Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
Debrief: Vantage (ft Mike from @BearwynPlaysGames)
The Operation Game Night podcast welcomes Mike from @BearwynPlaysGames to discuss Stonemaier Games' ambitious new release Vantage, a solo/co-op adventure game eight years in the making.
• Vantage's premise: You crash-land on a mysterious planet separated from your crew and must complete missions with your companion
• Players manage health, morale, and time resources while exploring through location cards and dice challenges
• The game contains nearly 1,800 unique cards offering unprecedented replayability
• Even after 12 playthroughs, Mike estimates he's only seen about 5% of the game content
• Play sessions can range from 12 minutes to 2+ hours depending on dice luck and choices
• The game always moves you forward - you'll succeed at challenges but face resource penalties
• It plays 1-6 players, with each player describing their location cards to others
• No app required - everything is contained within the physical components
• Players are creating journals and detailed narratives of their adventures
• Web tools now exist to speed up rulebook lookups for those who dislike page flipping
Follow Mike on Instagram @bearwinplaysgames to see his July Shelf of Shame cleanout featuring games like Root, Button Shy games, Marvel Champions, and Wonderlands War.
As always, come interact with us online, let us know if you have any feedback, and leave us a review/comment anywhere you get your favorite podcasts!
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Welcome to another edition of the Operation Game Night podcast. I'm your host, travis Smith, today joining us. We have a very special debriefer. He is the hostest, but the mostest, he's magnanimous, he's magnificent. He is Mike Argenziano from Bearwin Plays Games. Mike, how you doing.
Speaker 3:Good, how are you guys doing Great?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we're fabulous man. You have been playing some awesome games and we just really want to get you on here to hear specifically about Vantage, because I'm a Stonemaier fanboy. This game oh yeah, he's got the T-shirt and everything. This game. I am not a solo guy, I'm not really a co-op guy, I'm not a reading out of a book guy, but I have still been teetering on the edge of wanting to buy Vantage. That maybe this will be the solo game that you know does it for me and I can sit down and not be bothered that I have no friends and I can just play. So I'm really looking forward to hearing about it from you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I'm excited to share it with you guys.
Speaker 2:The other sultry voice that you hear on the podcast is Clayton Gable. Clay, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm good.
Speaker 2:I've already said too much. So, mike, this is your show. We are so excited to hear about Vantage. You're getting it right. When it came out, you are one of the first people we know that has laid hands on it and experienced it. It's something super unique that doesn't exist really anywhere else in board gaming. So give us your first impressions of vantage. How many times have you played it? Give us a little breakdown of the rules, tell us about it all right.
Speaker 3:So first off, clay, there might be a solution to your rulebook issue with these types of games with vantage.
Speaker 3:We'll get okay all right so, and also with that, I was hesitant. Being a stonemaier champion, like I love stonemaier, I was hesitant about buying it as well. Um, because I was like I don't want to be in a rulebook and I watched one playthrough and it was. It seemed like more work than it was worth for me. Uh, obviously, uh, it's a great game and I love it. Um, I got it for literally, I think, four days after it was released, delivered, and I would had already popped open, uh, and was playing it. And since then, and it's been about 14 days, so I've played it 12 times in the 14 days. Actually, I played two times yesterday at Starbucks while waiting for my car to get fixed. Wow, so, yeah, totally, totally a great game and loved every minute of it.
Speaker 3:Just as a brief breakdown like Vantage, you're with you and your. What a co-space ranger types float around space and your ship goes awry and you know you have to jump in a pod and crash, land on a planet, but the unfortunate thing is you crash away from everyone else around you. Um, but the unfortunate thing is you crash away from everyone else around you, uh, so it's you and your. I think they call it an odd suit Um, and you land on the planet and you have a mission, um, and hopefully so maybe be to bring you guys back together or um, one of the more common ones I'll say cause I don't want to give spoilers is collect a menagerie of animals, um, so that's one you usually see in a lot of the playthroughs. So not to common ones, I'll say because I don't want to give spoilers is collect a menagerie of animals, um, so that's one you usually see in a lot of the playthroughs. So not to get a lot of spoilers, um, and then you kind of just explore uh, jamie was online when he was like.
Speaker 3:It's literally like zelda. You're just kind of wandering around trying to complete missions and not get attacked by a chicken, um, that's literally the only thing I really remember about Zelda back then is the chickens. Uh, it's been a very long time, um, but yeah, uh, so you just spend your time doing different actions on cards and stuff, um, to get through it, um, but the basic setup is literally you have a starting, uh location that starts on the rulebook I don't know if you can see that you probably want an upside right and then you just kind of follow the directions. It literally takes maybe three, four minutes to get going, wow, and then once you land on the planet, you have a starting location and this is another one of those cards. That kind of is the beginning of it, um, and everyone will have their own starting card. Uh, oh, there we go. You'll have your own starting card and you'll describe what's on the card to people, but they can't see it.
Speaker 3:Um, which is kind of a cool concept, especially for you guys, is if you all were to pick this up, you could play it across the country from each other and it's basically the same thing, uh, which is kind of cool, uh, but yeah, so, like you would describe what's here and you guys can kind of work together, um, to work towards that goal of collecting a menagerie of animals.
Speaker 3:Um, there are some skill tokens that you have that you can use to pay off, uh, your roles and stuff, because you start with uh dice.
Speaker 3:Um, I think there you might be easier to put a picture of the dice up there. Um, you have skill dice and challenge dice and stuff like that that you will roll um, and based off of the challenge, so kind of like in those black dice there that you see, those are challenge dice in a pool and on your turn you'll pick an action you want to do which is on the right of the card and there's five to six usually on each one, and then they relate to a certain book. There's seven books that are in there and as you're choosing your actions, like a movement or departure or helping a sentient you would go to that page with that card number and before you read any further, it just tells you like help and then it'll have a dice number and you roll those black dice and then you'll have a dice number and you'll roll those black dice and then on um, you'll have certain things, um, and you start with I'm sorry if I'm getting going too fast here, no, no, no, what a rip.
Speaker 3:Uh, as you can see on that board there you have three tracks that you kind of want to stay as far away from zero as possible. You have health, morale, which is a star in time, um, and everything you do you succeed. It just might make you injured or takes too long and your og suit's dying, or you lose morale because you feel like it's such a strenuous task. But those dice, all the black dice, going back to those all have like a heart or a, any of those three, a dash or a reset facing on it and you'll put them on your cards, depending on the type of task you do. And then the lightning ones. Anyone can put a dice there that you're playing with. So you'll do that, and if you can place any of that dice on the card, you're good. It doesn't affect your health tracks at all. But if you can't, then you start manipulating that track. So you kind of want to fill up your grid of cards as you go with a variety so that if you roll a heart, you have a space for that heart dice or a roll on a departure, you have a blue departure square you can put that dice in and there's a million different ways, but there's the basic six different types of spaces you can fill in and then, based off of that, you'll read the passage and it'll tell you what's going on and where you're going, or if you got a pet or you found a crystal, or one of the crazy things and I won't get too detailed is there is so many mini-games that are inside this box, like there's a Mission Impossible type thing going on in one of them that I MF in the middle of Starbucks, cause I couldn't figure it out. But you still succeed, no matter what. You're constantly moving forward, cause unless you die, you're going to keep going, right.
Speaker 3:So that's kind of like the basics of it, and you can offset some of your dice, like how many you roll with the different uh tokens. So if, like, you're doing a green health um action, you can spend some of these uh green tokens and then you only have to roll one dice or no dice, uh, so you can offset it by those. But you can also help each other. So if clay was trying to do something and I had a green token, I can spend my green token to help him mitigate that dice roll, so you guys can really work together. I've free played majority of the time solo uh. I've played twice with my girlfriend and majority of the time solo. Uh. I played twice with my girlfriend and majority of the time solo. The gameplay unlike most stonemaier games, there's no atoma so you, you just play.
Speaker 3:There's no like I gotta manipulate a card or flip or uh, move a shadow character, none of that. So you, you're just on the planet alone, uh, minus a sentience, and there's a traveler that talks to you. That just randomly pops up, but for the most part, you can just go at it. Now I know, like I said, I was really hesitant about it because of all the reading that you would have to do in these books, like there's pages of things here, dang, I like it. I actually ended up really enjoying it. I think it's great. I like the no screen time thing. Someone actually, though, created a rule pops webpage that you can go in there and type in the number like two, seven, two and the skill so help, and it'll actually pop it up there for you, so you're not having to flip through multiple books and stuff like that, and I actually tried that for the first time at starbucks and it works. It's good, but that could kind of help your uh, I don't want to shift through a bunch of books, uh, clay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm notorious for whining about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but the good thing, though, is those it's only like a blur, it's like two lines and then you move on, so it's really really kind of cool in that way.
Speaker 1:Is there a coherent story involved or is it kind of just disjointed little blurbs and you're kind of one-offing things?
Speaker 3:So there's the mission. I forgot that part. You draw a mission the Menagerie of Animals, for example and that's kind of what you're working towards. But you can also win by completing destiny cards that you find along the way, which is like helping a sentient start a new life in a different location. So you can. Those are like what you're working towards, but in general, no, there's not like an overlapping, like you're trying to save the planet from dying or anything like that. One of the cool things I've seen that I don't believe jamie was trying for is people are actually writing journals. So they're playing this game and then writing, like you know, stardate 1722 and like creating a whole like story for their hour and a half two hour games about what they're doing. Um, so no, it's left to your imagination really, which I love because I'm not that type of person. So I like seeing that people are doing that because it makes me think about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's kind of like Oath the game. Oath will sell you that big leather-bound journal that you can keep track of all your character stats and write down your different feats and everything. That's cool, man, since you brought it up, is it taking you an hour and a half per game, or is it an hour and a half if you are playing with six players? What's the playtime like?
Speaker 3:The box says an hour and 20 minutes to 200 minutes or something like that. Out of the 12 games I've had, out of the 12 games, I've had games that lasted 12 minutes. Literally I timed it Because I was being like every choice I had I had, like I had your starting character card that's in the middle of your grid, and I was, it's like rolls 12 dice, I mean 6 dice, and then I have two slots that ain't gonna work. So I was constantly going down that track. And then other games, like I was rolling the dashes, which don't affect anything, that's just like a free roll, and that 30 minutes, 45, the longest one I've had was two hour, two hours and a half, 245, um, but it's really and it can. It ranges, uh.
Speaker 3:And then there's also, even if, like in that game, that it lasted 12 minutes or 13 minutes, there's actually a mechanic in there where you reroll all the black dice that you have and whatever shows up there. It's like a refresh or respawn so you move them to those spaces so you can continue on, uh, instead of just ending it. Um, but also with the, even if you completed a mission and you wanted to keep going, you could. It gives you like a destiny. Like you found the menagerie of animals. Now you know help map out the ocean or whatever the destiny would be, so you can keep going.
Speaker 3:So, um, there's really no time frame. That, I think, is like set, I think that was just like a ballpark, like hey, be prepared, you could be playing this for two hours. Um, I think I on his podcast, uh, his live stream on wednesday someone said they played for 12 hours, holy wow I'm not sure how.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. I don't know how many respawns they went through, because you're only supposed to do it once. But yeah, no, it's totally open-ended, which is great for you guys. You got kids and stuff going on. You can stop at any point and just kind of carry on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So the most you've played at is two, though yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's. The unfortunate thing is I have my girlfriend in me and she'll play any game I put in front of her, but it's just us two usually. Yeah, or my if when we hang out with my ex boss and his wife. But yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd be out of this pandemic yeah, I don't think that.
Speaker 1:From what I've heard and from my own experience with games kind of like this, I don't think I'd want to play it with more than two, and I think one's probably what I would buy it for. Just because I don't like describing stuff. You know, like to me I feel like I would get sick of being like I see clouds and some type of metal object and there's a mountain in the background, like I think I would get tired of doing that. So I don't know how you felt about having to do that, how much you actually do that um, I think it really depends probably on, like, who you play with.
Speaker 3:When I play with my girlfriend, I point out the things that I know will interest her. Is there a cute flower, an animal in the background? I'll be like it's stormy out, versus when she explains things to me, she's like it's dark and gloomy and there's a hallway. It really kind of depends.
Speaker 2:I didn't find it too annoying, so I I haven't read, like I haven't read through the rule book or anything, but what is the breakdown of, like, how many cards are in this box? Because, uh, to get the money's worth, like, there's got to be 500 cards in this thing um, no, way more than that.
Speaker 3:Just like I don't know how well you can see it. This is the box Holy smokes, and there are probably 900 item people, flora cards that have tons of information, and I think there's 900 or 800 location cards, and then on top of that there's a pack and this is what there's so much in here that he never really talked about, which is kind of the point. But there's even like a spoiler pack that I'm no one's mentioned nothing about it, and there are cards in here that are I don't want to give it away, but it's a new mechanic that you wouldn't think jamie stegmaier would put in a game, because usually they're it's kind of like strays away from it, uh, or an action, I should say, and these cards help with them. Um, okay, so, and I finally got to open one of them after like the fifth game, cause I was like I know, and I haven't seen a post about it, nothing, no one said anything what they were. But yeah, there's tons of cards and I feel like I've maybe gone through like 5% of them.
Speaker 3:Wow Cause sometimes you get some repeats where you are, but they're all so different. Yeah, and even if you go one path, the likelihood that you remember to go that same way again is so slow. You're the right, the same action, or anything like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah no.
Speaker 3:I think you would love it, travis Travis is a sure win.
Speaker 1:I was going to say about this thing I know I think you would love it Travis, Travis is a sure win.
Speaker 3:I was going to say playing this solo is so cool. Yeah, it is amazing how well this came out and I'm hooked. Something else I was going to mention Tapestry is my favorite game of all time. Any designer, everything I love Tapestry. I've only played Tapestry in person 10 times in the three or four years I've owned it. I've played this 12 times in 14 days. That's wild. It's a contender for me, 100%.
Speaker 1:I'm like looking at all the cards over here. Yeah, I mean I'm inspired by how ambitious this game was. You know you always have to respect something. I mean jamie's talked about it at length, about what's this? Eight years in development, that he's poured so much thought and design work into this game. You know it's good to hear that it's getting, I think, on majority, positive reviews, especially at those lower and solo player counts.
Speaker 2:It looks awesome if you think about it like this, this to me says, like video game, right, the zelda is the, the destiny is the no man's sky, whatever. You're exploring these abandoned worlds and and you're seeing new things and you're interacting in different ways, and those teams that make those video games that take eight years to make, those teams are giant, ginormous, right, like those big triple a games that put quality content out, like this, and jamie stegmaier is like the smallest of teams, and even just the artwork alone, for you know, a thousand different cards is going to take forever. I can't believe that. This is even a thing. I'm, I'm super intrigued. I'm, I might have to.
Speaker 3:Yeah and I think there's there's only two, no, I'm sorry, three artists. So out of those like 1400 cards, three artists did all of it, which is insane, and the fact that they didn't even I was listening to him talk. He didn't even do it in order. He would get a card and be like the art for it and then create around that kind of thing or like this is where this is going to go, so that none of the cards well, there's some of them are in order with other cards are just like randomly, like you're in a hot spring and then next year in the mountains, like so, but apparently if you were to line them up, they would make a complete globe uh, you just need two sets to do he.
Speaker 3:He said it is possible if you have both, that it is a round planet, um, so you could do it wow that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Holy smokes so real quick back to the gameplay I you touched on a lot. So on your turn, like a turn by turn basis, you're the core actions. I know you can take a location action, which are the things on the side you can move. Is there something else you can do on your turn?
Speaker 3:So you can do location actions. You can do, and when you're doing a location action, unless otherwise said, you can only do one there, the entire game.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:You can do card actions and there's card actions like in this picture here. On any of the cards in your grid or the on the central board with all the tokens, there's the mission and destiny cards. Go there. You can do actions off of those as well. Those don't have a limit of how many you can do. However, if you do one, it's going to give you the same answer each time. So it's kind of silly Versus the ones on your cards in front of you in your grid. You can use those over and over again. And then the other option is departing and there's a On the departing one there's this compass and the one pointing upwards is always north, but it's not geographic north, it just means in front of you. So if you were to turn around, south would become north. So that's the other X you can do and depending if there's a number on it, it you can spend one coin or roll one challenge dice to move there.
Speaker 3:Or if there's an asterisk, which you probably won't see because it's shiny and blurry, it's that south one um you can, uh, you'd go through the depart book and it will be like roll this many dice and you'll succeed, no matter what, uh, and it'll tell you where to go. So it's so interconnected it's crazy.
Speaker 1:The challenge dice. There's a big pool of them. You fill up spots on your grid so that you don't have to take penalties for them. Yep, exactly, and when do they get reset back to the middle?
Speaker 3:So there's the pool in that picture and that's where they start. When you spend them, they either go on your card or that penalty box which is on the top of the card over there. Once there are no dice or not enough dice to do an action, it all resets back to the pool so in a one-player game there's, I think it's, eight dice, so it's six plus two.
Speaker 3:I think that's right. So once you go through those, they reset. And yeah, I only briefly did it, but yeah, like when you see the dash that has no effect to you, and then when you see this, it's like a reset that goes automatically back into the pool. So if you keep rolling these, you're never going to reset and get the car, the ones off your cards where you can uh save yourself from getting penalties all right, travis, now you can say whatever you want to say I was gonna say you, you, as you venture around, it tells you where to go.
Speaker 2:in the booklet you said that you've seen maybe 5% of these cards. Have you ever had instances where you end up in the same location as you had previously Between games?
Speaker 3:Only once. It just happened to be because I think I just lucked out and it was one of the starting locations. Because there's starting locations and you roll your dice to see like there's a ton of them and, depending on the skill dice you roll, I don't know where I put them there's like 30 of them, not 30, probably 20. And, depending on it, you will end up in that location and like if you so, if you had a like, you have these two symbols. You're going to go to the same location if you have that same card. So that's the only time I've really run into it. Otherwise, no, I have yet to repeat a location.
Speaker 2:And this plays up to six. So how does it work if like two?
Speaker 3:players have to go to the same location.
Speaker 2:Uh, you would is that possible?
Speaker 3:yeah, you would just pass the card back and forth so they can look at it. Um, yeah, but I I think that would be such a rarity if you were to ever get on that same thing, like I was flipping through before here, just, and I shouldn't have done it. I was flipping through to find a card that it was like I've seen before and I was like, oh man, I just saw a card I've never seen there's so many. Yeah, you'll never see the same thing. Probably I mean maybe if I keep going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sounds like you're good. I cannot see the same thing. Probably, uh, I mean maybe if I keep going. Yeah, wow, I can't believe. I cannot believe this plays up to six players like I one. That would probably take forever. But just passing back and forth all those rule books, I feel like you'd have to go to like an app-based thing at that point because, um, well, um, on the back of all the rule books is actually like your reference sheet.
Speaker 3:So if you played at six and everyone had one book whenever you did the green help, I would read that for you. Or the blue depart, like you could do it that way, and then that splits up the reading and that's actually how they recommend you do it, so like if I'm somewhere, clay will read it to me so I can't cheat to see what it says. Okay, not that it makes a difference, because once you choose, that's what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah so maybe it's a spoiler, but when you choose a location action, you don't know what's going to happen. If you decide to, you know, search this rubble or whatever. Um, they're like branching paths. Once you choose that, or is it usually just say one thing, or do you get to, you know, spend more things to maybe go a different way?
Speaker 3:yeah, so there are actions that you'll do. Um, some of them are the overpowered ones. I've seen them in, or what's that called. There's the take ones I've had seen it where it'll give you, like you walk into this bar and kind of like a dd thing, what do you want to do?
Speaker 3:and it'll list off three or four options okay and then you'll, it'll tell you something or, like you'll, you can spend a boost or um a dollar and you'll get a different thing than if you did the other. So yeah, some of them do break down further, okay, and kind of branch off to the different options. Uh, and what you could do. I've usually only seen it when you're dealing with another sentient out there, another life form.
Speaker 2:Okay, wow, one more question, since we've been talking for almost half an hour now. You mentioned that you have the overarching mission and one of them is collect a menagerie of animals. How many different missions are there without spoiler, without any spoilers?
Speaker 3:Like, are there like hundreds or is it a collection of them? I would, I don't know, cause that's the other thing. There's missions, and I've probably seen 12 of them, oh, no, 11 of them. I got the menagerie of animals twice and then I cause I, without looking at them, it's kind of hard to tell. But you have missions, you have destinies, you have quests, you have all these different things. But just thinking about it, probably I would think at least 60 of something in that range, but there could be more.
Speaker 3:I don't know, because those cards are not in order. Like yeah, there are plants right here and then there are plants on the other end of the deck, like like I've pulled them from different places. I have no idea. I don't even think I've heard him talk about how many there are okay, I think that's kind of the point.
Speaker 3:That's yeah, that's wild man yeah, yeah, he's been pretty good about like not about not giving spoilers and combating it on Facebook. There's a Facebook group and he does pretty good about like hey, don't do this, put it in the comments and say spoiler. He's been working really hard not to ruin it for anyone.
Speaker 2:Dang, you got me fired up about this game, mike.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if we could all be together, I would say, right now, let's go.
Speaker 1:It is such a great game. It sounds like it.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna do it. I'm in Arizona. I could be there in six hours driving.
Speaker 1:So you coming to World Series of Board Gaming then? Maybe, I've thought about doing it, you're gonna be.
Speaker 3:Uh, I know, that's why it's tempting. Um, I started a new job, I decided to quit that job on friday and I'm starting a new new job on tuesday. Uh, so I don't know what that's going to look like yet, so maybe I'm debating.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, keep us posted. We'd love to have you. Yeah, awesome, this has been a great conversation, super informative. You are a great coast, mike. We would love to have you on again but, before we go, do you want to give a shout out to anybody? Do you want to, like, tell people where they can find you on the internet?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I am not as active anymore as far as like posting reviews and stuff, but I'm bare wind plays games on Instagram. I have a tick tock a few things here and there with, but I feel too old for that, so not very much. But yeah, no, that's it man.
Speaker 2:I'm going to tag your Instagram handle in the show notes if you are interested in following Mike. You play some awesome games. You're always posting interesting stuff. I love following your page because you get me pumped up to play games. Your July Shelf of Shame cleanout has been super interesting to follow and you're playing some of my favorites Button Shai, Thank you. Oh yeah, Button Shai games You've got Marvel Champions on there You've shy games.
Speaker 2:You got marvel champions on there. You got games of root going on. You played. You look fell in love with wonderland's war. I'm hoping, oh yeah yeah, no, it's great dang.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I live vicariously through you now because I do not play as many games as I was when I was in colorado. And when I see you playing all these games, I'm like we gotta get this guy on, because he is doing the Lord's work playing games and I want to hear about them.
Speaker 3:I have to shout out my girlfriend for that Cause she puts up with the hobby and this and all the stuff over here.
Speaker 2:She's a keeper, she's a keeper.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, I'd say so.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thank, she's a keeper, she's a keeper. Yeah, yep, I'd say so. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, mike, for operation game night. I have been travis. He has been clay.
Speaker 3:He's been mike arginian arginiano there you go, you got it, you had it twice from barrow and plays games.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us. This has been ogN and we're out. Thank you.
