This was during the open playtesting phase before finalization and adjustments. It has been too long for me to know just how much was adjusted but I know this influenced quite a few small shifts and updates.

should be the basic inquis 18alch 2arti

@@thorstenfrings8690 well considering there are three tree's, I was wondering if he found things that helped on certain tree's to maybe offset DR for things or get decent effects still with 2 less levels of alchemist as you level up.

So it's a year later and I'm obviously not the poster, but signalling a white 1 from Koolant's seat would be very loose there, since he has every reason to believe he has a known white 1 in his hand. Spending a clue to identify a duplicate is a waste of a clue that could signal something actually usable. As it happens, it wasn't a white 1 in his hand, it was multi, but from Koolant's perspective he should be assuming it's white, and therefore any white ones he sees are unimportant until he is given reason to believe otherwise.

Thanks! Did you check out the other view of it? www.twitch.tv/videos/697218085 Will have to head to the 6:59 mark to jump to finals

@@josephsumma3430 great gameplay & commentary! That link is broken now, are you still available to follow on twitch?

Good to know! BGA has an easy way to check (if they make that information public) I just didn't actually look into it and defaulted to pronouns when joining a random table of experienced players to do a demo video. Thanks for watching!

Since this video they have tuned and changed a few cards/wording partially based on feedback from the community. They have also released a new wave of cards and a whole new scenario. There is talk about a whole book full of scenarios and there are some surprises held back for the kickstarter campaign to keep the excitement high.

@@josephsumma3430 Thanks. This seemed like a regular retail corebox of content., So I was hoping there would be more stuff in stretchgoals/addons and so on.

@@robinrosendahl7586 We will find out Tuesday! It definitely will have a ton of stuff like that. Including things not just for tactics such as a collectors big box for ascension deckbuilding.

In this variant of the game with the wild, you can’t say it’s multicoloured, the multi is just considered any colour.

Rainbow isnt a color choice on very hard difficulty. Only the standard 5 colors and rainbow show up in any color clue (only marked as rainbow if you were told it is both one color and another). But saying it is his only 1 doesn't tell him anything about the rest of his hand. Telling him that 3 of his cards are not white and not rainbow might be useful later. Most useful of all though is that it marks the 5 so he will hold it. That is his rightmost card and the first one he would discard whenever he decides to do that. He needs to know to hold onto it and an entire clue to tell him it is a 5 is pretty useless since the info means nothing till late in the game. White or red gets a 5 hold safely and gets the 1 down on the table and some negative color information for later. Very efficient clue overall.

Xe Yoshi that depends... got lucky on this one. What has Mr Nezzy been up to?

@@josephsumma3430 same old same old... living the lockdown dream as it were... how about you?

@@josephsumma3430 only 1 reply? feelsbadman

There are fewer constructs than most sets have overall. Really only 2 in each faction except mechana (and one of those is always a pasythea all faction thingy). The easy destruction and expensive investment in upgraded mechana transforms has made that strategy feel highly conditional. I see the constructs bought for honor more than for their effects in the mechana line (except the big two).

@@josephsumma3430 Ah ok. That's too bad really, the transforming constructs seemed like a really cool strategy otherwise.

1A) I don't overprioritize lifebound unless I get an early Hakua, Kat, or two of the gain honor guys come out early (even if my opponent has one it still puts a faster clock on the overall game pace). When you spend crew is the critical part of this set. Many players spend it early and often to inflate their deck with some better stuff and feel a few rounds ahead. I tried to point out which cards I am willing to spend early on with crew. But normally I save crew for massive crew gain cards or a big kraken kill. I do hide loot under the kraken fairly often so investing in huge power deck or making sure to save the 9 crew first is important to me. 2A) The conflict is usually quite enjoyable in 2 player games. It actually feels less mean than infest does and very rarely has the massive swings we regularly see in the final round of valley. That doesn't mean it won't happen. In my world championship match against Hai (from Hai's waveblades), the first time we ever played, he had a massive early advantage and everything fell his way and came out with 3-5 treasure under it. He also had more raid cards so I hid all my treasure under the kraken right from the start of the game. Then in the final round as second player I killed monsters that let me raid him 3 times and killed the kraken to reclaim the big treasure pile. I might have these numbers slightly off but it was close to this in the swing: he had 4 crystals (16 points) and I took 3 of them to subtract 15 from him. Then I picked up a 4th from the kraken and got up to 16. The other 3 gold from the kraken pile made the treasure be an extra 34 points of difference in our swing scores. Since I invested all in on the kraken pile and all the crystals but 1 came out it was the highest swing I have seen. Valley regularly is a 40 point swing so even in bar far the most edge case game we didnt hit that level of nonsense. Note I said in 2 player games. In 3 and 4 player games, someone almost always feels out of control on grabbing raid cards and the multiple ships on the board makes it impossible to play keep away even with lots of movement boosts. The person who gets no agency towards raiding usually loses if enough treasure flipped from the deck (more players means more treasure on average and it gets collected into 2 piles usually). But for 2 player it feels quite solid. 3A) Gift of the elements and Storm of Souls are my top 2 favorites for competitive play given the way they feel and how balanced they are. Realms Unraveled is my top for recommending to new players. Big combos, no construct destruction, and clear incentives for a coherent deck with multi-unite makes it an ideal starting place and people will know if ascension is not at all for them after playing it. Skulls falls firmly in the upper half of the sets. Well above energy sets, base set, dawn of champions, and valley down at the bottom. In the middle priority sets with Immortal Heroes, Delirium, Deliverance, Skulls and Sails, and Dreamscape.

@@josephsumma3430 Thank you for the through response! I mostly play ascension in groups (3 person, 2v2, or 2v2v2) so this set may not be the best choice for me. When I play 1v1 it's usually vs my wife and she doesn't like conflict style games. Thank you so much for this review of the set.

It is how many total tiles are in the stack. The visual often glitches when people toss out tiles to scout for even more at once. Reload your browser to make sure the count is accurate

Yup I just subscribed as well! It's been a year and a half since the last set review but I'm still hoping!!

I play a lot of games and many of them I first learn online. This is easily the most exciting new release in quite a while. I had never heard of it but am already sending all my friends to check it out. A lot of deduction games are either keyed to bluffing and a group of mixed good/bad liars doesn't always work well. The others have these complex logic grids and "go fish" style mechanics. I like those but they cannot be played fast enough for some more casual players to avoid the complete brain melt. The 3 mini-games and balance of play with investigator use... yeah just this is a perfect game in my opinion having only played it for a day.

Joseph Summa I'm really curious how well this will be received by the BGA community. I always hesitated to introduce new players to it, because it is kinda special (and not exactly beautiful). But for most people that are even remotely interested in deduction it has always been a hit.

I think it will be a HUGE hit. There will be dozens of tournaments constantly. I will be setting up many myself once it exits beta. I also plan to setup 3/4 player tournaments in Discord group as well. Honestly this will probably be in the top 15 games on BGA. This is the perfect format for a game like this. It plays very well turn based and doesn't takes ages in real time either.

Joseph Summa that would be amazing. I have no clue, really. :D

I can't quite make out your player name for a challenge. Mine is Mr_Magic if you want to send me a turn based game