ISS Vanguard Review: A New Frontier for Narrative Games

[@BoardOfItReviews]

@BoardOfItReviews Hey everyone! We really appreciate you watching! If you found this helpful, please consider subscribing as it helps us grow our channel. More subscribers makes us more attractive to publishers, which allows us to collaborate with them and make more videos! It's costly and time consuming to make these videos, so we could really use the support! :)

[@fmgs31]

This looks like a really unbiased review, thank you! (You gained a new subscriber here). And man, I love those dogs!

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Thanks for the sub, we really appreciate it! We strive for unbiased reviews and I think it's one of the things our regular viewers really appreciate about us - we'll critique even our favourite games if we think there are aspects others won't like.

[@lergof0202]

Best review I’ve seen on it. About to do the first planet after the tutorial tonight. Hopefully the rules stick and I don’t have to spend a lot of time flipping through the book.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Hope you enjoyed your first play! I think the tutorial is pretty good at getting you through, so hopefully it wasn't an uphill struggle. Thanks for the lovely comment!

[@LenLindsay]

Wow - an excellent review ... I added it to My ISS Vanguard and am putting some highlights from your comments below the video window! Good Job.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Thank you for the effort! Appreciate it.

[@michaeldarling7169]

Love your well-rounded review! Can't wait for my copy to be delivered.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Hope you get it soon! Thank you!

[@eastargamemanufacturing6914]

Thank you so much for your video, it was very helpful for me to understand ISS Vanguard! 😊

[@BoardOfItReviews]

No problem, glad you enjoyed it!

[@Liszka0]

I've been looking forward to your review of this, gonna watch it as soon as I have the time :D

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Hope it's worth the wait.... :O

[@timoseppa9124]

Love the new table!

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Not as much as we do ;)

[@Deltium5683]

very good review, thanks

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Thank you!

[@Deltium5683]

@@BoardOfItReviews your dogs are adorable too. you should definitely include them in every video! 😀

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Ah thank you! We do try to, we used to be a lot better at making little skits for them in our reviews and definitely want to get back to that this year! 🐶

[@odgregg]

Good review. I'm about 50 hours in, but haven't got back to it for the last week. There are some great story moments so will be interested in your final review of the game.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Did you also pick up the expansion? Defo want to get our hands on that once we finish the campaign! And thanks!

[@odgregg]

@@BoardOfItReviews Yes, backed all game content in the original campaign. The Personnel Files is a great addon as well.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

@@odgregg Yea I also planned to get those!

[@samyoung2885]

Reminds me of theme for original Star Trek,( unknown, exploration, on your own, scientific vessel, etc....)

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Good Comparison!

[@MrKazyFreak]

Looking forward for my copy. Will most likely play solo as getting a group invested long term might be difficult. Thank you for the in-depth unbiased review. Would love to hear your thoughts post campaign.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

I think solo would be fine, it honestly wouldn't change too much :). I'd be tempted to play solo myself if Tallie would let me!

[@mpaice]

Did you ever finish the campaign?

[@BoardOfItReviews]

I did!

[@KingCommaAndrew]

Good to know that the game is so so, from your perspective. It's refreshing to have an honest review that isn't meant for hype, even when the publisher sent you a review copy. I think the game looks cool, but there's so much to keep track of and you mentioned that some of that happens mid-mission. Seems like it may be better off as a video game or an app-driven game.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

I wouldn't say we think it's so so, we enjoyed it a lot and wouldn't be surprised if it showed up on some end of year lists. More that like most games, it isn't perfect. You're right though about your worries, certainly things to consider! Thank you for all the kind words!

[@jeffersonwu952]

Nice review! How would you compare ISS Vanguard to other story telling games such as Sleeping Gods? Would the ISS experience motivate you into backing Tainted Grail 2? Thank you!

[@inotterwords6115]

I'm also particularly interested in the comparison to Sleeping Gods. I realize they're very different games, but I'm just interested in how they contrast.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Thanks! I would say that it's more engaging than most story telling games I've played but a direct comparison is a bit difficult with sleeping gods. In Sleeping Gods you go where you want, make your own choices, and kinda play with a timer in the background counting down. Vanguard is much more linear, although it does open up a bit later on. In SG you create your own story, while in Vanguard you're only part of the story. I do think the Ship Book is an improvement on how story-telling games handle equipment and upgrades - Sleeping Gods would certainly be improved with something similar IMO. Also, it is making me tempted to back Tainted Grail 2, whereas otherwise I don't think I would have, but I'm still on the fence.

[@inotterwords6115]

@@BoardOfItReviews thanks for the detailed response!

[@sAKecOkE]

Thank you for the review, wasn't even expecting it so a pleasant surprise :) ! The game just arrived recently and I haven't had time to get the first play yet, one thing I'm interested in though that I hope you may be able to give some insight on: What age rating would you give for ISS Vanguard? I was thinking to play this with a child, focusing on purely the exploration part and maybe some of the more interesting ship book decisions (they would be playing the planetary phases with the adults, and for the more "boring" parts that involve a lot of reading and abstract decisions, we'd sort of be the commander of the ship and they would only have to get involved if they wanted to or became interested in a specific ship project). You mentioned crew members dying, but is there a lot of violence / gruesome stuff (without going into spoilers) that would make it inappropriate for a 9-10 year old? Do you think a kid could enjoy this sort of "Action ISS Vanguard" version, or better to wait a few more years?

[@BoardOfItReviews]

The biggest issue I'd see is that you do have a decent amount of mid game setup and admin as we said, so it depends on if the child would begin to get a bit bored at times. Otherwise I don't see a problem. When we refer to dying, it's just that if you get 3 injuries on a mission, you roll a dice at the end to see if that character dies. There aren't any gruesome descriptions or anything. I think it would be okay with the adults doing upkeep as the core gameplay is straightforward, and usually you're only either moving or doing an action on the location you're at, which are all done the same way, by rolling dice. Thanks for watching!

[@blakecurry3880]

I would give the cooperative element a little more credit because deciding as a group who should be going down which path is still part of the discussion. Good review though.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Thank you!

[@ianwales9247]

Very nice thank you both. Useful to know. Some extra insights there I hadn't seen in (many) other videos. 20-30 hours of a game is a decent amount to give an opinion. Be interested to see a second review for sure. My group played Etherfields and our opinion after say 16 hours was very different further down the line. Maintaining interest is difficult.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

As for now we aren't really bored of any part of the game - the Ship Book (and upgrading) plus the difference between the scenarios, plus the story are keeping us very engaged and making us want to continue. As we said, we are now a bit tired of the dice checks which require you to get multiple successes, but that's only a minor issue. How did you find Etherfields?

[@ianwales9247]

@@BoardOfItReviews thanks for the response. Etherfields had huge potential. Started off excellent with a great story and great mechanics (use of cards rather than dice). We loved it. Over time we realised that the characters didn't really evolve THAT much. The story was good but quite vague and it wasn't getting somewhere quickly enough. It also forced you to repeat some elements which felt like a chore. It was a shame. We gave up and didn't get to see if this would change at all. It's not that it was a terrible game by any means just that it dominates so much table time and there are better games out there. Big caveat: we have a 5 player group. This will have slowed the game down dramatically and maybe if we could have got through more quicker we would have seen the game develop more. The game was also quite easy. The only failures were story driven and we never really felt threatened so the focus was mainly the story and for us there just wasn't enough of a cohesive story. Also we didn't feel there were many clues towards making the decisions in the game so it became 50/50. What we found ourselves doing is choosing an option and then looking at both outcomes and picking the one we felt was in the spirit of our choice. Oooff sorry long answer...

[@BoardOfItReviews]

@@ianwales9247 Thanks for the write up!

[@ianwales9247]

@@BoardOfItReviews 😂

[@lotusmoon2744]

Thank you for this review, it was immensely helpful. I've been following along and watching this game since before the campaign launched, but decided to wait to pledge until after reviews came out considering what happened with Etherfields. I went all-in on that game, and while i think it has strong points, it was very hard to table and the rules were a mess. Also consequently, the reviews of that game were mostly negative which was also disheartening. Because of such, I did not want to fall for the hype of another huge narrative game from Awaken Realms before hearing reviews on it first. To be clear though, I do love narrative games as well as sci-fi so for sure I thought this would be a no brainer. Besides being cautious however, the ship binder was a bit of a worry for me since it looked tedious like homework. I'm glad to hear it is engaging. Also the dice gameplay worried me that it would get repetitive or dull after a long campaign, and I still have some of that worry. But after hearing your review as well as hearing from others, I think this is definitely a game I will want to play. Thanks again!

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Yea we fully recommend Vanguard. As I said somewhere else, I think even if the dice gameplay becomes a bit tedious, the strength of other areas of the game (the story, the Ship Book) really does keep you engaged and wanting to play more. As we kinda alluded to, we didn't have much interest in Vanguard prior to being offered a review copy, but it's almost certainly the best surprise of the year, and I wouldn't be surprised for it to be on our top ten list for the year...unless it all goes wrong from here on out...

[@Swedgin23]

Did you play with just the two of you? I know when I play a legacy game, my friends and I really get into the role play aspect so those repetitive dice checks get punched up with our own silly banter. I can’t really imagine doing a legacy type game with less than four, because we’ll create filler story and the like to help those lulls.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Yea just the two of us. You and your team would need a hell of an imagination then in our opinion! The dice rolls are really abstracted (to us) - I don't know how you can role play spending 3 green dice but we're probably just unimaginative philistines ;)!

[@Swedgin23]

@@BoardOfItReviews I was thinking like - man that away team that died (and gave us a morale boost) were just the worst group of pretentious hipsters. I’m glad the planet got them. Or - maybe I should’ve studied in class so this [task] wouldn’t take so long. That’s what I get for majoring in art history instead of mechanics. Nothing serious.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Could give it a go next time! I guess we just didn’t think of it so far as you don’t get so much of a sense of character in this game since they are essentially disposable each round and don’t have any backstory as opposed to other narrative games where you might keep the same character for longer, so the role playing here doesn’t come so naturally. Certainly worth a shot though!

[@simpelton524]

Doggos. Doggos. What was this video about again? I don't care, doggos!!!

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Haha, the doggos appreciate the love and support!! 😅

[@davidsimpson4046]

The guys raised intonation at the end of every single sentence is really hard to listen to. Sorry, just being honest. Talk normally, it sounds better

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Just how I talk my dude - I don't decide to alter my voice and do random intonations just to annoy viewers.