Game Reviews and Author's Thoughts |
Board Game Reviews, Play Through Discussions, and General Gaming Thoughts
|
Game Reviews and Author's Thoughts |
Board Game Reviews, Play Through Discussions, and General Gaming Thoughts
|
While scrolling through Facebook back in April of this year I stumbled upon a post from CMON that was promoting their latest game on KickStarter called Masmorra. Up until that point I never knew there were board games on KickStarter, let alone board games where you get a crazy amount of extras and exclusives for helping them fund the game. Needless to say, I was hooked…more like addicted. I pledged for Masmorra then I late pledged for Arcadia Quest: Inferno, I will talk about those experiences in another blog in case you are not familiar with my displeasure with those experiences. Then I spent hours drooling over which game to back next. This is when I came across a unique dungeon crawler called Ravingspire. I love dungeon crawlers so I was in heaven scrolling through all the game videos and content. What pulled me in was this guy, Cory, who was so excited to bring you his game. A unique game that is part board game, part puzzle, part deck builder, part RPG, and all kinds of fun! My KickStarter excitement slowly faded away as delay after delay pushed Arcadia Quest: Inferno well into next year. I was bummed. Here I had backed several games and at this point I’m starting to realize the downside of KickStarter...delays. Massive delays! My 4th game backed, Ultra Tiny Epic Kingdoms, announced a two month delay. Ugh! I feel like I am never going to get my games! Through all these delays though Vorpal Chainsword Games kept releasing positive updates about Ravingspire. Pictures of expansion cards which were never promised to be ready for the launch but ended up arriving in every KickStarter game, plus production updates kept backers in the loop. Through these constant updates Cory assured us backers that delivery was still on schedule. The estimated delivery date was October, and on October 8th Ravingspire was delivered to my door! I was in awe. My first KickStarter game ever! My faith in humanity, well Kickstarter, restored! Could it be that there are still designers and publishers out there that truly care about their backers? I was nervous opening up the package. I had high expectations for Ravingspire and I didn’t want to be let down. I can honestly say the game exceeded my expectations! It was beautiful! There in the box was this beautiful looking wood book. The game box is actually made of wood and designed to look like an ancient tome. I didn’t know a board game box could be such a beautiful work of art. The components were high quality too with amazing detail and art. The battle mats are awesome. There it is, Ravingspire. Now it is time to play! Game Play The insert for Ravingspire is well done and designed to make setup very quick and easy. You pull out the game board, select your character and corresponding battle mat, and retrieve the foe battle mat. All the different cards; tower, encounter, loot, and starter, have their own area in the insert so creating the initial decks takes very little effort. You create an encounter deck, loot deck, tower deck, and starter deck for your character, then shuffle the foe cards and place them on the foe mat. You are now ready to play Ravingspire! It takes about 15minutes from the time you open that sweet box lid until you are wandering the tower. I guarantee five minutes of that time will be deciding on what character to use. Each character has unique abilities, battle mats, and starter decks. Each level has room for five encounter cards. On your turn, you draw an encounter card and either try to acquire the card just drawn or another card on the encounter ring. If you can’t acquire any of the cards then you lose sanity. Sanity is the life of each character. Each character starts with ten sanity points. Madness is tracked as a group. Madness starts as the number of players plus two. Each time a player’s sanity drops to zero the madness track drops by one. When the madness track reaches zero the game is over and all the characters have gone mad. Adversaries must be dealt with accordingly when encountered in the encounter deck. Players will lose sanity if any adversaries are in the encounter ring at the end of the round. The player rolls for movement, draws and deals with an encounter card and then has a chance to rotate the board. Rotating the board and aligning the steps with the doors is how the players advance to the next level. The goal is to reach the locked door on the spire, which is the top level, but to open the door you will need a key. How do you obtain a key? You defeat a foe. Foes are powerful enemies who are out to stop you from escaping the tower. They are brought to the board through chaos cards in the encounter deck. You must acquire better cards than what is in the starter deck to defeat a foe. Defeating a foe is a dangerous task but the rewards are necessary to defeat the final boss. Defeating a foe not only gets you a spire key but allows you to gain valuable loot from the loot deck. Acquiring new cards is not the only way to strengthen your deck. You can use the “well of souls” to banish weak cards in your hand. You need a card equaling 1 skill, 1 charm, or 1 fight or a total value of 5 to banish a card. A strategic combination of gaining strong cards and banishing weak cards is the key to success at Ravingspire. Once a player has made it to the locked spire door with a key, and a strong hand, he is ready to battle the final boss. A sealed spire card is selected and revealed. Hopefully a combination of skill and luck will allow a victory. If not, well, better luck next time! Acquiring item cards and defeating foes is done through a battle matrix. A battle matrix consists of a skill value, charm value, fight value, and a brute force value. This is a unique system, and I love it. If a card in the encounter ring has a fight value of 4 and a charm of 5 then you must use the cards in your hand and/or what is slotted on your battle mat to equal or exceed those values to acquire the card. The value and associated matrix icon is located in the upper right hand corner of the card. Battling adversaries and foes uses the same battle matrix logic. If a foe has 11 skill and 4 fight then you need to equal or exceed both of those values to defeat the foe. Foes can’t be beat with brute force making them very dangerous to encounter. Encounter cards have brute force values which allow the player to use any of the matrix types to win. If a player encounters a card with 2 fight, 2 charm, 4 skill, and a brute force of 12 but doesn’t have enough fight to acquire it he can use the brute force value. He will play 1 fight card, a 3 charm card, a 2-charm card, and a 2 skill card from his hand and a slotted loot card with a value of 4. Loot cards have a gold number and no associated matrix icon signifying they can be used as any of the matrix. All the cards used are placed in the discard pile. Final Thoughts I’ll be honest, I love dungeon crawlers. I really love dungeon crawlers, especially ones which don’t require a ton of time to setup, don’t have a million extra tokens to keep track of, don’t require a PHD to learn and explain, and don’t have so many rules that you are constantly flipping through the rule book. Ravingsire is all that and more! I will say, the rule book isn’t the best and leaves a lot of unanswered questions. However, the videos on www.vorpalchainswordgames.com are amazing, and are a must view before playing the game. Watch the videos first! Trust me, watch the videos and have the rulebook by your side for the first play through and all will be smooth. In case you didn’t catch that, watch the videos first! Ravingspire holds a place in my heart since it was my first fulfilled KickStarter game. Cory ran an amazing campaign, and he was in constant communication. I always knew the status of this game and I never went more than a few weeks without an update. He delivered all four expansions packs with the game which was something he wasn’t sure he could do during the campaign. If there was an issue he addressed it immediately. I can’t emphasize enough how awesome Vorpal Chainsword Games ran this campaign. I would label Ravingspire as a medium/light dungeon crawler with the focus being on the deck building mechanic. The battle matrix is a fantastic concept. You can’t focus on just one or two of the matrix types and expect to succeed unless you select a character that has an ability to let you use one type for another. The game sets up fast and plays under an hour for solo and under an hour and a half for 2 to 3 players. The replay-ability is huge on this one. The encounter deck has so many cards that you only use about half each game. There are nine characters to choose form and plenty of foes to keep games fresh. The deluxe edition was shipped with four expansions that included more characters, foes, and encounter cards. Three of the expansions add new settings such as steampunk, Wild West, and a Goblin Queen story. For those of you buying retail you will be getting some expansions in the future. The rotating game board is a nice touch and keeps the board game aspect of Ravingspire in touch with the theme. You will go mad trying to get the die rolls you need to align the stairs and the doors. I would easily say this is my current favorite dungeon crawler. I love the game. Using the battle matrix to build your deck is fun and challenging. The characters and the foes are unique and all have different abilities. The boards and battle mats don’t require a lot of room. A small kitchen table will work fine. Ravingspire sets up quickly and doesn’t have any fiddly components. I highly recommend this game! Tony’s Pros and Cons
Pros: Quick setup and teardown. Unique rotating game board. Unique battle Matrix for acquiring cards and battling foes. Awesome game box! Battle Mat lets you save cards. Everything has a place and is well marked. Great fantasy art. Fun! Fun! Fun! Cons: Foe and character cards have inconstant art. Rulebook is not very good at explaining everything needed to play the game. Tony’s Epic Scale:3(Lots and Lots of cards!) *Epic Scale is on a scale of 1 to 5 and is a combination of number of components and complexity of rules)* VALUE: 9 – KickStarter edition was a bargain! ART: 8 – I love the encounter cards, battle mats, and box, but character cards are a little weak. SETUP/TEARDOWN: 8 – Fastest of all my dungeon crawlers. RE-PLAYABILTY: 9 – This came close to being my first ever 10! Probably a 9.5. I may have to introduce decimal scoring after this one. FUN-FACTOR : 9 – I can’t stop playing it but I may still be in the honeymoon phase. OVERALL: 8.6
9 Comments
Tony
10/24/2016 04:34:46 pm
I am so excited to see what you guys do next! Not that you need to rush, Ravingspire will hold me over for awhile.
Reply
Beth
10/25/2016 06:32:02 pm
I saw in your About page that you have kids. How old are they, and have you played Ravingspire with them?
Reply
Tony
10/25/2016 06:47:38 pm
Beth, my kids are pretty well grown up. My youngest is 16 but I still see him as my baby. I should probably rephrase that section but I just always think of them as my kids. :) The 16 year old loves Ravingspire. We have played several times together. I would say a 12 or 13 year old that liked the fantasy setting would enjoy it. Very easy to learn.
Reply
Steve
10/25/2016 06:58:18 pm
Great review!
Reply
Tony
10/25/2016 07:13:02 pm
Thanks Steve! I have only backed about 10 games but out of my first 4 this is the only one to deliver on time and I know 2 more will be late for sure. Cory has been awesome and set the bar quite high for other campaigns. I really appreciate you checking out my other reviews. I hope you follow me and check out my up coming reviews.
Reply
Tony Graham
4/29/2017 04:24:10 am
Thank you very much!
Reply
3/5/2024 03:01:32 am
You know your projects stand out of the herd. There is something special about them. It seems to me all of them are really brilliant!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorA software developer by day and avid game player by night.KickStarter has recently rekindled my love of board games. Now I am looking to help the little guys of KS get their games noticed and funded as well as demonstrate how easy or difficult a game is played its first time through. Archives
May 2017
Categories |