Agreed. I also offered some balancing thoughts. I think the concept is great but it needs a lot of work. Regarding the traitor. This is a very interesting game mechanic and should be worked on. I fully agree there needs to be a penalty for the dragon rider and spending glory to use cards seems like a great idea. I also think the dragon should be a lot weaker without the dragon rider. Mostly for pacing. One way or another the dragon needs to have reduced power in the early game. It's okay for a game to be hard, but it's unfair that heroes can only move 2 spaces and basically can't build anything in the first turn because they need resources first. But then comes along the dragon on it's very first turn just casually knocking over 2 barricades.... It would be a lot more fun if the dragon without a rider is weaker. Giving heroes the chance to gather resources, build, quest etc. It should get to a point in mid game where heroes and dragon are equally matched, and THEN have the possibility for one player to become the traitor. This way you'd get an end game with high stakes. Add to that your suggested glory point cost for dragon rider actions with an added mechanic whereby, for example, the rider could be kicked off of the dragon's back if they ever fall below a certain level of glory (because why should a dragon want a rider without any glory) and you'd go a long way towards a great game.

Nah. It's more of a partyish game for laughs and you are fighting a DRAGON! Needs to be tough :D

Just in case the devs actually check comments I’m copy and pasting some feedback from another thread since this one seems more appropriate for balancing suggestions. I’d argue the game encourages you to be selfish and play exactly as they did. The dragon rider mechanic should be reworked as a catch up mechanic for a player who does not have glory and might not be able to win the traditional way. The amount of rider cards should decrease with glory and the lowest glory player should have the option to betray the party OR get an instant infusion of glory (close half the distance between them and first place) only after 2 or 3 bastions are down. This could be themed as “the dragon’s choice” where you can become his rider or gain the glory of resisting temptation. I’d also consider having the back side of the player card be “the city or the people” where once a betrayal happens all the resources, runes, and equipment are transferred to the city and the city acts as a bonus “player” that can help gather resources and build but not fight the dragon. This can be themed as the city banding together in light of betrayal to support the remaining heroes. As currently written, the rules basically just encourages all player to rush to 15 glory and be the first to hop on the dragon. The only mechanical reason to be a team player in the beginning is the fear that someone might beat you to the dragon and you’ll be stuck on a sinking ship. I think the devs underestimate how appealing being the dragon rider is so the choice needs to be more difficult. Not to mention the betrayal basically give a buff to the dragon (getting a human controlled choice for actions vs random) while simultaneously nerfing the defenders by removing an entire players worth of actions each round. As others have stated it does also appear the physical balance of the marbles vs the barricades seem to be off. To fix that, I’d suggest the idea of having the dragon have two ramps a high and a low. The start of the game would shoot all balls off the low ramp for less momentum and the high ramp after say 2 or 3 of his hearts are destroyed. That also gives folks more replayability with a “hard mode” where he starts shooting off the high ramp to begin with.

@@Sgrand80 If it's trying to be a party game I feel like it has too much going on: resource gathering, artefacts, praying, coop and traitor mechanics, etc. The core mechanic of building a marble obstacle course is really great, it's just a bit much on top of that.

@@Sgrand80 yeah the party game version of this would just be build an obstacle course and the both sides shoot marbles at each other until they destroy the other village. This is clearly not a party game by the amount of rules/mechanics

Yeah I would have sworn there'd at least be a notch in each space so the barricades are slightly useful but as is it looks like trying to stop an asteroid with some satellites

@@Lucarioguild7 A nub alone could derail a marble. The board needs to be fairly flat and uniform. Maybe easiest would be to have the pieces being heavier. More options could be gotten with double sided game board in multiple parts, one side stickier than the other, for some more variability. Basically you could mix and match the parts and sides to change the "difficulty".

He shall continue to decimate the trolls of the world and only the piglets shall survive

I don't think he meant "decimate"

Especially since it seemed almost impossible for anyone to get through to even attempt to attack the dragon ONCE!

Good point. The game needs massive re-vamping imo too many things not working with it. Genuinely surprised its reached this stage tbh

Agreed! Also this incentivizes people to do team-friendly things like building (or, like, killing the dragon) rather than collecting glory points. The other option would be to re-weight things so the things that benefit the team are *also* the things that deliver the most glory points, so the only way to become traitor is to help the team a lot first, but that seems to ruin the narrative a bit in a way that ditching the solo-winner for the town entirely doesn’t.

This makes sense to me - that there needs to be a real coop option rather than an individual winner. Or if not that then there needs to be more constraint in the beginning so everyone working for themselves all with the idea of riding the dragon can't completely decimate things in the first round. Maybe something like others have mentioned no fireballs first round (or only on specific fixed rounds). Also maybe something where people can only ride the dragon at 20 or 25 points after the first time they build a building or barrier or something? Forces people who want to go for dragon riding to help as early as possible maybe?

Or maybe the more barricades that are gone the higher the glory points needed to ride the dragon. So if they are all up you can jump on at 15 but if one is down you have to have 20 etc. Makes it more likely people help early since not helping early probably just means you'll all lose to the dragon knocking down everything.

@@grlquartz the bigger issue is that there isn’t really any counterplay to someone clearly going for the dragon win condition. Everyone is motivated to rush towards the dragon and be the first to jump on its back and there is nothing you can do to interrupt other people doing that. This goes back to being framed as a coop game where your actions in theory are supposed to help everyone, but in practice, the incentives are to help nobody and just get as many points as you can quickly while dashing forwards.

When a wild Sullivan Beau Brown becomes sufficiently agitated, he turns into Hei-Hei from Moana.

At very least, the requirement should be set higher. 15 seemed like an easy target to reach, maybe it should be something like 30 minimum. Or it shouldn't even be possible, when 3 or more bastions are destroyed. To me, it seemed like everyone wanted to become the dragon rider, which just made them not attack the dragon.

I think they just didn't quite get the idea of the game until it was too late. They already lost half the base before they built a single obstacle, and they didn't identify that you want to stand in front of the dragon until near the end of the game.

@@AshlingScott I’d argue the game encourages you to be selfish and play exactly as they did. The dragon rider mechanic should be reworked as a catch up mechanic for a player who does not have glory and might not be able to win the traditional way. The amount of rider cards should decrease with glory and the lowest glory player should have the option to betray the party OR get an instant infusion of glory (close half the distance between them and first place) only after 2 or 3 bastions are down. As currently written, the rules basically just encourages all player to rush to 15 glory and be the first to hop on the dragon. The only mechanical reason to be a team player in the beginning is the fear that someone might beat you to the dragon and you’ll be stuck on a sinking ship.

@@kashtrey 100%. The game is intrinsically flawed by having both the win condition and the traitor condition be based on having high glory. Personally I dislike the concept of a single winner in a coop game on its face; just play a competitive game at that point... This game is an S tier concept with a D tier execution.

I think they should scrap the traitor mechanic. It isn't needed at all as the dragon is already strong and having a player manage it makes it even stronger. Not every game needs to have someone become a traitor.

Totally agree. Over-engineered by far. The designers should have grading levels of complexity for the game so you can learn it at a lower complexity and then ramp it up as you know it more

Huge +1 to everything you've said. It's just bad business thinking. Jon and Viv were super strategic with YKI.

So true. Dunno if it was just bad luck but otherwise the game is basically a race: the first one who gets to the dragon almost certainly wins.

The players need more movement, so they could even reach the dragon, nobody managed to get close before they were losing badly, (and the traitor rightly seeing how the game was going switched sides) and the walls need to be heavier and/or the marbles lighter, because even the small fireballs alone were smashing through everything with almost no resistance.

@@definitelynotabot593 Well it was never supposed to be easy to slay a dragon. But you are totally right, there has optimisation to be done, but I really dig the concept. Maybe the dragon should pass the first round and marbles should destroy only the first 2 objects they are hitting. I'm sure somewhere in the concept there is a nice balance.

That's why it's still in testing. I think this game has appeal, but not in its current state. The concept is very interesting and unique though.

to me this is like almost every modern game...theres no real "hook" no juicy mechanism and is a hodgepodge of too many little things not really amounting to anything other than relying on the almost toy factor of rolling marbles at a wall. I think the traitor element needs removing asap

It looks more of a party game to be fair...

@@matthew_thefallen far far too complicated to be a party game - if it was just rolling the marbles and having barricades that would be plausible

@@matthew_thefallen I'm sorry but I cant see myself pulling this out and setting it up as a party game with some people who are not so much into TTG. To me party game would be something that can be ready in 5-10min and not take much space so we can talk, drink and socialize. Again, just me so take it or leave it

Yesss we need a TAP/NRB crossover!

YESSSS THIS, please:)

as much as i'd like that i don't see a channel like this just dumping all it's regulars so Dom can bring his friends on

@@NovaStalkerthis is a very fair observation but let a girl dream ok

Try if you will worm! Our great leader Dom cannot be destroyed by the likes of you!

I think they already do number 2... out of fear.

I think they already do number 1, see the Monopoly series.

The game as of this play seems too unbalanced and spread out. Love the idea but I would agree that the traitor mechanic needs some work… But it could be that the crew just doesn’t co-op well. Dom trying to turn everyone into piglets is his moto

@@rafk2976 I agree. I love Nemesis and it's not really co-op but there is a possibility for everyone to win IF they cooperate. In this, if you are behind on victory points you simply don't care which side wins, because you lose either way. So i would trash the traitor mechanic altogether and make it that everyone below 20 victory points loses, because they will be seen as a coward. Then you have individual goals and shared goals

@@marvinko6610 that could work or as someone else suggested that after 3 parts of the bastion is broken the player with the lowest VP could become a traitor if you wanna keep the traitor aspect

im going to propose a new phrase ( but I suspect someone has got there first) this game is a Mechanism Salad

I got the same impression. I would hope the pieces have been physically tested, alongside the mechanics being playtested for balance. Instinctively I feel like the various barricades need more nooks and crannies in which to "catch" the fireballs, or possibly more angles to give strategy to where you deflect them.

Yeah, my first instinct would have been that if a ball hits a wall, its effects are nullified afterwards (even if we have to replace the stuff that got bulldozed over). It's not super convenient, and it's a bit less exciting, but still... Ofc an alternative is to give more hitpoints to the villager team: the ability to rebuild the village barricade, in particular.

Maybe the smaller marbles need to be smaller so there is a bigger difference between the large and small.

They could be anchored to the game board and angled so they could actually deflect the fireball. There could even be a certain level of strategy involved in exactly what orientation you place them in so you could (potentially) protect certain areas.

Best solution would be magnets. Destroy them after being hit, and let the ball continue on its course, but give them some oompf. As it is, it doesn't seem like building walls and barricades is worth the action and resources.

I literally came to the comments to shout out the Dragonheart reference. Nice to see I'm not the only 1 who got it 😅

the game would work better (but its still too many working parts for me) with lighter balls and ditching the traitor thing

I'm thinking it was only fragile because it was a one-of-a-kind prototype and Laurie didn't want it to have any potential nicks before its photoshoot. Hopefully the one that comes with the finished game would be durable. 🤔

@@brockmarie Yeah I think he may have been extra careful, but you would like to think a prototype could handle 8-9 marbles being rolled down it. The cardboard one looked fairly flimsy too

Yeah people who manage to convey the rules to complicated games are my heroes

I fell asleep it was so long.

​@@graemewells3716Yeah, I could barely keep up. Thankfully, it all became clear once they started playing.

@@LinoWalker yeah, i feel that lauire over explains rules to most games, but this one seemed very complex

@@graemewells3716 Oh, it absolutely wasn't Laurie's fault! It's just that this game is way too complicated (and unbalanced). It just seems like they grabbed a bunch of popular mechanics from other games and crammed them into this one without thinking if they're really necessary.

Cooperative games should lean towards being very difficult. The traitor mechanic seems to make this game almost impossible though.

Yes!! This!! ❤❤❤❤

So what you're saying is you can't apply an elegant reductive assessment to a game that has too much going on. Got it.

@@broshmosh I think you have mistaken "can't" for "chose not to"... I also chose not to make a snide personal remark denigrating a fellow KZfaqr's comment, which is not to say I can't do that, I just chose not to... you obviously chose otherwise.

@@broshmosh come on, the game in its present state is I think a mess. Sorry creators

If only i could get a good grip on what it is...

That's what I was thinking. Rules should at some point be self explanatory. Like if you get the iconography and know how a round works, you should be set. However to explain any of the 6-7 systems, you have to explain another system first. For example: "So you need these runes to defeat the dragon. But it has to be the right rune first. You get them by defeating monsters or you can spend artifact cards. I now explain you how to defeat monsters: You need resources. So let me explain how you get resources. Also let me tell you how to get the artifact cards I mentioned before I explained 2 other systems. So now you know how we win. Let me tell you how we lose. We lose if the barricades are destroyed. How? By the dragon. Let me explan how the dragon works. Also his fireballs can trigger effects. How do we prevent that? There is a building system. And for good measure, you can pray and somehow have another thing on your character board that gives you stuff. Got it? Oh and there is a traitor and only one of you can win even though you work together. Yes, another 3 systems I can explain to you."

@@marvinko6610 I could not have explained this better myself, nor have I laughed this hard in a while

well said - its like the makers have thrown everything at this. The marble thing IMO is an ESSENTIAL thing to change before everything else. Get lighter balls. Get that sorted then it may be playable

Yeah, the walls make hitting the sides even easier. It's like they are in a big tunnel, and the only way out is the end of the map. The marble deflecting off the obstacles doesn't do much if it can't roll off the board and just be guided to the end. Joining the dragon, if the dragon is loosing, makes more sense contextually. I don't see why a dragon, with full health, would be so easily tamed.

Looks like an osmo pocket?