Solo Vast
Round 2: Goblins!
Tricky tricky faction to play solo or maybe it’s just that the Knight was so straightforward. Like the Knight, the Goblins need to smash five crystals before the Cave collapses. Unlike the Knight, exploring the map with three separate tribes is super procedurally weird. Running around in the light kills your tribe’s population, but you need population to smash the patriarchy crystals. I think wild fluctuations in population are to be expected though.
They power themselves up by allying with fellow monsters, which is very cute. I’ve also got a hand of Secrets, those cards in the foreground, and it’s just…a lot to keep track of.
And yes, anyone who’s played the game will see I’m playing it wrong in this picture. 😀
I screwed up my first game so badly that I restarted on the Goblins a second time, played correctly, and got my ass beat. Or just failed to actually win. Harder than it seemed! Goblins definitely seem harder to run than the Knight on their own, but I am so curious to see how they work alongside other characters.
European deliveries of Vast haven’t started yet, but I’m very excited about this game.
The Goblins finally started clicking for me when I realized that population isn’t something you’re supposed to maintain carefully: it’s a resource to be spent. Spend population to smash crystals, to attack people, etc. And it’s a resource that limits your movement. (Also, Ferocity is likewise a resource to be spent–you’ll get Ferocity back pretty readily, unless your opponents are playing passively, which is good for you anyway.)
Waiting on mine. Ordered the one with the minis.
Ohey, I just remembered that this is partially my fault for letting Paul know about this game, isn’t it?
Andy Hauge it is! You and Keith Stetson, IIRC, posted about it and got me interested.
So far so good on the 2E rules, although he’s written them in such a dense and compact way that disentangling them from each other is a little tricky. And there are still holes and best guesses.
My favorite is
the fact that at no point does he explicitly state the order of play. You have to extract that from his example.EDIT I’m dumb and wrong, it’s right there in the setup section, just missed it.I’d love to try this on 2E and see how clear it is. The first edition held a lot of promise, but was rather mind boggling.