Unbreakable vs Undertow | Too Many Bones review

[@adamspohn6919]

Just a quick correction. You mentioned that skills like borrowed time have pre reqs because of the green line on the mat. Not the case. If it has a star symbol it can be trained at any time. You could train Borrowed Time as your first skill in the beginning of the game. If it has an arrow then that shows the pre req. The skill above it "Waypoint" does have a pre req. So you could train Warp as your first skill in the game because it has a star. Then train Waypoint after that. The green line just shows the dice on that mat of that dice tree. In this case green color.

[@RoomandBoardReviews]

Thanks! Guess I misspoke while trying to be brief :)

[@adamspohn6919]

@@RoomandBoardReviews I assumed you haven't played the game that way for 2 years because that would make grinding those tech trees even harder. Just wanted to clarify for the new player because yes that would make it even worse to only get 4 or 5 skill dice every game and have them always be the same first ones in the color line.

[@TableTopTroubadour]

Gale is actually incredible, and in fact, maybe a bit overpowered. And actually, I think newbies like to pursue skills over stats (cuz they're fun), then people with a little skill under their belts advance stats over skills, then advanced players return to a combination.

[@nraw_]

Our house rule is you're allowed to throw the special dice more than once if that doesn't break the game in some way and if other players agree. We needed to fix the idea that the best way to go is just to improve attack in some way and this felt like the most fun way.

[@Herodragon9]

I was thinking of doing something similar, but with a caveat for balance. When you use a skill die that doesn’t immediately return to your skill tree area exhaust it as usual. At the start of your next turn, Skill dice in the exhausted area move to your preparation area on your player mat (the spot that has your gearloc’s picture where buff HP and bots for Tink go). At the start of your next turn any Skill dice in your preparation area move to your skill tree and are free to use again. This variant should still present the tactical puzzle by allowing you to manage skills like cooldowns as opposed to one time use abilities. The goal is to retain most of the design intent without reducing longer battles to stat dice checks.

[@CommDante]

@@Herodragon9 Sounds a bit like how they do it with Elder Scrolls and the stamina bar. Maybe limit it to the dex per turn. ;)

[@Herodragon9]

@@CommDante the could add an element of choice and balance it even more. I tried a game with my version of the house rules with some new players recently and they felt that the game was still challenging, but way more fun when your character feels special and more tuned for a role. There were periods where we were trying to survive until our skill cooldowns came back, especially against the break baddies.

[@Thebrad11984]

Good video. I love too many bones. I’ve never been drawn to just go for base stats in the game but I tend to play by the rule of cool. If it sounds cool and fun I’m going to go for it rather than just what will make the game easiest. The skill dice can just lead to some truly epic and thematic turns. I put undertow over unbreakable as well. I love unbreakable for the new and interesting puzzles it creates and the tyrants are more challenging but overall it adds to the barrier of entry for the game. I’ve always told people too many bones isn’t that hard once you get the basics of the enemies down so that goes out the window with unbreakable because you also have to learn how the map gets manipulated. I love all three versions but unbreakable I can’t recommend to anyone unless they have played the other versions enough to know them well

[@blinkTCG]

I started with Unbreakable as it was all my LGS had, and I agree with your points, it's PROBABLY best to wait to buy it until you have at least the base set / undertow, BUT I do credit it with getting me on the TMB train and I still absolutely loved it as a first experience. You also do bring up a good point that many folks echo on the idea that investing into your stats often feels better than the actual skills, however on longer Tyrants, and definitely different Gearlocs (Ghillie for example) the skill dice feel great to upgrade and add versatility to your kit that you wouldn't have simply by just getting more attack/dex. Great review!

[@ptastydactyl]

I absolutely love TMB! I got Undertow as your recommendation of the best place to start and now I want EVERYTHING! I''m saving up to add it to my Elder Scrolls pledge whenever I complete it. Unfortunately the trove chest isn't available but honestly, as much as I do want everything TMB, I likely won't get it all as it would be well over $1000 for everything. =*( Thank you for this great recommendation Chris!

[@panagiotisxanthoulis7552]

Very nice video as always! U are one of the best youtubers in the field. Ur opinions helped me many times to decide what to do. Thank you

[@RoomandBoardReviews]

Aw thanks for saying so :) I'm glad to be helpful!

[@Twineandribbon]

I quite like Unbreakable but Undertow is still the MVP here, and I for one even like core game more too. I do think Figment is one of my favorite Gearlocs to come along. Side note, I feel like you're arguing against your own points when complaining that you think investing in stats is the obvious must-use strategy and then also complaining that Cynder is too difficult... Yes. Exactly. If every enemy were vanilla then just getting max stats would be fine, but there are a lot of enemies with special abilities that counter this strategy, and if you don't diversify your repertoire of skills, you'll just die. Cynder is a prime example of this, where you really can't rely on brute forcing it; you need battlefield manipulation. Break is another one. Yes you could try to overcompensate by just maxing out your Attack stat, but what happens when you run into some 5 pt baddie with break and 7 hp? Bleed, Poison, or any alt damage methods are all WAY more effective a tool than just frontloading base stats at that point.

[@RoomandBoardReviews]

Yeah, I guess I get that aspect. I think TMB always has left me with, ah I wish I could have upgraded more on the tech tree, which I think is by design and keeps me coming back for more and trying more builds. Which is a great thing, I think that's the most important aspect of replayable engine builders is knowing you can't do everything and not being able to unlock everything or then it becomes repetitive. But it also makes for a bit of a repetitive early game for me, which is why I enjoy playing with those initial stat bumps so I can spend more time with the fun stuff, because the dice and special abilities are just so fun I wish I got to spend more time with them, and my games never seem to work out that way. And I'm in the middle again, haha, arguing against myself, but it makes it so hard to evaluate if I love it or if I'm tricking myself haha

[@CommDante]

@@RoomandBoardReviews I guess that's where the campaign mode comes in? But most likely we're alike in just wanting to mostly just wanna play one offs with TMB. However, going through some of the comments here made me realise that we can easily just 'change the rules'. . Why not start at day 5? Give your gearloc 6 'stat/skill points' and 2 loot cards and play as if your first encounter as day 6 (skip the 1-3*, saves a lot of repitition at the start if you don't have the 40 Waves too). There is one boss that would go past the first side of the day-counter (as the Tyrant day limit would go +5 too and dragon one if 11 days limit, would become day 16) ...but that's just by one day. This would not only give you a more mid-campaign experience, battle larger enemies and groups (in solo it's pretty hard to even see a L20 baddy), but also let's you have more fun with more skills to toy around with while skipping the boring (and repetitive) first few days. :D

[@Hansi251]

So, I basically have to defend gale. First of all if you rly wanna go for efficiency health is basically a trap, because its one use per battle, instead go for def. I agree that the movement of Gale is somewhat lacking, but Status Immunity is awesome. And the best by far the dmg tree is much better than just use at range. It makes your 3 dmg skills into 3 poison/bleed skills, which is massive. It makes the pure dmg one potentially one shot a 5p baddie, but even in its worst case its 4 dmg (assuming the poison case). I think Gale is brilliant. You get Innate +1, you do your 3 bones plan, get the poison/bleed effect and now you are a dmg monster! That it amazing progression in my opinion.

[@Hansi251]

To add some context. I started with UB and mostly play solo/solo 2h.

[@RoomandBoardReviews]

Yeah Status Immunity does seem like the way to go, I guess I don't like that you're incentivized to prolong those initial fights to just try and roll as many bones as possible, because I agree Innate +1 and unlocking a slot are so so good, but it just feels like you have to prioritize getting those bones so early on.

[@libablo]

Was going to mention that the tech tree example you gave wasn’t great lol - only two of figment’s green profession have prerequisites! Yeah, you haven’t got the best characters to demonstrate how good skills are. Gasket’s skill die don’t exhaust, tink and ghillie have companions that are on the field as long as their health lasts, and there are multiple characters that can attack multiple baddies at once with skills, as opposed to attack die being limited to a single target each round. It’s not so noticeable if you are always playing solo or 2 player, but some 5 and 20 point baddies, which are a lot more prevalent at 3 or 4 players, almost require some skill die to be used to defeat them. Not the biggest fan of characters heavily relying on their backup plans either, but Polaris is a definite exception to this; the orbs take a degree of familiarity to wield well, but damn she can be surprisingly deadly once you get the hang of her. Riffle is another one where you would be hard pressed to work well without investing outside of their base stats. Trust me, there are a lot more duster type characters available than there are stanzas lol. Wholeheartedly agree that unbreakable is probably the last expansion you want to get for the series; undertow is the best gameplay mechanics wise, but you get a lot more variety in the base game. Unbreakable seemed like every baddie was either poison, lava oriented, or breaking your dice (ie sword breaker), so it kinda seems a lot more grindy compared to the other titles. That being said, once you have worked through other tyrants before, Cinder was a cool head scratcher of a puzzle for us to sort out a solution to. Definitely has its place, but i don’t think it’s the best starting point for new players.

[@RoomandBoardReviews]

Yeah definitely agree, that's cool to hear about the other gearlocs, guess I'll have to add them to my collection next :)

[@DumahAtreides]

I need to get more plays in, but I enjoyed the puzzle I had with Unbreakable map mechanisms and think it's an upgrade on core maps. While Figment was the better of the two, I still had a lot of fun with Gale. Polaris was my standout fav though.

[@shannimarmen8201]

Making me want to play TMB instead of work right now

[@matissmatiss3126]

Is it last or latest ? 😃

[@HansJoachimMaier]

I am a massive TMB fanboy (yes, I have everything) and I totally agree with your critique about Unbreakable.

[@RoomandBoardReviews]

That's great to hear, I'm always wary having not played everything, but glad you agree

[@HansJoachimMaier]

@@RoomandBoardReviews I haven't played anything either, even TMB is the game I've invested the most playtime in (Too many good board games in our shelf :D Oh, and I've had played TMB with 4 players. Never ever again. 2 players is my favorite player count. 3 is ok. The battle map is too cramped. When teaching the game to new players, I prefer to stay aside and play the role of a GM.

[@FK-Jaja]

core game is better than undertow? not sure which one get

[@RoomandBoardReviews]

Unfortunately I haven't tried the core game, I think it depends on if you want the extra gearlocs or not. I'd say core game is likely better, since the characters are probably less complicated, or you could pick up Undertow and a couple other characters if you wanted more complexity. But with the base you also don't have to worry about housing extra characters in a different box, so I'd say fairly comparable depending on what you value.

[@GG4GJake]

I think undertow is the best. Though base has most content and i think TMB is best with 3 players

[@FK-Jaja]

@@GG4GJake what about unbreakable?

[@GG4GJake]

@@FK-Jaja it's the most complex for sure. I wouldn't recommend it being the first set you buy.

[@bhelmore1]

The base game provides significantly more variety in both baddies and gearlocs. Undertow is a good starting point, but I'd get bored with it pretty quickly because of its lack of variety.

[@babylonsfall7]

12:20 - totally agree. And because of this fact, the game lost its appeal for me....that and 3-4 hours of playing only to run out of time here and there.

[@VaultBoy13]

I didn't know that about the special abilities being a one-time use. That's kind of disappointing. The fun, for me, in these kinds of systems is the special abilities. I want to unlock a special ability and at least be able to use it in every fight after that.

[@RoomandBoardReviews]

Oh yeah sorry one time use per fight/round. So until you clear the board of baddies and move on to the next day you can't use them again. But you can use them in every fight just not every roll

[@CommDante]

There are also Gearlocs that have skills that stay active entire battle or even able to 'lock' (stay active once activated, even between battles), or have pets/machines which can be upgraded with skills etc. Some skills do extra stuff as long as you've got the 'counter' for it, like batteries or gas canisters etc. Some even have skills or abilities able to be used outside of battle. . Also: Gasket is not a 'Gearloc' ;) .. it's a machine, so it's dice don't exhaust dice at all (but he does need water tanks/pressure). So might be one you might want to look into. It also can't bleed, get poisoned etc.