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20 hours ago, anna said:

My copy arrived yesterday, so now I need to find people to play it with!

This is a good time to mention that I developed a 2-player variant for M:HW, in case anyone hasn't seen it yet. The gist of it is this: The players are working together to hold the Final Empire together and prevent the Skaa from rebelling. If the Unrest track reaches 8, both players lose the game. If they successfully solve the Vin Problem card before the Unrest track hits 8, then the player with the highest score wins.

I've tried it out and this variant does a surprisingly good job at capturing the feel of a regular 3+ player game. Give it a try and let me know what you think. :) 

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Thanks for the 2-player variant!  I'll try it out next time I can only find one friend for board games :)

I ended up playing last night with two friends who are also Cosmere fans.  It took us a couple of turns to get the hang of gameplay, and we didn't do a lot of backstabbing so we were mostly limited by resources when trying to solve problems.  I think the overall concept of bickering houses works as a standalone game, so House War should be approachable to people unfamiliar with Mistborn.

I'm excited to play again now that I have a feel for how the game works!

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Just got back from our non-release-party-thing- It was a lot of fun. :)

We got two games in- the first one was relatively short with @Emerald101 swooping in to single-handedly solve Vin, which boosted his score well above anyone else's. 

The second game was tense. @Blaineabus started aiding the Skaa rebellion right from his first turn and was soon joined by one of the other players, while Emerald and I stayed loyal to the Lord Ruler. As best as I could tell, the scores stayed pretty even for most of the game between the two rebel players and between the two loyal players. The rebels were able to stir up a lot of unrest, and when Sazed erupted fairly early on they were sitting at 7 unrest.

(EDIT: Here's a couple pics of the game right before Sazed came out)

IMG_0838.thumb.JPG.402d1cb3256c76e8950440637032aae8.JPGIMG_0839.thumb.JPG.082d413639a5b6df8a7f57d249669bdc.JPG

The unrest hung by a thread for the rest of the game until Vin finally arrived, at which point all out war broke out (basically). There were probably over a dozen cards played the turn that Vin appeared, including (IIRC), a soother, 2 seekers, a Thug, a Lesser Noble, a Mistborn, a Tineye, a Political Informant, a Financial Informant, a couple of Smokers, and several Hazekillers. In the end though, Emerald and I were able to thwart Vin and quash the rebellion. Very fittingly, the Lord Ruler had just come out a couple turns before Vin appeared, so all our points that round were doubled. Unfortunately for Emerald, even as we beat Vin I stabbed him in the back (It's okay, he's a Sanderson Elimination Vet, so I knew he could take it) by playing a Slanderer on him and turning all his Favor into Disgrace for the round, and thus secured a solid victory for myself. :D

IMG_0840.thumb.JPG.e58e1d94bb0e033ab239b53a32cf5d8f.JPG

Good times! Again, I had a lot of fun, and I can't wait until the retail release so that we can do this again!

Edited by Herowannabe
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I posted on SteelMinistry, but this is probably a more appropriate venue so I'll cross-post:

I got two friends together and we played a pair of games this afternoon: first a short, then a medium. Lost both games, of course, though the second only by 1 point, so a little salty about that. The second one was close, between me and guy who won in the positives and the other guy about to get an unrest victory the turn after mine.

Impressions generally positive from all sides, though it wasn't what they expected from the "war" part of the title.

I felt that the mechanics for when/how you could play the Personality cards were a bit unintuitive, at least to us (we're fairly heavy MTG players). When you could/couldn't was unclear, especially given the "play this whenevs, but not really" nature of the "Play anytime" cards.

There was also some dissent over the strictness of the "no negotiating until the pawn's on the Problem" rule, as people were inclined to figure out if there was any will/ability (in terms of Personality cards) to solve problem X before wasting a turn on it.

--

We had some discussion about the viability of the "spoiler strat" of going for Disgrace, whether it's the kind of thing you can reasonably aim for with a low-Personality House. We also reveled in the OP-ness of the Steel Ministry as a faction in a 3-player game, since they just go LOL at a fair number of pretty nasty STEEL MINISTRY card effects, which we pulled a lot of. Also gorram Yeden, he came out early both games and we couldn't muster the will to deal with him, so he just kept cycling in more problems.

One thing we found was that no one was really that inclined to even discuss long-term deals: mostly it was "okay, going rate of about 2 Favor per resource committed to a deal, deviations as appropriate", with some Personality shenanigans thrown in on occasion. Two of us were holding Obligators but never used them because people just weren't even pretending to make anything but one-Problem deals. Things may get different in 4+ player games, with the possibility of more permanent alliances or the like.

A balance concern arose, though we're still on the fence about it: Augors plus Heirs (the cards that give you 2 Favor/Disgrace per resource of type X at the end of the game) are crazy strong in terms of end-game scoring, particularly in shorter games. I got a 12 point swing (would have been 18 and the win if not for some unfortunate Eruptions the turn before) last turn of our Medium game using an Augor to swap everything out for food, and another guy got 14(?) in the Short game by doing essentially the same thing. Those are extreme examples, but the combination does seem to make the Augor unusually powerful.

--

An amusing anecdote here is that our first game we randomly dealt out the two Houses that get 3 Personality cards each turn, along with another getting 2. So that was a lot of complexity to deal with for the first game.

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5 minutes ago, Kurkistan said:

A balance concern arose, though we're still on the fence about it: Augors plus Heirs (the cards that give you 2 Favor/Disgrace per resource of type X at the end of the game) are crazy strong in terms of end-game scoring, particularly in shorter games. I got a 12 point swing (would have been 18 and the win if not for some unfortunate Eruptions the turn before) last turn of our Medium game using an Augor to swap everything out for food, and another guy got 14(?) in the Short game by doing essentially the same thing. Those are extreme examples, but the combination does seem to make the Augor unusually powerful.

Ah, that's a clever use of Augur! I wouldn't worry about it too much, as in practice it probably doesn't occur very often- my experience with the heirs is that you usually get the ones that get points for resources you don't produce and they're basically worthless. For example, in the game I mentioned above I played the Political Heir very early in the game (I think turn 1 even). Didn't get a single Prestige Resource token the entire game. The heir sat there all game and earned me 0 points  (come to think of it, I should have held it in my hand to use for Lesser Noble fodder). 

And if the augur/heir combo does pop up frequently, well then it just gives you incentive to go heir-hunting with your coinshots and augur-hunting with your seekers. 

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12 hours ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

Has there been any announcement about what the retail release date is going to be? Or if there hasn't, is there a general idea about when it will become generally available?

Retail release is being planned for November

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  • 4 weeks later...

A little bit of an update for our release party:

Things are slowly marching forward in Crafty's warehouses and shipping containers. Long story short, we're still looking at a retail release for sometime in November, though we don't know exactly when yet. 

We can, however, narrow down the date of our release party a little bit. Weekends are still the best for me, as well as most everyone else it sounds like, so we're looking at a Friday or Saturday. 

Oathbringer is being released the 13th, which is a Monday. No real reason why we couldn't do it the weekend before or after though, unless maybe we don't want to overload people with Sanderson parties. 

Thanksgiving is the 23rd, followed by Black Friday weekend, so things will be crazy. I'd like to avoid that weekend if at all possible. 

Also, there's a good chance I'll be out of town the weekend of the 10th/11th, so that wouldn't be my first choice. I could probably make it work if I had to though. 

So that leaves us with the weekend of the 17th/18th. I would prefer to do it one of those two days, assuming the release happens by then. Does that work for everyone else?

Also, Game Night Games is still graciously planning on hosting us, they too are just waiting for a release date from Crafty. 

Last, but not least, I hinted a while back that we were working on getting some promotional material for the release party. Well today, I finally got a little package from Kara Stewart with Dragonsteel Entertainment. So now I can officially confirm that we will have promo cards to be giving away at the release party. Here's a little teaser:

IMG_0956.thumb.JPG.5ad85f964f4fab027d535cd645c32d41.JPG

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46 minutes ago, masaru said:

A HOID card?? WHAT?

42 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

What does Hoid do? Let you play a card from a different game entirely?

 

29673f3b39f16753c1c3ade7492efa7c.jpg

 

 

(although I guess it should be PAFO: come to the release party and play and find out ;) )

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13 minutes ago, masaru said:

But not everyone can come to a release party in one specific location of the US...

This is unfortunately true. However I'm still keeping my mouth shut until the Release Party is over. I'm not even sure if I was supposed to say anything about the Hoid promo in the first place- Team Sanderson has been keeping it pretty secret. 

Another possible option for out-of-staters is to track down Brandon at a signing or a convention and ask him about it yourself... ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/11/2017 at 7:40 PM, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

Will they ever make the cards available for people who aren't able to make it to any of the events? 

I have no idea. That would be a question for Team Sanderson. From what I understand, Brandon was giving the cards out at Gen Con to anyone that specifically asked for them, but he wasn't advertising them or anything. But that was for Gen Con. I assume he'll have a similar policy going forward but who knows- he could change his mind at any point or could run out of promos or something else entirely. This is pure speculation on my part. 

So my advice to people would be- if at all possible- find your way to one of Brandon's signings and ask him. Based on past observations, choosing to dress up, giving Brandon gifts, or even just wearing swag from his webstore all will improve your chances of getting promo stuff. 

Or check eBay. 

Or email Team Sanderson and beg and plead. It couldn't hurt, right?

 

 

If none of that works, then there may still be hope. Now, I have to emphasize that I can't make any guarantees, but I promise that if I have any extra promo cards left after the release party I will not be keeping them for myself. I'll probably hold a contest of some sort to give them away. Again, I can't make any promises because I don't know how many people will come to the release party, but well there you go. 

Edited by Herowannabe
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  • 3 weeks later...

So... here’s where we’re at. Crafty is doing more of a rolling release, shipping to each distributor/area separately rather than having one universal release date. They have offered to ship directly to game stores so that we can do release parties.

At Game Night Games they already ordered through their regular distribution channels and are content to wait until the game arrives that way. No word from their distributor yet as to when that will be. 

Which leaves us with the question: wait until Game Night Games gets M:HW in stock and do a release party then, whenever that may be? Or talk to some of the other stores in the area and see if any of them are willing to order directly from Crafty (or have already done so) so that we can have the release party sooner?11/18 might still be doable if we go that route. 

What would everyone prefer? I can be flexible, but I hesitate to delay the Release Party any longer than necessary. 

(tagging everyone I know of who is local and might be interested in the release party)

@Themasterhunter @little wilson @firstRainbowRose @Rubix @Ecthelion III @Emerald101 @Elenion @ChaosModifier @RippleGlyph @M0ntz3rin @Shumei @Blaineabus@Crafty Games

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On 10/31/2017 at 0:02 PM, RippleGlyph said:

I think the weekend after Oathbringer releases would probably work best for me.

That's the weekend that works best for me (in November), too. 

I went ahead as shot emails to Blakfyre, Dragon's Keep, and Epic to see which, if any of them, would be willing and able to host us. I love Game Night Games, but I really don't want to wait an indeterminate amount of time to have the release party- especially since the game IS shipping to retailers now. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
10 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

@HerowannabeWhere are you guys located? How much does the game go for? Where can I buy it in NYC? (NOT limited to New York county, which is scarcely the only borough in my city.) Will the promo cards be available anywhere else?

We’ve been talking about a release party in Utah, somewhere around Salt Lake City - Provo. 

 

No no clue where it will be available in NYC- I suggest talking to your Favorite Local Gaming Store(s) and see if they are willing to order it in. Or, you can order it straight from Crafty Games. Most of the Kickstarter exclusive stuff is available from them, too. 

 

As for the Promo cards, your best chance is to attend a Con that Brandon Sanderson and/or Crafty Games is attending. 

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