I love this expansion, I’ve been playing it with my wife and 2 girls (12 & 14). We will be playing the final episode on Friday. Can’t wait. I love the quality you put inti it all. I’ve just ordered Tapstry 10 mins ago looking forward to playing with my family. Thank you
The first 2 minutes of this video was very amusing. I think you were realizing the weirdness of telling people not to open their boxes, like kids on Christmas at 6 am.
Just want to say thank you Jamey. Scythe is amongst my favourite board games ever (really had to choose between scythe and a a feast for odin). I just got the new expansion today and i cant wait to dive into it. As for your question my favourite way to determine a winner is probably games like mansions of madness where the win condition is unknown until it matters and is different depending on the story. Thank you for all the love and care you put into crafting such an amazing game, cant wait to see what you work on next.
This mechanism was great for our play through which we just finished. We played with 7 players and it made sure that a couple of us were contending in the last game. 2 points separated the winner and runner up in the end!
Jamey, please keep up the great work that you and Stegmaier Games are doing. I am a huge fan and look forward to what Stonemaier Games has upcoming in the future. #Scythe #StonemaierGames #MyLittleScythe #Viticulture #WhatsNext
one of the best expansions ever. Love the suspense from chapter to chapter. The surprises are great. Well put together and very balanced. the only concern is the punch boards....it was hard to keep them separate enough not to see or uncover some future events. great fun.
I agree the suspension was great, there were many cool twists and turns and suprises, we definitely had a very memorable campaign played! But I didn't think it was very well balanced. The better players kept getting better and motre powerfull and if you had one or two bad rounds you basically had no chance anymore. So one player had tokugawa as their fraction which is pretty late game... well too bad there were like 3 rounds that were over in under 10 turns because of the different winning conditions, the one player who managed to quickly get thei hast mech and out of their territory got like 3 stars out (everyone else max 1 star) and just hit the objective of the round, one time the objective involved getting quickly to the factory which was hard for any factuion due to some additional rules, rusviet even was denied their special ability, but guess who could just walk in withough any penalty: Polania/norths, because they just used the see which didn't give them ANY penalty and just ended the game before anyone could do anything if they were lategame-ish. It was pretty clear who would win for the last three games, the one player with the tokugawa just didn't get any immediate bonuses and hardly any of the stuff you could buy, abnd I think not once 25 points from the track down below, because everyone used their special new powers when he hadbn't manged to get any, and sped up the game more and more, making it harder and harder for him to catch up. Even in the last game it's the best player who get to choose their player mat first! WTF So while I thoroughly anjoyed the campaign and will definitely use modules of it for normal games, I really don't think it's balanced. there is no catch up mechanism especially because of the triumph log (as netually the players with the most stars will get the most points from that one as well) (the best palyer overall got like 200 points alone for the track, I didn't even make that many points in the last round in total).
That runaway total problem mid-campaign was very present for my wife and I toward the end of Near and Far. It drained the campaign of fun and drama, so reading this today - and seeing it here - has me really excited to dig into RoF!
Youhou! It's available this week in France, with a great job on translation (by distributor Matagot) and on design of course for this extension. One of my best game ever: thanks Jamey! Many many thanks!
Hi Jamey. I'm the "limited Gloomhaven" guy :) Rise of Fenris is a good example of what I intended to say in terms of thinking that legacy and campaign games should have greater replayability, or diversity of paths and possibilities. I'm an old guy :) self-taught, who is pioneering the world of modern board games. Initially to divert my children from their cell phones (unsuccessfully), now I am discovering games that I like and can play alone. I find campaign and legacy games interesting, but in a limited budget reality, it bothers me to know that after finishing... that's all folks! I'm loving Scythe, and Rise of Fenris will undoubtedly be an excellent addition to my game, as beyond the initial discovery I can always play with the modules in different ways. Thank you very much for your attention!
Thanks for sharing this! We definitely designed The Rise of Fenris as a campaign game that can be played quite a number of times (opposed to a legacy game that features permanent changes).
One thing I thought of is that why when printing the game the text on the punchboard warning about spoilers wasn't put on another side of one of the other punchboard to ppssobly avoid spoilers just by looking at the top punchboard.
It works fine at any player count--what's more important, in my opinion, is that the players enjoy Scythe enough to play 8 games of it and yet are open to some twists on the game along the way.
Hi there Jamey i'm a big fan of your work just wanted to ask if these new Factions where playtested enough like the original factions i mean with the different playmats etc.I saw to a previous video talking about Scythe that you playtested Scythe 700+ times before release!!My question is..does these factions and invaders from afar factions playtested that much?i 'm not judging here just wanted to know.Keep up the good work Jamey!!
They weren't playtested quite that much, no. The original playtesting was so robust because we were trying to make the game as fun, functional, balanced, and intuitive as possible. Once the game was set, we were mostly just testing factions, not a completely new game.
@@jameystegmaier Thank you Jamey for your quick response you are doing so much for the hobby and you are an example of a designer!both for your games and your attitude!
Co-op/solo so not quite the same thing, but I really like how both Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1&2, and Arkham Horror: The Card Game handle their campaigns and not really having a win/lose criteria, just a bit of narrative that you either read, or write down for future reference. But then, I realized recently that I like when narrative games do 'levels of victory/defeat' with thematic significance rather than an arbitrary win/loss criteria. Also for some reason the way you're aiming for lines of victory criteria, either horizontal or vertical, reminds me of a blog post Gil Hova made about the design of The Executives expansion for The Networks, about how his playtesters really wanted to play tic-tac-toe so he reworked things from whatever it was prior to aiming for lines. Very odd opening to the video. "Don't open any of the boxes, there lies spoilers. But if you do ignore this, be sure to open all of the boxes." Idea for a Sunday Sitdown - you've now done all of a true, non-legacy, campaign game (well, expansion) in Rise of Fenris, a true legacy game in Charterstone, and Tuscany's campaign approach to gradually adding in expansions. How have you found the approach to designing all three differ, and is this sort of thing something you intend to do more of in the future?
We are currently playing the Fenris campaign with 6 players. Is it normal that episode 4 (where you have to subdue the agents) is finished faster than it took to setup the game? First thing everybody did was to go and subdue those agents. After just a couple of turn the game ended. No one had a star. Then the next episode (episode 5) there is a box in the middle of the table, everybody rushes to that box. There wasxa huge mech and if you defeat it, the game is over. It was defeated immediately. The game ended while only a few players had a single star. The other players did not get any star. So those were 2 episodes that ended very fast. Not a single person had the feeling to have had fun while everbody loves normal scythe. But now... we did not have the feeling we played a game. Those two episodes made us love scythe a little less. But... episode 6 is going to be a normal ending game again.
Thanks for playing! It is normal for a few of the games to go quite quickly (though definitely not shorter than the 5-10 minutes needed to set up Scythe). It's been a while since I designed or played this expansion, but looking back over the rules, there are a few things in play here: 1. You're right that there are ways for players to vastly accelerate the end of the game. But that's the choice of the players: You have the full ability to play a "normal" game of Scythe instead of rushing to end the game. It sounds like your group has the ability to make that choice, but they chose not to, yes? Why do you think that is? 2. I view any campaign game as a big time commitment, even one with just 8 sessions. So it is absolutely by design that some sessions are shorter than a normal game of Scythe--this is so you can tell the story of The Rise of Fenris without it overstaying its welcome. 3. Both elements in episode 4 and 5 have variable elements. I'm sure you can see a scenario where the power cards drawn would have led to longer sessions.
I really like Scythe and I was thinking about upgrade the game withe metal coins but I saw different 5 and 10 coins in red and blue color that look better than 5 and 10 coins from the original metal coins' pack. My question is, is Stonemaiergames going to release a new and painted version of each value coin? I would like to know in order to buy them now or wait for the new version. Thanks!
I'm glad you like them! We made those coins at fan requests and because it helped differentiate them from the standard versions of those coins (they're more expensive to make than the standard versions). We don't plan on making any other painted versions.
Hello, Mr. Stegmaier. How to pronounce "vEsna" or "vesnA"? Because on our language name "Vesna" also mean "spring" and emphasis on it is on last latter "a". (Sorry for my English, it's not my native language 😁)
I thoroughly enjoying Risk Legacy, but the run away leader definitely turned the campaign anti-climactic. In my game, Felis, I'm weighting the later games heavier to mitigate the forgone conclusions. There's also a "bigger than just one player" win/ lose scenario.
Non Spoiler Question for you Jamey, For the Triumph Log. Lets say you Earned 2 Stars for Winning Battles in the First Campaign... Do you have to put 2 Stars in the first Row (Next to each other), Or can you stack the 2nd Star Below the 1st Star in a Column? I will be playing my first Game of Rise of Fenris Tonight... So Stoked! Thanks!
Great! Thanks! So the Rule is, If you have 2 Stars for Winning Battles at the end of an Episode, you would need to put each Star in Separate Columns... You cannot stack 2 Stars in the Same Column at the end of an Episode. Cool! I only wanted to clarify because during the corse of the Campaign, there may be 1 Episode that you only won 1 battle... making the Triumph Log Columns uneven. I wanted to make sure that you didn't have to fill in the Topmost Empty Slot the next Episode if you received another Star for a "Victorious Battle". Rather, you can put the Next Check in the Longer Column. Sorry if this is Really Confusing!
Can players drop in and out or is the player count you start the campaign with, the number you will continually need to play every consecutive game with?
It's compatible with the base game and/or any expansions. There are some scenarios where we recommend not playing with the airships in The Wind Gambit, and you can't play a 6-7 player campaign without Invaders from Afar, but those are the only caveats.
It's my intention for this to be the final expansion. We do have a promo pack and a few new accessories in the works, but Fenris concludes the end of the Scythe storyline.
Thank you Jamey, you made a living leyend for huge amount of playing time for devouted players. Im very proud to be owner of this amaizing saga. Only one final question, How was the old combat system of Scythe?
Bernardo: There were around 25 different iterations of the combat system during playtesting, starting with very random systems using lots of dice all the way through the final deterministic system. :)
Picked up my copy an hour ago! I can't wait to play it on Sunday! Thank you so much Jamey and Ryan!
I love this expansion, I’ve been playing it with my wife and 2 girls (12 & 14). We will be playing the final episode on Friday. Can’t wait.
I love the quality you put inti it all. I’ve just ordered Tapstry 10 mins ago looking forward to playing with my family.
Thank you
Thanks for playing through Fenris, Jarv! I'm glad you're enjoying it with your family. :)
The first 2 minutes of this video was very amusing. I think you were realizing the weirdness of telling people not to open their boxes, like kids on Christmas at 6 am.
That part is weird, though the weirdest thing to me is seeing people open SOME boxes and not ALL boxes, yet thinking something is missing. :)
Just want to say thank you Jamey. Scythe is amongst my favourite board games ever (really had to choose between scythe and a a feast for odin). I just got the new expansion today and i cant wait to dive into it. As for your question my favourite way to determine a winner is probably games like mansions of madness where the win condition is unknown until it matters and is different depending on the story. Thank you for all the love and care you put into crafting such an amazing game, cant wait to see what you work on next.
Thank you, Robert--I'm honored to hear that. I like the way you put this: The win condition is unknown until it matters.
I'm so excited to play this, my package just shipped this out today!!! Thanks for making this video it was so helpful.
You looked so excited in this video 😁. I cant wait to get my copy of fenris.
congratulations. I'll have to wait a bit to purchase, but it is on my list of "must haves."
This mechanism was great for our play through which we just finished. We played with 7 players and it made sure that a couple of us were contending in the last game. 2 points separated the winner and runner up in the end!
Jamey, please keep up the great work that you and Stegmaier Games are doing. I am a huge fan and look forward to what Stonemaier Games has upcoming in the future. #Scythe #StonemaierGames #MyLittleScythe #Viticulture #WhatsNext
Thanks John! I appreciate your enthusiasm. :)
Omg can't wait to pick up my copy!!!
one of the best expansions ever. Love the suspense from chapter to chapter. The surprises are great. Well put together and very balanced.
the only concern is the punch boards....it was hard to keep them separate enough not to see or uncover some future events.
great fun.
I agree the suspension was great, there were many cool twists and turns and suprises, we definitely had a very memorable campaign played! But I didn't think it was very well balanced. The better players kept getting better and motre powerfull and if you had one or two bad rounds you basically had no chance anymore.
So one player had tokugawa as their fraction which is pretty late game... well too bad there were like 3 rounds that were over in under 10 turns because of the different winning conditions, the one player who managed to quickly get thei hast mech and out of their territory got like 3 stars out (everyone else max 1 star) and just hit the objective of the round, one time the objective involved getting quickly to the factory which was hard for any factuion due to some additional rules, rusviet even was denied their special ability, but guess who could just walk in withough any penalty: Polania/norths, because they just used the see which didn't give them ANY penalty and just ended the game before anyone could do anything if they were lategame-ish.
It was pretty clear who would win for the last three games, the one player with the tokugawa just didn't get any immediate bonuses and hardly any of the stuff you could buy, abnd I think not once 25 points from the track down below, because everyone used their special new powers when he hadbn't manged to get any, and sped up the game more and more, making it harder and harder for him to catch up. Even in the last game it's the best player who get to choose their player mat first! WTF
So while I thoroughly anjoyed the campaign and will definitely use modules of it for normal games, I really don't think it's balanced. there is no catch up mechanism especially because of the triumph log (as netually the players with the most stars will get the most points from that one as well) (the best palyer overall got like 200 points alone for the track, I didn't even make that many points in the last round in total).
That runaway total problem mid-campaign was very present for my wife and I toward the end of Near and Far. It drained the campaign of fun and drama, so reading this today - and seeing it here - has me really excited to dig into RoF!
Youhou! It's available this week in France, with a great job on translation (by distributor Matagot) and on design of course for this extension.
One of my best game ever: thanks Jamey! Many many thanks!
Hi Jamey. I'm the "limited Gloomhaven" guy :) Rise of Fenris is a good example of what I intended to say in terms of thinking that legacy and campaign games should have greater replayability, or diversity of paths and possibilities. I'm an old guy :) self-taught, who is pioneering the world of modern board games. Initially to divert my children from their cell phones (unsuccessfully), now I am discovering games that I like and can play alone. I find campaign and legacy games interesting, but in a limited budget reality, it bothers me to know that after finishing... that's all folks! I'm loving Scythe, and Rise of Fenris will undoubtedly be an excellent addition to my game, as beyond the initial discovery I can always play with the modules in different ways. Thank you very much for your attention!
Thanks for sharing this! We definitely designed The Rise of Fenris as a campaign game that can be played quite a number of times (opposed to a legacy game that features permanent changes).
One thing I thought of is that why when printing the game the text on the punchboard warning about spoilers wasn't put on another side of one of the other punchboard to ppssobly avoid spoilers just by looking at the top punchboard.
We just put it at the top of the first punchboard (front and back) you see when you open the box. There isn't room on the others.
Love your game brah, ordered Fenris before any other expansion. Do you think that’s wise?
Thanks! I think it'll be interesting that way. :)
Jamey Stegmaier Also what player count would you recommend we play with. We have a 3 player group with an occasional 4th.
It works fine at any player count--what's more important, in my opinion, is that the players enjoy Scythe enough to play 8 games of it and yet are open to some twists on the game along the way.
Hi there Jamey i'm a big fan of your work just wanted to ask if these new Factions where playtested enough like the original factions i mean with the different playmats etc.I saw to a previous video talking about Scythe that you playtested Scythe 700+ times before release!!My question is..does these factions and invaders from afar factions playtested that much?i 'm not judging here just wanted to know.Keep up the good work Jamey!!
They weren't playtested quite that much, no. The original playtesting was so robust because we were trying to make the game as fun, functional, balanced, and intuitive as possible. Once the game was set, we were mostly just testing factions, not a completely new game.
@@jameystegmaier Thank you Jamey for your quick response you are doing so much for the hobby and you are an example of a designer!both for your games and your attitude!
Co-op/solo so not quite the same thing, but I really like how both Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1&2, and Arkham Horror: The Card Game handle their campaigns and not really having a win/lose criteria, just a bit of narrative that you either read, or write down for future reference. But then, I realized recently that I like when narrative games do 'levels of victory/defeat' with thematic significance rather than an arbitrary win/loss criteria. Also for some reason the way you're aiming for lines of victory criteria, either horizontal or vertical, reminds me of a blog post Gil Hova made about the design of The Executives expansion for The Networks, about how his playtesters really wanted to play tic-tac-toe so he reworked things from whatever it was prior to aiming for lines.
Very odd opening to the video. "Don't open any of the boxes, there lies spoilers. But if you do ignore this, be sure to open all of the boxes."
Idea for a Sunday Sitdown - you've now done all of a true, non-legacy, campaign game (well, expansion) in Rise of Fenris, a true legacy game in Charterstone, and Tuscany's campaign approach to gradually adding in expansions. How have you found the approach to designing all three differ, and is this sort of thing something you intend to do more of in the future?
We are currently playing the Fenris campaign with 6 players. Is it normal that episode 4 (where you have to subdue the agents) is finished faster than it took to setup the game? First thing everybody did was to go and subdue those agents. After just a couple of turn the game ended. No one had a star. Then the next episode (episode 5) there is a box in the middle of the table, everybody rushes to that box. There wasxa huge mech and if you defeat it, the game is over. It was defeated immediately. The game ended while only a few players had a single star. The other players did not get any star. So those were 2 episodes that ended very fast. Not a single person had the feeling to have had fun while everbody loves normal scythe. But now... we did not have the feeling we played a game. Those two episodes made us love scythe a little less. But... episode 6 is going to be a normal ending game again.
Thanks for playing! It is normal for a few of the games to go quite quickly (though definitely not shorter than the 5-10 minutes needed to set up Scythe). It's been a while since I designed or played this expansion, but looking back over the rules, there are a few things in play here:
1. You're right that there are ways for players to vastly accelerate the end of the game. But that's the choice of the players: You have the full ability to play a "normal" game of Scythe instead of rushing to end the game. It sounds like your group has the ability to make that choice, but they chose not to, yes? Why do you think that is?
2. I view any campaign game as a big time commitment, even one with just 8 sessions. So it is absolutely by design that some sessions are shorter than a normal game of Scythe--this is so you can tell the story of The Rise of Fenris without it overstaying its welcome.
3. Both elements in episode 4 and 5 have variable elements. I'm sure you can see a scenario where the power cards drawn would have led to longer sessions.
I really like Scythe and I was thinking about upgrade the game withe metal coins but I saw different 5 and 10 coins in red and blue color that look better than 5 and 10 coins from the original metal coins' pack. My question is, is Stonemaiergames going to release a new and painted version of each value coin? I would like to know in order to buy them now or wait for the new version. Thanks!
I'm glad you like them! We made those coins at fan requests and because it helped differentiate them from the standard versions of those coins (they're more expensive to make than the standard versions). We don't plan on making any other painted versions.
Hello, Mr. Stegmaier. How to pronounce "vEsna" or "vesnA"? Because on our language name "Vesna" also mean "spring" and emphasis on it is on last latter "a". (Sorry for my English, it's not my native language 😁)
I say "VESS - nah"
I thoroughly enjoying Risk Legacy, but the run away leader definitely turned the campaign anti-climactic.
In my game, Felis, I'm weighting the later games heavier to mitigate the forgone conclusions. There's also a "bigger than just one player" win/ lose scenario.
I know exactly what piece it is. 😂 In fairness though, I'd totally take another. Just because it's cool. 😄
I haven't understood much of this... only that I need to play more Scythe (especially with te two first expansions I have not playet yet xp).
Non Spoiler Question for you Jamey,
For the Triumph Log. Lets say you Earned 2 Stars for Winning Battles in the First Campaign... Do you have to put 2 Stars in the first Row (Next to each other), Or can you stack the 2nd Star Below the 1st Star in a Column? I will be playing my first Game of Rise of Fenris Tonight... So Stoked! Thanks!
Thanks Chad! Those stars would need to go in the first row--you can't stack them in the same column.
Great! Thanks!
So the Rule is, If you have 2 Stars for Winning Battles at the end of an Episode, you would need to put each Star in Separate Columns...
You cannot stack 2 Stars in the Same Column at the end of an Episode. Cool!
I only wanted to clarify because during the corse of the Campaign, there may be 1 Episode that you only won 1 battle... making the Triumph Log Columns uneven.
I wanted to make sure that you didn't have to fill in the Topmost Empty Slot the next Episode if you received another Star for a "Victorious Battle". Rather, you can put the Next Check in the Longer Column. Sorry if this is Really Confusing!
That's correct--separate columns, and you decide the row. :)
Awesome! Thanks again.
Can players drop in and out or is the player count you start the campaign with, the number you will continually need to play every consecutive game with?
You can! It's not the ideal experience, but it is possible.
Jamey Stegmaier thanks J.Steg
Jamey.... unfortunally my anxiety win
I open it all :(
I want to go back in time
Is Rise of Fenris playable without other expansions, just with the base game?
It's compatible with the base game and/or any expansions. There are some scenarios where we recommend not playing with the airships in The Wind Gambit, and you can't play a 6-7 player campaign without Invaders from Afar, but those are the only caveats.
Final means that Scythe will never get more expansions on the future?
It's my intention for this to be the final expansion. We do have a promo pack and a few new accessories in the works, but Fenris concludes the end of the Scythe storyline.
Thank you Jamey, you made a living leyend for huge amount of playing time for devouted players. Im very proud to be owner of this amaizing saga.
Only one final question, How was the old combat system of Scythe?
Bernardo: There were around 25 different iterations of the combat system during playtesting, starting with very random systems using lots of dice all the way through the final deterministic system. :)
How many requests due to "leaners"?
What's a leaner? I'm not familiar with that term.
Jamey Stegmaier some thing has a lean (trying to stay vague) I can bgg MSG
Oh yes, that's what I'm talking about. At least 20 requests so far from people who open one box and not the other.
Is it pronounced, "Fen-ris" or "Fen-er-is"?
"Fen - ris". At least, that's how I intend to say it! :)
Thanks, Jamey.