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Well at the time of writing is the hottest game on BGG and I’ve played it twice. So why haven’t I mentioned it before? Because I played it wrong. I watched a run through and I didn’t watch it through to the end and I missed a crucial rule. And it ruined our experience of the game. The game lasted way too long, with the end result that that we all grew wearisome and when a card came out that instantly ended the game, it was played straight away. Jez and Rob, who I was playing with, swore they would never play it again.
I feel like I really let the game down. So what rule did I get wrong? Well it was the one whereby you could take a scoring tile if you completed a clearing. So although we had three clearings completed it looked like we were only half way through the game. The timing of the game end is determined by when the six scoring tiles are taken. This instantly ends the game once all the players have had their turn.
The other thing I didn’t realise is that there’s only four chances to recruit more heroes. So although there’s a big deck of heroes your opportunity to get them is limited. Unfortunately there weren’t any hero’s that had fighting actions in the card river. Rob took the only ones. So I decided to get ones with wood and build actions, resulting in me being weak in fighting. This left the fighting mainly to him as the heath of the enemies was too high for me or Jez. Fighting not only get you points but resources as well with the end result he won by miles. The next time I played I made sure I did plenty of fighting and the scores were much closer. Nevertheless I still felt that the game ran too long. These days my appetite for longer games is diminishing. Greg wants to play again and I am not sure I can face it.
But back to Emberleaf. The big new mechanic for this is “card dancing” and I quite like the way you manipulate your cards, sliding them off into your hand. But I was still frustrated by the lack of hero cards. The second time I played I had very few heroes with slide abilities so sliding felt weak.
There are opportunities to build the buildings on your fellowship board, which give you more tags and a spaces to play cards. The second game I was short of options to build. I was waiting for a hero to come up with a build action but of course once the other players have their hero’s the card river stagnates and doesn’t change. That said luckily there’s a build action in your board you can unlock. There are also extra fighting tags as well.
Nothing else really gets you enough points. You can draw objective cards but again there are limited chances to do this. Just five chances on the board and another couple as the game progresses. I found these quite easy to achieve but then I was really selective about what I choose.
Being strong in moving about doesn’t really help you. You need a mixture of wood and food tags. In the first game I didn’t have any food gathering abilities which was tough. I couldn’t build the buildings I needed to. That said there are opportunities to house critters on other people’s buildings. I really liked this. It really helped you achieve objectives. But again the opportunities to do this are scarce so house them wisely.
There’s bonuses on the score tack which I don’t usually like. It can lead to a runaway leader problem but here it works well, as all players benefit from them.
I loved the board with all its little details. This is how the board for should have been. Indeed the whole production is great. I’m just not sure the gameplay is good enough for my group to want to play it again. Which is a shame. Obviously I did the game a major disservice playing it wrong. But even so the lack of scope for deck building is a major draw back for me. I love slow deck builders like and Obsession.
I need to look at the expansion to see if that adds anything. Basically I want more opportunities to recruit hero’s. The problem is that I am so discerning now and I have so many games, any slight issue going to leave a game in the box, unplayed. Even if the experience will improve with plays. I after my first play. So much so that I sold the game. It just seemed impossible to take the actions I needed. There was so much to do and so few options to do stuff. I lost my first game horribly. But during lockdown I played it numerous times on Yucata and it became a favourite game. But in face to face plays, games get short shift. They have shine or there are back on the shelf.
But the main lesson I have learned is that I need to prepare games better. Much better. Minor rules goofs are inevitable on a first play but this was a major error. You also need to warn new players about the lack of heroes to ensure they have a good experience. Muck up the teach and you risk never getting that game to the table again.