Duel of Meloch solo play and review - One Stop Co-Op Shop
Transcript
Hey everybody, this is Mike with the Onetop Co-op Shop and today I'm doing a playthrough and review of Duel of Melock, the one to two player mashup of Scythe and Expeditions. And disclaimer that I got a review copy of this one. And if you like the content on the OneStop 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. You can also listen to our weekly podcast for reviews and design discussions, or join the conversation and say hi on our Discord. So, as I mentioned in the intro, this is a game that allows you to play expeditions versus scythe. So, one player is playing with the expedition rules and the other one is playing with the scythe rules, which is kind of crazy. I don't think I've ever heard of anybody even attempting something like this. Uh, so in this playthrough, I'll be controlling the expeditions character because I have over the years grown to like expeditions more than Scythe. Scythe used to be one of my favorite games of all times, but I've played it just so many dozens of times that it's faded a bit for me. And the Automa of the Bot will be controlling the Scythe character. But my first bonus Patreon video for July will be a playthrough from the other side with me controlling the Scythe player.
So you can go check that out if you support the channel. And in the game, you have a roll out mat. It has two different sides. So I'm playing on the desert side here. And it's got the usual stuff you might see in a scythe map. It's got rivers that are going to restrict the scythe player at first, so they will not be able to cross over these, but I can cross over them freely. You've got resources the scythe player could produce if they had workers, although with the bot there are no workers. But then you've got expedition stuff. You've got these corruption tokens you can vanquish. You've got cards you can get and deck build into your hand. You got exploration tokens that both players are going for. So again, very unique kind of thing. But in terms of winning the game, we are each racing to get four stars out. And while we might have different goals for some of these. So here, the scythe player has to get to 13 power before I can get to 10 power. We both want to win a fight.
They want to get two exploration tokens before I get four. But whoever gets a star there first locks the other person out of it. So, we're going to be fighting to see who can gain these stars faster. Once one of us has four, the game is over. And there's no victory point counting like there is in expeditions. It's purely just a race to the stars. Now, if you don't own expeditions or scythe, then the game does come with exactly one character for each playset. So, you are going to be a little bit limited in your options unless you go and pick up the big daddy games for both. But here for me, I'm playing Nikti and Nohawk maybe with the Voyager mech. And the bot's going to be Everin and a car in Constantinople. Not that it matters because they're not going to refer to any of this stuff for the Automa. Now, there's a little bit of a weird video to do because I'm not sure how much to explain of the scythe and expedition stuff, but I'll try to go into some detail if you haven't seen our previous videos on either game. Uh, so for expeditions, uh, each turn I'm going to move my little cube. Uh, first it'll let me take three actions and then every turn after that I'll get to take two actions and I got to keep moving it. I can move around the map. I can gather resources from the hex I'm on and I can play cards in my hand, moving them to the right to show that they are now in play. And then every once in a while when I want to, I can refresh to pull all my cards and my workers back because I will be putting workers on cards to activate their powers. And then after a refresh turn, I get to activate all three actions again. And I'll be raising up guile, this green or cyan track, and power both to help me vanquish corruption tokens to pay for other costs like quests. And if I get into combat
with the scythe player, which can happen in this game, unlike expeditions, I'll be using power for that. And some of the cards I can add to my deck can also be slotted underneath my board to give me ongoing bonuses. Quests up here, items over here, and meteorites down here. The scythe player, meanwhile, since it's the bot, is not going to do a lot. But in the actual game, they would be moving around. They'd be putting out workers in these places. They'd be producing resources to pay for costs. They'd be eventually summoning mechs, which let them also fight. Uh, so generally speaking, the side player has a huge advantage in combat, especially once they start getting other units out, but again, a lot of that is going to be simplified. Now, I don't think I'm going to explain too much more beyond that because, uh, I'll explain things as the game goes along, the actions and such. But just a note, the board of the things you're trying to accomplish is double-sided, so you can have a very different game play out. But in this one, I'm trying to get three quests completed, three items upgraded, seven tokens vanquished, six workers total, I only start with one, nine money, I start with two, four places explored, I want to win a battle, and I want to get to 10 power. Any of those will be good for me.
And you might notice this little board up here. This is only when you're playing with the Automa. And basically, they are legitimately trying to get these three things. So, if they accomplish these, they get their stars right away. But these other ones, the bot doesn't track those kind of things. So instead, these tokens will move up or these workers will move up. And if they reach a star, then the bot has gotten there. So it kind of provides a shorthand of how close the bot is to getting something so I know how quickly I need to try to outdo them and reach it first. By the way, for my starting resources, I'm using the Voyager card that's included with this set. So I have two power, two Guile, two money, and one gold worker. This is from the previous expeditions expansion, I believe, and it is a wild worker that can go on any card. Meanwhile, the bots starting stuff is determined by the difficulty level they are doing. They start out with this phase one card in play. And that upper right icon with the thing moving a single space and not over rivers represents the bot's current capability for the sighthe player. They can only move one space when given a move card and they can't move over rivers. That's going to change very quickly once they go through their deck and get to face card too. And the setup stuff is based on their level. I am playing against level three. They did win my level two game yesterday. So they are starting with three power on their power track and two combat cards. Pretty dangerous.
But the bigger thing for the level is I take a number of action cards equal to seven minus their level. So they've got four right now. Whereas at level two they'd have five. At level one they'd have six. They're going to use one action card a turn. Whenever they go through that entire little deck of four cards in this case, they're going to get a new phase card that'll give them a bunch of immediate bonuses and also make them stronger for the rest of the game. So, because I'm playing at level three, they're going to accelerate much more quickly. And how this works, by the way, is I take all of the action support cards. They're support cards on one side and action on the other. I shuffle them all up and I take four at random to go on top of the phase cards. The rest go as support cards. I'm gonna flip one card from each deck on the bot's turns to determine what they do. But in the game, the expedition's player goes first. So, let's see what I want to try.
So, I see a few things that interest me. Uh, one of the goals I can go for is to upgrade three items. And there is, I think, a very powerful item right there sitting waiting for me, the TLock mask. Uh, which will let me once I upgrade into it gather a second time every single time I gather for the rest of the game, which is kind of crazy. Now, to get that card, I need to use this space, space number two, right next to me, which lets me get any card in the offer. I can additionally sweep as many cards as I want, which might be good because I don't really need meteorites with meldding not being valuable at all with the current triumph track I have. Instead, I want items and quests. But going here gets me nothing else. No more workers to activate my cards. I can't really play anything effective, even though I am going to get a move, play, and gather turn right now, which makes me think maybe I should go somewhere else. Yeah, you know, I think we can come back to that. I'm actually going to move over here. I can move up to three hex's. I can't move through the lakes themselves. If I move into an enemy combat unit, I need to stop immediately, but I am not restricted by the rivers like the size player is initially. So, I can go right here. I do have to stop moving whenever I move into a exploration token like that. And when I do that, I'm going to immediately flip it and gain its bonus, which in this case is two coins, which gets me to four coins out of the nine I would need for that triumph. Although, I think I am going to spend them right now because I can then play a card and gather or gather a card in play. And first, I'll go and gather. So, what is this icon here? It means that I can activate the bottom effect of one of my characters
without playing the card or using a worker for it. And I'm going to do my companion who lets me vanquish corruption. So, to show this bottom power, it says, "I pay one coin, which unfortunately is going to take me further away from that goal to gain my location's top corruption or to take a vanquish action. And if the vanquish removes the location's final corruption, you may gain the revealed benefit." So, I'm paying a coin, and I can either just take this three, or I could do a vanquish action, which means I would pay three power, matching the color here, orange, to destroy it, and I could keep on going. That's the big benefit of the vanquish option. I could also pay three guile to get rid of that one. And I would get to benefit from this newly revealed gather icon, which is to upgrade if I had an item available to be upgraded, which I don't. Here, I don't want to do any of that. I'm just going to for free take the three orange and put it on my board. That's one out of seven corruption tokens I could use for that goal. But probably more importantly, because that seven corruption thing I usually don't get with this faction that comes with the game, they have the power with the Voyager mech. Once per turn, I might trash one corruption to upgrade, meld, or boast. Upgrading is taking an item, if I have one, and putting it under my board to gain its bonuses. Melding is the same thing for meteorites. And boasting is how I get my stars onto that board once I've actually accomplished whatever needs to be accomplished for the given space. uh the scythe player and the bot always gets to just freely put their stars down when they're ready.
But for me, I have that little hiccup of time between completing the goal and actually seizing it. All right, so that was my gather. Now I'm going to play. So I'm going to play Nohawk. And when you play a card, you gain the indicated amount of power or guile. Here it's one power, but if I had gotten a star on the board, it would be two power. And if I had gotten a second star, it would be also one guile. But just one power for me. We'll pay another coin. Bankrupted myself over here. Maybe I won't get that goal, but it lets me get that second corruption, which means I have uncovered that upgrade option. I might want to use that later. And that's it for my turn. I've moved, played, and gathered. Oh, and sorry, I had to put the worker on Nah Hawk to actually activate his power, which means I have no workers at the moment. If I play Nictti, I would not be able to activate her power. Although, hers is to solve quests, so I'm probably not going to be doing it anyway. All right. And with that, we go over to the Automa. So, again, I'm going to flip the top card of the action deck and the top card of the support deck. For the action card, I'm just looking at these top two rows, and each of them gives an action the Automo will take with priority being the leftmost one that applies. So, they're going to do the top row action, and then they're going to do the bottom row action, and they'll pick one of the options presented. While they take those actions, the support card will give the nuance of the action and help them make decisions, which triumph thing they want to advance, how they want to go into combat, all that kind of stuff. So for the top row, the first action, that one with hex's going down and an arrow, is a make progress on the triumph track action. One of the most common they'll take, which means they're going to move down one of these workers. They get closer to seizing one of these five
triumphs. And to determine which track they go on, we look at the support card in that icon on the left with the arrow going around. It shows us where they start, which is the rightmost space. If that was not valid, then they would go around to the leftmost space, then the second and the third and the fourth, following the arrow. So here they'll advance this one. They're getting hearts, which opposes me getting quests. But whenever they advance on a track, I move their little cube here. And that means that that will be invalid the next time they make progress. So they can't do the same track twice in a row. They would have to pick one of the other four. Then it would move off and they can move the uh popularity one again. There are sometimes more calculations to be done in which tracks they prefer, but for this one, it was a very simple choice based on a support card. Now, the second row has a star with an attack icon in it. And what that means is they check if there is currently a star available for winning a combat. And if there is, they will move to try to fight me. Now, currently, they have one movement. They can't cross over rivers.
So, they'd have to go all the way over here to have a combat. So, in the basic mode of the game, they would not move at all. They would skip that option, and they would just draw a combat card. But in the advanced mode, where the bot is a little bit smarter, they have what's called a threat move action. So if they can't actually get into combat, they will move towards me to try to get into combat. Now when they do that, they do this thing that's pretty complicated which is called calculating the power balance where you look at the spaces they could move to and calculate whether the power would be in their benefit. And this is again kind of complicated. I'm not going to go too much into it, but basically you look at what their power is. They have three added to the number of combat cards they could play if combat was forced because I could well actually no I can't even move to them yet. So they don't have to worry about any of this. This is the space they want to move to because it's the only way it's progressing closer to fighting us.
When we actually get into a situation where the power balance matters, I'll try to explain it, but it's kind of like you add their current power plus what they could potentially get from combat cards and compare the values. And then the support card, that little scales icon with less than three next to it, that's going to determine how risky they are willing to be in their moves. It gets a little heavy, but for now, we're not going to worry about that. All right. What should I do now? I could grab this before they do. That'll make it almost impossible for them to get the two exploration tokens before I get four. But I don't have anything good to play at the moment. I don't really want to gather a purple worker cuz that doesn't fit any of my current cards. So, I'm going to do my original plan. Going to do a move and gather action. Go over to here for my move. And I'm going to gather with this. So, this icon means I can take either of these cards. And this icon means I can sweep one or both cards away and draw new ones. I'm going to take this item first because again, I think that ability is awesome. When you gain a card, it goes into your exhausted area like that. So, I'll have to refresh, actually bring it back over and be able to play it for its one power with a blue worker for its special ability. And when a card is taken, it's immediately replaced. Okay, good.
Another item. I think I can go for this three upgrades option. So, with my sweep, I'm just going to sweep away the meteorite and draw replacement, which is a quest. They already advance once on the quest once, so I'm not sure if three quests is going to happen, but yeah, three upgrades should certainly be doable. So, I moved and I gathered, but let's go ahead and use my once per turn voyager ability. I'm going to trash one of the corruption I've defeated, which does mean that I'm further from completing that seven corruption goal over there. But, I get to upgrade. So, I will upgrade the TLock mask. I slot it under so you don't see the blue guy anymore. you don't see the gathering ability. So, if I had played this and put a blue worker on it, I would have gotten to gather while benefiting from this ongoing power. But instead, I do that. But now, for the rest of the game, whenever I gather, I can choose one benefit to gain again, which seems pretty dang strong, I think, to have uh right at the beginning of the game. But that's it for my turn. All right, back to the bot. They are doing that action and gaining support. So, their first action preference this time is if there is a star available for having power, which there is, they gain two power. Here it is. They want to get the 13 power. And that brings them to five. And then their second action is to attack even if they couldn't get a star from it. You'll see there is not the little star icon for that attack symbol that was there before. So once again, they're going to move this way. And they are going to take this which gets them halfway to the goal of having exploration tokens. See, I'd better run over there. Darn it. I was not planning on doing that, but uh now it seems like I must. Yeah, I don't want to give that to them. So, even though it's kind of a waste, I'll move to the move
and play side. For the play, I'll just put her out and get a Guile. I'm getting nothing else from it cuz I don't have a worker to activate her ability, and it wouldn't really be a useful ability anyway. But for the move, I will jump in here. They're probably going to attack me and get a star anyway, but at least I'm leaving my hopes for this star alive. Oh, I get another power. So, I'm up to four. Good chance they're about to murder me. Uh, but we'll see what happens. All right. Uh, now it looks like we're okay. So, first they're going to make progress. And this time, they have a different icon. that thing with meeples and a check mark. What that means is while they still use the shaded square and the circling arrow to determine their priority, they will prioritize tracks that are further along to fasttrack certain stars over tracks that are not as progressed. Now, in this case, that doesn't matter because the only ones that are available have not progressed at all. Whereas, the one they would want to do because it's made one progress is locked out because of the square they already did. So, in this case, it was here going there for the priority. So, they are advancing this as though they were building a mech, which is actually great because I'm already uh partway along to getting three upgrades.
So, I'd rather them make progress there and then I'll just scoop it out from under them hopefully. Okay, their second action is to move. Trying to get an exploration. Good think snatched that one up. So, now he's going to be trying to move towards these, which means he'll move into where I am. So, now we do have to check the power balance. Basically, does he feel safe moving in here? He's not going to start a fight because he didn't have a combat action thankfully for me cuz they would have beat me up really badly. But he checks the power balance. So I've got three power. That's my total if I had a combat card cuz each player, this is Scythe Rules, can play one combat card per combat unit in the space and I only ever have one combat unit whereas he could eventually get a lot of combat units. Then each card would be imagined to be worth seven. So I would have four plour plus seven 11. But right now with four power, that's my entire total. Whereas the bot has five power plus two cards, more than enough to play one on their person. So they imagine their power to be 12. So 12 minus 7 means they have an advantage of five, which is way more than they'll ever need. But right now that scale symbol says zero. So even if we were tied for power, they would still come charging in. And yeah, they're just hanging out there. Uh they could attack me on another turn though. So I don't want to stick around. So maybe I should move and gather, right? Especially my double gather. And then when I'm farther away from them, I can refresh. That seems smart. So, sure. Let's move and gather. And let's keep going for exploration stuff, I guess. So, I'll go here, which is getting me Oh, okay.
Interesting. So, this icon means I get to pick one reward from stuff adjacent to me. So, I could get one coin or I could upgrade an item or I could activate a card's playability without actually playing it. Or I could get a combat card. That one seems good. So, I would have gotten to do this once because of my TLock mask upgrade. I could do it again. And then the expiration token also lets me do it. So I'm getting uh three gathers. I could just get three coins and try to get that faster. I could get a lot of power. Well, for the first one, let's definitely get one combat card. So at least make them a little scared to fight with me. And this one says ambush. It's worth three in the upper left. These are all new combat cards, by the way. But then it says, "After the reveal, you may play an additional combat card with a different value." Well, crap. I guess I should get another combat card. So, yep.
Let's go and do that for my second one. Wow. This one is the highest value possible, a seven. But it says, "No guts, no glory. You cannot earn a combat star in this combat." Oh, and I should say, super important, you can discard combat cards at any time to gain the indicated bonus for them. This one's amazing. I could discard this to get a worker immediately of one of the colors that would let me activate more of my cards. This one will just get me a single power, so not nearly as good. Well, maybe it's a little silly, but I do want to be ready to beat them in fighting. So, let's go ahead and get another combat card. Why not? Oh jeez, it's another ambush. It has to be a different value. So, crud, if they fight right now, I could totally destroy them, but I wouldn't get a combat card. But you know what? I am going to go and discard one of these because there's literally no reason to have both of them and get a free worker. And let's make it a yellow one that matches my fighty companion. Oh, no, it's blue. Sorry. Let me get a blue one so I have a bit more flexibility with how I use my workers.
All right, so that was a fun move and gather. I'm one exploration away from being able to complete that star and I'm going to probably refresh next turn unless the bot keeps trying to kill me. All right, this is the final action on top of the deck. So, next turn they're going to get the phase two card in play and they're going to take another action. They immediately go again. So, that's going to suck. Okay, they're making progress again, starting at the second spot, which is having eight workers. You know, I guess I could actually do six workers now. If I go to one of the spots that gives me workers, and I use my TLock mask, that would get me to four workers, and then one more time would get me to six workers. That's not hard at all. I don't usually go for that one, but maybe I will now. Okay. Okay. And then they're moving to explore again. And now that power balance thing actually matters cuz for wherever they can move, they're looking at whether I could move in and attack them. Now, by the way, for expeditions to attack, I need to actually play a card that lets me do a vanquish action. And I try to vanquish the uh the opponent, whereas Scythe characters can just attack for free whenever they move into a space with an enemy combat unit. So now, if they go in here, I could come to attack them. I do have at least one combat card, so in their mind, that could be a seven. 7 + 4 power for me is 11. Seven from the one combat card they could play plus five power for them is 12. So if this had been like this, the thing that says it has to be a three or greater, they would not want to move there cuz they'd be scared. In fact, I guess they wouldn't move at all. Uh and they'd take a different action because all the places would be too scary for them. That still means in their mind that they're winning by one power. So all hex's remain valid and they'll just move one
towards the next uh exploration they can do. All right. Now, this part's a little scary, but I'm going to go ahead and refresh. So, I get my workers back. I get my cards back. And I just sit there and hope they don't kill me. So, they go into phase two, which means, first of all, their units can each move two now for the rest of the game and over rivers. Yikes. They also gain an immediate bonus based on their levels. They're getting one power going to six. And they're putting a mech, another unit, at their home base ready to attack me. That's what these are. Checking the level. Remember, they're level three. And then also, they're going to draw a support card and resolve a make progress action. Then they're going to rebuild the ultimate deck and take a whole another turn. Yikes. All right. So, for this one, they prefer to start on the left, which is the money one, which I've not been making much progress to. So, the only one they haven't gone for, unfortunately, is the one that I'm the least interested in. So, that's not great for me. Okay, now it's we rebuild the deck. So, we put all the cards together, shuffle them all up, and then again, because level three, I'm putting only four action cards on top before they do phase two. Then I'm flipping it back to the sports side and they take a whole another turn. Oh, and here we go. They are coming for my blood and then drawing a combat card. Oh man, and this is extra bad.
They're sending because they can. They're sending every unit in that can come. So they could potentially play two combat cards and use six power. The best I could get would be 10. And then I've got four power that would get me to 14. So if they did six and then they're just flipping cards at random. So, let's say the average is like a three or a four, but some of them have extra bonuses. I mean, I should probably just do nothing and then I can benefit from the other uses of combat cards. So, like inside combat, I would first determine how much power I would want to use up to my max of four. I would also secretly decide if I wanted to use a combat card or not. But yeah, I think I'm just giving it to them. I don't think I can realistically win this and they're going to overwhelm me at some point anyway. Now, I will say I'm using one power because I need to have a minimum of one for me to get a free combat card. Although actually, you know, let's say I'm using zero power because I can use that for other stuff.
And instead, let's say that I'm using my seven combat card just so that if they're like super weedy, cuz sometimes they'll like surprise you and not actually do anything, I'll force them to waste an action. Why not? Cuz I really don't care about getting this plus one power thing. So, my total is seven for them. We flip up the support card and we're looking just in this area in the upper right. So, the first row says, "Is the power balance less than one here?" No, they're way above me because again, each of the combat cards they could play, which is two in this case, is worth a theoretical seven plus six power. They're destroying me. Uh, next they say, "Whoops. Are combat cards a victory condition? Do they want to hold on to combat cards cuz it's one of the triumph track ones? That's what the star with the combat card is." Uh, nope. In this case, we are not on that side. So, they would have been a little bit weak. Instead, they're going to spend up to seven power, which is the max they could ever spend, and use up to five cards, the most they could ever spend. They're going to go completely ham on me, which means they're going to use both of these combat cards, which end up being two planned retreats. They're going to have 10, but they have to retreat after combat. That's a small favor at least.
Then they spend their max of six powers. They would have spent seven, but they didn't have it. So that's 16 for them, seven for me. So unsurprisingly, I have lost, which means I get retreated back to my starting space. But because I at least one power, I get a free com. Ooh, another worker. Now that worker goal seems even easier to do. But because of the cards they played, they all retreat too, which is good because now they are out of movement range to get a final exploration token. So that leaves me a little bit of leeway and space to finish that up. But they did, where is it? Boop. Get of combat win. Although now they are very far from getting the power victory. So I love that that all happened. But there is a little catchup mechanic for people getting stars, which are where these Melo cards come in. This is the duel of Melo. What happens is whenever the other player gets a star, you flip the top mele card. You start with one in play like this and you get to orient it either way you want and then you overlap whatever the last card played was. In this case, there's only one. And you cover up your opponent's half of it. And then you gain everything facing yourself. So here I'm definitely getting a coin, but I can either get a free refresh of my cards or workers. No, they're already fully refreshed. Or a free combat card. Yes, please. another.
What the heck? There just a ton of ones. Give me workers here. And then if they got another star, I would get three things. But if I get a star, which is probably going to happen, they'll cover up both of my things. So yeah, you're kind of like going in this little eb and flow push and pull getting bonuses back and forth. Now, that was only their first action. They also get a combat card for their seconds. They're ready to fight again, although not really. And also, they're going to not want to fight very often now because these icons will always be ignored from now on. There is no more star for combat. Uh if we were on the other side of the triumph for there would be a second star. So they would be a bit more aggressive there. All right. So now it's back to me and I get to do one of each action. And this is getting pretty interesting now because if I go over here and get two more workers, I'm going to discard two of these cards. I'll have the six workers for that goal. If I can move over here, I'll get the fourth exploration token for that goal. Um if I can get that item and upgrade it, I'll be very close to the item goal. And if I can save up my power, I'll get the power goal very quickly. So, there's a lot of things to try for here. All right, I think I'm going to move here. I'm going to gather and then gather again because of my mask. I already have a blue guy, but I guess I get another one in case I get another card and then a red. I'm going to go and discard, I guess, both ambushes cuz I don't know if I'll have enough combat cards. I'll keep this swarm tactus one that's worth two, but it's plus one for every unit here that includes enemy units so that if they like jump me with a billion guys, but don't bring that many combat cards, maybe it could sneak me into a win. And I guess I'll get I don't know a purple guy and then definitely a yellow one for Nick T's power. So that was my move and
gather. Now before I do the second action because I think I can you know interrupt. I'm going to go and spend a corruption to upgrade me or boast. And I'm going to boast about having six workers which ties me with the bot gets me my six people. But it does mean they get their melock cards. You just randomize which side it's on and then they gain these bonuses. So here they're getting one power. Now, they ignore a lot of things like they don't care about refreshing. If they had like gotten a worker or something like that, they wouldn't care about that. But how it goes is if they skip two or more icons, so two of them are invalid for the bot. They get a free progress action here. But uh since they got one power, that does not apply. Okay. And I can still play. I'm just going to play Nikki without a worker. Uh doesn't really matter much at the moment. I want to save him for my next turn. But that way I can get to Guile. That's cool. All right, back to the bot after being so aggressive. Okay, they're going to push forward. They want to do the one that is the furthest forward and starting to the right, which means Yep, they are coming.
Oh, that's not what I want to move. That's what I want to move. They are coming for that one. I've not completed any quests. I think I'm just going to let them have that. I'm trying to upgrade three, get four exploration, maybe 10 combat or coins if I can. You know, with the double gather thing, I could get two coins over and over very quickly. And then they're going to try for an exploration move. And here, actually, the power balance might scare them away because I could go to here or here where they would want to go. At the moment, I have one combat card and four power. So, that's 11 in their brain. And they have one combat card, so their mech wouldn't help them. They don't have a second combat card for them. And one power, which is eight, which means they're actually losing by three. So, they for this action do not want to go anywhere. that I could run over and attack them even though I wouldn't really want to. So, I don't know if this is actually smart. So, I think that's the only space they can move to cuz 1 2 3 I can get them there. 1 2 3 I can get them there. Yeah. So, I think they use their entire move going there. Now, if they didn't move at all and didn't make any progress toward exploration tokens.
So, I think this is invalid. The rules aren't 100% clear for that. I think this is an invalid mood. This one though might not be valid either. Here they try to move towards a specific location with that white circled number underneath the uh scales, which is a five. So they're trying to Oh, that's the exact same space. They're trying to move towards there, but it says only if there are no valid moves do they skip the action. So I think they move there. Oh, and they move up to two units with this action. Okay. So yeah, I don't know. Some of those things are a little bit uh still confusing for me of like when they move and when they don't. Once the game is widely available, I'm sure there'll be FAQs and rules questions on BG that'll clarify it, but I think maybe they both end up there. I don't know, but I'm loving that. My combat card is keeping them scared. I'm definitely not going to get rid of it. All right, then. I had a fun plan for my next turn. I'm going to what was it? Move and play. And let's lock in another star, baby. I'm going to go over here. I'm going to Oh, get a free refresh. Okay, so I'll get Nick back. That is my fourth token, which is going to matter because as my play, I'm playing Nak with a blue worker. So, first with one star, I go up to six power. Getting close to 10, although I'm about to spend some. Then I spend a coin, and this time I'm going to vanquish instead of just getting a free token. The one on top requires two guile. The next one requires two power, but I get both of these for future uses of the Voyager ability. But I don't need to use it yet because with Nah Hawk's power, I get to immediately use the revealed benefit if I took out all the tokens on his base, which means I get to boast immediately. And I'll go ahead and boast about all of those expiration tokens I just got, which sadly means
they're going to get another Melo card. And it's going like that. So, they don't care about coins or this. They are going to do a free make progress. And they get a second power. And they're making progress on the furthest advance starting from the left, which means this one for coins. That's another one I'm not really going for, although I kind of could. Yeah, I think this and this seem like the clear winners at the moment. Which speaking of, I probably want to run down and try to get another item for my next turn. All right, back to the butt. They are Oh, making more progress. Uh, starting with that one, which is the item upgrade. I think that's okay. I can still beat them hopefully. And then, oh, they want to move again. Uh, yeah, they're still scaring me. I still have more power than them. And, uh, we have equal combat cards. And, okay, you know what? Looking at the thing again, I think if they can move to a space, even if they're not making any progress, they still do. Although, this time they can because I would stop if I moved on to that, which means I couldn't charge in to attack them. So, they can actually get to here and I can't possibly reach them. Okay. Now, by the way, you might be wondering why they still trying to get that even though the star is gone. I agree with you. They're kind of dumb, but the rules say they only ignore that exploration action if the token is gone, even if the star can no longer be gained. I guess because, you know, in a real game, they would get some bonuses from drawing the exploration card and resolving it. But yeah, I'm getting a little bit lucky here. So, uh, let's go ahead and do a move and gather to try to get more items, right? That's what I want. More items, more power. So, let's go down to here so I can resolve this one to get the forbidden scroll. Then I can sweep if no more items came out.
Yeah, two meteor or a meteorite in a quest. Let's get rid of those. And then hopefully there will be another item. Yes, actually two of them because now I can use my mask to grab one again. This one's a bonus when meldding. This one's a bonus when boasting. And it lets me boast. Clearly going to get the land sail. And ooh, I guess I could upgrade one of them right now. Yeah, let's fasttrack this. So, I'll go and use my power once per turn. Discard a corruption I built up. And I'll go ahead and get the lad sale lets me boast. But am I even going to have time for that? I'll just go ahead and upgrade that. So, now after I boast, I gain one money per star I have placed. Pretty nice. Pretty nice. And I can boast or upgrade again soon. I should be able to get my third star. Too slow, bot. too slow. Okay. Oh, they are going to get some power finally because uh Oh, no. That's right. It's not a star to get power. No, it is still a star to get power. I haven't taken that yet. So, they're at four. Uh then they're going to try to attack. If they don't have a star, they do. So, instead they're just going to try to move up to two units to space two. Now, interestingly, with them having four power and me having four power, now we're suddenly tied. And this time they don't care even if they're at a deficit of two in the power balance. Which basically means that every space is valid. So they just want to get to as close to space two as they can. Which means since that would stop them, this guy's going to go here. And they move a second unit. So that guy's going to go there. Now they are boxing me in because I cannot take a move action through them. I have to stop when I move onto their space, unfortunately. which does
leave me an interesting place because unfortunately I can't move and gather again to go up to where I could boast with the gather action. So even if I use this to get a free upgrade, I can't take advantage of it. Maybe I'll just rest then cuz playing her to get two guile and a power is not that impressive. And gathering more cards here doesn't really help me out much. See, I think I'll just refresh to at least be able to play my companion again. which does mean they're going to get a tempo advantage on me. They're going to phase three. Okay, they're getting a free combat card. It's going to change things up a lot. And at level three, they're putting out their two more mechs on their home base. Yikes. Then we're going to do another make progress and take another turn. And they just want to do their second from the left. Oh, but nope, I forgot to remove the worker.
Once I take a star, they clearly don't want it anymore. So, they're going to this one, the money one. They are almost there. In fact, they could get it with their extra turn right now. Okay. And then again, we are shuffling it all up. Four cards on top. And here we go again. All right. They're making progress again. Looking for the most progress. Starting from the rightmost space. They can't pick that one. So, it's definitely going to be that. Whoops. What am I doing? So, they are almost done that one, too. So, they are very close to four stars. That's scary. Oh, no. No. I guess if they did both of those, I would only be three. And then for their second action, they're going to try to explore. Okay. Now, the bot has a less than six. So, with us being about the same on power and no, that's right. They have a second card now. But if only their character could reach, they would not win the battle. So, they wouldn't want to move here. That'd be too dangerous for them. But this is also going to get them as close to the thing as they can.
And then they can bring in four mechs if they needed to. So, they could definitely win a combat. Cool. So, that gets them out of my way at least. Just in time for me to do a move, play, and gather. Huh. I got a good one. Okay. So, I'm going to move to here. Then I'm going to play in a hawk. just to get all of those fists, not for any other reason. So that gets me to six. And then before I do anything else, I'm going to use my once per turn ability to throw that away and also upgrade into my scroll. And now now I'm going to gather. So I get a coin. Brings me to three. This is a rescue icon. I get to take a played card back and any worker on it. So now I can play Nak again for two more power soon. Trying to get to that 10 power goal. Then I also get to boast because I have three upgrades now. So uh boop. I've got that, which means their worker goes away. And after I boost, I gain one money per star I have placed total. So I get three coins, which puts me to six out of nine, which would be pretty great if they weren't one progress away from getting it. So I'm definitely not going to win that race. But Melo goes again. Oop.
And they're getting what is it now? A power to get to five, a combat card, and they still have two invalid ones, so they get another progress. Shoot. Uh, which is going to be on the most advanced starting from second to the right. Okay, so they would have done this one, but nope. They are locking in this, which means I will also get a uh bollock card or melo. All right, so I get to pick the side. More power. I actually want that instead of thing this time. So I cover up the most recent half of theirs and a little bit more. So I slow them down a bit. So I'm getting a coin, but it's already too late to benefit from that. But I'm getting a power that gets me to seven. I'm very close to the 10 I need to win here. H. Now remember that wasn't their turn. And that was just from me getting the star and then I got a star right back. So crazy turns. Okay, now their actual action. This is getting tight.
They're going to progress again. Shoot. Starting from the middle. Okay, this is great. Fantastic. Really, cuz they should have by all rights done that one. But now they're going to waste their time doing this one that they're never going to have time to actually finish. Now, the next time they progress, they will definitely get their third star there. Uh, which means it really comes down to who's going to get to more power first. And that's going to be me, I think, cuz I'm way closer. Then for their second action, they want to move their leader to explore. And this time they ain't scared because they can bring everybody there. It's like if all of us moved our combat units in R. Well, they couldn't bring everybody, but they could bring two, which is more than enough. So they do lock down the last one of that, but they get no bonuses for it. So that was again kind of a wasted turn, but now they will skip those actions for the rest of the game. All right, for my turn, I think I want to move and play. I'm just trying to rush to 10 power now. So I want to be kind of out of range of them attacking a whole bunch. I want to have access to that if I can get to it.
But I'm going here and I guess I'm playing the hawk just again for nothing except the two power. Oh, and one guile. I should have gotten that last time, too. It gets me to nine power. And then if I can uh go here after playing somebody or doing something to get another power, then I'll be good. If gives me time, uh, let's see. Oh, they're getting their own two power. They're at seven out of 13. Two slowbot. Then they're not going to try to attack. They're going to try to move to space four. Remember, they're not scared of me anymore. as long as I can get two units to wherever they're going. So, yes, they'll go to space 4. And yes, they'll go to space 4. Oh, which is No, it's not blocking me because I can go in there and just not fight them. I would just have to stop my move. Okay, now if I could play him or no, I should play her to get to the 10th power and move and gather. I could gather the boasting action there. Shoot, I should have used Nah Hawk to like get another uh one of the vanquish tokens. That would have been so much smarter, Mike. Ah, well, I didn't make that choice.
So, I'm actually going to refresh and then as long as they don't like block my movement, even if they attack me and kick me out of where I am, I should be able to win on my next turn, I believe. So, let's see what they do. Their final action. Okay, they're getting two more power. They're at nine. They're within four of what they need. And then, yep, they're trying to attack me even uh if I don't care. In this case, only these two guys can reach me. And they want to bring them both cuz I have more power than or no, I guess we're tied for power at nine. But they can play two cards and I can only play one in their mind. So their power balance is certainly fine. Definitely better than the less than one that would stop them from moving in. Okay. So what the hey? I'll play my swarm tactics just so I get another combat card. No reason not to. And they flip this. And yeah, nothing applies. They're spending up to seven power. Why, guys? It's weird that the card checks that they want a combat card goal but not a power goal. Oh, never mind. Power as a triumph category is an option. We're just not drawing it. Yes, they're using seven power and two cards.
Oh, they cannot earn a combat scar as that doesn't ma matter. Increase value of this card by plus one for each other combat card played. Well, yeah, clearly they destroy me. So, I retreat back here. Oh, no. And then I get a constellation combat card with a coin that I don't care about. And I'll note on their very next turn, they would get to draw their phase four card, which would get them a free advance here to uh gain their third star here. Oh, and if you're wondering, once they only have one track, every other progress action just takes away the cube. So, it still takes them twice as long to actually make progress. So, yeah, it's going to take forever for them to do that, but they ain't going to get the chance because I am moving. And then I am playing, let's say, in a hawk for one more power than I need that gets me to 10. And then I am gathering, which lets me get a coin. Who cares? Rescue. Who cares? And boast about my 10 power.
Boom. All right. So, maybe I should have played on level four. Although honestly the lock mask was so crazy powerful for the entire game, letting me fast track my way to lots of goals that I think without it I would have maybe lost or struggled a lot here. Uh they clearly would have gotten their third star in a second. But with how things were going with their combat results and stuff, it would have taken them forever to get these. All right, so what do I think of this game? This is a hard one cuz this game is crazy. This is it's a fever dream, right? It's taking two completely different games, yes, in a shared universe. Yes, with some shared uh iconography and map type things and just smashing them together. And the crazy thing is that it works. I've played this game a bunch competitive and it's been very tight and uh exciting each time.
I've also played it solo and it works pretty well. Now, I do have tons of caveats here. Uh, number one, even though I've played Expeditions before and I've played Scythe before, I had to go back and skim through both rule books because they do give in the game a rule summary, a one-page sheet kind of telling you what's up with Scythe, which is good if you've played the game a lot and played it recently. But for me, having played it years ago, it was not enough. I had to go read the rule book. And same thing for Expeditions. The rules are not included in the box. You have to go and look them up. This is if you're just buying this game by itself for the first time and don't already own everything. And then you got to read the duel of melo rule book to see how things kind of change up with the versus mode. Then if you want to play solo, you got to read the solo rule book. So that's four rule books, everybody. If you are not intimately familiar with the scythe and expeditions rules, that is four rule books you got to read to be able to play this one consistently. Now, I got through it and hey, I taught my 13-year-old how the expedition side of things work and I played scythe against him and it worked pretty well. Like he c picked it up quickly. So, even if you're a complete newcomer, I do think it's doable to get into these games. Also, as I mentioned, you're only getting one character for each side, so that's going to get a little sy. There are two different maps to play on. There's two different triumph tracks to play against. Those do change things up quite a bit, but still, as you can probably guess, this is an odd one to recommend for a newbie. I don't know if it's going to have enough value in it. It might seem overwhelming. Now, if on the other hand, you own even one of the games already, I think this one is a lot
easier of a pill to swallow. And if you own both games, I think this thing is awesome because it gives you a very, very different way to play, a much more interesting head-to-head experience than I think either game offers, and solid solo play as well. Although, to be fair, I think expeditions and side both have good solo play to begin with. And of course, I'm sure this is what Stonemire is hoping, but if you do get this as sort of a starter set and you enjoy the games, you can get so many more play options by buying the full size and the full expeditions, of course, then you're talking about like $200 or more. So, that might be a bit much. But yeah, this is an insane design thing, and I think they pulled it off, as crazy as it is. Now, what are some more caveats for the Now, that being said, I do have a few more caveats for the design. Uh, first of all, I do think the swinginess is much higher than in base expeditions because there are only two cards out at a time. So, you can get something really powerful like the mask I got early on.
You could be digging for items, but you just don't get them for several sweeps. So, there are some potential frustrations there. On the scythe side of things, when I've played it, I have not found the empire building to be as interesting. You're not building out as many workers. There's not as much interesting nuance movement just because the map is so small. Also, maybe this is group think, but we have not found the goals be completely balanced. Some of them seem way easier for the expeditions player to get or the size player to get. So, sometimes our games have followed kind of similar tracks where we are going after the same stuff. And then, as you saw, the bot can be a little dumb sometimes. They can do movement actions that don't seem to actually do anything. Just kind of get them going around the map to, I guess, get in your way. Maybe that's the point. And the whole power balance thing is kind of confusing. I think I've got it. Hopefully I explained it well here, but it's definitely not an easily groable rule. But still, I got to give credit where credit is due. This game is insane and it works and it's fun and it's tight and it's tense and it's fun to return to Scythe and Expeditions at the same time again. Thanks for watching everybody and don't forget if you want to see another playthrough from the opposite perspective. Go check out the bonus video on Patreon. A special thank you to our biggest Patreon supporters, Dan J. William F, Steve Ren, KCW, Andrew R, and Chris C. We'll see you at the next