lord_blackfang wrote:
it's fitting since Steamforge is the new CMON

 Monkeysloth wrote:
They also have something called Euthia as well which appears, at a quick glance, to be a Gloomhaven style game that's OOP and was just a Kickstarter only game I think.

You will start each turn with at least three tokens on your hero board. This will be a mining, trade and combat action token. Each of those tokens show movement on the top and an action like mining, trading or combat on the bottom. On your turn, you may take actions until you no longer have the tokens or resources to do so. If you want to move, chose how many spaces you would like to move and take the token with that many movement points (or more) from your hero board. Choose carefully, because if you choose to spend a token on movement, you can’t use the bottom section of this token anymore.

I've played both several times now (MK a lot more), and I can see why people would want to compare this game to Mage Knight. It has enough similarities that you get the idea to compare the games. But there are also enough differences that make the game very unique.
Free exploration, free world building through tiles, fixed monsters/ encounters on the tiles, fixed locations for hero improvement, different scenarios with different victory conditions, no campaign, solo/ ccop, copmetitive/ everything is there.

And yet I find the gameplay a completely different experience, as the game mechanics are very different.
MK is a deckbuilding game, which influences the deck through the use of markers (crystals) and lets you execute a fixed combat strategy.
In Euthia, much is ultimately decided by the dice roll, which can be manipulated, but is also more dependent on luck. This is where the RPG elements of weapons and armor bonuses come into play.

Gameplay is as I hoped reasonably quick compared to MK. It's not a deck builder and each round gives you 3 basic actions which are EITHER movement OR a specific action which are Mine, Trade or Combat. So for example you can use the mine action as either 1 movement or MINE, the trade action as either 2 movement or TRADE and the combat action as either 3 movement or COMBAT. It means in general you can only do trade, combat or mine ONCE per round, although you are allowed if you want carry one action across to the next round. Movement CAN be interrupted to do an action and then resumed after e.g. use the TRADE action for two movement, take one movement use COMBAT to attack an enemy and then use the remaining one movement to a MINE and use the MINE action. It makes it easier to move around the board.

In terms of revealing the map whenever you move to a new tile space you should always be surrounded my map. If you aren't then you reveal tiles until you are. This means that you reveal the map much quicker than in MK.

Like MK you "liberate" areas of trade, mines etc. from monsters through combat. MINES will give you gems which can be traded or used in other ways. TRADE (three different types of trading tile) allows you restore health, reveal hero skills (depending on reputation), train skills, unlock new item/skill slots, restore health etc. Much like MK you tag tiles which you have liberated and can only do this once in solo.

One thing you do have - that is not included in MK - is encounters which are mini side scenarios you can complete to give you rewards IF you have the time. These are nice additions in particular from a solo perspective.

Much as with MK each hero has a skill tree which consists of tiles that are unlocked as you gain reputation and can then be trained in areas of Trade. You have choices (generally between 2 skills) that have to be made at each level in a similar way to MK.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So if I still have everything from the original Rivetwars KS, completely unopened, what should I do with them?

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Who?

Asmoridin wrote:
I actually don't mind it being a board game- heck, Memoir 44 was a great way for me to recruit people into the hobby. I just want to know if the rules are 1) easy enough to teach to most people (sounds like yes), and 2) crunchy enough for me (sounds like yes).

I looked at the Kickstarter- do you think that the big 400 USD pledge is actually worth it? Do the expansions add enough to be worth the value, or are they too CMON-ish (just a lot of extra minis with minimal gameplay additions?).

ecurtz wrote:
So the Veterans pledge is all the new cardboard and none of the new minis? Feels like they got that backward.

 Sacredroach wrote:

ecurtz wrote:
So the Veterans pledge is all the new cardboard and none of the new minis? Feels like they got that backward.

And the Nemoan faction and stretch goals. If you were like me and got everything from the first, the Veteran’s Pledge is the way to go.

For play information, the big tanks and walkers are crazy fun to field but are difficult to bring in to smaller games.

chaos0xomega wrote:

So to your first two I would agree, yes the rules are easy enough to teach and have solid strategic depth and were generally just fun and engaging (at least the original, I'm not sure to what extent they've been revised, haven't followed that closely).

As for the expansions, YMMV. Most of the games I've played haven't utilized the expansion content (even though I own all of it), mainly because just about every time I have played has been with a different group of people and so I left that stuff out of it so we could just focus on the basic rules without introducing some of the more complex stuff. If you have a group in mind to play this, as in you know you're going to be tabling it regularly with a group of regulars, then its absolutely worth it as the expansions add more variables and replayability into the game (and consequently dramatically increase strategic depth by giving you capabilities that you wouldn't have had access to otherwise).

Mind you, the new core set includes a good amount more minis than were included in the base game of the original, so even then you'd probably get a good time without them. If you're unsure, pledge for the core game now, you'll be able to upgrade to the 400 pledge tier during the pledge manager phase after the campaign ends if you decide you want the rest of it.