Small-Time Heroes play and review | One Stop Co-Op Shop
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Transcript
Hey everybody, this is Mike with the OneStop Co-op Shop. And today I'm doing a play and review of Smalltime Heroes, one of the latest from Gabe Barrett's solo game series and disclaimer that I sent a review copy of this one. And if you like the content on the Onetop 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, Smalltime Heroes, somehow I totally missed this one when it was on crowdfunding. Gabe usually asked me if I want to cover all the games. I can't remember if he did or not. Uh, but for some reason I didn't cover it, which is weird because this game is totally up my alley. Luckily, I saw people on the Discord getting their copies and talking about it in very positive ways, which made me want to try it and Gabe sent me a review copy. And yeah, this one's awesome, as I will say more in the review. But this is basically Slay the Spire. Like, it is very, very heavily influenced by Slay the Spire. I think it wears that influence on its sleeves, but it does do some things pretty differently, especially in how the enemies work. And it's certainly a much smaller, much quicker playing package than the big Slay the Spire board game that came out recently. Uh but so let's dive in. I'm going to play as the more straightforward of the two heroes that come in the game. There are two so far, although more are planned. This is the warrior, and she is very much like the ironclad in Slay the Spire. Has some of the like exact same card things going on. But for her, she can get these armor items that become ongoing boosts once they're played. Kind of like powers in Slay the Spire. And sorry, I'll try not to refer to Slight the Spire all the time because some of you might have never played that game before. It is a
very popular uh roglike deck building combat game. But uh yes, so that's kind of how the warrior works. The other uh character in the game is called the Rogue, very similar to the silence from Slay the Spire where they get a ton of card draw and can kind of combo cards together and stuff. And there are four bosses in the game. I'm going against the Houndmaster. Each boss has their own unique deck of level one, two, and three minions that they'll be throwing at you. And then they also have a boss side and a like horde side that they're used uh that they use to boost their minions until you reach the boss. So to set up, I'm going to have the wolf pack ready. And for our first battle, we're going to fight level one minions, three of them. For battle two, we're going to fight three level two minions. For battle three, we're going to fight three level three minions. And then we'll fight the boss, the Houndmaster, with three more level one minions backing him up. And if we can defeat him, we win. if we go down to zero life at any point, which so far I think um one for three against the Houndmaster with the warrior. So, I've won, but it does not happen consistently. If we get defeated, then we lose. So, we're starting out with a wolf father, an alpha wolf, and an omega wolf. Each of them has an attack value in the upper left is how much damage they deal to you when they activate, how much life they start with, and you have to defeat or deal them to defeat them, and then a special power. So, some of them have activation powers, things something to do when they attack. So, the wolf father is going to deal one damage for every other minion. And the omega wolf is going to attack twice.
Whereas the alpha wolf has an arrive ability. Uh-oh. Where he's going to add one strength to each other minion. Strength is just like in Slay the Spire. It is an ongoing boost to every single source of damage they deal. All right, let's get these guys set at the right damage. Uh, the boss doesn't have any health yet, so we don't have to worry about that. The Warrior has a unique big deck of cards, like a lot of cards. Again, this is very meaty game for the solo game of the month series. Uh, but they have an offer, a market of four of them. You start out with nine cards that you always have that are starting cards for your character. You'll see they don't have the red borders. And then I pick one. Last game I went for a heavy defense strategy and one. So, let's totally undo that and do something totally different. I'm going to go for this berserk card. So, it costs one energy to play. It is an attack card and it says I can only play it if every card in my hand is an attack card and in that case I deal 12 damage which is insane.
Usually attacks deal like three damage. Um whenever you get a card you immediately replace it. Uh so here we got two of those equipment cards I was mentioning and yeah we'll go on from there. If we survive the first wave we'll get to gain the reward shown on the topmost card of the wave deck. Then the second wave then the third wave. So, usually uh in a single game like this, you'll maybe add six cards to your deck total. Six or seven, it depends. Now, you can also play the game as a campaign where you fight one boss and then another boss and then another boss and they kind of level up and get stronger, but you also get relic like treasures and keep on leveling your deck up. But, we're just doing a single play here. So, yep, we shuffle this all together. We're going to draw our five card hand and we'll get into the meat of the play. So, on each round, you have a hero turn where you're going to reset your block.
So you lose any block that you gained uh since your last turn. So like you get a chance to block the enemies, then it all goes away. Then you draw an intent card to see what the enemies might do on their turn. Then you get to spend energy to play hero cards from your hand. You usually have three energy. And then at the end of your turn, you discard your entire hand and all the cards you played and you draw five more. Then the enemies have their reset. You flip the intent card you drew and you see what they're actually doing to you. And you just keep on going back and forth like that until you're defeated or the enemies are. All right. So, I don't have any armor to lose. I'm drawing my intent card. And it's showing a square or a triangle. And sometimes they will be like this where you don't know which of the two it's going to activate because when I flip this over, it'll only have one or the other of those symbols. And sometimes the card just has a single symbol. You know exactly what the enemies are doing.
And those square, triangle, etc. symbols correspond to these things here beneath the enemies and also corresponds to the horde card over here. So if the square is the one that activates the wolf father will deal four damage boosted by one so five then he will deal one damage for every other minion so two boosted by one I think I'm not sure sometimes like if these are separate attacks so if it's deal one damage for this minion then deal one damage for this actually you know what I think it might be that deal one damage for this minion then deal one damage for this minion each one boosted by one so that' be five seven nine damage if the Omega wolf activates he'll do one plus one two and then attack again for two more but then also though, the boss is going to do something. So, if it's square, all the minions will gain one strength for the future. And if it's triangle, the mini with the highest health activates. Jesus. So, sometimes things can be pretty nasty. And that'll just give us some information on our turn. Like in this case, the wolf father is so much worse than the Omega Wolf.
So, if we can find a way to defeat him, that uh seems like a smart thing to do. But getting to my turn, I start with three energy each turn. And each of my cards says how much energy it costs, and they tell me what they do. So, we've got double hit cost me two. I deal two damage, then I deal two damage to the same or a different target. Uh, doesn't seem maybe that great for two energy, but if you do a build where like you gain a lot of strength that adds to all your attack, then it can be pretty amazing. Uh, parry costs one and it's a defensive card. I gain two block to prevent some of the damage coming at me and then I deal two damage. So, it's kind of an attack and defense. Berserk, you already saw I got a regular attack to deal three damage and a regular block to gain three block. Well, this seems like a a pretty obvious turn. I want to be able to use Berserk, which requires all the cards in my hand to be fight, which means I would have to use my first two energy to play the block and the parry. So, let's go ahead and do that for two of our three energy. It's going to get me five block overall. Uh, these four spots are not limited, by the way.
I had to check that online. So, you can have like any number of block even if it uh spills over past the four slots at the top. And I get to deal two damage. And let's see if they get the triangle. It says the minion with the highest health activates. U I'm going to kill the wolf father with the berserk. So if the omega wolf has the highest health, he'll hit me for two and then two again. Whereas if the alpha wolf has the highest or tied for highest health, he'd only hit me for three. So that is less. All right. All right. So, that being the case, the two damage from my parry, I'm going to assign to the Omega Wolf because that way they'll be tied on health in a second for highest with that triangle effect if that's what gets activated and I'll be able to pick which one to resolve and I can have the alpha wolf attack. But then for my last energy, I'm going to play Berserk. I do have only attack cards in my hand. So, I'm dealing 12 damage, more than enough to defeat the wolf father. Some cards will give you a bonus when you defeat them, which is this little skull effect.
The wolf father does not have that, so he's just discarded. And I do not have any energy left after playing those three. So I discard those plus the rest of my hand and draw five new cards. And now we find out what they're actually doing. Oh, we got lucky. It was the square, which means he's just dead, so it doesn't do anything. And all minions gain one strength. That part's maybe not so nice. But if I can kill them and they don't get to attack, then it won't be a problem. Of course, it does mean I wasted those five shields cuz they're all gone. And now we're going to it again with three more energy. And my new intent card is square or diamond. I killed square already. Um, diamond is via mega wolf and he has six life left. Let's see if we can take him down. Wait, how did I get berserk again? Oh jeez, I picked up my discard pile. I was like, why do I have the exact same cards? So this time I've got exercise. It costs zero, but it gives me strength until the end of the turn, so all my attacks deal plus one. Smash does one damage to all enemies. A forceful attack does two damage. Or if I have at least one equipment equipped, like my shield here, I do four damage instead. Block gives me three block.
Okay, so here's what I think is the best way to play out this turn. I'm going to play my shield. When I play it, it goes in my offhand slot because if I like had another equipment, I couldn't have them both equipped at the same time in my off hand. I gain two block when I equip it. And then in a future turn or even this turn, I could spend one more energy because that costs one to play to remove it and get five more block if I needed to. Okay, then I'm going to do exercise to gain one strength cuz it's free. And then here we go. I'm going to do forceful attack, which will do four five damage because of the exercise. Um, and I will do the Omega Wolf with that. And then I'm also going to smash for my last energy, doing two damage to each enemy. So that's seven damage total to the Omega Wolf. He's gone. And this means I get to deal one damage to another enemy. So, the alpha wolf took two from my smash and one more from my uh killing of the Omega Wolf cuz I don't think that's boosted by your strength. And when you defeat him, by the way, you get to draw a card. But he's down to three life.
Cool. And I'm discarding everything. Well, everything except my shield. That'll stick around until either this entire fight is over. So, I'd have to re-equip it in the next wave or until I use its ability to remove it or until I played some other card that removed it. All right. But what are they doing? It's square again. Oh, this is great. They're never even going to try to attack me. All minions gain one strength. Now I just got to do three damage and they're done. Now I still take an intent card, which will be an automatic circle this time. I'm sorry. I should not have the block anymore. But I mean, if I can't do three damage, then something's going wrong. There we go. Um, oh man, look what I could do. I could do exercise to gain one strength and then do the block to get three block and then that would free me up with all attack cards. So do a berserk for 13 damage and a smash for two damage to all enemies. Uh the double hit is a little bit too expensive. So clearly way more than enough to blow up this guy. And drawing the card doesn't matter because at the end of each wave you're just going to shuffle all your cards back together anyway. But my shield does come unequipped. And now I get to resolve my wave reward. I can add a card to my deck and then I can either add a card or trash a card from my deck.
Uh, usually in these one-off games, adding a card is better. Uh, the trashing is really good, of course, in the campaign where you're playing uh several bosses in a row. So, like getting rid of a weak card is really pretty helpful. So, let's look at our options here. We've got advanced attack. It deals four damage, which is already slightly better than a regular attack, but if I have two things equipped, does six damage. Okay, we've also got Rapier, which uh takes up the main hand slots, not the same as my shield. Cost two to equip and then one more to remove, but when you remove it, you get to play all of your attack cards for free. Although, I assume Berserk's restriction would still apply. I can just get muscles, which gives me plus one strength for the rest of that wave. So, plus one damage to every attack for the rest of the wave. Or thorn plate after your attack to deal two damage to that enemy, which is pretty nice. Although, I'm not really going for a defensive build. Yeah, shoot. Honestly, none of these are my favorite. I guess with the berserk thing, I'm going to go for advanced attack, even though I don't expect to use the equip thing. I guess I can get the rapier. Well, let's see what the next Ooh, so I could call a card here, but look at this. Brute force deal two damage. And if the last card played was an attack, deal three damage to another enemy. So, you know, I don't know if this will actually be a viable strategy to just murder everything as quickly as possible, especially when I get to the boss and there's like minions and bosses attacking me. But uh so far we'll see how it goes. And we got a helm. Okay. So I'm going to shuffle all these new cards back into my deck and get ready for wave two. Oh, and also the intent card that I had drawn for the end of the previous wave is discarded with no effect. So I
will use the next intent card. You don't shuffle the entire intent deck until you go through all of it. All right, here we go. Wave two. We got a beta wolf with guard. We got another wolf father except a stronger one and a loyal wolf. So, the beta wolf has a power guard and also has this black border around. The big thing is I cannot choose uh any other minion as my target for a single target attack until the beta wolf is defeated. He's got seven. He's also got two guard, which means he starts out with two guard and he resets to two guard at the start of each enemy phase. Uh cuz their guard goes away just like mine does. The wolf father doesn't do anything special. The loyal wolf starts with one guard. Oh, and gives every other minion two blocks. So that means to defeat the beta wolf, I need to do 11 damage before I can start hitting other people. That ain't great.
And oh man, especially when my first intent card is everybody except the beta wolf. I'm just going to get hit, I guess. Oo. Although, look at my hand. Might not get hit very much. Oh man. Yeah, I'm going to do a lot of damage here. Um, so I'm going to play exercise first. Then I'll go and get my shield equipped just to get my hand to be only uh attack so that I can play my big hit. So at least have two block. But yeah, then look at this. I'm going to play Berserk for my my second. Yeah. So, I have one energy left. So, I'm dealing 13 damage. So, remember how scary that beta wolf was? Well, nope. You're just gone. And this bonus means I can discard the entire line of cards and draw new ones, which honestly, yeah, I want to do cuz I'm not trying to do like an equipment guard focus build. I just want to murder things. Um, okay. Yep. None of those are very good either. So, uh, it looks like another one of the monsters gives me a re deal or sorry, a removal of all that stuff. So, I'll try to get that. But I ain't done yet. I am doing brute force. Yeah, it's going to be better than advanced attack cuz look, I'm going to deal um since my last card was an attack card, I'm dealing two damage boosted to three and then uh four or sorry, three damage boosted to four to another enemy. So, it can't be the same one. Let's just I guess knock them down two each because the loyal wolf has one armor and we'll do the three hit to them. And then this guy has two armor.
We'll do the four hit to them. So they're both down to six now. That's it. They are probably going to kick my butt pretty badly, but so it goes. I didn't get hurt at all in the first fight. It is a circle activation. So the wolf father first attacks for four, then attacks for one more from the loyal wolf. So that's five. After my two block, I'm taking three damage down to 22. You start with 25. And then the wolf pack. Oh, sorry. Uh, this guy, the loyal wolf, is resetting to one guard or block. Then it says, "Deal two damage. The minion with the lowest health gains two block." So, I take two damage down to 19. Suddenly, this uh no blocking strategy seems not quite as good. Now, this part's interesting. The minion with the lowest health gains two block. Right now, they're tied. And I can see the top card of the deck is a circle. So that becomes pretty easy. Loyal wolf take some extra block and I'll just kill the wolf father. And what circle? Oh, that's a thing that they just did. Okay, so they're going to even if I kill the wolf father, deal two damage and then give the loyal wolf more block. So I want to get at least two block for myself and I want to do at least six damage. All of which seems pretty easy to do. Yeah, actually it's super easy to do. So I'll do forceful attack for my first energy.
It's going to do four damage. Then I'll do a parry for my second. It's going to get me to six damage and Oh, no, sorry. Uh well, yeah. Yeah, six damage and two block. That's the two block I need. Then I'm going to smash uh for my last energy to do two damage to all enemies. So the two damage to all enemies will get both of them. The four damage from forceful attack will kill him. I'm going to get two discard cards from the line again. Then the two damage from Perry will just get through and do a single damage to him. I mean, w not really that important, but I hurt him a little bit. But then there's circle activation is nothing for the minion. Deal two damage to me that I block. But the loyal wolf gets two there and one from his starting value. So he is going to be pretty tanked up again. Maybe I'll get my berserker attack and then it won't matter. I'm sorry. I forgot to do this.
So I got to discard four things. And huh. Oh man. Play the next attack card you play twice. I mean it's not attack card itself and it costs one. So it could make it less likely I'm able to use uh things like the berserker thing. Oh, and also it would never work with brute force. I just realized because there's no way to, you know, I would have to play a different attack card, get that activated twice to benefit from brute force's second effect. So, maybe we won't get it. We'll see. But anyway, going to the next turn. Uh, we do have a triangle on top. So, the loyal wolf would attack for four and then oh god, they would attack again for four because the triangle would activate them. So, I got to try to do eight damage. Let's see if we can make that happen. Huh. I'm actually not sure that we can. Wait, can we? If I do exercise gain one strength, double hit for two AP. That would be three. And then three. Oh, never mind.
We're fine. And then regular attack would be four, so that would be 10 damage. Good to go. Yay. So, we win. And their bonus is to get me an extra action point, but we already won, so it doesn't matter. So, wow. We came out of wave two taking only six damage. Not too bad. Not too bad. So far, overwhelming offense is kind of working. And this time, I can add a card. And then I can add a card or take a potion which is a single-use item. You can hold up to three of them again like slay the spire. Stop saying that Mike that give you like healing or other bonuses. Deal damage enemies. That kind of stuff. I mean I mean I think I got to go for wind up and then depending on what else comes out I might get a potion. Deal damage equal to your block. Nah, that's definitely not what I'm going for. I mean cleanse kind of works. Remove an equipped card to play your next card twice, but it's not an attack card itself. I'm just worried it would kind of gum up my combo. So, I'm getting a potion instead. Oo, this is one of the best ones. Revive. When a hero's health is zero, they gain five health and we can't be hurt for the rest of that turn.
This was actually the designer said on BG, like originally when they had an easy mode for the game, you would start with more health and have this as like a starting potion just to kind of keep you alive longer because the game can be pretty tough. But feeling great since I already have a combo that's kind of working. But that might all change cuz wave three tends to be pretty tough. We got a spirit wolf. Uh when he dies, he'll give everybody else two strength. And he attacks for seven. Yikes. And an Omega Wolf who will attack again. And he has 11 life. Jeez. And oh, another guard. Although his attack is only three, so that's the most annoying part about him. All righty. And our first intent. Huh. Okay. Well, at least not the spirit wolf, but the omega wolf would be bad. But I can't I'm not going to be able to kill any of them. So, I'm just going to start, you know, tapping away at the beta wolf. That's the best I can do. Yuck. This is a terrible hand.
Um, I could do wind up and then smash do two damage to everybody, but that would use up two of my actions. You know, I'm actually, even though I'm uh, you know, hitting Mick Hitter over here and like want to just attack all the time. I think I might actually spend all my AP just to block and I won't even get any damage through on the beta wolf since he'll just parry my attack. He'll parry my parry, I should say. Oh, whoops. I forgot to shuffle my shield in. But yeah, I think this might just be a biting my time turn. I'm going to gain eight block. My two damage will be wasted. And hopefully they won't hit me hard enough for that to be a bad decision. And let's see. Okay, it was the beta wolf, which was the best it could have been. So he's attacking me for three. And then the boss does one damage for every minion. So I'm getting hit for six. So I didn't get hurt. And they didn't get boosted permanently with strength or anything. But all minions gain three block. That part's annoying.
But again, it will reset to their regular values at the start of the round or sorry, at the start of their next turn. So, this guy will go down to two and they'll go down to zero. But yeah, I'm not going to get much through this turn on the beta wolf. That's okay. I feel good about just not being hurt. Uh, what's next? Ooh, square is a spirit wolf. Beta wolf would be great again if that's a diamond, but it might not be. Okay, I got my shield for some block. I got exercise. Seems like the logical thing to do would be to shield up, then play exercise and do forceful attack and advanced attack. That's going to be two instances of four being raised up to five from the exercise. So, I'll get the beta wolf pretty hurt and then I can theoretically berserker him next time. Oh, wait. I'm definitely Yeah, berserker is one of these last three cards. I'm definitely going to get that. So, um I can't kill the guy, can I? Four. Wait, so with the plus one from the zero, that would be five. uh 10 14 damage. No. And the beta wolf has 15 with his guard.
Okay. So, we'll play the shield for two guard. And then I could hm you know I could discard the shield. This is kind of silly, but I could discard the shield and cuz then if it's the the square activation, I won't take any damage from the spirit wolf and the beta wolf will go back down to two guard and 10 life. And then I can just use my berserk attack or whatever it's called to kill him in one go. But if it's the diamond, he's going to add more block to everybody and it's not going to deal much damage anyway. I mean, he'll still hit me though. No, I got to start killing people. I don't know. So, I'm going to go and do advance. Oh, sorry. Uh, exercise for one strength, advance attack, forceful attack. So, that's 10 total. And I can only hit him. So, he's down to five, but he's going to get two armor back in a second. And okay, it was a diamond, which I guess is better. Um, so he hits me for three, so one damage gets through. I'm down to 18. And then they do three more damage, so I'm down to 15.
And they all gain three block. So he's back to five, and they're still at three. Uhoh. And what's next on the deck? Oh, this is actually an interesting one. Look, all minions gain five block and two strength, but they don't activate. So the two strength is terrifying. They're going to hit me really hard potentially, but the five block is annoying. But they're not actually attacking me this turn, so I need zero block. So, let's kill some people. Let's see how easy they Oh, they made it easy for me. Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh, this is an obvious one. I mean, I have to play the block just to get it out, but I'm going to play exercise for plus one damage to everything. Then block. Then I'll play berserk to do 13 damage. Then I'll play brute force for three and then four damage. And we won't play the double hit. Get out of here. So, we got three block 13 damage. Boom. Beta wolf is dead. I can clear the row. Let me see if I want to. Yeah, these still seem kind of block focused. Let's keep looking for other attack fun things. And then the boosted brute force is doing three and then four to somebody. Oh. Oh, crud. That's not nearly as good. Wait, I shouldn't even play that, should I? Oh, I don't have any other options. I already played my block. Yeah. So, I'm doing three damage and then four. I mean, I don't I don't really want to I do want to kill the I mean, the Omega Wolf's actually gonna be worse than the Spirit Wolf after he's boosted by the strength. So, yeah, I guess I'll get a single point of damage on the Omega Wolf after going through his shields, but he's about to have more block than he had in the first place. This might be a nasty turn coming up, but that's it.
Yes, they are doing that. So, they don't do anything except gain block and strength, which yeah, it's kind of terrifying cuz they can barely even hurt them or do anything else. All right, what's next? Okay, this is lucky. There's no enemy to attack me. Deal one damage for every minion. That's fine. And then all minions gain three block. I mean, that's honestly so much better than it could have been because this guy would be doing nine damage to me and this guy would be doing five twice for 10 to me. So, I will take it. And I hope I got Yes, I got a lot of attacking so I can get through that armor. Um, ooh, wind up advanced attack and then forceful attack. That seems like the way to go. So, that's going to do 812 damage. Heck to the Yeah, but no defense. Ww. So 12 on the Omega Wolf.
We'll get rid of that and bring him down to three. So he should be very killable in a second, even with the block the guy's going to give him. All right. And yes, it's a diamond, so nothing. Deal one damage for every minion. I have no armor, so I'm taking two damage. I'm down to 13. And then all minions gain three blocks, but the five resets. Uh but now, okay, my luck has run out. They are one of them is going to kill me. Um, okay. What have I got? What have I got? Um, shoot. Okay, I could just block a lot, but I mean, how much do I need to do? Six will kill the Omega Wolf. So, if I did double hit would be four. Wind up and then double hit would be eight. Uh, that's the best I can do. But that'd be everything. And then if I guess wrong and kill the wrong one, I'm going to get smacked pretty hard.
I could just play the block and the parry for five block. This guy's doing nine to me. This guy's doing 10 to me. So that's not I think I think I just go for it and hope I get lucky. So I'm going to do wind up double hits. I'm attacking four times for two damage each. I wish I had the strength boost. So six of it will go to him and then I guess two will go to him, but it doesn't matter. Oh, actually it does matter cuz my two gets him down to one guard and then this guy dying does another two damage. So he's down to six instead of seven. Vaguely better. Oh, I forgot I had the shield. I could have discarded that with the two blocks. Well, too late. But I could have guaranteed that I wouldn't get hurt. Um, so we're hoping this is a circle. We're hoping it's a circle. It's a square. Oh my god. All right. So, what's happening? Uh, he's doing nine damage to me and then gaining another strength from the boss. And yeah, that revive potion's looking really good to me because I'm at four life. Revive potion looks awesome.
Should Yeah, man. If I had just um if I just played those two defense cards and then played the shield, then I could have been totally safe. Although, oh man, look, it's another either of them cards. Maybe it's good that I killed one. And how much All I got to do the spirit wolf is six damage. So, is there any way for me not to do that? Nope. Oh my gosh, look how much damage I can do this round. Exercise is free. 13 damage. Uh 17 damage. 21 damage. Where were you cards last turn? Okay, so they're all dead, but so am I a bit. All right, so this time I get to gain two cards, but I can clear. And you can do these in whatever order you want. So I could like gain one card, clear the row, and then gain another one. Uh, let's see what we got. Just do it. Draw two cards, select attack, shield, or armor, play all of that type for free.
The problem with that is that it's pretty much guaranteed to lock out berserk, right? I mean, how many non the shield I can play and it stays out. Exercise is free. Wind up. I mean, yeah, I have like too many non-attacky cards. That still might be worth it because drawing two cards almost my entire deck is attack cards, right? So, it's it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll get to play more attack than I could afford normally. So, maybe weapon throw. Remove an equipped card to deal three damage to all enemies. Wow, that's strong. Um, wow, it's strong. But is it good enough? I don't know. Push. After a shield card is played, deal two damage to an enemy and it's free. I mean, that's cool, but I'm not really going for shields. Would have been great in an armor build. Outmaneuver, gain three block, and draw one card. That part's nice, but I'm not going to be equipped to. And I don't really want to be playing more shields.
You know, I hate to say, I think I'm going to discard all these. Just do it might have been like the key to an awesome strategy, and I'm just not getting it. So, okay, now I can get two cards, but I can't trade them out anymore. First attack deal one damage three times to the or fast attack to the same enemy. That's amazing if I'm going for a strength build, which I'm not really doing. Olas would be in the same spot as my shield. Deal four damage and gain four block when removed, but I don't have any. I guess equipping the shield would remove it because I think that's how it happens. Uh, draw three cards. All equipped cards drawn can be equipped for free. And full plate gain one strength or one protect whenever you equip a card. It's pretty awesome, but god, it's going to slow me down so much. And I'm at four life against the boss. Doesn't seem smart. Protect, by the way, is the same as I think it's agility in Slay the Spire, where you uh every time you play anything that gives you block, you get uh one more for each protect you have, and it sticks around for the entire wave.
All right, let's let's go for fast attack, I guess. Or actually, full plate is good if I get it. An equipment mastery would make it better. there. Although, I mean, it's still not really that good cuz I don't have that much equipment. I really don't know, man. Yeah, let me get fast attack. All right. And then All right. And then the replacement. Oh, that's great. That's very good. Look, three damage for free. Heck yeah. Okay. My deck is like probably way too big. And we'll see how things go. But, uh, that's it. So, now we go to the final showdown. All I got to do is kill the Houndmaster. He's only got 30 life, and I've got a whopping four, but I've got a potion. Now, his minions happily are only level ones. We got a wolf pup with nothing special going on. A wolf mother who will deal damage when we defeat. Oh, and another wolf pup. Okay, so this is like extra easy, but he can also summon more minions with some of his activations and stuff. And now you can see his activations that happen in addition to the minions are much more offensively oriented. But that's okay. We're going to win or we might not. I really don't know. So, I'm getting my five. And let's see what I got. Uh, some stuff. some stuff. I just realized that bash isn't very useful if you don't have the shield yet, is it? Okay. And our first intent card is crud. The wolf mother who will deal a lot or the wolf pup who won't and I can kill pretty easily. I'm going to go for the wolf pup and just like hope that that's the one that attacks. And then if it is triangle, oh, the hell master is going to gain his strength and summon a minion. Now, if he summons a minion while the whole row is full, you
just draw a card and basically they attack and then immediately die, which I don't know. So, what do I have? I don't have any. Yeah, this is not great. This is not great. I could wind up advanced attack. That's pretty awesome. And regular attack. It's probably like my best option here because double hit's not going to do that well. Okay. And then I'll die and use my revive potion and then I'll be in a bad situation, but we'll see how it goes. All right. So, I think I'm going to do my regular attack to knock the wolf pup down to two. Then do my wind up and my advanced attack to finish off the wolf pup and hit the houndmaster for four. Get him down to 26. Or I mean, if they're going to summon, if they're summoning the minion, if I get the diamond, I'm kind of hoping to get should I just do all 12 damage to or all 11 damage to the guy? I probably should. Yeah, you know what? Forget it.
He's down to 19. The wolf pup's still there. He's only doing two damage anyway, right? And if I can get like my berserk or something, I can potentially do 19 damage and I can just go ham on the boss and do nothing else. But let's see what happens. Okay, it was the triangle. Is that I guess that's what I wanted. So the wolf pup hits me for two. I'm down to two life and then he gains a strength. The boss does. So his attacks are stronger and he's summoning a minion and it's an alpha wolf who immediately I think he still triggers his uh arrival effects. I think I'm going to guess that they do because that would just be a nastier thing to do when you don't have a room for people cuz you didn't kill anybody. But he's also hitting me for three, which clearly would kill me. My revive potion brings me back with five life. But that's all I got. That's uh that's it. See if I can do 19 damage. Well, let's see. The next card is deal one damage four times with strength. That'll be eight damage. But I mean, none of his other people are activating. That's maybe good. So, if I can get at least four block and hit him.
Oh, which I totally can. I can actually Oh, this is kind of perfect. So, one to play the shield to get two block, one to play the regular block card to get to five block. And then I can play berserk for 12 more damage. Wasn't a perfect turn, but it does get him down to seven life. And then, yeah, he's smacking me four times for two damage each, which is with only two life left. But you know what? That's just enough life left in me to kill you, I think. Yes. Yes, definitely. Maybe. Oh, in fact, holy crap, this is better than I expected. By the way, uh the intent card is a square. So, the wolf pup would do two damage and then he would do six damage and gain some block. But look at this baby exercise plus one strength for the turn. Fast attack doing six damage instead of three. So, he's already down to one. And then let's follow it up with some brute force. Uh so, I can do three to one of them and then four more to the guy. And then I can still parry for a bit more damage. So, woohoo. Pulled the win out with no life left. That was great. All right, so let's get into it. What do I think of Smalltime Heroes, and how do I compare it to Slay the Spire, specifically the board game version, since that is offering a very similar experience. And I'd say this game is great. It is a small package. It's a small price, but it's got a lot of bang for its buck. Uh the core card play of the game is basically identical to Slay the Spire. You don't have like huge choices on your turn, but you do have riskreward choices, especially since you don't always know exactly what the enemies are going to do. So, like, do I go heavy on attack? Do I go heavy on
defense? That tends to be pretty interesting. And the rogue, the other character, has a lot more card drawn, like kind of combos than the warrior. So, that can be even more intense and tactical in how they play their cards. But, yes, it's just fun to play big attacks, to play big defenses, to find crazy combos, which honestly I didn't really get to that much, but like you can see how I could have gotten like combos with guard and like a lot of equipment and other things. Like cards will go together. Well, now of course, just like Slay the Spire, just like a lot of these sort of cooperative and solo deck builders, it's going to be random sometimes. Sometimes cards will come out that are perfect and like totally match exactly what you're going for. And sometimes the cards will not go with your build at all and you're forced to add something cruddy to your deck and you just got to deal with it. Similarly, sometimes you'll draw all the wrong cards and they just don't go well together and your big combos don't happen. And sometimes that happens on the turn that the intent card is totally the wrong thing and you're going to get totally bodied by a big enemy. So that is, you know, kind of the feel of a rogike, the general thing they go for.
Sometimes things are going to go your way and sometimes they won't. But as you saw, the game is quick enough that even a full basic run doesn't take too long. I think it would probably be more frustrating in a campaign, but in a campaign, you're also getting these like treasures and cool things. So, I think it's got reasons to play that. So, yeah, on the player side of things, I think this is great. I think it totally matches up to uh its big daddy, Slay the Spire. And you know, it only has two warriors, but you're paying so much less that that kind of makes sense. And they have said they already have at least two coming in an expansion at some point. So that'll double the number. And that's great cuz I think Slayer only has four official characters, too. So really cool. Now, let's talk about something that is very different from Slay the Spire. And I love it. And that is the intent system. So in Slay the Spire, the video game, you can see exactly what the enemies are going to do most of the time. Like they're going to attack, they're going to guard. It's pretty straightforward stuff. Every enemy activates every turn. Same thing in the board game. Every enemy activates every turn. I think the idea of having like way more people array against you in a given battle than in those games, but only having one of them attack a turn and you having either 100% knowledge or 50% knowledge of which of them is going to do it is fabulous. It gives you much more riskreward choices on your turn, making guesses like taking out the guy that's most dangerous for you, when should I guard, when should I not. It also gives a ton of variety because even when you're fighting the regular battles, the fact that the boss changes up those battles in major ways with their own abilities is really cool. And it makes those four different bosses feel super duper different. Not just for
the boss themselves, but for the entire run. So, you really feel like you're going into like four different dungeons facing against four different types of things cuz all the minions are different. They each have their own special mechanics and things. So, it really changes up the game in an awesome way. Now, again, there is luck in this. you can sometimes get totally destroyed because the wrong intent card comes out at the wrong time or the wrong combo of enemies, but that's part of the roglike formula. And here, I think it makes the game exciting and fun and super varied. Again, with just four bosses in the base box, it's still a ton of replay, and that's without adding in the campaign mode. It's pretty great. Now, the one thing I'm not enamored with is the two-player rules. It's cool that the game includes two-player, but at least for my money, now I've only played this once. I've definitely played the solo mode way more. Uh, so, you know, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but I don't think they went the right direction with this. Let me explain why.
So, how it works in two player is you have the same amount of monsters, the same boss, but they have double the life. So, the wolf pup would be 10, the wolf mother would be 18, and you each get an intent card where you get hit by your intent card and they get hit by theirs, which sounds pretty straightforward. Works pretty well. It's smooth to play. But I also think it's it's maybe not quite right in balance. Again, this is just based on one play, so what do I know? But a big part of the game, as you saw in my play, and a big part of certain builds, is the capability of destroying a monster in one go. Like, if the wolf pup is about to demolish me, and I can do five damage, then I can kill him. And that's still a possibility in the two-player play, but because the intents are split, I might want to fight this guy, and you might want to fight that guy, and they're not both going to damage us. And because the monsters have twice as much life, unless we both kind of have an attack focused hand and both attack the same person at the same time, then we're not going to be able to uh deal the damage that we need to to finish somebody off. So, I just feel like it kind of changes up the strategy and the balance of the enemies a lot. And it's interesting to compare this to some other solo focus experiences that have added two player. A couple that I'll name are Unstoppable, which is one of my favorite games of the year, and also the Ashes Reborn Red Reigns solo co-op mode, because both of those take a different tack with it where you are each playing against your own set of monsters that you need to fight and that have their regular health and then you can help each other by attacking each other's monsters. And I think honestly, for my
taste, that would have worked better here because then stuff would work out the same as it does in the current game. You could defeat guys before they attacked you consistently. You know, if you had a bad turn or a good turn, you can kind of help each other out. I could attack your guys, you could attack mine. But, and that's also, by the way, how the Slay the Spire board game handles it. And I do think the cooperation in that game is one of its strongest assets, whereas I think this one is much better for solo. Now, I think this is pretty house ruleable. There are enough minions that I think it wouldn't be that big a deal. Uh, the one thing you're missing is you don't have three more of these cards, but that's easy enough to proxy and print out. See, I think if I'm going to play a two-player, I might house rule that there are double the enemies. Now, it's fine if the boss has double the life. Like, that doesn't really affect anything. That's not a big deal, but I think it would be a better balance experience. It would work better if they had double minions. Now, I kind of have an inkling of why they might not have wanted to go that way because some of the monsters and some of the bosses are using cards in different ways. Like the goblin boss is putting cards into your deck. So to have like enough of each wave to have both players have three while also uh supporting that mechanic might have made the card count go too high for a tiny game. But apart from those instances, yeah, I think that doubling up the monsters would have been better. Just my two cents again based on a single play. So, you know, take it for what it's worth. But otherwise, Smalltime Heroes is freaking great.
Probably my favorite in the Gabe Barrett series, which is saying something because those are some really good games. Just an awesome find for a little bit late in the year. And I'm so happy I got to play it. So, thanks for watching everybody and a special thank you to our biggest Patreon supporters, Jay William F, Steve Ren, Pedro Lucas, Miles, Casey W, Andrew R, and Chris C. We'll see you at the next