Miami Dice: Charterstone **SPOILERS**

Tom, Zee, and Sam take a *SPOILER-IFIC* look at the new worker placement legacy game from Stonemaier Games, Charterstone!!

00:00 - Introduction
00:22 - Overall thoughts on the game
02:00 - Spoiler discussion!
18:30 - Conclusion

[claytonkeating]

Honestly I think the candle was an exciting thing as long as the group you're playing with can just have fun with it and embrace the mystery of it all. I loved my playthrough of the campaign because the variety of ways to play the game always changed.

[TheJohnnyisontheTable]

Taste really is a curious thing. I thought the candle was the coolest thing in the game. Yes, it is gimmicky. Yes, it could be replaced by the roll of a die. But it wasn't, and that is great! Is a new way of randomizer, that went along with what was told on the campaign story, I thought it was clever and cool. Took a bunch of pictures and got excited about it.
Great video as usual, guys. Thanks for all the hard work you do to entertain and inform us on your view about several games out there.

[ericmatthews]

Tom, I really look forward to hearing about post campaign play, including players that weren't in the original group.

I do think Jamey focused on post legacy play for the design and the price of he paid for that focus is a necessarily weaker story. My hopes for this is that post legacy games are interesting and nostalgic to jump back into occasionally and not just an artifact like other legacy games have become once completed.

[Walter.Kolczynski]

My group of five just finished tonight. We generally enjoyed it, though I don't think we'll necessarily be playing our completed version again.

One of our players failed to build his buildings early and wound up behind. Once he became a ghost, he intentionally remained a ghost until the very last game since it is all upside.

For our candle game, a different player intentionally blew it out on his first turn because there were three of the peril to avoid on his charter. Our group was kinda torn on whether it would've been a good mechanic or not.

There was also some grumbling about the early game guidepost that awarded points for buildings, because they didn't like the surprise scoring.

I agree with the guys on the peril, as in addition to there possibly being only a couple buildings that consume them (other than the quota track), but they require two and there are only 5 of each color spread over the whole board and don't replenish. It is impractical to activate a building more than once outside of using a treasure to activate for no cost, and the payoff isn't commensurate with the difficulty.

A disappointing thing for me is that we had built and opened almost all of the stuff by about two-thirds of the way through. I know this is a balance because you want players to see most of the available buildings in a play, but it felt like the legacy aspect was running out of steam outside of the guideposts.

[teacherskids]

I really liked the candle addition to the game because it was totally unexpected and it added an interesting way to time the game. It made us worry about the ramifications if the candle went out and we actually finished the game without it burning out. It was really fun!

I do agree that Charterstone is not the best worker placement and that there are better WP out there to play. I think the campaign was fun but I am not super keen on playing post-campaign. Also, the cubes were meaningless and we found it just a race to get cubes. The minions were an interesting addition and one we enjoyed a lot.

My verdict - campaign 8/10 and post campaign 7/10

[VinegarAndSaltedFries]

The Candle really added a tension to our game, like ohhh don't blow out the candle, we were taking really fast turns. IDK I enjoyed it and the game.

[dicemystics]

Thank you for this detailed view of this game. Keep up the good work. :)

[TheBrokenMeeple]

After finishing it in pure solo mode, i was a bit disappointed overall. Probably a six I’d give it. Opening up stuff quickly became very samey and by the end I was kind of eager to just have the campaign end. The candle was silly but I found it amusing that it was even tried. I don’t know if playing with human players would have made it any more entertaining as the games were very quick even with the Automna. Also don’t know if I’ll ever play it again anyway as a post legacy game. Might just canabalise the game, mount the board on my wall and take the meeples and resources and money for use in other games.

[HeadCannonPrime]

To understand if its a good legacy game just ask yourself would you ever want to go back and *ONLY* play the very first game of the Charterstone campaign ever again? Probably not, its barely a game. Now ask yourself if you would want to go back and play the very first game of Pandemic:Legacy ever again? Probably yes, because its the the standard Pandemic everybody knows and loves.
For me Charterstone takes an ok worker placement game plus an expansion with rules variants, cuts it apart, and feeds it to you in dribs and drabs. Its basically Lords of Waterdeep if you had to play 4 games to unlock all the buildings.
I agree with the guys that said its 1 twelve hour game and not twelve 1 hour games.

[flottdog]

I didn't mind the candle. It gave a time limit to the game in a sense. Was it necessary, not really, but it was nifty. Now that I've finished the campaign, I've played a couple of games post campaign, and it's a really solid game overall. Even though there were some things that I regret covering up with buildings, it's still playable, and having filled up sky islands that give variability and ability to cover up something that you aren't thrilled with on the board make it super cool. I would be interested to see what/if Tom makes his own board out of a recharge pack, I've though of doing the same thing, as I think I could make my board pretty cool. Though playing another campaign could be interesting, knowing what you know mechanic wise for the game, and how much you could actually plan ahead if knew things.

[Kindlesmith]

Best aspect is seeing the rage of the Forever King. We've managed to successfully go against almost all (but one) wishes of the Forever King. Have not finished the campaign yet so I am curious how all of the happy / unhappy king elements fit into the game.
Also wondering if the entire board will actually get a building on it as Automata are struggling to attain any (4 players, 1 is the automata). Biggest issue is the sky islands covering the empty lots on the Automata board. Automata only get to build buildings if it's visibly available and only IF the right Automata card is drawn. So far building is a very lucrative investment, 7 VP and build a building all as one action is a little hard to ignore.
The ghost mechanic is nice one, where someone's main meeple becomes a ghost simply because they are in last place.
We've yet to play the game with the candle, but from reading it, it is so far pretty stupid. First player that starts will deal with it being out as other players will just blow it out. There is no rule prohibiting players to extinguish the flame at all. A random generator imo would be better suited.

[yikyakyakyik]

Man ... you could at least have warned us that there were spoilers ...

[yrusomad]

Charterfail!  So glad someone is honest in this community with the bad game play from a popular designer.

[ryusorata]

Legacy should be a good campaign game with evolution and progress. Not a game where you put stickers here and there and destroy components.
Those 2 are extremely different, legacy games could easily be made without the destruction of components. Can't support shame a lame system

[mikejonesnoreally]

For those curious like I was, a *charter* is simply a region on the board.  I thought it may be a faction or something.  I put this in the spoiler loaded review because people are really weird.  :)

[jeffreeves]

Couldn't disagree more about there thoughts. Best Legacy game to date. Second campaign is really different as well.

[Belzebub]

I dont know, has a legacygame really have to be playable after the campaign? isnt that against the idea of legacy. For me that is what is great about pandemic legacy, its a good story and than its done. If i want to play it otherwise i just play normal pandemic. Why not just make a good worker placement game in the first place.

[TheAvisian]

Candle ha ha What if there are cards with invisible ink on it ha ha

[princeneumator]

These were spoilers?!

I haven't played it and I watched this because I just didn't feel like you guys talked about ANYTHING in your spoiler free review. Like...only how the game made you feel not how it's played. This finally had some substance and I don't feel like if I played any degree of surprise will be lost for me. (I also know that I'm probably going to pass on buying it...)

[TheLuminousCleric]

We felt that the game was overall very unbalanced and all over the place.