Hour of Need: Discussion

0:09 some viewers may find the following video disturbing viewer discretion is advised for hour of need our hour of speed this is the uh the newest game by the saddler brothers uh blacklist games in their mds system their modular deck system uh it's a sadler brothers game all right yeah um it's all right it's okay like it's it's very um these guys are good at all right games well no because street masters and brook city we really enjoy yeah yeah but true and for some reason this one just it's kind of boring like i don't know well i i have a few theories as to why that is so the system itself works but there's a couple glaring issues well that really one of them for me isn't default of the game itself one of them is and i'll go over the one that is actually a fault uh their rule book is atrociously bad yeah i really really do not like it and they had this issue with alterquest did we we played ultra questions yeah i think we've played all of them okay games ultra quest is a fantasy one that has slowly grown on me um mainly because i'm playing it correctly the first time few times i played it i wasn't doing it right but at least that one's kind of in its own fantasy thing with its own system

1:40 that still kind of works uh street masters is kind of the beat em up you know whatever uh fighting game insert fighting game here battle toads or whatever kind of style right and then brook city is the cop game so those are all kind of unique in and of themselves and this one is still like that because it's superheroes but there has been a boom of superhero games uh board games lately that uh well i'm getting ahead of myself the rule book is is very bad uh because there are so many things that are just not clarified and in a game like this where it's so modular it's almost like they want to have their cake and eat it too they don't want to overload you with rules but because they don't overload you with rules you have a lot of vagueness surrounding the game where it's like so what does this mean okay can i use this over here like one of my cards for example is you know place your figure adjacent to an enemy and do that enemy one damage does that bypass defense uh whenever they whenever you're solving in a location if you're solving specifically for the villain does he also deal damage to you right like so which based off just it being an enemy would be yes but then it's like well the [ __ ] we have to do 20 solve on him then we have to do 20 damage to beat him and it's just like it almost feels like a little much and i don't like the fact that things aren't concrete in their answers this is definitely a better rule book than ultra quest uh but

3:10 it's i mean that bar was so low any improvement is like any effort is an improvement yeah so i mean and that's that's just a negative on the game itself but here's where i think that this game falters for me anyway okay it's it's a beat-em-up style game uh where you run around you fight the villain you fight minions and stuff like that well i'd rather play street masters then like because these are just generic heroes like belt whatever is supposed to be daredevil judge is clearly batman with tits yeah female female batman batwoman or black girl i don't uh i don't know but so it's like okay well i can't get into the superhero theme because these aren't actual uh ip characters so then they just come down to generic fighting kind of guys well then i'd rather play street masters because that's clearly their baby like that box over there is all street master stuff so they clearly have put way more effort into that one and it works you pick a stage you pick a henchman and you pick up um i don't remember the third deck they you shuffle into that one so that one feels more like a beat-em-up but then you go to the superhero side and you're like well i'd rather play i i don't think i've had you play marvel champions um but that's kind of a pick a villain pick a superhero and then try and win that way and that one is well it's ip

4:41 characters it's marvel and it's a phenomenal uh deck system so now i'm just kind of in this weird gray area of well i don't really care about the fact that this is some generic superhero game and it's worse than both games that i just basically would combine to make this so guys like well what's the point of this so that's why it's just kind of uh whatever kind of man yeah i don't know what are your thoughts i i mean definitely of the games that i have played from these guys this is definitely the lowest of them that i at least you know first impression wise because i don't remember too much of alterquest i remember really enjoying brook city and i really enjoyed street masters um and i mean i kind of struggle with why i mean maybe because like they tried to make the boards more specific um to the to the i think they have a whole bunch of boards with this game they do yeah and they're every issue you pick is and that's in the issue just just creates the board yes which is neat but then the board's kind of unimpressive right i don't have like like okay i have a bunch of hexes i can move through town great so then it's just like it just kind of boils down to its core functions i don't feel super thematic i guess yeah um they kind of mix it up a little bit by doing solve versus fight yeah um and yeah which is another system for marvel champions marvel champions there's

6:12 schemes and uh you can either thwart which is removing tokens or you can attack like it's the same kind of system that's why i'm definitely comparing this to that and you're right i mean the board is they did try to make it focus they definitely wanted it to feel very comic booky yeah uh where it's like uh it's not just us fighting the villain like because if you think about it's like okay like in this case the run through we had curtains he's some elaborate magician i guess but then it's like well realistically judge and belt could just beat the [ __ ] out of him so they of course have to have perils or some other you know generic bystanders that are kind of over the place that you can go out and save just to get these clue cards which i don't know i i i don't like the clue cards either like i don't like the fact that your main source of healing is getting lucky on drawing a clue card that heals you your main source of increasing how many dice you roll is also is also the clue cards and i don't i mean it's not like they're hard to get right and then there's the static damage issue where it's like okay you want to you want to solve on this guy right he's going to deal so much damage each time you do it right and i suppose i was a little more frustrated from that because it's like my character has like a mode and i'm underwhelming the other effect if i'm not in specific mode right and you know it seems like my guy's a bunch of a bun is focused on a bunch of

7:43 attacks um that are low dice but i can do a bunch of them yeah which kind of sucks if i'm or like a bunch of solves you know one of the other i guess it doesn't deal the static image if you're fighting no so it's like when we're solving right yeah whenever you fight them it's uh it's just whatever damage you do and then they're past their defense i suppose with this game i kind of struggle with proper um like uh complaints about the game i just have to say like as someone who's i mean i'm a little more experienced with board games i've played with you for four years or four years like four years four or five years yeah damn um because like i knew you like a year before i met marcia and marcy and me just hit our thing our fourth year now damn god get out of my house i can't look at you anymore no um you don't feel authentic anymore oh [ __ ] um i don't know it's just it doesn't really i mean i guess it's modular i mean there's different lots of different i mean a lot of the praise that we threw in a lot of their other games also exist for this one it's modular you pick all that i mean they have they have 10 heroes yeah and i think like six villains and like maybe like maybe 10 issues yeah maybe they were thinking because you know the hero thing with you know marvel doing so well in the theaters that like oh this is our cash in everyone's doing you know and we want to take our system

9:13 that we know works we've done for three [ __ ] games yeah let's do it in this theme yeah 100 is exactly and that's why a lot of people actually didn't back this because they were like ever like a lot of people are burned out on superheroes and i understand it i mean there's a marvel show or movie coming out every week it feels like and uh and then i mean you have other games there's other i mean there's another one called sentinels of the multiverse which is significantly older and i think it's worse than this but it has its own superhero style uh like because they have of course can't afford the ips like fantasy flight who makes marvel champions can yeah so that's how they're doing it but then this not this company but these designers are working on another game called freedom 5 which is another superhero game using the sentinels of the multiverse superheroes in a more cooperative uh style it's not modular like this but so you have all these all these superhero games coming out that people are like well i don't want this and it kind of comes down to well judge belt jury you know whatever wyvern gem and ice you know these characters that come out which these are these are the sadler brothers oh i think they put them in all their games um like they have characters design which is kind of funny but uh so they're all kind of these these heroes that you're like

10:44 yeah you get to play them and you see how their decks are and their decks i mean the deck system works perfectly fine right i mean yeah it's a perfectly functional game look at me wrong i think we're i think it comes down to the fact that i'm like if i'm going to get one of their games this is what i'm going gonna get yeah i mean they're all pretty similar yeah they'll do the same thing i'm like you know go get street masters that's the good one yeah that broke city was a lot of fun because it was so different it used a modular deck system but in a in a different way and i think that's where this mds system is it either is stale um if the games are too similar to each other this is too close to street masters and street masters is a cleaner more functional game where the mds is highlighted like and this one this is kind of like yeah we have these issues over here but that's just kind of a weird issue deck that's kind of on off on its own and then yeah the villain has his own decks so that's like a boss and street masters so i think what it boils down to is if you have the other games the three we've mentioned um i don't see a need to own this yeah i i mean yeah staying alone it's kind of flat yeah i don't i wish i had better criticisms for it right it's a very functional game i mean like yeah you could put your own theme into it you know like when we were describing the combats and whatnot that's that's fun that's always fun um but i mean it's also the fact maybe it could have been flushed a little more with

12:14 better story beats if they really wanted to go all in i will say i'm glad that it'll be full yeah like at least that makes it somewhat thematic that those are there uh oh funny enough i didn't even realize on the back they do actually have a backstory on the villains oh cool um oh and the uh and the heroes damn i totally missed that i could have read those um yeah i uh because they're in the it's it was weird they're in the issue guys so you think this is just for your like the issues that you pick uh but then but here's the other thing is like all the expansions are technically standalone so you have uh yeah here's you as belt your complexity won i'm so complex um and then i think judge and jerry is here so uh judge is also complexity one which makes sense i mean i like the fact that yeah they have they have the story stuff like so your characters you can learn a little bit more about uh the villains you can learn a little bit more about and then they do have little story beats based off the schemes to kind of make it a little bit more thematic which i enjoy like i think that does kind of bring it out a little bit more but in terms of the gameplay the reason i wish the villain didn't just hop from one area to the next it was like like it feels like we're running around the city and he's just going to these you know these panels and we have to deal with his lackeys

13:44 and they're kind of around but even some of the lackeys just don't do a whole lot they're just kind of around and it's more just annoying than i don't know it's it's just kind of blah and yeah i can't really think of like any specific thing besides the fact that we take static damage when we scheme i think that's kind of stupid um like it would make more sense if we were scheming on a different plot like if we were trying to do the the curtain call one and he was nearby and he he damaged us for trying to do that but it's like well why are we taking damage from him when we're actively trying to stop his thing because if i if i get some really cool ability that lets me solve multiple times well does he attack me each time or is it just a one-time damage it's just not clear so it's like well for me to make any progress that's nine damage you know if i do three solves because of a cool combo so it it feels like it halts like the card synergy yeah and if that's not how it's played well i can't find anywhere in the rulebook that says otherwise so which is like well he is an enemy and therefore he he damages just like everyone else yeah i mean it's yeah yeah right too much to spread pretty pretty black i mean yeah i mean these

15:14 guys they make work you know working games that are entertaining yeah um you know good uh modular deck system but uh you know if you're gonna play one of these i would recommend one of their other games yeah if you're looking for i guess it depends on what you're wanting if you're wanting a superhero game and you don't like marvel for some reason like if someone were to come to me and be like hey can you recommend the superhero game i'd be like yeah marvel champions or marvel legendary or that's only two i think up off the top of my head and it's like well i don't like marvel or i don't like deck builders or i don't like you know it's like okay well then i guess this but then if they have any of their other games it's like well then don't bother you know if they don't if they don't have street masters and they don't have like brook city or any of those then this one's probably a viable option because it would be so fresh it would be a new modular deck system that you're like oh man i can combo any of these together yeah yeah i suppose if you didn't have familiarity with their other games and maybe that's why you know it's kind of hurting me here right that i'm like i'm just kind of struggling i'm like whatever i'm like i think i'd rather play one of their other games yeah yeah which is always kind of rough whenever you are a fan but that is kind of the downside when your entire game design is centered around one system then it's like well all your games are starting to feel the same so this no longer has the allure of the mds system we're not like who it could be any combo it's like well yeah there are other games do that too so

16:45 why do i need this one right um yeah i i don't know i also i just think also gameplay is kind of it's i don't know but it just doesn't seem as fun like i i didn't ever feel like like judge i never felt like i was a badass like you know swas you know swooping into these plot scenes and defeating you know bystanders and then coming in and foiling the the villain i never felt that way it felt like i was always just kind of struggling because oh well we don't need to solve anymore or i'm all about solving but too bad i'm getting my ass beat while i'm trying to solve so i guess i won't do that uh yeah i mean overall that's that's pretty much that's pretty much it i'm mainly upset that i just missed the uh like reading the character stuff because it's like oh man we could have had more of me to read but i guess uh oh curtains is a complexity too okay curtains is the complexity too and uh the century heist was also complexity too so i wonder if that's also an issue potentially if we had two complexity two obstacles the issue and curtains and two complexity one um heroes so it's like i wonder if that actually has anything to do with it if you need to have the same type of complexity but

18:15 maybe not um maybe it's just like how hard these are to play versus how hard these are to overcome yeah i felt like it advanced incredibly rapidly yeah the gameplay i didn't feel like i had a whole lot of turns right i didn't feel like i had a whole lot of stuff i could do and they try to yeah it seems like they try to balance that by letting you have free cards like somebody like wise counsel doesn't have an action for me to do um exhibit a doesn't happen but it's like you know you burn through your four cards that you initially get and then now henceforth short of the one that you get automatically or if you get something to let you draw and have an effect um you get you can draw two cards on your on your turn yeah and you're not getting much else short of that you've got your you know your standard actions you know your solve your attack but then you only get two actions right um so i just didn't feel like i could do a whole bunch right i'd almost rather have the pacing of you know i mean because we also had there were multiple ways for us to lose in this the issue has a loose condition and then uh well i guess that's really it but we have to solve to even have him come out of hiding or whatever which is also kind of weird you would think that doing the plot like i don't see like it'd be better if he or the villains and you know in general didn't have a scheming side but because they already have the issuer

19:47 schemes and then they already have the the schemes themselves um like so it's like just let us be able to fight him and give him a health pool uh instead of both because i feel like we're working extra hard because we have to we have to do the schemes then they flip to something worse or something else then we have to deal with that with deal with his lackeys we have to deal with the randomness of his deck of putting out these minions and then stealing bystanders all on top of he's still scheming so then we have to finish the schemes then scheme on him again so it's it's almost like he essentially has in the way 40 yeah 40 scheme is essentially what it is and then the way they encourage um you do have to work for toward getting a bigger dice pool for fewer attempts uh otherwise you're taking the static damage yeah and it's like i want to take static damage right i'd rather you know so it's like okay i should just go for as many as many clue cards as i can get and go for just a [ __ ] big ass scheme and try to get it in one go and then that could be exciting because i mean the burst thing is in all their games and that could be fun but like if you roll and you roll that you don't get a single burst i mean yeah that's a lot that's two four six eight nine nine scheme against the 40 or potentially just outright beating one but then it's like oh but i still took three damn

21:19 it took me like three turns to accumulate that effect that's true yeah you have to be like boom boom boom let me save all these bystanders get three clue cards hope they're the double two and maybe give you an ability that doesn't just to so you spend all those actions just to potentially outright remove one so you then you remove both of these now we can finally scheme against him and so that's another 20 in in curtin's case and it just feels like you do so much for so little payoff yeah versus like like when we did street masters the one that comes to the head to top my head is is the weapons master the one word and this is like he just has a health pool against however many heroes there are right and he has weapons and stuff and these caches and like uh and then he has lackeys are coming in and shooting at us so we have to decide do we want to go fight the lack he's sniping us or do we want to try and go after him oh he has a [ __ ] you know bulletproof vest on so now he takes less damage like it just feels so much cleaner here and here we're just over here like oh can we like scheme once or solve once to even get anywhere yeah and i mean i don't think he advances so quick that like it feels like you have no chance i mean we got 16 damage on him so a good hit would still beat him i don't think the game is like

22:51 i don't think it's unbalanced i just think the pacing is off because of like you just said you have to work super hard and then after you do all that solving then it's like oh we did it nope still gotta fight him yeah and by that point it's just like you're just kind of burned out um already right and like because in in marvel champions i'll we'll have to play that game um just so you can see the superiority of it but they you you have a character you have an alter ego mode and a in a hero mode that you can flop between when you're in alter ego mode so whenever the villain goes he acts against each player i only ever play that game at solo or two um so he acts against each player if you're in alter ego mode then he schemes and he puts thwart tokens or threat tokens on uh like a major plot which if that ever you know finishes you lose uh so you have two ways of losing if the major plot card ever gets its max value of threat or all heroes are defeated so but if you're in alter ego mode then he does that but if you're in hero mode then he attacks you so you actually have a balance of which mode you want to be in where it's like i'm really low on health let me swap to alter ego because we're not super high on threat so you have that to always taken to consider and but the fact that in this game it's almost weirdly reversed where

24:22 you're the one having to scheme or threat and it's just it's just weird like i don't know and all those other games i feel like a badass yeah like feel like a badass cop badass fantasy warrior right um and here i just feel like a person in with a kate i'm helping yeah and i don't know the bystanders are just kind of whatever like you just go there to get clue cards and they're super easy to sli to save but it takes a bunch of move actions and a standard move is only three yeah and short of using like a unique effect yeah where you get the i think the feet effects are they almost feel like a cop out because it's like if you don't want to take all that tons of damage you have to remove one of your crucial cards like this this game would have been amazing with my swift justice cards because whenever they're out i can exhaust it to ignore the target's defense or whenever a showdown effect would show up which i just realized we forgot to even draw those each time we attacked him oh [ __ ] um that's another thing of just oh great he also does more stuff uh but i could i could discard this to ignore the showdown effect but i had to get rid of that card because i was trying to solve and i had to get rid of to not take the damage i don't know the more we talk about the more i'm

25:53 actually disliking the flow of of the actions because if you're in a if you're in a superhero game you should feel like a badass superhero and i just don't uh yeah that's it that's all i can think of you got anything else nope i don't yet because like i said i still have i struggle with the criticisms i guess it's functional but yeah it's uh i soon play one of their other games i like their other games i do this one just kind of me to me um so can't they recommend but right if you haven't played any other games yeah if you get one of the others but yeah you might actually like this one maybe a little more i don't know yeah but it's definitely not their greatest work yeah um that's kind of where i'm at it's it's it is very weird where it's like i i would easily recommend their other games but at the same time you probably would like this more had you not played any of the other ones so yeah i guess it's whatever you're wanting to get out of it like this these reviews are always weird because of that reason where it's like just inherently not a whole lot of things wrong with it but it's in a bloated genre of superheroes and it's just worse than other games especially one of their other games it's worse than when they're it's like it's fine if this is worse than some other

27:23 company's games like i keep mentioning marvel champions it's like well that's not their fault right but it's also worse than street masters which is their you know bread and butter really so yeah i mean technically this could also just be a shitty issue like the century heist with curtains could just be super bad yeah uh and yeah it's modular like any of the others yeah like but yeah it just didn't come out it you know it's uh first uh impressions not great right it's like maybe if we did automated chaos with gorilla and micro guy and and uh and we did dowager you know maybe that would be better or if curtains was in that one like but because it is modular like that it's it's too much to ever like play to fully be like well we've tried every single combination it's like nah that's not happening yeah it's too it is too modular in that sense huh well that's disappointing so i was hoping whenever we played it with the actual like floor stuff i was like oh it's gotta be better no yeah not really but yeah uh all right well on the scale of one to ten what would you give hour of need

28:54 that's yeah five maybe six like maybe someone else would like a little more than i do but yeah five you know it's a doable game yeah you know playable uh you know like someone else want to play it i'm like i'm not gonna say no you know but i'm not buying it yeah yeah that's kind of that's kind of where i'm at i'm giving it a five as well i think it's average uh like you said if someone would be like hey you want to play this i'd probably be like sure yeah like i mean the card system i still like uh and it's like okay we'll see how micro guy plays or why vern or whoever it might be sure why not uh and who knows maybe a different combination might be more thematic or might be more creative and innovative but i'm not gonna spend the time to figure that out when i could easily figure out better combinations than their other games um i guess one highlight i mean it's a negative for me but it could be for other people is they have standalone expansions which is good if you just want a particular type if you're like oh i really want the fire and ice people well then you just get that that box but if you have the all in it's actually incredibly annoying for because like whenever you're setting up a scenario it says if you run out of bystanders well if you have all of that you have 40 bystanders and you're like okay so then you have to weirdly go into the setup or

30:25 the components and be like oh there's only supposed to be eight so i guess i'll separate those out and have all these other tokens that don't do me any good or it's okay if you run out of minion tokens then it causes a crisis so they have rules specifically designed for running out of tokens however if you have expansions then theoretically you don't run out of tokens so now you just have extra stuff so not a huge fan of the standalone way that they kickstarted this gotcha like because this was all a kickstarter but it's like well i went all in but i got four different core sets really and so now i just have a bunch of [ __ ] so yeah that's just kind of a component annoyance but yeah i think our need i'm gonna give a a five out of ten which is disappointing but yeah anyway that's our thoughts on our need let us know what you think of the game in the comments below other than that like comment share and subscribe and have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you hey everyone thank you for watching and i really hope that you enjoyed the video if you would like to see more of my content go ahead and click that subscribe button and the bell to be notified whenever i upload any new content if you feel like supporting the channel you can go ahead and click that patreon link to be taken to my patreon and any help is truly appreciated other than that stick around for any any other run-throughs or reviews or cool top tens or whatever i feel like putting on other than that like comment share and subscribe and have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you