I’ve played a few rounds and been very happy with it. And FWIW, I also have Hostage Negotiator and think it’s a real mechanical improvement - it’s not nearly so focused on manipulating the hostage taker’s mood (your fear level, in this case) because you’re moving around a map, searching for helpful items, attacking the killer, and leading victims to safety; you get a baseline pool of points to buy actions with instead of resetting to zero every turn; and the result spread is a bit different on the dice so you’re mildly more likely to succeed (though it’s still very dice driven). Not to mention there’s simply more scope for variety and gameplay twists because you’re dealing with both a killer (the equivalent of a hostage taker in HN) and a map the action is taking place on, which have their own wrinkles and decks.
I’m not a fan of companies doing this generally speaking, but demand vastly outstripped what they expected and they wanted to get another print run out ASAP because it was sold out everywhere.
At this point, I’m considering cancelling my pledge because this box is going to be HUGE to accommodate all of these addons that I’m not interested in.
Yeah, but they also show a “box” for the stretch goals and the vineyards expansion, but presumably those will be in the base box. They’ve been very cagey about a lot of things in the project, likely because of unrevealed stretch goals… but I’m not sure how to tell what is intended to fit in the box and what would be a separate box.
I own almost everything Awaken Realms has made, and not one of them has ever been designed to put anything in the base box that doesn’t ship in the base box. The addons will be their own boxes, and the stretch goals probably as well. It’s probably my biggest complaint about them, but if you’re not getting the other boxes it’s probably just as well.
(Sometimes that means a base box that’s like 3 feet long, like The Edge: Dawnfall, but still. The other stuff is separate boxes.)
I was really hoping they were done with Aeon’s End. There’s so much of it, and I feel like while the nemeses often have interesting new wrinkles, the mages and the player cards struggle to be that differentiated, and they keep churning out more so fast that forget not having played Legacy of Gravehold, I also haven’t played Outcasts, New Age, or most of Legacy, and they’re asking me for money again. Plus they’ve now got Astro Knights, which is barely different and could be where they put their development energies going forwards.
Still debating whether I’m done. Leaning towards yes. But gosh I hate to leave a game I own incomplete.
My current plan is to pick up waves of content secondhand when other people decide they are done. I currently have 3.5 waves of content (mostly unexplored). By the time I’m ready for more, I’m sure there will be collections up on the secondhand market. I may end up with duplicated content, but it’ll still likely be cheaper in the long run, and I can always sell off the dupes
That’s pretty much my feeling (and position - I generally play AE a lot more while demoing at Essen than at home). But this feels like a good sort of capstone to the overall narrative, so I’m probably in.
One of my silliest stories from working at a game store is related:
Magic (the Gathering) frequently releases sets they call “Un-sets.” They’re supposed to be silly, uncompetitive, just fun. Unglued, Unsanctioned, etc.
One of the sets was called “Unstable.” As a result, we had a very concerned postal worker deliver us a box, held at the far extreme from their body, eyes wide, asking “What is in this box!?”
The box was clearly labelled multiple times with stickers proudly proclaiming “Unstable materials within!”
