Hi Jon! Your commentary and management of each player's strategy makes the content really interesting. The appraisal of the Yellow player's disadvantage on the cultural track highlights the weakness in that starting Merchant dock + market combo really poignantly. Great job!
Thanks so much, Jon. I just picked up the base game and expansion and I really enjoyed your playthrough. Your play style, speed of play and explanations are the best out there in my opinion and I actually watch you play before reading the rule book. Your work is most appreciated.
As I was watching the walkthrough, it looked like it was going to be a "slam dunk" for Purple with Yellow being in far behind in 2nd place. What a neat turn of events with evil RED coming so close! I also loved how the last abolishment card could not be reached due to the chosen battle action. I gotta assume Jon planned this all along, but it was way fun to showcase the "surprise turning of the tables" at the end... as Jon became suddenly dismayed he no longer had enough presence to Abolish slavery.
I can assure you I plan almost nothing "all along", but I do try to set up smart turns that create compelling turn sequences. In this case I think this situation became apparent a turn or two before it happened and of course I try to pretend like I'm surprised at it happening :P
This is quite long but it is worth it to see all the actions etc in play. I used it before going to play the game for the first time in a club. Well explained.
At 1:13:00 I think your mistaken, the slavery cards can count as a normal card so 4+1 means they can hold those 5 cards if I recal the rules correctly :D Good playthrough overall though as always Jon!
This is great. In a game like this it would be productive to do a Out-of-Box set up. There are some actions that do things that look like they come from an initial set up of the board.
Aw, I was cheering for the Yellow player, playing as the peaceful trader laying the groundwork for the others, but it looks like you really have to commit to it.
First, thanks, great explanation. Went through all the comments and didn’t see this. The level 5 building has errata with a sticker to match the rules. In the action phase they can’t be used to pay, but I think you didn’t pay the workers on those spots. You just don’t have the errata.
Small error at the scoring at around 1:30:09. Anything on the extended track is moved down to the 15 space because there aren't any symbols on the extended track. This is kind of inconsequential, however, because you could have discarded the card with two influence and one good rather than the card with two goods and one influence when you discarded cards on the final turn. So you would have the same score in that case. Great video! I really like the changes made from the original version and am looking forward to checking out the exploit modules.
This makes no sense as all the tracks have symbols for every number over 10. We decided house rules that anything on the extended track also does not slide down. Seems more consistent with the game.
1:26:04 - Slavery wins!!!!!! :D OMG A SCORING PAD!!!!!!! I'm in love now! I hate it when games don't come with even the basic of scoring tracks :( I was really hoping for Red to take the victory. Interesting game. Took awhile to understand but I like it. Would be nice to see a modular board for increased replayability
Great video, thanks for that! Just as an aside: We should not have gotten 16 points for our influence (but 15), as the extender score tracks don't have symbols on them. But we still would have won against the evil red player ;)
Point loss when using slavery and it is abolished: if you look at 1:32:17 you can see that red would have lost 3 industry and 3 wealth, thus losing 7 "victory points" because it would put them back from 11 to 8->7 industry and from 13 to 10 wealth. I am not sure if the slavery cards would be discarded, but I think so thus incurring minus 2 vp too for a total of -9 vp if slavery had been abolished. I am not a historian but I think this is more harsh then it was in reality, so you can think of it as twisting reality and making those against slavery look better regarded then they were or condemning the use of slavery, that is up to you.
The chances aren't zero, I did back the KS campaign for it so I should be getting a copy along with everyone else. That being said, I have SO many games I want to film with my friends and I can't be sure at all this would make it to the top of that list.
Thanks for the great playthrough Jon! I had very little idea of what this game entailed and it looks a lot more interesting (and much quicker) than I expected. I like that you made the red player the bad guy with their ill-gotten gains from slavery - I was really rooting against them when you were tallying the final scores. Did you avoid that route for our purple player for strategy reasons or was there a moral element too? I think I'd feel very uneasy about making that play even if it was the most sensible in a game situation.
Honestly it was part mechanics and part morals. There was a spot where taking a slavery card as the purple player did seem to make sense but I was able to talk myself into a different plan which also seemed good and I was happy with that overall. I did want to show the slavery mechanic in this video though, and the Red player taking a couple ended up doing that while still being "good" moves for them I think.
I am borrowing a friend's copy so I don't know if they did anything to help with the curve. I can tell you that all of them are still somewhat curved, you just can't see it due to the camera angle during filming.
I put all the boards face down with one side up a slight bit (on some plexiglass) with some very heavy books to weigh them down. They came out the next day just great no curve. Be careful how much you "correct" or you'll have em warped the other way :)
I was considering getting this game since I’ve found a good offer dyne base game + expansion bundle. How annoying is setting up the game, considering the sheer amount of tokens you have to place on the map? This thing alone is holding me back 😕
Purchased this game 100% green, never introduced to it, never even heard of it. 4 friends got together and this video saved the day, the instructions that accompany the game are a complete let down. Other then the instructions not instructing lol, the game is a lot of fun.
I actually kind of like the mechanics, but woof that theme. I think this may actually be worse than Mombasa. At least in that game, profiting from slavery isn’t a thing. Though speaking of that, there is at least a bit of anti leader catch up with abolition. But it is still intensely uncomfortable.
I personally believe this is a bit hypocritic. I will explain. We are fine with playing all these games about wars and killing, but as soon as any game tackles any historical theme like slavery it is all bad? No... as long as games take it seriously and it has a place in the game based on history and theme, I think that is ok, in fact more than ok, hats off for the courage.
There is a difference between a game about some unpleasant thing, like war or even slavery, and a game which puts you in the place of actual historical powers that perpetuated an evil system, one whose effects are still felt today. To put it another way, there is a difference about violence in the abstract, and slavery in specific. Warfare is something universal, something all humans have waged upon each other, and most of us can view war in the abstract with a certain amount of comfortable distance. But this game is very specifically about 15th-19th century European colonialism. For the descendants of slaves, or those of us like myself who were born and grew up in countries that were less than a century ago part of European colonial empires, the themes of this board game are not some abstract thing we can deal with from a distance. They are very real, very present injustices, and their aftereffects still reverb around us, their echoes ever present in our lives. That is why such themes can be more difficult to deal with then simply 'wars and killing'. And I did not say, and it was my mistake to imply, that this game is 'all bad'. On the contrary, there may be some things to praise about this game's treatment of its themes. A game that whitewashes the period, that does not even nod to the injustices that took place, may well be worse in some ways. At least this game acknowledges that slavery was a thing, and lets you push for its abolition. But there are still things to criticize: this game assigns a cost to slavery, but the only cost is the risk that it may someday be abolished. In short, this game puts you in the mindset where slavery is treated as a risky business proposition rather than a moral abhorrence, and its actual cost - its human cost - is elided. It's not a matter of 'courage'. Treating a difficult subject matter with courage means more than just mentioning it, or designing mechanics around it; it means actually dealing with it in a respectful fashion. There are board games that I think treat slavery with courage, like Freedom: The Underground Railroad. The inclusion of some feature like slavery might be entirely historically and thematically appropriate, and we can still criticize the way a game chooses to deal with it, the mechanics it develops around it, and the mindset about it it encourages in the players. I do not think this game is, like, morally bad. I don't think it should be banned or censored and wouldn't even encourage others not to play it. I say this and only this, nothing else: this game makes me, personally, uncomfortable. And, you know, there might be some hypocrisy there. I play video games set in this era, some of my favorite ones in fact. There are distinctions I can draw here, like that the way those games treat thing like slavery is less uncomfortable, or that they give non-European powers more agency rather than representing them as passively awaiting conquest and colonization, or perhaps most importantly that single-player video games are private and board games are an essentially social activity and that changes the dynamics of it. But I can't say I'm entirely innocent of hypocrisy. But this board game makes me uncomfortable. And I hope you can see why it might do that, even though a board game simply about war and death might not.
@@Skycroft1000 If you think this game's theme is problematic, you aren't thinking. If you choose to benefit from slavery, you will get punished hard for it if the other players choose to make it so, which they will. Please stop damaging real progressives' images with knee-jerk, half-cocked reactions.
@@Skycroft1000 Thanks for your elaborated perspective. I agree that you can not feel comfortable with something while not thinking it is overall "bad", and I think the design of the game was done specifically to make people feel uncomfortable (or at least to try). I didn't want to use the mechanic while playing and managed to avoid it as the Purple player despite there being at least one point where it did seem like a good overall move. I'm hoping to play this with friends soon and I'm curious to see their reactions to the options the game gives them.
The slavery theme has indeed incited reactions and ways of play in my playthroughs with friends. Its kinda inspiring to see most of my friends and family begin a quest to abolish slavery as soon as they see somenone go into it. I mostly try to avoid it for the gameplay risque, but I still see it as mostly a thematic mechanic. Still I get this moral weight in me like if I take this part of history for granted. I think Skycroft has the right to feel the way he/she does, thats the beauty of our freedom and sharing views. I think we all agree about how horrific it was to those who suffered slavery. Same goes for war and death themes. But we each have our way of handling some subjects and certainly there are specific topics we avoid while other people can handle. :)
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Hi Jon! Your commentary and management of each player's strategy makes the content really interesting. The appraisal of the Yellow player's disadvantage on the cultural track highlights the weakness in that starting Merchant dock + market combo really poignantly. Great job!
Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed this :)
Watched the entire video. I love how in-depth you went into explaining just bought the game
Thanks so much, Jon. I just picked up the base game and expansion and I really enjoyed your playthrough. Your play style, speed of play and explanations are the best out there in my opinion and I actually watch you play before reading the rule book. Your work is most appreciated.
Thanks for the kind words :)
You are a super cool dude! Thanks for such clear and thorough walkthroughs! God bless!
As I was watching the walkthrough, it looked like it was going to be a "slam dunk" for Purple with Yellow being in far behind in 2nd place. What a neat turn of events with evil RED coming so close! I also loved how the last abolishment card could not be reached due to the chosen battle action. I gotta assume Jon planned this all along, but it was way fun to showcase the "surprise turning of the tables" at the end... as Jon became suddenly dismayed he no longer had enough presence to Abolish slavery.
I can assure you I plan almost nothing "all along", but I do try to set up smart turns that create compelling turn sequences. In this case I think this situation became apparent a turn or two before it happened and of course I try to pretend like I'm surprised at it happening :P
This is quite long but it is worth it to see all the actions etc in play. I used it before going to play the game for the first time in a club. Well explained.
This game looks so good! Thanks for your play through, I enjoy them.
You got a gift John.
Amazing playthrough, thanks!
Thanks for this great slick concise professional playthrough-review. It was very helpful and interesting. Keep it up!
Really great video! Your playthroughs are amazing Jon thanks for sharing
Great playthrough. You make it exciting. Thank you.
Great refresher so we can learn the expansion, thank you!
At 1:13:00 I think your mistaken, the slavery cards can count as a normal card so 4+1 means they can hold those 5 cards if I recal the rules correctly :D Good playthrough overall though as always Jon!
Exacly. They should not have discarded.
Good catch, it appears I slightly misunderstood the discard mechanics. I've added a note correcting this to the Klingon subtitles, thanks!
It's nice to see your human ;) You usually make way less mistakes than I do myself in playthroughs ;)
Great tutorial and playthrough!
nice to see this game get more love. Thanks for the video.
This was very good to watch. Nicely done!
This is great. In a game like this it would be productive to do a Out-of-Box set up. There are some actions that do things that look like they come from an initial set up of the board.
Endeavor is excellent! Thanks for this video.
What a great tutorial! Thank you very much for it.
I just got this game. Great teaching vid. This game is insanely easy to play and fun!
Aw, I was cheering for the Yellow player, playing as the peaceful trader laying the groundwork for the others, but it looks like you really have to commit to it.
First, thanks, great explanation. Went through all the comments and didn’t see this. The level 5 building has errata with a sticker to match the rules. In the action phase they can’t be used to pay, but I think you didn’t pay the workers on those spots. You just don’t have the errata.
Huh, yeah I had no idea there was an errata for those buildings.
Small error at the scoring at around 1:30:09. Anything on the extended track is moved down to the 15 space because there aren't any symbols on the extended track.
This is kind of inconsequential, however, because you could have discarded the card with two influence and one good rather than the card with two goods and one influence when you discarded cards on the final turn. So you would have the same score in that case.
Great video! I really like the changes made from the original version and am looking forward to checking out the exploit modules.
Ah good note! I did miss that in the rules and I'll add a correction thanks :)
This makes no sense as all the tracks have symbols for every number over 10. We decided house rules that anything on the extended track also does not slide down. Seems more consistent with the game.
First Combat Action of the game at: 1:19:14
Really good explanation, thank you!
Always a good play! Thanks
This game looks really interesting to play! My game group won’t like it, but I hope to play it someday...
Did red discard a card when they didn't have to @1:14:00? Seems to me like they respect their limit (4+1)
Correct, he should not have had to discard
Good catch, it appears I slightly misunderstood the discard mechanics. I've added a note correcting this to the Klingon subtitles, thanks!
1:26:04 - Slavery wins!!!!!! :D
OMG A SCORING PAD!!!!!!! I'm in love now! I hate it when games don't come with even the basic of scoring tracks
:( I was really hoping for Red to take the victory.
Interesting game. Took awhile to understand but I like it. Would be nice to see a modular board for increased replayability
BrianD0313 the 95 trade tokens being randomly placed on the board adds enough replayability
That, and also the new exploits! :-)
Great video, thanks for that! Just as an aside: We should not have gotten 16 points for our influence (but 15), as the extender score tracks don't have symbols on them. But we still would have won against the evil red player ;)
Thanks for pointing that out, I'll add a note now :)
Point loss when using slavery and it is abolished: if you look at 1:32:17 you can see that red would have lost 3 industry and 3 wealth, thus losing 7 "victory points" because it would put them back from 11 to 8->7 industry and from 13 to 10 wealth. I am not sure if the slavery cards would be discarded, but I think so thus incurring minus 2 vp too for a total of -9 vp if slavery had been abolished.
I am not a historian but I think this is more harsh then it was in reality, so you can think of it as twisting reality and making those against slavery look better regarded then they were or condemning the use of slavery, that is up to you.
What are the chances we get to see you give this treatment to Endeavor: Deep Sea ? maybe even a playthrough with your friends?
The chances aren't zero, I did back the KS campaign for it so I should be getting a copy along with everyone else. That being said, I have SO many games I want to film with my friends and I can't be sure at all this would make it to the top of that list.
Jon, did you have the same issue (that many people did who backed the KS) of badly warped player boards?
I don't remember the boards being warped. This was filmed with a friend's copy and I gave it back to them so I can't check.
What I want to know is how your player boards are so nice and flat.
They unfortunately are somewhat warped up on their right hand side, you just can't see that from this camera angle.
@@GettingGames so if i just adjust my camera angle mine won't look as warped? perfect!
That's what Gloomhaven is for. Set them underneath that massive box and wait patiently. :)
@@CeePhour i'll just stack Hate, Gloomhaven, TI4, and then Thunderstone Quest. I'll end up with flat boards or diamonds, happy either way.
@@CeePhour its been there for the last 3 months still they are not flat :(
Thanks for the great playthrough Jon! I had very little idea of what this game entailed and it looks a lot more interesting (and much quicker) than I expected.
I like that you made the red player the bad guy with their ill-gotten gains from slavery - I was really rooting against them when you were tallying the final scores. Did you avoid that route for our purple player for strategy reasons or was there a moral element too? I think I'd feel very uneasy about making that play even if it was the most sensible in a game situation.
Honestly it was part mechanics and part morals. There was a spot where taking a slavery card as the purple player did seem to make sense but I was able to talk myself into a different plan which also seemed good and I was happy with that overall. I did want to show the slavery mechanic in this video though, and the Red player taking a couple ended up doing that while still being "good" moves for them I think.
Great vídeo!! What did you do to make the players' boards less curved?
I am borrowing a friend's copy so I don't know if they did anything to help with the curve. I can tell you that all of them are still somewhat curved, you just can't see it due to the camera angle during filming.
I put all the boards face down with one side up a slight bit (on some plexiglass) with some very heavy books to weigh them down. They came out the next day just great no curve. Be careful how much you "correct" or you'll have em warped the other way :)
I was considering getting this game since I’ve found a good offer dyne base game + expansion bundle.
How annoying is setting up the game, considering the sheer amount of tokens you have to place on the map? This thing alone is holding me back 😕
Setup does take more time than most games, but when it's split up among several players it is very manageable.
@@GettingGames I should get the game tomorrow 😊😊 I’ll let you know if the setup takes my whole gaming time frame 🤣
I really appreciate your videos but I wonder if it would have been better as a 2-player game
What’s everyone’s views? This or merchants and marauders?
I personally prefer Endeavor, though I only played M&M once and it was a very long time ago so I don't remember a ton about it.
Both.
I see your boards are warped too.
Could you please do an exploit review how to play?
Unfortunately I very rarely make two videos about the same game, and I don't own this one anymore to show it more.
Nooo I really wanted for slavery to be abolished !!! Great playthrough, i really want to get this game. Has anybody tried the expansion ?
Purchased this game 100% green, never introduced to it, never even heard of it. 4 friends got together and this video saved the day, the instructions that accompany the game are a complete let down. Other then the instructions not instructing lol, the game is a lot of fun.
Mechanically this looks like a really good game, but there is no way I could possibly get past the theme...
Whats wrong with the theme?
I actually kind of like the mechanics, but woof that theme. I think this may actually be worse than Mombasa. At least in that game, profiting from slavery isn’t a thing.
Though speaking of that, there is at least a bit of anti leader catch up with abolition. But it is still intensely uncomfortable.
I personally believe this is a bit hypocritic. I will explain. We are fine with playing all these games about wars and killing, but as soon as any game tackles any historical theme like slavery it is all bad?
No... as long as games take it seriously and it has a place in the game based on history and theme, I think that is ok, in fact more than ok, hats off for the courage.
There is a difference between a game about some unpleasant thing, like war or even slavery, and a game which puts you in the place of actual historical powers that perpetuated an evil system, one whose effects are still felt today. To put it another way, there is a difference about violence in the abstract, and slavery in specific. Warfare is something universal, something all humans have waged upon each other, and most of us can view war in the abstract with a certain amount of comfortable distance.
But this game is very specifically about 15th-19th century European colonialism. For the descendants of slaves, or those of us like myself who were born and grew up in countries that were less than a century ago part of European colonial empires, the themes of this board game are not some abstract thing we can deal with from a distance. They are very real, very present injustices, and their aftereffects still reverb around us, their echoes ever present in our lives. That is why such themes can be more difficult to deal with then simply 'wars and killing'.
And I did not say, and it was my mistake to imply, that this game is 'all bad'. On the contrary, there may be some things to praise about this game's treatment of its themes. A game that whitewashes the period, that does not even nod to the injustices that took place, may well be worse in some ways. At least this game acknowledges that slavery was a thing, and lets you push for its abolition. But there are still things to criticize: this game assigns a cost to slavery, but the only cost is the risk that it may someday be abolished. In short, this game puts you in the mindset where slavery is treated as a risky business proposition rather than a moral abhorrence, and its actual cost - its human cost - is elided.
It's not a matter of 'courage'. Treating a difficult subject matter with courage means more than just mentioning it, or designing mechanics around it; it means actually dealing with it in a respectful fashion. There are board games that I think treat slavery with courage, like Freedom: The Underground Railroad. The inclusion of some feature like slavery might be entirely historically and thematically appropriate, and we can still criticize the way a game chooses to deal with it, the mechanics it develops around it, and the mindset about it it encourages in the players.
I do not think this game is, like, morally bad. I don't think it should be banned or censored and wouldn't even encourage others not to play it. I say this and only this, nothing else: this game makes me, personally, uncomfortable. And, you know, there might be some hypocrisy there. I play video games set in this era, some of my favorite ones in fact. There are distinctions I can draw here, like that the way those games treat thing like slavery is less uncomfortable, or that they give non-European powers more agency rather than representing them as passively awaiting conquest and colonization, or perhaps most importantly that single-player video games are private and board games are an essentially social activity and that changes the dynamics of it. But I can't say I'm entirely innocent of hypocrisy.
But this board game makes me uncomfortable. And I hope you can see why it might do that, even though a board game simply about war and death might not.
@@Skycroft1000 If you think this game's theme is problematic, you aren't thinking. If you choose to benefit from slavery, you will get punished hard for it if the other players choose to make it so, which they will.
Please stop damaging real progressives' images with knee-jerk, half-cocked reactions.
@@Skycroft1000 Thanks for your elaborated perspective. I agree that you can not feel comfortable with something while not thinking it is overall "bad", and I think the design of the game was done specifically to make people feel uncomfortable (or at least to try). I didn't want to use the mechanic while playing and managed to avoid it as the Purple player despite there being at least one point where it did seem like a good overall move. I'm hoping to play this with friends soon and I'm curious to see their reactions to the options the game gives them.
The slavery theme has indeed incited reactions and ways of play in my playthroughs with friends. Its kinda inspiring to see most of my friends and family begin a quest to abolish slavery as soon as they see somenone go into it. I mostly try to avoid it for the gameplay risque, but I still see it as mostly a thematic mechanic. Still I get this moral weight in me like if I take this part of history for granted. I think Skycroft has the right to feel the way he/she does, thats the beauty of our freedom and sharing views. I think we all agree about how horrific it was to those who suffered slavery. Same goes for war and death themes. But we each have our way of handling some subjects and certainly there are specific topics we avoid while other people can handle. :)