Vantage

Posted on August 18, 2025 by Leeman

A bad thing happened to me and my family finances this month. I purchased a game largely on a whim and it’s become not only my favorite new game of 2025 but possibly…. ever. This is the equivalent of playing in traffic and finding a bag of candy; my lizard brain reward system is learning all the wrong lessons and this will come back to haunt me. That, however, is a future Leeman problem. Today’s Leeman gets to bask in the wonder that is Vantage.

To give you a better sense of my newfound obsession, this game was released two weeks ago and I was apparently the 38th person to click “add to cart” on the Stonemaier website despite knowing precious little about it except that it sort of looked like a scifi version of Tales of the Arabian Nights. Now Stonemaier has a proven track record of quality with Scythe, Tokaido, and Wingspan although funnily enough, while I can recognize that they are all good games, I have never quite fallen in love with them. There’s also the fact that this wasn’t a kickstarter but just a standalone release with little fanfare or to-do, just a confident “here’s our game, hope you enjoy.” Since it arrived, I have lugged all 10.5 pounds of it around and made no fewer than 8 of my most tolerant friends play it as well as poking its solo mode in what has to be over a dozen games so far.

The premise of the game is that players are explorers crash landing on different parts of an alien planet. Over the course of the game, players will explore biomes, engage with alien denizens, collect strange artifacts, avoid various hazards, and help each other achieve their original mission goal, their newfound destinies, or random side-quests. Imagine a less bleak version of Scavengers Reign. The art alternates between straightforward and dreamlike and the themes are abstract enough for your imagination to fill in the gaps.

Play is organized between the Location Cards which show where each player currently is and gives them options for how they want to engage with the world around them and tableau cards which represent their character, gear, sidekicks, pets, etc. On all the various cards are actions that players can choose based on six skills – Moving, Observing, Engaging, Aiding/Crafting, Taking, and Overpowering. Each of these skills corresponds to the different character roles players choose and they have their own book of results. On a typical turn, a player will pick a card and an action and then refer to the matching book and entry to see what happens as a result. Usually they’ll have to roll a certain number of Challenge Dice which has the potential to damage them. There’s a tracker for the three “hit points” – Health, Morale, and Time. If any of the trackers for any of the players hits Zero then the game (potentially) is over. To avoid taking damage, cards in a player’s tableau have open slots that can absorb these dice. Some of these slots are limited to certain skills or damage but some can even be used to help other players. Much of the cooperation of this game involves stepping in to help a teammate avoid getting hurt. Risk can also be mitigated by spending skill tokens which are accumulated throughout the game and then spent to roll fewer dice with any player being able to spend on behalf of their teammates. In addition, tableau cards also frequently take small cubes called Boosts which are used as power ups and can be spent to get bonuses and power abilities.

My original assessment of this game remains accurate although incomplete. Much like Tales of the Arabian Nights, Vantage is a game of exploring, drawing cards, making choices, and having a friend flip through books of story results based on those choices. The game then rockets off from this comparison in a couple of ways. First and most noticeably, its cooperative nature makes it feel much cozier and less capricious while avoiding the pitfalls of quarterbacking. There’s a seemingly arbitrary rule that states that players cannot show each other their Location card. Now this can partially be seen as a way to help avoid spoilers and make the game more replayable but the more immediate impact is that it gives the players ownership of their particular situation so one player can’t easily direct the others in what to do.

Secondly, while the choices and skills in Tales can feel at times somewhat disconnected with what happens in any given game, Vantage makes the results and consequences of choices matter and feedback loops start to develop as you play. If you keep choosing violence, then the violent options become more attractive over time. Same if you focus on diplomacy or sneaking or helping others. This isn’t a roleplaying game but story and a sense of play emerges and players can be rewarded for choosing the more narrative decision rather than the one that might be more mechanically efficient.

Finally, this game is a Mary Poppins bag of mechanics, concepts, and play. In the dozen or so playthroughs I’ve had over the last fortnight, I keep discovering new parts of this game. It isn’t a legacy game but it feels like it has taken some of the joy of discovery found in legacy games and imbued it in its panoply of cards and books. There is a Book of Secrets and a Book of Vantages both of which you might use once or twice in a game to get just a glimpse of what all the game has to offer. Minigames will pop up at random and suddenly you’ll find yourself doing a tricky logic puzzle or even a manual dexterity exercise. More than anything, Vantage feels like the old point and click adventure games of the 90s, complete with choosing whether to Look At, Go North, Pick Up, Push/Pull, etc. It’s like all the best parts of Monkey Island, The Dig, Fate of Atlantis, or Myst but with your friends all seated together taking turns and offering suggestions of what to do and where to go next.

I have no doubt that over time the novelty will wear off but so far I’ve discovered an almost bottomless well of delight putting this game in front of friends and seeing their faces light up when they uncover some whimsical bit of art or a new mechanic that emerges from their choices. I think it’s telling that while I could play this game by myself with little mechanical difference from playing it with friends, the joy of communal discovery and revelation is where this game shines again and again. I’m looking forward to seeing just how much joy I can squeeze out of it.

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Star Wars Outer Rim

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Leeman

In juxtaposition with my last post about Star Wars Talisman, I want to talk about Outer Rim which falls squarely in the talisman genre even if it is not part of the Talisman brand. Both games see players move around a board, collecting gear, money, and followers while getting into fights and rolling dice to overcome challenges. They both give opportunities for players to get better and more powerful as they bounce around until eventually one is able to claim victory. Whereas Talisman is a kind of Purgatory where you just go round and round accepting the vicissitudes of capricious chance, Outer Rim and its Unfinished Business expansion offers a more engaging and robust experience.

In Outer Rim, players pick characters taken from the more scoundrelly side of the setting (Han Solo, Boba Fett, Doctor Aphra, Hondo Ohnaka, etc) and then choose a starter ship either going for speed or toughness. Depending on their character, they’ll draw a random starting mission which will either be cargo delivery, bounty hunting, or a job which will calm for a series of skill rolls to achieve. These three types of missions are the main ways players will earn money and Fame. Earning a set amount of Fame is how players win the base game.

Every turn, players will either move around the board, recover damage from previous misadventures, or collect a small amount of money. Then depending on where they are, they can deliver cargo, buy cards, or carry out any free actions they’ve accrued. Finally they’ll have an Encounter which will either mean drawing a card based on their location, choosing a Contact token which will either be hidden or revealed and gives them a character to interact with, fight another player or patrol ship in their space, or use a card with an Encounter action on it. These Encounters are the real dynamic part of the game and can give the players new gear or quests or go into combat.

The fiddliest action is the Market action where players try to buy cards from the various market decks. During set up, the decks are laid out with the top card visible so players have an idea what’s available. First they have an option to discard up to two of these visible cards either because it’s not what they want or to deny it to other players. Then they can choose to buy gear, cargo, new ships, or take bounties or jobs. If they buy, they take the top card and reveal the next card in the deck which might have certain symbols on it that immediately trigger some effect. Some let the player flip over hidden Contacts where others move the various patrols on the board closer to the player. These patrols can limit movement or force a combat. They patrols correspond to 4 different factions that players will have some sort of reputation with – Empire, Rebellion, Hutts, and Syndicate.

Missions are the best way to earn money and Fame and come in three main forms – cargo runs, bounties, and jobs. Cargo is available to buy on different planets and has a destination. If the player can get it there they earn the reward. Some cargo is illegal and requires a dice roll to either acquire or deliver and can get a player in trouble if they encounter patrols. Bounty hunting consists of running around flipping over the Contact tokens hoping to find your quarry and then winning a combat against them. Sometimes these bounties will be serving as crew for other players which makes chasing them down all the more interesting. Finally there are jobs which usually have a destination planet and then take the player through a flow chart of skill tests and combats. If the player survives and gets enough successes they get the reward, otherwise they have to keep trying until they do.

All players and ships (apart from starting ships) have personally goals that both give you fame and unlock new abilities. This is a more long term way to earn fame and can help give you direction for the early and mid game.

Skill checks are fairly simple although the game uses custom dice with particular symbols that you have to learn. Whenever you make a skill check, you roll two dice. If you don’t have the skill you need to roll a critical success. If you or a crew member has the skill, you need a regular or critical success. Certain gear and ships and player abilities can tweak these checks and make them easier.

The Unfinished Business expansion is a nice buffet of options you can take or leave. New characters are introduced with corresponding challenging bounties. It also lets players travel into the more Empire dominated core worlds which lets players have a short cut from one end of the board to the other. Its biggest addition is an overarching player career goal which changes how you win the game by giving you a series of challenges and achievements you have to overcome. This can be anything from getting obscene wealth to carrying out ever more dramatic acts of resistance to becoming a pirate queen.

Like all talismanic games, Outer Rim is big and ridiculous and if you want a more brainless, less fiddly experience you can just stick with Star Wars Talisman. However, if you want a big epic story of a game where Boba Fett teams up with Chopper and Lobot to take the fight to the Empire while trying to figure out how to offload baby rancors, then this is the game for you.

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Star Wars Talisman

Posted on June 26, 2025 by Leeman

Talisman is both a brand and genre of game and I’ve been playing both since 1989. (For more in depth takes read this.) As a game it is long, repetitive, unbalanced, and somehow completely addictive to children’s brains. A decade ago, a Rachel and I were hosting British boys whose choir was touring Canada and, not knowing how else to entertain them, I pulled out Talisman and they were hooked, requesting that we play every chance they could. My kids likewise go through stages when they demand we pull it off the shelf so we’ve invested in various iterations that The OP Games has put out, including the Star Wars version.

The original game was fantasy flavoured with an expansion adding scifi elements lightly lifted from Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40k setting but the prototype design was based on British schools (no really) so the mechanics lend themselves to practically any setting and given the ubiquitous popularity of Star Wars, this pairing was, if not inevitable, certainly predictable. There’s also Batman version along with Harry Potter, My Little Pony, and Kingdom Hearts. As kf

In Talisman, you roll dice, move around a board, draw cards, fight monsters, collect followers and objects, level up, and eventually work your way into the middle (if you possess the titular Talisman or equivalent object) to win the game. The Star Wars swaps out swords for blasters, orcs for stormtroopers, good vs evil alignments for light vs dark side and graveyards for Mustafar. Otherwise, the only real changes are using the dark and light side alignment matter with interacting with different characters so you don’t wind up with Luke Skywalker going on space adventures with Grand Moff Tarkin and the end game which has players fighting the Emperor rather than each other.

The art is decent but not amazing. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a mash up like this. Some of the stats don’t make a ton of sense thematically but all in all it’s a solid workhorse game that gets you through all the beats of fighting folks and getting stuff which is the hallmark of these sorts of games. If you have any one iteration of Talisman you essentially know what any other kind will be like so collecting multiple versions isn’t particularly necessary but especially if you have kids with particular tastes, having options can be enjoyable.

I still prefer the clunky 80s-ness of the original.

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Heart

Posted on June 20, 2025 by Leeman

Tragedy is a challenging theme for roleplaying games to explore. When pitching a game to friends, GMs often have an easier time evoking images of heroes and/or scoundrels gaining fame, power, and riches rather than offering up a literal descent into a turbulent , kaleidoscopic hellscape which will inevitably end in some sort of personal loss or destruction. However, I think GMs would do well to listen to my 5th grader’s teacher who was fond of saying, “you can do difficult things!” Rowan Rook and Decard agree and offer some enticing qualities in their Ennie award winning game Heart to help you make the pitch.

Set in the same drow world and literally the same zip code as Spire, Heart replaces the espionage and steampunk shadowrunning of its sibling for what at first glance appears to be a more traditional dungeon diving game. Players are a ragtag group of social misfits with dangerous powers and apparently no responsibilities to attend to beyond exploring, fighting, pilfering, and occasionally returning to society to recuperate and sell their questionably acquired goods. Like Spire, players have skills, areas of expertise, unique abilities, and questionable gear to help them overcome challenges while taking damage not only to their physical frame but to their sanity, souls, and credit score.

From the get go, this game departs from their well worn grooves of the mainstay of the hobby. First off, unlike most games, they are asked to explicitly state why they are choosing to forego the relative safety of uhhh not dungeon diving to their current occupation. This question of motivation is not just a fluffy one for drama majors to consider but has mechanical impacts, indeed it determines how you level up and gain new powers. It’s not enough to bash a requisite number of lizardmen, acquire enough diadems, or even just get to whatever chapter break your GM has written down; players have a laundry list of Beats and every session they give two of these beats to the GM like a sushi order. These can be to take a certain amount and kind of damage, to explore a particular locale, betray a loved one, undergo a ritual, etc. The GM is expected to take all these Beats and use them as guidelines to direct how a particular session or campaign goes. This means that whether the heroes are motivated by helping communities thrive, uncovering dangerous secrets, or because shady cultists are blackmailing them has huge ramifications on what happens in any given game and if they want to get the shiny new abilities that come with leveling up, they have to cooperate with the GM to reach those Beats.

The powers and abilities come with the player’s class which are a carnival mirror reflection of traditional fantasy games. Instead of Fighters you have Dogs who are sort of reincarnated members of a doomed regiment. Instead of Rangers you have Carvers who lust for the blood and viscera of the creatures dwelling in the Heart to imbue themselves with feral power. Instead of Clerics you have Heretics who can’t show their face in the City Above but are free to worship their seemingly indifferent lunar goddess in her various forms down here. Instead of Bards you can be a Deep Apiarist and just be full of bees. All of these classes have a tantalizing menu of powers that are unlocked by meeting the Beats. There are corresponding Minor, Major, and Zenith beats and abilities and deciding when you want to risk going after the higher powers is a huge part of the gameplay. In theory, players could swim in the shallows of minor Beats and powers indefinitely but the game breaking opportunities that always sing out from these lists prompt them to delve into deeper and stranger perils.

The process of delving is mechanically defined even as it’s given a lot of room for improvisation and on the fly storytelling. The game makes distinctions between Landmarks which are defined locations, communities, temples, dangerous and psychedelic abattoirs, etc and Delves which are the tunnels and passages and liminal spaces that connect them. Each of these areas are made of thematic Domains which provide color and also tie in to player expertise. Religious characters will be more adept at navigating Religious spaces while Wild characters will come into their own handling encounters in Wild areas and so on. The game suggests mixing and matching these Domains particularly in the connecting Delves which gives the GM the creative prompt of trying to imagine what a Wild and Religious space or Desolate and Technological corridor would look like. Another rule is treating the Delve almost as its own ongoing combat with the equivalent of hit points which go down as the players explore or overcome challenges, or use their ever increasing powers to blast short cuts. This is a clever way to abstract the travel process without having to map out every hallway or 10 by 10 room and let everyone have a sense of progress. It’s similar to the countdown clocks in Blades In the Dark which is a system I really like for making it clear to the table what’s at stake and how the pacing is ticking along.

Beyond the vivid setting and body horror, what truly gives Heart its unique drive is that commitment to tragedy and game architecture that takes you there. Characters can always give up and leave which is one tragic ending or they can continue to burrow deeper looking for what brought them down here and maybe even achieve it and that’s a different tragic ending. What gives it all potency is that, like all the great tragedies, it’s all built on the choices they make. What it loses in this structure is the potential for sprawling, long term play that often defines other dungeon crawlers. This is not meant to be a marathon but a sprint where players see the gory finish line practically from the start.

I like Heart and while I think it might be a hard sell for a lot of groups, the ones that buy in have the potential for an immensely rewarding experience. It’s an ambitious game that takes big swings and doubles down on its core themes over trying to have broad appeal and I respect its artistry and its passion and look forward to getting hot and messy with it.

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Episode 90: Disney (Lost Episode)

Posted on June 9, 2025 by Leeman

Rachel and I talk about Disney!

Topics discussed and/or spoiled: Debs & Errol, Disneyland, and my Mad Disney Video,

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Episode 89: Rian Johnson (Lost Episode!)

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Leeman

We talk about the works of Rian Johnson. Originally aired on Facebook Live on May 11, 2020

Topics Discussed and/or spoiled: Knives Out, Last Jedi, Looper, my interview with Bill Slavicsek, and Inception.

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Episode 88: Mike Schur TV (Lost Episode!)

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Leeman

Rachel and I talk about all the great TV that Mike Schur has been up to his elbows in over the years. First aired on Facebook Live on May 4, 2020

Topics discussed: Taika Waititi’s still as of 2025 untitled star wars project, The Mandalorian, Parks & Recreation, Good Place, Brooklyn 99, and The Office(s)

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Episode 87: Musical Theater (Lost Episode!)

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Leeman

The first of our Lost Episodes series! Technically they haven’t been lost yet but with Facebook removing all old live videos at the end of the month, we wanted to make sure there was a home for our COVID-era episodes, starting with our musings on all things both musical and theatrical from April 27, 2020!

Topics discussed: Crazy Ex Girlfriend, The Sondheim Celebration, Les Mis, Hamilton, Hadestown, SIX, Come From Away, Wicked, Parade, Urinetown, Sweeney Todd, Phantom, Zip!, Into the Woods, Free Solo, 127 Hours, Avenue Q, Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma, Cinderella, Sound of Music, Gigi, Gypsy, Beetlejuice, Mama Mia, Galavant, Glee, Greatest Showman, La La Land, Buffy Musical, That Song In Every Musical That No One Likes, and Aladdin

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War of Whispers

Posted on May 3, 2025 by Leeman

There are many games where players move armies around a map to seize and hold territory in order to secure victory. These games can have a King of the Mountain energy where obvious winners inspire other players to set aside their differences to unite in dragging them down or neck and neck players try to convince everyone else at the table that their rival is the real danger, not them. From classics like Risk to Diplomacy to big chunky wargames like Twilight Imperium or Game of Thrones, these games are often big, long, affairs where hours of planning and maneuvering are rewarded or not. War of Whispers by contrast is a fast game lasting only 4 rounds and around an hour and yet in that time it manages to capture a lot of the elements that makes those larger games so compelling while also subverting them.

In War of Whispers, players are not representing the different empires and kingdoms at war but rather the secret societies, cults, and conspiracies maneuvering in the shadows and manipulating these larger forces. They’ll share control of the kingdoms and try to manipulate the wars to their favour.

At the start of the game players randomly shuffle their ranking of the different kingdoms that will determine how many points they’ll gain or lose depending on how the war shakes out. In this way the game has more in common with gambling on a horse race or buying stocks than with just straight up trying to grab Kamchatka before anyone else. These rankings are secret and keeping that information privileged helps prevent your rivals from sabotaging your goals. However, empires fall and sometimes it pays to switch bets so between rounds, players can swap their rankings between two kingdoms but in so doing they flip over their tiles and reveal what their new rankings are.

Every round, players assign agents to the different officers tasked with running this war which gives them the ability muster troops, draw cards, and attack rival kingdoms. There are no restrictions on how many agents from which factions can be on any given kingdom so you can very well see a turn where one player raises an army and another player sends that army in the complete opposite direction of where the first player wanted. Combat couldn’t be simpler with armies canceling each other out, no dice needed. The cards allow players to swap out actions or move armies around unexpectedly or can even cause dramatic upheavals.

As the game goes on, more and more agents get added and control gets more complicated as everyone gets a better idea who is in favor and who isn’t. By the end some kingdoms will be mighty empires astride their conquered rivals or burnt out war zones, or colonized husks of their former selves. When the smoke clears, players reveal all their rankings and score based on how many cities the kingdoms control.

War of Whispers is a deeply clever game that plays remarkably differently every time we bring it to table. There isn’t a great deal of table talk because so much of the game is trying to misdirect and hide your intentions although it can be a lot of fun to roleplay the hapless kingdoms who just can’t seem to catch a break. If players have similarly ranked kingdoms they can be unknowingly working together. Similarly when one kingdom is everyone’s bottom pick that creates hilarious devastation. It feels almost like a meta-war game with the grand schemes and bold tactics being reduced to opportunistic sabotage and sudden betrayals. The cards create the most unpredictable chaos and I can see them frustrating players with the way they can upend things but I appreciate the threat they pose and the arms race of collecting one’s own cards to have on hand to even things out.

I have the deluxe version which comes with the larger pieces which makes the board pop and apparently makes reading the board state a lot easier. It also adds additional cards that provide more variety. Not a deal breaker but definitely adds to the game experience. Whichever version, I have had great success putting this in front of my friends and heartily recommend.

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Earthborne Rangers

Posted on March 20, 2025 by Leeman

Folks who have been following this blog know I’m a sucker for a strong theme that grips the imagination and tells a story. Given that, one would be forgiven for assuming I hanker for big campaign or legacy games but fortunately for my wallet that isn’t the case. With the exception of a semi-burgled copy of Pandemic Legacy a friend left at my house and King’s Dilemma I’ve largely stayed away from Legacy games. When I learned about Earthborne Rangers and the way it carried players through a story while also being a game of exploration and ecological management I jumped at the chance.

The game uses cards, tokens, and a campaign book with different read-aloud entries to tell the story of rangers in a far future where humans have opted to live in greater harmony with the environment largely by leaving it alone for centuries before returning to the surface to explore and see how nature has healed. It’s comparable to a cozier Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Players take on the roles of 1 to 4 rangers with skills, gears, and personality aspects that they draw on and play to overcome challenges, connect with the people, beings, and places they come across, and travel around this lush and living world.

Like the best dresses, this game comes with pockets! The creators not only wanted to explore ecological and sustainability themes in their game but produced it to be as environmentally friendly as possible. This leads to an incredible economy of component that feels slick and flexible and robust without needing armies of plastic. With a map, a book, some cards, and an assortment of tokens, players have all the tools they need for adventure and exploration. The storage system neatly allows for quick and easy set up and take down and the game state can be saved to allow for resuming the campaign easily without needing a ton of administration.

At the start of the campaign, players construct a personal Ranger deck either on their own or using a structured Prologue the campaign book provides that walks them through all the different types of cards that go into their deck (as a secret third way, you can also use the premade decks so you can jump right in to the action.) Decks are made up of personality cards, backgrounds that represent your early training, specialities that determines your Role and act like RPG classes, and then an outside interest that can be drawn from any of the starting cards to allow some flexibility and customizing. Along with these decks rangers also choose an Aspect card with 1 to 3 points allocated to four main stats that will get used to determine what all they can do – Awareness, Spirit, Fitness, and Focus.

The campaign is played out in Days which corresponds roughly with an individual game session. At the start of the Day, players draw their hand from their Ranger deck and put energy tokens on their Aspect card. Based on where they last ended their campaign they set out a Location card and create a Path deck based on the environment they’ve been traveling through (woods, grasslands, swamp, mountains, etc) adding in cards based on their location or Valley cards which add random challenges and opportunities. The Path deck will have obstacles, plants, animals, and other humans who will help or hinder the rangers as they travel from location to location. Based on the day, there will be a weather card that will also impact the Rangers as they travel. Finally players will shuffle and set up the Challenge deck that both adds some chance to Tests as well as triggering Challenge Effects on cards already in play.

The Day is broken up into rounds where players will draw new Path cards and play them either directly in front of them (Within Reach) or between them and the current Location card (Along the Way) which represents the range of the particular card and who it can impact. Players can interact freely with cards within reach but if they try to interact with cards further away they run the risk of getting Fatigue. On their turn, players can spend energy tokens from their Aspect card to either play cards from their hands or to attempt Tests on the cards already in play.

Tests are carried out by spending the relevant token and discarding cards with symbols that match the Test and then drawing a Challenge card to see if the total is equal to or higher than the Test’s difficulty. Tests usually result in placing Progress or Harm tokens on different cards in order to Clear them out of the way which makes it easier to interact with other cards, reduces potentially harmful Challenge Effects, and can trigger mission or campaign entries. Players can choose to attempt any Test listed on cards in play or from the four basic tests that are available no matter what. These basic tests allow players to add Progress tokens to the current location in order to travel, adding Progress tokens to animals or humans, avoiding animals or humans by Exhausting (tapping) them, or drawing additional cards from their Ranger deck.

As the players run around they will frequently take Fatigue which pulls cards from their Ranger deck and sets it aside. Other cards and tests can Soothe Fatigue which places those set aside cards back in their hand. Players might also get Injured which increases the rate of Fatigue they take. If they take on too much Fatigue or Injuries and discard their deck down to the point that they can’t draw new cards, that can trigger the end of the Day so managing your health and Fatigue is important to be able to accomplish all you want in any game session. There is no death although taking too many Injuries can lead to players having to add Malady cards into their Ranger deck which junks it up going forward.

The round ends when all players have chosen to rest at which point they can choose to Travel if they have placed enough Progress tokens on their current location. This resets the play area and creates a new Path deck for players to explore. Regardless of if they travel or not, players then draw a card from their Ranger, put energy tokens back on their Aspect cards, Ready (untap) any Exhausted cards and then every player draws a new Path card and the next round begins.

This repeated round structure of spending energy, playing cards, making tests, managing Fatigue, and drawing new cards makes up the real core of the game and players have a lot of choices about how they want to interface with this world and it’s those choices that really bring this game to life. While the game can be played solo it really sings as a cooperative game as players can focus on areas where they’re more skilled and help one another where they aren’t as proficient. If one player is surrounded by snarling predators, their teammates can race to their rescue or leave them to work it out on their own.

A huge choice players have to make is when to move on to their next location as things may be getting dangerous and crowded but there might be fun people to interact with or missions that need to be worked on. Fulfilling these missions is a way to get Rewards which can be swapped into the Ranger deck to provide new options and show progress.

And sometimes you just want to play with your ferret.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Earthborne Rangers both as a solo game and with friends although I much prefer the latter. The game has all the fun of a choose one’s own adventure game, a roleplaying game, and a clever card game. The way the game triggers different effects and the various cards interact makes it feel alive. When you have a play space full of predators and prey and plant life all feeding or moving each other makes this feel like an ecosystem that responds to your actions as well as living and breathing on its own. There isn’t as much of an emphasis on fighting and taming nature but the possibility for that is there which makes the choice to try to live in peace feel like a genuine and weighted decision.

I’m already eyeing the various expansions but given what all this game starts off with, I will hopefully be able to hold off for some time but I could spend a lot of time in this cozy future. The folks who make it also have great online resources like music, printable character sheets, and standalone adventures if you want a break from the full campaign or want to gently introduce friends to it. Superb game. Highly recommended.

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