Board Game Review - Earthborne Rangers
This review is subject to change. My SO and I only recently received this game and are currently two sessions in. This review will be more of a focus over initial impressions of the game, prologue, and first mission.
Overview and setting
Earthborne Rangers is a science fiction game, taking place in the far future, where you take on the role of a Ranger. The focus is all about outdoor adventure and exploration.
The gameplay takes place during sessions that can be an hour or two. The game in its entirety is card based. There is an element of deck building as you play, but is most significant when you first start playing and make your Ranger. The game calls each session a "day". With a location in mind, the game will progress when Rangers travel from location to location. The missions will move along when encountering specific cards at each location. Sometimes a mission will generate when on a path to a location as well.
Its an interesting gameplay loop. You need to cycle through the deck made up of the location cards and the path cards to the location. You play in a series of turns to use your hand of cards as a resource to put progress tokens on the cards that need them. As you do this, you are mainly worried about making sure enough progress tokens are on the location cards to move forward while making sure that you do not discard or fatigue your own deck. If you do, the day is forced to be over.
This isn't something that we've had to worry about when we played our first two sessions. Although, I'm sure later down the line difficulty will ramp up and this might be a worry if we do not have enough reward cards in our decks.
Rules and such
I strongly recommend watching a video on how to play this game. A big frustration on this game is the rule book and the campaign book. My SO and I have not played a campaign board game before. The rules and campaign book read as though you already have played games like these. I call then "DnD in a box" board games. These are your Gloomhaven and Frosthaven where there is a campaign and the rules serve as bit of a GM. I think the designers are the ones who wrote the rules, and honestly while I really enjoy the game, they need someone who is not part of the design process to write how to play. There is a lot of assumption here that needs to be taken out. If you have not played board games like these, then you are at a disadvantage. Not to mention, the weird and inconsistent layout of the campaign book. We felt forced to read ahead of the current mission in order to figure out if we properly completed the mission.
Through these frustrations, I have to say that I do enjoy the game. The experience is far better once the prologue is complete and you are moving on to your first mission. While in retrospect, I see why the prologue was set up the way it was. The game is a narrative experience and going through the prologue helps in getting in the right mindset for this game. If you are able to get past this, I think the game is highly enjoyable. Once we finished the first mission and set out on our own, it was really fun to dig up our own quest and chart a route on our map to decide how we were going to tackle it. The narrative pieces started to come together at this point and I was much more sold on this product.
Pacing is done really well once you have a grasp on things. We might've house ruled some parts in how the cards interact, but that's okay as that kept the game feeling right and allowed things to flow. Thankfully none of the cards felt too wordy that we didn't know how to play them. Trying to remember the keywords might be what slows the game down, but the back of the rules had a handy cheat sheet that I think should be given to every player. But overall, I liked the pacing of the game.
The game is also great for putting up and storing. The game assumes that you will be playing with the same deck that you create during the prologue so the only fiddling you need to worry about it making sure you remember where you left off and separate those location and path cards. Thankfully the game does have a sheet, that you can either download and print yourself or just use the one included on the back of the campaign book.
Production value
This game was made with a very environmental mindset. The only plastic in the box was the stickers that held the top lid down during shipment. I think this is really cool! And hopefully more game companies can follow suit and try their hand in making a plastic free board game.
I did have some worry that the cards would be flimsy or the ink would rub off, but no. Even with the recycled materials everything felt great. I can safely say that you wont be disappointed in these cards.
Personal thoughts
I find myself looking forward to play again. Even with the challenges on the board, I never felt stressed during our playthroughs of the game. I think this would be a great game if you like to leave everything out and return to on a weekly bases. Also the adventure and discovery is quite fun.
If you like these types of games where its a campaign experience in a box, I think this is a good pick.