RISE OF THE DREAD MOON discussion

[LucaRocks]

Good ol' Ash! Two vids!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njlXYvxJyO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3cwrb3KRyE


He's got the back of the box image in there too... ahead of me by about 7 hours...

Is there another rantcast happening tonight?

[Kurgan]

I wouldn't really call these "spoilers" but here we go...

Alchemy is the label for the new potions deck... LOVE THAT.

New Equipment cards explaining those tokens, I just had to be patient.

Also, back of Box.. like Amalgamash was saying!

If the piles are accurate... 3 Dread Spells, 7 monsters... 4 (or 9) Merc cards... 8 (or 9) Treasure (?) cards...

Artifact Raven's Talon. 2 die sword, re-roll 1 black die on a single attack.

Equipment Caltrops. free action on your turn, place it on a square. any creature that touches
it has to roll a white shield to pass it or their turn ends. Remove from the board once it stops them.
100 gold

Mercenary "Striker" (2 axe character) female elf.
5 move, 4 attack, 5 defend, 2 body, 2 mind. costs 100 gold. so identical to swordsman from Frozen Horror.
This makes me think the other Cadre of the Raven's Veil members are each equivalent to another merc from
the other pack probably. The Striker is the same figure on the back of these cards too coincidentally.


Appears the Elven archer stats are the same as before. Probably the Elven Warrior as well I imagine?

Alchemy card Heroic Brew says "Crafted." is that a joke (craft beer) j/k (look ma, I'm an alchemist!) I'm intrigued!
How to craft things? We're learning more...

Treasure Mysterious Flower "use as a reagent to craft 1x potion of dexterity or 1x potion of defense" it otherwise only restores 1 BP (and can only be used once per quest). I like the opportunity cost on this one.

7 of those "shield" crescent tokens... and it looks like the "coins" are actually lion shields. Maybe those represent something with regard to mercenaries? I see there are tiles that correspond to the faces of the various Mercenaries too. Is the chain wielding Elf good or bad? (Or maybe both, depending upon the quest)

There are duplicates of some of the elf monsters from MOTM (which as you may recall, were usually evil but sometimes could fight for your side).

[Maalicia_Ironhoof]

interesting that they are bringing in "Potion Crafting" I was toying with the idea for my group already

[Kurgan]

Ah and I'm posting and typing and missing things... so the back of the box confirms the # of each mini. So only one each of the Elf characters copied from Mage of the Mirror, 4 of the gray "cultists" and two of the big blue elf warriors (the ones we were thinking were some kind of chaos warrior). One each of the Cadre members, one each of all the furniture pieces, and 2 of that weird "dancing with chain whip" character that's cast in blue. I forgot to mention that one before... wonder what it's supposed to be? An enemy perhaps?

[HispaZargon]

Just now looking to the NEWS...

Finally, no Sir Ragnar mini included? Well, probably inside a Collector's box? Interesting...

About the included stuff, well I need to analyze it in more detail but my first impression is that Hasbro maybe has not risky too much? Maybe is a bit vanilla the design decisions they have taken, like giving same stats to the Mercs as FH ones, even if they are elves or differently equipped?, same size of the outdoor cardboard tile as any other boss room tile from other expansions? More extra standard furniture like in MoM? As said, they are just my first impressions, probably good new stuff will be included inside the box, i still hope find there good new balanced mechanics and a good HQ story (and plot). Let's see...

[LucaRocks]

I think it would be cool if the Dread cultists had the ability to perform one dread spell. Would be similar to the spell scroll mechanic. I feel that dread spells aren't used unless there's a boss. So this could make them be used more.

The cultists will probably have something to do with summoning a wraith or a specter if I had to place money on it, though.

[elvyler]

Just finished a post on the new RotDM contents. Looking forward to playing this expansion!
https://elvyler.com/2023/06/rise-of-the-dread-moon-preorder-now-available/

[Kurgan]

Great work Elvyler!

Good ol' Ash! Two vids!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njlXYvxJyO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3cwrb3KRyE


He's got the back of the box image in there too... ahead of me by about 7 hours...

Is there another rantcast happening tonight?

We may end up just doing a video covering these updates in lieu of our usual RantCast. StrangeBus can't make it, so we'll see what we can do around 9pm CST on twitch.

[Kurgan]

Just now looking to the NEWS...

Finally, no Sir Ragnar mini included? Well, probably inside a Collector's box? Interesting...

About the included stuff, well I need to analyze it in more detail but my first impression is that Hasbro maybe has not risky too much? Maybe is a bit vanilla the design decisions they have taken, like giving same stats to the Mercs as FH ones, even if they are elves or differently equipped?, same size of the outdoor cardboard tile as any other boss room tile from other expansions? More extra standard furniture like in MoM? As said, they are just my first impressions, probably good new stuff will be included inside the box, i still hope find there good new balanced mechanics and a good HQ story (and plot). Let's see...

Yeah I'm disappointed there's no Sir Ragnar figure. Even Mythic owners may not wish to have "prisoner" Ragnar running around. But we don't know yet if he makes an appearance for battle... having him just be a tile is less impressive, I agree.

The tokens for the Cadre of the Raven's veil and mercenaries (shields), etc. is interesting, I wonder what those are used for? Are they to track which hero is controlling what? Or maybe showing how many of these characters are available to hire for a particular quest? Or maybe they represent something else like mind/body points or skill/spell usages? Or maybe they represent some other use, like if they are under a spell effect...

We need a fan unboxing to see the game mechanics explained from the quest book!

[Kurgan]

The "outdoor area" is a 5x6 tile, I wonder what's on the reverse side? We also don't yet know what's on the other side (assuming these are two sided tiles and not just the same image on both sides as some in the MOTM and Frozen Horror sets were). Interesting we don't see any extra of the regular game images (no skulls, secret doors, stone blocks, pit traps, rubble, etc) as if those aren't needed... then again maybe that is what's on the back of some of them?

So what I thought were "bones" on tiles are actually eye masks... I wonder what that is. Is that some kind of dancing reference maybe to do with the Chain wielding Elf? (there are some dancing Eldar aka space elf characters in Warhammer 40k) Or maybe that is a reference to the "masked" nature of the Raven's Veil Cadre members?

The crescent tokens look like moons... so maybe Dread Moon. Rather than assuming it has to do with werewolf transformations, maybe it's a token for those bad guys. Are the bad guys hiring different numbers of mercs too? Why would we need differentiated tokens for these guys?

OR maybe the allegiance of a figure can change so often that we need these tokens to represent what side they are on? Hence they might be for the Raven's Veil Faction (neutral? own agenda?), the Dread Moon (chaos) faction or the side of the heroes (the shields that look like mercenary gold shields?).

It makes me wonder though if these factions are opposed, how does Zargon impartially go about pitting them against each other?

Or are they going to break from tradition and there's going to be a human player at the table that controls the Cadre (let's say) and is working towards their OWN GOALS independent of the heroes and their mercs... and of Zargon and his forces... similar to the "semi-competative" nature of a game like Space Crusade?

It's probably not anything THAT cool, but who knows. Those Cadre members seem a little weak to represent an entire player... between them all their body points are only 8, which is way below the armies Zargon can field or even the party of heroes without any mercs.

If you don't own the Frozen Horror, what will you use for mercenaries? Presumably you have the Cadre members and maybe some of those elves (what if you don't own Mage of the Mirror? you will be using only what is in the box and game system at minimum I assume they took that into account).

Or maybe the cardboard are just proxies to use instead of the minis to move around the board attacking, etc, it would seem strange to do that, so that's probably not their true purpose.

I see once again we get two "door bases" (MOTM remake had two as well) into which cardboard can be inserted. You could print your own stuff onto chipboard to make new custom doors very easily with these too. The cardboard this time are different art versions of mirrors probably for travel between areas or perhaps to give special artifacts or represent other quest goals I imagine if MOTM was any precedent. I can't imagine they would require MOTM to play this one, hence the duplicate assets, but if you own both, maybe you can just use the extra plastic instead of the included cardboard?

That hourglass thing has a 5 on it, I'm not sure yet what that means so if someone figured it out, my apologies, still racing around...