Lairs: Discussion
Transcript
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Games Unlocked. And today I'm doing a discussion over Layers. This is the uh newest two-player game by the company CTBG who has made games that are very um animal friendly and and familyfriendly. All their games seem to be related to around uh these types of animal games. And this game wasn't even on my radar. A friend of mine had asked me if I had heard of it or played it. And uh obviously I was like I have no idea what that is. And then he kind of to explained the premise to me and I had already missed the crowdfunding. But then I was able to pick up the uh all-in pledge on an online website, you know, pretty exclusive black market website where you can get only all-in pledges. Um, and I am so happy that I did. This game is so absolutely [ __ ] fun. It has been a long time. Maybe not that long.
Um, but it's extremely rare when I play a game and I immediately play it again, you know, back to back. It's even more rare if I play a game back to back to back. And, you know, this is not I mean, not counting, of course, the campaign games that I do on the channel or a tournament style thing where I'm recording all day. So, of course, I'm playing a you know, multiple sessions back to back, but whenever it's a oneshot game like Lararss, uh, where, you know, we finish playing it and we're just having we're laughing and having a blast playing it and then we, you know, we pack it up and then or we we finish the game, it's like, let's play again.
And then we do it again and then like I kid you not, cuz I was playing this with my girlfriend and we work overnights. So, we're up all night. In case you're wondering why I make videos at 3:00 or 4 a.m., it's that's why. Um, and you know, we had finished a game at 7:30 a.m. and [clears throat] we were getting ready to, you know, pack it up and go to bed. And she's like, "Oh, can we can we play again?" I'm like, "Well, I'm tired." And she's like, "Uh, you I mean, well, it won't take that long and we usually don't go to bed right now." So I so we played it again and you know it's this game just caught something that I have been looking for in the industry that I just have not seen in a very long time.
Not saying that great games don't come out. I've just reviewed a lot of them. Um and a lot of those games we did play multiple times. But that something about this one is just an absolute blast. And this is all coming from uh a company that I'm not even really aware of their other games. It doesn't seem like any of their games from looking at them is anything like this. So what is layers? Well, the way it was described to me was essentially fantasy battleship where you are creating your own dungeon with only a few placement rules. You can't have the same hazards back to back. Um, but you can't fully block something off. And that's kind of it. So, you get incredibly creative with just the base game. And the whole goal is to try to get the most victory points by finding the most uh treasures.
And the freedom that this game gives you on how you can lay out your uh your uh layer is just so much fun. one game. Um, you know, one game we just you kind of make it the best you could possibly be, but then the second game, for example, I did it to where it was almost a complete circle. You know, you still have to have an exit, of course, but a complete circle with all the treasures inside, and the route could have gone one of two ways. She could have immediately found all the treasures and then just left. Uh or she could have missed all the treasures and be scanning the outside of it and she run into every hazard along the way. Um which is what ended up happening. And it's just so much fun. And this game isn't even really that much of a deduction game. You're given enough tools to be able to help you not blindly run into things all the time, but it doesn't have this element of, okay, I'm trying to deduce how yours your your system is laid out or your layer is laid out so that I can make the most efficient path possible by using all these different rules. You know, they could have gone a route of like Search for Planet X or Search for the Lost Species, that kind of element of deduction, which still would have been cool, but I think less approachable. Those types of deduction games uh are still a lot of fun. I still have Search for Lost Species. I still
have Turing Machine. They never hit the table because it's not always a blast to sit down and have to logically think through stuff.
[snorts]
Um, and it's not even I mean it is kind of a race to find the most treasures and then get out because the first person to leave then the other player only has one full round to try to escape. Um, [snorts] or at least try to get the most points possible. But, you know, there is that element of, okay, I I want to try to be the first one out. Maybe there's a treasure that gives you more points for doing so. However, it doesn't really give off that side. it. Every game of this that I have played has just been the fun of seeing how absurd the other person has developed uh their lair. Um and [snorts] there's a few other games that have this similar theme. What's you know kind of but it's never directly uh based off what the other person has built. Um I know there's the uh was it Stonespire Architects? Uh that game initially appealed to me. I was actually backing it and then I ended up playing the base game and really didn't like how it how it worked. I didn't like the randomness or the market phase felt very punishing. If you're in last, you go last. That just felt shitty. Um but that's a layout a dungeon you make but then kind of NPCs or you know types of adventurers go through. There's also dungeon um lords which is by CG. Same kind of concept from what I remember. I still have it, but I haven't played it in like 15 years. Uh, so I don't really
remember, but I think it's a similar concept of, hey, here's the dungeon, you know, build it, and then adventure is go in and die. And that's always been a theme I've enjoyed. But having this one literally be here's my dungeon, now you as a player go through it, that is an absolute blast. And it just doesn't it's not random. I mean, there is a little little bit of randomness to it, but you I mean, you're in control of everything the entire time. It's not, oh, here's a barrage of chaos coming at you. It's here's your structure, and if if the other player kind of gets on the right path, then that's great. Uh, that's great for them. And I just really like how everything just how everything pans out. Even the random elements in this game aren't even really that bad.
You know, you come across, we'll just say the base game because I don't want to spoil anything. You know, the base game is just against this enemy. Very basic. Nothing to it. You know, it it'll exhaust uh or fatigue two cubes if you run into it and then you get nothing for killing it. Um, they I mean, yeah, it's a six strength and whenever you come across the the monster, you can spend up to three cubes to roll that many number of dice. Well, you could spend two cubes to try and be efficient in your movement and roll two dice and hope you get, you know, a six, which I got a seven. I rolled a four and a three. But you could easily roll a one and a one. Um, or let's just say it's a two and a two. So, you've done four.
Well, what's awesome, it's not an all or nothing. You mark down on your sheet, okay, yeah, I'm going to suffer the attack again. That's my own fault. I didn't choose to pay more. I wanted to risk it. But then you write down, oh, okay, I dealt four damage to it. Now, in my sheet, I will write down two health. That's what he has left. So then on your next turn, you can either come back and or you can just leave it alone and try and run away. But there you're rewarded for killing monsters. It's one of the objectives to try and get to leave and I mean it's just now out of the way. So I I mean the dice isn't even that big of a deal even for the traps. And typically you're only really affected by them if you are just blitzing through the uh the lair without actually uh taking the time to search it before moving in. But that costs time or that cost a certain cube. And as the game goes on, you might not have those cubes available or you might have spent them on something else. It I I honestly have no problem with the way the dice are implemented here uh in this game. So, the randomness of it, getting the treasures, I mean, those are still super fun to get. And the game is so quick.
How long does it say? 40 minutes. That's probably accurate. I think maybe 40 to 60 is is a good good number. And it's done in such a small time frame that the way the game loop plays, you just immediately want to play again. And I mean, one game of this I played uh cuz we usually listen to music whenever I'm not recording, obviously. we or I I put the blared the music up and I took all the the walls and I just kind of like tossed them onto my sheet and just to see where they landed and that was the layout of my of my lair. Um, and it's also the game just has so much hilarious moments of, you know, when someone is running uh in a particular direction and then they decide to stop and go a different direction, but they stopped right in front of a treasure chest. So then they're like, "Man, I'm not finding it at all." and you know for a fact that they were so close but then just for some reason moved. I I absolutely love this game and I wouldn't be singing its praises as much if it was just what the core game offers. But this company did a such a great job and I need I wish more games did this of peacemealing more and more mechanisms in the game. Um, now to be fair, this is based off either I think an expansion or a Kickstarter, uh, the
adventurers pack that, you know, when you're familiar with the base game, which literally takes maybe one play, two at most, and you're ready to add something, it tells you in what order to add things. Okay, open box one. Okay, now play a game or two with what box one adds. And then they have all these envelopes that say, "Okay, now open o open envelope A, then B, then open box two, then C and D, then open box three, and then all of these just add more and more not not huge things where now you're overwhelmed by the choices that are available to you, but it's just enough for you to add one thing and then you want to play with just that um so I mean so I guess small spoiler for um I won't go specifically into the details but small spoiler one of the uh envelopes adds another trap. I won't say what the trap is but that's all it did. It added one trap and I think it only added one trap. It might have actually added Oh no. It added another action you can do. So, a trap and an action. But just one trap, like one one um token that you would be adding in immediately changes how you are going to try and build your layout
and makes it that much more creative. They lean so heavily into the freedom of creativity. And that's just one envelope. There are I mean there's four boxes, four full boxes. One, two, three, four, five. So, it's six envelopes. Four boxes, six envelopes on top of the vault. And this is not empty. So, then you get to open the vault, which adds even more stuff. And that would be enough. Literally, that would be more than enough to give you so much content to be able to create your layer however you want. But then there's another expansion that adds even more content that actually I think makes it to where you can play three and four players. Um but a bunch of other stuff and honestly when we opened up the first box they gave us new things to do. Um you know we played with it. It's an absolute blast.
Super fun. Uh and we could have moved on to the next envelope and just kind of just keep seeing what's new. But for some reason with this game, I just wanted to pace it out. It's okay, let's let's play a few games with the new stuff instead of all right, we played it. Let's see what's next. Because I feel the way that they they piece meal stuff to you that's already in the box. You kind of want to sit with it. At least I do. I do that with video games as well where I don't want to get everything because then it feels like on replay I've already seen it all. So, I like the fact that this game is still a lot of fun. Even with the base game, we were still having a blast because again, it the building of the layer is not railroaded in here's 10 things you have to keep in mind when building it. Um, it's it's like two two rules. Uh, every the start space has to reach to every goal, which is the exit and the treasures. And you just can't have two hazards of the same type adjacent to each other. So you can't have monster monster, even if it's different monsters, you just can't have that for whatever reason. Um, probably just to prevent being a [ __ ] of having one row cuz you could build it to where they have to go straight and then they could just be like, "Okay, monster, monster, monster, trap, trap, trap." you know, that would be that would just be very boring um and annoying for the person like trying to move one space and then they constantly just have to keep rolling dice. So, I really appreciate
that rule. The other thing that I think is awesome is with the the sheets. Uh one, every rule that you would ever need is actually on here. But what's really cool is the new rules that they give you. I haven't tried to peel these off yet, but it's uh it's not a sticker. It is an adhesive of some kind. Almost like a uh a window decal is really what they're made of. So, it feels as if they're made in a way that if you ever wanted to reset it, you could just easily grab those and pull them off. I thought that was kind of cool. That's a production element that I haven't seen before. I've they're, you know, for all intents and purposes, they they should have just been stickers. Um, and yeah, I really can't sing this game's praises enough. I think the treasures are varied. They give you you're kind of what you would expect for treasures to be where they're worth a certain amount of victory points, but then they have conditions. Some of the treasures have abilities on them, which is neat. Uh, others are, hey, this is worth three extra points if you have another book. Uh, so you're kind of searching for a collection. But what's also cool is the more treasures you have, you can have as many treasures as possible, but at the end of the game, you can only score choose four of them to score face up and then the rest go face down.
So, I kind of like that element also. Yeah. I mean, I'm really really struggling to think of any any negatives that this game game has. I guess there's potentially some rules or things that are added that I won't like, but so far, I mean, to full disclaimer, I've only open box one and one envelope, [snorts] but the things that both of those added were immediately exciting to to add. It feels as if this is a legacy game without the horrible parts of a legacy. Uh cuz nothing's permanent. It's just all extra stuff. and they didn't just throw it all at you and hey, here's all the extra [ __ ] Figure out what you want to add.
It It really allows the players to have control over when they're ready to throw in something new. And more games really just need to start doing that. Um cuz some games definitely just give you everything and you are you're you're having a tough time trying to figure out when to add it to your game. Um, the other issue I find is, you know, hey, I got this new big expansion that's for a game I love. Okay, but I don't really want to throw it in with new players. So, I guess I'll just teach someone the base game and the next time we play, I'll throw in the expansion and then the next time almost never comes. You almost have to play the base game and hope everyone likes and if they do, then be like, "Hey, let's play again with the new expansion."
But that those opportunities at least for me are few and far between. Uh this game just does it has that moment of hey let me show you the base game and then okay cool you understand it. Let okay now here's a trap just a new trap we can toss in and oh here's what the new trap does. In fact there's not even a rule. It's literally a card that you could read and it tells you what happens. And now it feels like a whole new fresh game that is just an absolute blast to play. This was not even on my radar at all. I I knew nothing about I didn't even see the Kickstarter where I could have passed on it, you know. And so my uh my my question to you all is are there more games like this? I need more games like this where it's fun and creative enough without it being, you know, for for babies essentially. It feels this feels appropriate for all age groups, for all types of of players cuz I play 100page rulebook campaign games to well, I used to play heavy Euros, now those just don't excite me as much. But I play mediumweight Euros to games like this. And I promise you, unless the campaign game is extremely solid, this is just absolutely more fun than a lot of them.
So, are there more games like this? Because I cannot think of any that that are on this same vein. And I hope there is because I really want to check it out. And I don't think this company's any of their other games are in the same wheelhouse, but I could be wrong. Um, so yeah, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm giving Lars a 10. I literally cannot think of any issues I have with it. I can't think of a game where my significant other w like was basically begging to play again. Uh whenever we had just got done playing it multiple times in a row and she just I want to play this again. I was like oh right now she was like yeah right now. Uh not that she's not down to play a lot of games but very few of them is oh let's play this again. I think the last one that we blitzed through that also was an absolute blast was Cozy Stickerville.
Um, which again was I think I gave that game a 10 out of 10 because it was just an absolute blast. And you might think, oh, it's because you're having a good time with your significant other. Well, yeah, I am. And that's uh that's a good thing. But even, you know, even if it wasn't with someone that I love, you know, I could play this with a friend and still have probably a 10 out of 10 experience, if not a nine out of 10. So, I guess if you want to take the subjectivity out, it's a nine out of 10. But, uh, but [ __ ] you. It's uh, it's my discussion, my review. So, it's a 10 out of 10 for me and I highly recommend it. But let me know in the comments if there's any game that is similar to this or any game that just kind of has that type of vibe because I really want to check them out. Um, and that's it everyone. That's all I can think of in uh off the top of my head. So, let me know what you think of this 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.