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One thing is playtesting the game, the other is playing on the very final product. Today I had the pleasure to finally play the Wrath of the Lighthouse campaign in its retail version. I punched all tokens, unshrank cards, and took my pencil and campaign sheet—I already had so much fun!
Without spoiling too much of the story, the whole campaign starts with the Emperor sending us to some distant, forgotten province. The trade is down, the people unhappy, and the entire province feels abandoned and neglected.
For the campaign, I picked my favorite – in terms of the theme – clan, which is Nanurjuk.
The first change in the rules comes to play in the setup. I had fewer Workers at my disposal at the beginning, and instead of my initial hand of cards, I already had four cards in play (yay!), but each of them had a Ruin token on them (buuu!). These were abandoned locations that I needed to fix and repopulate.
I also began the game with a Poor Market card. It represents that the trade in the province is dying, and my goal was to revitalize it. This mechanism was really interesting – the card asked me to bring Rare goods. Rare good is a new concept in the expansion – these are goods that my faction does not produce at the beginning of the game. I must leave my comfort zone and find a way to get other resources, and trade in the region will begin.
I found the trade aspect interesting, so in the first round, I decided not to care for the ruined locations but went sailing to bring Rare resources. I also chose to Populate to get more Workers for the upcoming rounds. The scenario encouraged me to do that – if I managed to repopulate the province and have at least 6 Workers at the end of 4th round, I would get 3 VP and an additional story paragraph to read.
I scored almost nothing in the first round, but I had hopes for future rounds.
I was so wrong!
In the following rounds, I struggled with my engine, trying to do my best, but the Ruined locations were making everything harder. I sailed too much without Axes (short-term strategy), I tried too hard to fix the Trade in the province, and I was not fixing ruined locations (big mistake).
The Threshold in the first scenario is 55 VP. I made an embarrassing 32.
The game tells me to go to the next scenario. The story unfolds, I discovered some shady business around one of the priests in the local temple…
And I think I will go rogue, I will go against the rulebook, and instead of moving forward with the story, I will try the first scenario again tomorrow! 🙂
