Vast: The Crystal Caverns

Got this off a shift trade, sat shrinkwrapped for two months because getting five people in one room outside of work is basically a code all its own. Five roles, five completely different sets of rules, and the rulebook needed a major rewrite, mine had me flipping pages mid fight trying to work out if the Cave could even seal off a hallway. First play was a three hour slogfest, us checking rules mistakes the whole way through and generally trying to figure out what the heck we were doing. Somewhere in hour two I did my downtime clock thing, timing how long people sat waiting on their turn instead of watching the board.

Knight is the one nobody wants twice. He ramps up slow, mostly just walks around and hits things, no variable actions while everyone else is drawing symbol cards or conscripting goblin tribes. Played it once as the dragon in a two player game and it was heavily sided toward the dragon, the knight never had a shot. Could be a bad matchup, one data point, but it stuck with me.

Purple tint on the tiles makes an otherwise gorgeous box look a little lazy, and the player aids are basically flimsy photocopies of the manual pages, they need laminating before they survive round two. Thief and goblins lose a lot of their teeth at low player counts, so if your table usually runs three, know that going in.

The endgame kingmaker problem is real too, gang up on whoever’s ahead and it stops being five separate games and turns into everyone against one guy. That’s the thing my debrief instinct flags first if anyone asks whether to bring it. Still, watching the Cave player fling the knight fourteen spaces back and seal her in a wall two turns from winning, that’s a moment worth the setup. Keeping it on the shelf for the right five people, not for the next slow Tuesday.