Ashes: Reborn Red Rains Review - Coop Ashes

[@Shelfside]

RULES ERROR: Since exhausted cards have no effect, you CAN actually target Lurk once its exhausted. This removes that con, but keeps our final score the same. Also, you MUST play cards to the right of your existing units. You can still play around with positioning for sure, but don't have as much freedom as said in this vid. Written review: www.shelfside.co/reviews-2023/ashesredrains-review

[@jeremydelaporte3770]

Hey there! Playtester here -- nice to see more reviews of Red Rains! You covered everything really well and this was entertaining to watch. I did have a couple of important notes though: 1. Re: positioning your units -- new player units *must* enter play to the right of all other units in play. You can't choose to put a unit into play on the leftmost side, which was shown at 8:15. This means that you have to plan ahead on your unit placement. 2. I saw that you don't utilize exhaustion tokens and instead tap cards and that's a pretty big issue with the way Ashes works, since exhaustion tokens can stack and only one exhaustion token gets removed each round during the Recovery phase. Very important to use the exhaustion tokens, because many mechanics are designed around them! (Also turning a Phoenixborn sideways is used to indicate that your once per round Guard has been used, so that could cause confusion!) Others have pointed out the Lurk thing, so I won't belabor that. Lurk is definitely a beast sometimes, but he can be handled fairly easily with a cheap unit chump blocking him and then pinged by a single damage :). I will echo what others have said and say that I think every playstyle in PvP Ashes is absolutely viable in Red Rains, especially Mill! Keep in mind that the Chimera's deck is about 2/3 the size of a normal player deck and it goes through its deck *faster* than players at higher difficulties, so fatigue is reached much quicker. On top of that, Chimera discards from draw effects before fatigue which accelerates the process. Mill is a very fun way to play against Chimera! I think the criticisms against the RNG in this mode are warranted, especially for an Ashes fan, but I do think they go a long way towards ensuring that this mode has high replay value and decent challenge. I personally find the higher variance in Red Rains to be a feature and not a bug, and it's a nice palette cleanser coming from a lot of tight, high skill ceiling PvP Ashes matches. Last note -- you can deck build for the Chimera too instead of sticking to the premade Aspect decks, which will only add more replay value in the future especially as the card pool grows. :) Anyway, thanks for the video! Hope you had fun with the game!

[@Shelfside]

Whoa thanks for this writeup man! Yeah looks like I really need to use those Exhaustion tokens and get that positioning more dialed in. Excited to play this one again! -Ashton

[@Quizoid]

@@ShelfsideAlso, exhaustion tokens are “tokens” and so sometimes that matters, like with effects that count or remove “tokens”.

[@patrickpmcbride]

Thanks for the shout out, it's cool seeing you able to dig deeper with the stuff I sent over. Now open up that divine dice deck!

[@ashtonwu7760]

Haha will do! Hymntide has been really fun

[@ashes-live]

@@ashtonwu7760 If you're playing campaigns, the Divine box also has Meteor and Winged Lioness, both of which are fantastically useful cards against the Chimera during your first deck-building session. 🙂

[@ashes-live]

To answer a couple of questions from the video about deck construction: if you're using a competitive constructed deck, you'll probably want to play the Chimera at Heroic level 1 or 2. I don't personally love playing traditional constructed decks against the Chimera (because I'd rather play them against a human), but it can be fun to build decks specifically intended to cheese the Chimera. It's not a good indicator of the quality of a constructed deck for PvP, though, because the Chimera is such a dumb-dumb. The comment that building decks in Ashes doesn't provide very much variety...I don't even know what to do with that. 😅 Especially compared to something like Netrunner where you're constrained by factions, deck building in Ashes is wide open; there's a ton of variety. Granted, there are some people who are unhappy because the gameplay is not very asymmetric; folks see that you can play mill and believe that means you can just ignore the battlefield and do your own thing, which is absolutely not the case. Every deck has to focus on the battlefield to some extent, or it will just straight lose (thanks to access to repeatable units via the spellboard), but if that's not a deal-breaker for someone then there are a very wide variety of viable strategies even at the top level of play.

[@ashes-live]

"Is milling viable?" Emphatically, yes! I generally hate playing mill decks in competitive Ashes, but it's a ton of fun against the Chimera. Saria specifically is alright (Abundance can do a ton of work, but is a little slower given she doesn't have much mill support that allows you to maintain a battlefield presence); Leo is your best bet if you want to mill the Chimera out and win off that damage.

[@Shelfside]

That's super sweet to hear! Well i'll have to give it a go :) -Ashton

[@fafum1272]

It's awesome to see this game continue to grow. Definitely a passion project.

[@JamesWatsonV]

This video is one of the reasons I bought Red Rains! Ashes is such a great game. Thanks!

[@maltepalt8242]

That aeon trespass box tho 👀Hoping for a review from you guys, love both the game and your reviews 🙏

[@Shiogpo]

You can target Lurk after it's exhausted, i.e. after it's attacked and killed one of your units. But you don't need to let it sit around from round to round.

[@ashtonwu7760]

Oh my goodness… ok that makes the balance a lot better :)

[@ashes-live]

@@ashtonwu7760 This is why I would recommend using the exhaustion tokens instead of tapping stuff; when I play, I physically place the exhaustion token on top of the text box, which is a great reminder on the table that those abilities are no longer relevant (for stuff with a yellow or green box, I'll stick it up on the card art).

[@michaelwaldmeier8487]

Great video. I would recommend trying the game again with the rule "when exhausted a card loses it's text box" as it's a major game machnic. Thanks

[@ichbintimo823]

Great video, thanks! If the expansion comes with decks, do you really need the base game? I've only got the first edition and heard that you need the second for Red Rains but since it comes with Phoenixborn decks, it looks as if you only need the dice (which I have)...

[@ajeba98]

02:10 Hymntide, not HentaI. Common mistake, don't feel bad.

[@yingoyango3323]

this video is so well made

[@somefishhere]

I just got into Netrunner and the Standard format so I understand your friends. Netrunner games tend to last a bit longer than Ashes though! There are so many great card duelers nowadays, Netrunner, Ashes, Summoner Wars, Mindbug, Omen, Battle Line, Keyforge, Star Realms, Dice Thrones, Agricola(?)

[@kelliealanis9485]

Unmatched

[@nightwishpower]

I just bought the last few precon decks i needed to finish the game because now i can $&@@ play alone!!!! Hell yeah ❤️

[@leizeQ]

FYI, you have to play your units always to the right of your existing units

[@Shelfside]

Oh man. Ok that is really good to know, I'll make a note of that in the pinned comment as well. -Ashton

[@notsaved]

Ashes is probably the game with the highest how good it is : how ignored it is ratio

[@AdamJorgensen]

Thanks for the review. Sounds decent enough, although not as good as the L5R LCG solo/co-op mode (Currently my gold standard for a solo/co-op conversion for a 1v1 dueler). I pre-ordered this along with the core box and some expansions, haven't gotten around to trying it yet but it sounds like it should be fun. Wish I'd known the expansion was going to include a bunch of stuff from the other items I ordered tho XD

[@dpolishsensation]

Just curious - what's the go to L5G LCG solo/co-op mode you use? Official or some fan-made variant?

[@bernardorippe7024]

Concealed is deactivated when the unit is exhausted. Ashes is a great game!

[@youtubenoremac3314]

Just picked up the Red Rains and waiting for my upgrade pack and Frostwild Scourge. Really looking forward to playing it solo and maybe even coop some day. The start of the video hits me so hard. I got really into Ashes with my brother. Played with the precons, as soon as I wanted to do deckbuilding he just instantly quit and never wanted to play again. For years Ashes has just been sitting on my shelf. I would take it to play whenever I went anywhere... but no one ever wanted to play. No one really seems to like 1v1 card games anymore. Ashes has always been my favorite game mechanically. Love the dice + 1 action a turn. Curious if your thoughts have changed with the newest expansions and Frostwild Scourge. Is it still a 7/10 for you?

[@meathir4921]

Drinking challenge: take a shot every time “Aspects” is said

[@gcavrubio]

Ashes reborn looks really cool.

[@BigLowry]

Noah precon only checking in.

[@Shelfside]

liar

[@GrievousFrom]

Ashton: Reborn Review Rains

[@Shelfside]

Reborn again