Vindication deserves more love than it gets. It's one of those games that demands an immediate replay upon completion. There are quite a few expansions available that are all well worth tracking down. I agree; pick up the big box that includes all of the extras. Great video!

The quick answer is YES it is still worth it. It takes sandbox games and make them a euro, and with Chronicles also makes it an engaging story as well. Awesome stuff. It's a staple in my collection.

My favourite game, and I'm glad we're mostly on the same page here. Would have loved a version without minis to knock the price and box size down. Most of the module expansions are bollocks with a huge caveat being it is better with 2 Inn tiles rather than 3 Inn tiles, and the Pets just add another option to your engine building. And on that note, I find the game ends too soon, you've built your engine to a lovely degree of functionality and some bastard gets the win condition. So I remove about 4 win conditions from the game, the easiest ones to complete and play to 2 win condition cards are met.

I have had this one on my shelf for a while but your endorsement has convinced me to try to table this ahead of a few other games. Thank you for the review!

Cheers mate! Another banger of an upload

This one has been on my watch list for ages. Really want to try it, as i think it'd be right up meine straße. I hadn't thought about this one for ages actually, so I'm pleased you've brought it to mind again.

Cant believe its been 6 years since this come out!

Great channel man, that I recently stumbled upon, love the presentation style by the way. Some what different from a lot of board game reviewers, which is a refreshing change. Vindication - totally agreed, Kickstarted this years ago and it’s a massive frustration that they spent so much time and money on the peripheral miniatures that don’t do anything and left players markers with a crappy metal coin. Missed opportunity there. Having said that, production value is great, inserts are excellent, art work is amazing and it plays well. Could have been tweaked though to make it really shine. Keep up the good work

and this video is the reason i come to watch you nailed the review!

A very good game, it just feels right. Orange Nebula did really well here. I just wish it had a smaller box with none of the useless (giant) minis.

Got it pretty recently, and need to bring it to a meet up. Some people are keen on playing it, but we always plan other games haha I need to bring it soon though.

I spent too much on the all-in for this game in the last backing opportunity years ago. But it is a really good euro that maybe doesn't get as much love because it costs a lot, and it is sometimes not in print. I do not know if the expansions will unbalance the game, but I do not know if I will ever find out because the base game is so good I don't want to mess up the experience. Great video. Thanks for the effort on this one. Vindication deserves the attention.

Another great game getting your "treatment". Comes through with flying colours! Really hope you get to cast your jaundiced eye over Unsettled at some point. It is another absolute banger from Orange Nebula.

Are you not aware, Sir BoardGameBollocks, that you have something of far greater value to offer, than your knowledge of boardgames? You're certainly the last -Femistani- European man in existence; you should be selling that. But thank you for the quality video. Especially considering that you could be doing far more important things.

Thinking of buying this and now I think I will 😁 Your 3 minute rough guides are really good, have you thought of deviating a bit with a bgb Watch it Played sub channel? I'd love full tutorial videos that weren't dull as fuck and took the piss out of the game and audience while teaching...

Great review and some damn good filming! -- you're upping your production value, too. All other board game review channels feel so saccharin now, so thanks for ruining the experience for me ;-)

Just bought this for just over £30. Can’t wait to give it a go!

Great video. Vindication is in my top 3. Scythe at 1, Vindication at 2...and I actually don't know what I would put at 3. But your points are dead on. The minis non-use is upsetting. They take up a huge portion of the box and they serve no purpose. The expansions....I have read about most, and I still don't know which are good. I have played with Leaders & Alliances and I will say that one is fun and adds some cool stuff to it. Pets though...doesn't seem great. And why are there so few...treachery? cards? Still....base game rocks. If you are on the fence, jump over cause the base game rocks, the stuff he is says is all true...but doesn't change the fact that the game is killer.

Bought the game, we love the game. Took it to my game club and it's the first time anyone has ever wanted to play a game twice in a row. This off the back of our first game with 4 took 2 hours and they just wanted more. So we added well of wishes, menagerie and traitors and we got excited playing it. 20 minutes later. 20 fecking minutes later it was game over - somebody triggered the 'have 4 more control regions than the next player'. What a disappointment and let down. Instead of more KS releases full of more complex and convoluted rules (and figures of course), they should just redo the entire game end system instead of people creating house rules. Great game though, thanks for making me buy it :) btw, love your idea of player figures, but I haven't tried it yet, but the new monuments variant should make the figures actually useful and the monument expansion useful?

Great review!!! I love Vindication, but do admit the numerous expansions (still a good thing) can be hard to manage so I just try one at a time and you get better at knowing what to remove. The expansion character standees (one for scumbag and one vindicated) and larger draw bag are a must - the metal rectangles and tiny bag are a failure, not sure what they were thinking. Lastly, yes, disappointing after you see cool big minis and find out they do almost nothing. Happy gaming.

Interesting review. I haven't played Vindication, but owned Unsettled for a while. I find Orange Nebula's productions amazing and clever in how theme is integrated in the game mechanics (perhaps sometimes too much, like how they reinvent generic game terms to fit the theme, which over-complicates play at the same time). I wonder if this one might lack a bit of bashing and competitive oomph for our deranged game group 😁 Maybe too euro-ey for an exploration RPG.

I had this one for a while and gave it a few goes with different groups. I always felt like it promised a lot thematically, but never delivered with the gameplay. The sandbox of it made me feel like none of the paths I went down were strategically motivated, and were just motivated by the kind of “story” I wanted to tell? No one I played it with enjoyed it enough to play it twice. I since sold it. That bit with the conviction cubes was a great mechanism though. Reminded me a bit of Terra Mystica

Couldn't agree more. This one is in my top 3 of 250 games. The game play is just so smooth, the game so much fun. Time flies by unnoticed, with this one. Just a shame of the mini's indeed. They add 30,- to the price tag, or so. There is no justification for that, imho...

Still one of my top 20. Thanks.

Huge fan of this game, but I only had a couple of gripes. I don't like the rent-seeking mechanic where you can squat on a tile and collect resources when people use it or if they push you off. It just doesn't feel like it matches the theme. Also, the number of end-game conditions can be high and there were some people who were constantly asking, "what are the 4 or 5 ways this game can end again?" Not a huge deal, just didn't seem like the variety added any freshness. But other than that, I've been playing this game since '18 and I've always enjoyed it. Great review.

I want to buy the base game used, but are there different base game versions/releases i need to pay attention too (maybe any improvements)?

The best use I've found for those minis is to replace the crappy first-player markers in other games.

Tried a few games of this a while ago and we found collecting mosters the clearly dominant strat every time. Just us, or is this something the table is supposed to balance?

Oi, where's my previous comment, KZfaq? I bought it 2 weeks ago because of your review, but I see the review is from 9 days ago... either I'm going crazy or something is going on. Alzheimer's most likely. Great game, thanks for the recommendation. Getting it for £35 on Zatu was insanely good value. One of few Euros I actually enjoy, as even if it is obvious that this is an Euro, it almost doesn't feel like it at all - making it a hit with our play group.

Good content right there

Love the game and all the people there are super nice too

Currently on Zatu for £40 Inc del

Fun video! This is such original content! Everyone wants shiny and new- give some older games some love- maybe people will stop backing kickstarter frauds and support real game developers and companies

one of the best game ever

i assume super-duper attribute is the technical term?

I will utilize this video to convince my wife to play this self of shame game😅😅

Love the review, and your channel in general man. I have a request, can you do a review of "electric football" sometime? Boardgame channels never talk about it but it was MY gateway tabletop game. Although Idk how hard it is to get ahold of on ur side of the pond I suppose 🤔

maybe a nice game, but never got my kickstarter game and developer just ghosted me on multiple messages/emails... great guys rly...

The biggest issue I have with the game is that your character is not "vindicated", they are "redeemed". The game should have been called Redemption.

A lot of people seem to really like this game so I'm not about to yuck on anyone's yum. That said I've played it a few times now and it just doesn't click for me. It's not bad, but it does feel like the theme is very thin and pasted on to what is really just a cube pusher. And the random end game conditions always made us wonder after an hour or so when the game will actually end, and we have to keep reminding ourselves what those actual conditions are for the current game because they are just too easy to forget when you're already committed to doing your own thing. I do think it's kind of amusing that the rulebook makes it out to be a kind of hero's journey, but the theme is Vindication, not Redemption, so rather than doing anything noble or heroic in the game, what you do is go about tagging buildings saying "that one's mine!", charging people rent, and sacrificing your followers to kill things and gain wealth. So you're playing a dispicable fiend kicked off a boat for being a dick, and rather than redeem yourself on this second chance island, you set about exploiting it and your fellow bastards. That's not a complaint, it's just funny. And also coming from kickstarter culture it's also weirdly overproduced in ways that don't improve the gameplay and things you interact with while playing, which means it costs more than it should. And there are the usual craploads of expansion material that all came out at the same time. Who knows if any of it's good or well playtested, you'll probably never play with it to find out. Look definitely not a bad game by any stretch, but I think it's often a bit oversold on it's theme and immersion when really it's not much more thematic than any euro, just the theme itself is fantasy rather than faming or trains.

Had this game for years but its such a CUBE pusher I'm getting rid of it. Its so heavy on theme mechanics but the cube pushing just feels inescapable.

Still never touched this.. because as you said there are way too many expansions. Maybe one day I'll blow the dust off of it and give it a go.

I still maintain the game should be called redemption, not vindication.

I got the big fuck you white box and pulling that thing out to get a game going is daunting. I wish I had just picked up the core box and a few small packs instead. I would definitely play it more.

Even when i don’t care about any of your f***** euro games… love to listen to your reviews😂 so much fun 👍🏻

Great game. You need to play Unsettled, Orange Nebula's second game. It's fucking brilliant. Better in my opinion. 🥒👀

Well, I loved the heck out of this. Easy sub.

I love your channel, but it took me some time to get used to you saying "we" instead of "I." Feels like I'm reading Anthem by Ayn Rand.

Nothing whatsoever to do with the gameplay, but when this first came out I was put off by the fact that the publishers/designers had chosen the title ‘Vindication’ when the theme of the game is not vindication, but redemption. Call me a pedant but at the time I thought that if they can’t get that right then how good can the game be. The game does actually look good, but I still don’t understand the choice of the name.

The price is too high…