The game is great! I am really enjoying the challenge and LOVING the wild story that unfolds during every play. I'm in on the P500 for the "More of a Bad Thing" expansion, I can't wait! (Yes I can, there's a lot of legs in the base game, don't rush your creativity!)
So glad to see another playthrough of this, Mr. Phour! And I love the adjustments you've made to the screen layout. For such an expansive game, you've done a great job squeezing it onto the screen for maximum visibility. And I love your "interface mod" to track the initial adrenaline move as well as the actions and follows. Very nice! That's the sort of thing that should have been included in the game. Also, I suspect you're right about the difficulty and player count; I've seen a few playthroughs of this, and I simply don't understand how fewer players is anything other than a liability. More characters covering more territory seems like it will always trump fewer characters covering less territory. If anything offsets that, I must be missing it (which is entirely possible, as I don't own this). Also, just letting you know at least one of your viewers appreciates the obvious thought you put into your hat and T-shirt colors! Presumably the Neighborhood Watch are represented with your britches. :) EDIT: Nice fix when you realized you'd only been taking two actions during the night phase! You must have heard me yelling at the screen.
Good to hear from you! I can't imagine running around this game four-handed (my brain would explode) but I sure would like to try, just to see how the difficulty feels. Two Factions really feels like a good balance of the difficulty. I'm 1/6 but those 5 losses were close to the end of the game. I can't see how 4 Factions is not just plain better. On top of the "Crowd Control chain" (you can't move Civilians AND yourself), you've got more HP on the board to absorb damage, AND varied Special Abilities to exploit. This playthrough is a perfect example of how many Heal Actions I had to do (probably a few too many) versus just letting a different character stand there and take the beating while the player does something fun. OH MY GOD I have been messing around with the hat and shirt thing for monnnnnths and wondered if it was just slipping by. YESTERDAY it came up in conversation with my wife. 😂The unfortunate part of sitting in front of a green screen means I can't wear green (I almost did for the Ghost Fightin' Treasure Hunters game). Just know that I am that big of an idiot who bought a green t-shirt anyway. I was going to buy a bunch of colored hats, but never did. That's so awesome!
@@CeePhour ...aaand I just got to the end. Really fun finale! But I believe you did indeed take back a space on the Biohazard track that you should have spent (2:44:45). But as you noted, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. Because you did a really good job playing defensively. Of course, you also managed some amazing pulls that helped you manage the Biohazard track, which might have otherwise fallen apart by the time your game ended. But on the whole, I feel like you had this game pretty handily in the bag! So is there any rationale in the rules for why the player gets fewer activations during the later turns? I understand that they ramp up during the first three turns to represent growing awareness of the threat, but why the wind-down? Without some thematic justification, it seems like an artificial way to force a tense ending. Also, you might have addressed this in your previous video and I forgot, but are there any options to vary the difficulty? Or to play variants? Because based on having seen a few playthroughs, I can understand why there might be complaints that it's too easy, and you yourself seem to have more or less "solved" it with your approach in this video (i.e. crank out Search cards to flood the map with supplies, play defensively in terms of unit positioning and especially Follow actions, lean into faction/unit abilities and advantages). Also also, as much as you kvetch about being bad at rolling dice -- can you hear me rolling my eyes through the video???? -- you definitely have a point about the dice in this game. At first, I was taken aback by the distribution, and how "spikey" the dice can be, and stingy with damage. But I think one really smart element of the design is how this is discretely for combat, while all the other "d6 rolls" are handled with the even distribution of the event deck. I might be overthinking the maths, but it feels like an intentional effort to make combat more dramatic while flattening out everything else (e.g. the draws for Follow actions, repairs, Event resolutions, ability checks, etc.). All of which is to say you're right to call out the dice in this game for being cruel. : )
I can't recall reading anything about why there are less activations later - I could just be blanking on it (it's a long read). I could chalk it up to "exhaustion", I suppose. There are difficulty variants posted on BGG, but I think the expansion is supposed to address this as well ("More of a Bad Thing"). www.gmtgames.com/p-1092-the-plum-island-horror-more-of-a-bad-thing.aspx I know this strategy worked this time, but I have to hand this win over to the amazingly lucky draws from the biohazard bag. I should have been cooked. I simply don't see how this game is "easy" unless you're incredibly lucky time and time again. For all the effort I put in to trying to get my plan together, I was always cleaning up a mess of damaged units and not being able to do what I wanted to do, all the while having to repeatedly exploit the green team's Special Ability just to gain 2 Supplies. That's a really good point about the dice being for combat ONLY, yet there is still a "leveled out d6" running everything else. That could be tracked (and frankly, I need any help I can get with this game) with 6d6 very easily. Beyond the one guy with a firehose to push back Horrors I don't know what else to do besides get myself destroyed in close combat with them. That said, it wouldn't be fun if I was just able to do what I wanted to do - that's why it's a game! :) The way people talk about how easy this is makes me think there's something incredibly powerful I'm forgetting to do and making it hard on myself. As if there's some "heal all of your units, gain 5 Supplies, and all Horrors move backwards 6 spaces" Action I just keep forgetting to use :P
There is some discussion about the level of difficulty, it is too easy for some people, they have created a Nightmare mode but I don't think it's too easy with 2 factions. But you are right with 4 factions it might be too easy.
I'll never find out (my table isn't big enough! 😆) but it's also entirely possible (and likely) that I am just REALLY BAD at the game. It feels really good at 2 (for me) though, so that's a plus (for me anyway, which is likely the only way I'm ever going to play).
Thank you so much - again - for a terrific playthrough! And thanks for the kind comments and so glad you're having fun!
The game is great! I am really enjoying the challenge and LOVING the wild story that unfolds during every play. I'm in on the P500 for the "More of a Bad Thing" expansion, I can't wait! (Yes I can, there's a lot of legs in the base game, don't rush your creativity!)
So glad to see another playthrough of this, Mr. Phour! And I love the adjustments you've made to the screen layout. For such an expansive game, you've done a great job squeezing it onto the screen for maximum visibility. And I love your "interface mod" to track the initial adrenaline move as well as the actions and follows. Very nice! That's the sort of thing that should have been included in the game.
Also, I suspect you're right about the difficulty and player count; I've seen a few playthroughs of this, and I simply don't understand how fewer players is anything other than a liability. More characters covering more territory seems like it will always trump fewer characters covering less territory. If anything offsets that, I must be missing it (which is entirely possible, as I don't own this).
Also, just letting you know at least one of your viewers appreciates the obvious thought you put into your hat and T-shirt colors! Presumably the Neighborhood Watch are represented with your britches. :)
EDIT: Nice fix when you realized you'd only been taking two actions during the night phase! You must have heard me yelling at the screen.
Good to hear from you!
I can't imagine running around this game four-handed (my brain would explode) but I sure would like to try, just to see how the difficulty feels. Two Factions really feels like a good balance of the difficulty. I'm 1/6 but those 5 losses were close to the end of the game. I can't see how 4 Factions is not just plain better. On top of the "Crowd Control chain" (you can't move Civilians AND yourself), you've got more HP on the board to absorb damage, AND varied Special Abilities to exploit. This playthrough is a perfect example of how many Heal Actions I had to do (probably a few too many) versus just letting a different character stand there and take the beating while the player does something fun.
OH MY GOD I have been messing around with the hat and shirt thing for monnnnnths and wondered if it was just slipping by. YESTERDAY it came up in conversation with my wife. 😂The unfortunate part of sitting in front of a green screen means I can't wear green (I almost did for the Ghost Fightin' Treasure Hunters game). Just know that I am that big of an idiot who bought a green t-shirt anyway. I was going to buy a bunch of colored hats, but never did. That's so awesome!
@@CeePhour ...aaand I just got to the end. Really fun finale! But I believe you did indeed take back a space on the Biohazard track that you should have spent (2:44:45). But as you noted, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. Because you did a really good job playing defensively. Of course, you also managed some amazing pulls that helped you manage the Biohazard track, which might have otherwise fallen apart by the time your game ended. But on the whole, I feel like you had this game pretty handily in the bag!
So is there any rationale in the rules for why the player gets fewer activations during the later turns? I understand that they ramp up during the first three turns to represent growing awareness of the threat, but why the wind-down? Without some thematic justification, it seems like an artificial way to force a tense ending.
Also, you might have addressed this in your previous video and I forgot, but are there any options to vary the difficulty? Or to play variants? Because based on having seen a few playthroughs, I can understand why there might be complaints that it's too easy, and you yourself seem to have more or less "solved" it with your approach in this video (i.e. crank out Search cards to flood the map with supplies, play defensively in terms of unit positioning and especially Follow actions, lean into faction/unit abilities and advantages).
Also also, as much as you kvetch about being bad at rolling dice -- can you hear me rolling my eyes through the video???? -- you definitely have a point about the dice in this game. At first, I was taken aback by the distribution, and how "spikey" the dice can be, and stingy with damage. But I think one really smart element of the design is how this is discretely for combat, while all the other "d6 rolls" are handled with the even distribution of the event deck. I might be overthinking the maths, but it feels like an intentional effort to make combat more dramatic while flattening out everything else (e.g. the draws for Follow actions, repairs, Event resolutions, ability checks, etc.). All of which is to say you're right to call out the dice in this game for being cruel. : )
I can't recall reading anything about why there are less activations later - I could just be blanking on it (it's a long read). I could chalk it up to "exhaustion", I suppose.
There are difficulty variants posted on BGG, but I think the expansion is supposed to address this as well ("More of a Bad Thing"). www.gmtgames.com/p-1092-the-plum-island-horror-more-of-a-bad-thing.aspx
I know this strategy worked this time, but I have to hand this win over to the amazingly lucky draws from the biohazard bag. I should have been cooked. I simply don't see how this game is "easy" unless you're incredibly lucky time and time again. For all the effort I put in to trying to get my plan together, I was always cleaning up a mess of damaged units and not being able to do what I wanted to do, all the while having to repeatedly exploit the green team's Special Ability just to gain 2 Supplies.
That's a really good point about the dice being for combat ONLY, yet there is still a "leveled out d6" running everything else. That could be tracked (and frankly, I need any help I can get with this game) with 6d6 very easily. Beyond the one guy with a firehose to push back Horrors I don't know what else to do besides get myself destroyed in close combat with them.
That said, it wouldn't be fun if I was just able to do what I wanted to do - that's why it's a game! :)
The way people talk about how easy this is makes me think there's something incredibly powerful I'm forgetting to do and making it hard on myself. As if there's some "heal all of your units, gain 5 Supplies, and all Horrors move backwards 6 spaces" Action I just keep forgetting to use :P
There is some discussion about the level of difficulty, it is too easy for some people, they have created a Nightmare mode but I don't think it's too easy with 2 factions.
But you are right with 4 factions it might be too easy.
I'll never find out (my table isn't big enough! 😆) but it's also entirely possible (and likely) that I am just REALLY BAD at the game. It feels really good at 2 (for me) though, so that's a plus (for me anyway, which is likely the only way I'm ever going to play).
1:58:37 is the Activate Track Six dance! I hear it's super popular on TikTok!
Good playthrough. Where did you happen to get those plastic tokens? I'd like to get/make some.
3D printed, cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/gaslands-hazard-token