At the beginning of Ragnar's turn, fire deals one wound to beings on the location, but then all fire tokens are removed. So this adds like some kind of area denial. Ragnar can pressure spaces, force movement, threaten settlers or hunters, and make part of the board temporarily dangerous. The next beast included in this expansion is Lyden and Yelter. This is a beast that comes with a very important special summon, Yelter. Yelter is a legendary summon with three health, and almost like a second major presence on the board. When Yelter dies, Lyden also suffers a wound, and damage on Yelter remains unless it is specifically healed. Also, um the third beast included in the expansion is Omar, Butch Butcher of the Mist, but as you can see, I don't have that in the preview copy set, so I have no idea what Omar does, but Omar looks amazing. I like the design already a lot. I'm looking forward to what is revealed during the campaign. In the preview rulebook, there is additional content teased, but not all of it is included as I as I have mentioned. There are references to relics, dens, and also Omar, but in this preview version, those parts are either not included or not fully revealed, so I can't focus on them right here. So that is the high-level overview. Ashfall adds new characters, new ways to move around the map, new ways to block or manipulate path, and several character-specific mechanisms, and even more that wasn't part of this preview copy. But now, let's get into my

9:08 thoughts. What I really like about Ashfall is the variety it brings to the game. You don't just get new hunters and beasts with really interesting abilities, but also new mechanisms that can change how the board works quite substantially. The new hunters have very interesting abilities, and I like how they play. That said, my impression is that they are quite situational. I wouldn't necessarily call them great all-rounders. In specific situations, they can be very strong, but you need to work towards those situations or actively create them during the game. I feel similarly about the new beasts. The ones I could try in this preview have very interesting mechanisms, but they also felt harder to play than the beasts from the base game. Especially the dragon-like beast Ragnar was quite difficult in my opinion. That is not a bad thing per se, but I definitely would not recommend these beasts for first game.

9:54 In general, both the new hunters and beasts feel harder to learn and harder to master than the ones in the base game. But again, that's not necessarily negative. For players who already know Beast well, this adds a lot of replayability and give you new challenges to explore. What I really love is the inclusion of the boats. You get one boat in a two or three player game and even three boats in a four player game. And they make traversing the map much easier for the hunters. If you need to move across the map quickly, there's almost no reason not to use them. And if you combine the boats with cards that let hunters relocate to any settlement, they become a very strong asset. But they can also be destroyed quite easily and not rebuilt. The hidden path hit a little bit different for me. They're an interesting addition, but in our test games we hardly used them. Maybe that's because we're already used to how movement works in the base game, or maybe it's because the hidden path are quite situational and don't always lead to the exact part of the map you need to reach. Still, I can imagine them being helpful in the right situation. All in all, Ashfall seems to be an expansion that adds more variety, more complexity, and more replayability to Beast. The new hunters and beasts are interesting, but also more situational and harder to master. So I would mainly recommend this for players who already know and enjoy the base game. The boats are a fantastic addition that immediately changes how hunters can move across the map, but the hidden path feel more situational, but still interesting to explore.

11:16 So if you enjoy Beast and want more asymmetric options and more ways to explore the system, Ashfall is definitely something to keep an eye on. And well, that concludes my showcase and review of the Ashfall expansion for Beast. I hope you enjoyed the video. Thank you so much for watching and for staying to the very end of this video. As usual, my thanks goes out to all of you. I want to give a very special shoutout to my generous patrons. The biggest thanks goes out to Faganor for supporting me at the highest tier. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate that. You can also support me by watching, liking, commenting on my videos, subscribing to my channel, supporting me on Patreon, and joining my Discord server to hang out with me and my amazing community. All right, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the very next video on my Discord server. Take care everyone. Stay safe, and cheers.