Content Plan for the Gambler's Chest (Patreon)

A short one this week, I hope you all understand, I'm trying to get ahead on the YT video recordings over the next week or so by recording four in advance (Stone Circle is next Wednesday, then it's Leather Worker, Weapon Crafter, Barber Surgeon & Blacksmith). That will then let me concentrate on the GCE fully for a month.

First impressions are very good, I have a low number of issues and they would all land in the category of nitpicks, that's a good sign. The Crimson Croc is an absolute delight, both physically and to fight against, I've battled it three times now and it is clear that the monster is far more sophisticated and elevated a mechanical design than the White Lion. It's also super interesting that the game is guiding you away from slow farming plays by making it hard to support them.

The new survivor miniatures are gorgeous also, I knew I'd love the Smog Singer armor set, but I couldn't imagine the level I adore them. The Croc Armor is also really cool looking. In fact my sole complaint to date is that we desperately need new sculpts for Unarmored, Rawhide, Leather and so on because the old minis look very small and unimpressive next to the new ones.

Collective Cognition mechanics are interesting; but there's a huge amount of cognitive load on the player to manage them, I'm going to be spending today replanning my entire play space to take into account that I need a really well structured layout to help minimise all the juggling of different things. Even then I am sure I'm going to miss triggers on advancing these philosophies, but that's just something which requires learning.

I've only assembled the Bone Eaters, Smog Singers and Crunk the Crocodile so far outside of some survivor models, and only Crunk has anything other than primer on her.

Crocodile gear is super interesting; Honed is (to paraphrase what Star Slayer wrote in the discord) a fixed and more engaging version of frail. The armor set seems solid with interesting aspects without being too overly complex, it's hard to explore it properly when I keep failing to get veined glass though. It is interesting how the crocodile has multiple super dense locations and a parry location all of which remove honed for the showdown. Normally monster weapons help you handle the monster itself more effectively, this is the opposite direction.

The one main mechanic I'm not sure about at this stage is the Scout system; we were originally pitched that this system would be an 'opt in/opt out' kind of mechanic, but People of the Dream Keeper doesn't give us the option to avoid the system entirely; the scout is there and I'm currently keeping them covered up in poop while they wander about collecting from terrain (I've had so many survivor corpses so far).

Other brief thoughts:

• Skipping Innovating early continues to be the best strategy.
• Settlement Box is sweet as heck, though holding locations doesn't work super well.
• The Sleeve situation in the shop is not good; I want their Settlement Location, Philosophy and Settlement Event sleeves but I could not order specific sets, they only have bundles. That's something which I hope changes, but for the moment I can't see who outside of new players will benefit from the bundles cause you can't sleeve expansion or promotional gear.
• Boo on the Echoes of Death 4 situation, you guys couldn't let me get one? I'll have to wait for the restock.
• Having a bleeding based armor set is wonderful risk/reward
• Very impressed with the Bloodglass Cleaver design
• We need armor kit sets for this in the store asap (and a refresh of the old ones with new sculpts)
• A little disappointed that the Harvester is still a thing when we have such a focus on instruments. There is some mitigation because pure basic hunt events are far less common, but I wish we had an entirely new basic hunt event table which rebalanced stuff and also integrated aspects of this expanding world into it.
• I've not had scout or arc survivor hunt events yet, I'll comment on them when I do.

If you want to watch some GCE action here's my recommendations:

• https://www.youtube.com/@bigdenopaints
• https://www.youtube.com/@TWISTGaming

Also quick plug for https://www.youtube.com/@anawfulfeeling who is also planning for some GCE related content but you should be following all of these channels if you are not doing so already.

The Gambler's Chest Plan

So what I am going to do is here and there write up about my settlement as it progresses through the campaign; most of the time these will be just summaries and various scattered thoughts. I'll header each post with the lantern years involved and list at the top of the post the monster(s) + their level(s) so you can decide if you want to read because either you don't care about potential spoilers or you have already passed the given levels. During this first campaign I'm going to be crafting new gear where possible so I can try it out.

When I have had enough time and I feel I've seen what a given monster offers, I will write a specific review for that monster, also if any cool builds or synergies crop up I'll write about them in their own build showcase article. I'll also review each system separately when I've explored them enough to have an actual informed and balanced opinion.

And because it took around three hours, here's the set up I decided on for playing:

Settlement portion of the table, the box on the left contains various rulebooks, I don't really need it here so it will eventually get tucked under the table. 

Showdown Board, I keep the coloured cards under the gear grids for quick identification because I don't like. I'm not using dashboards at the moment because I can't find them after reorganising the gaming attic!

Hunt phase end of the table, it's also where I keep the miniatures, that empty base is where Crunk should be, but she was on the painting desk at the moment of the picture.

How is the GCE going for you?

Until next time; happy hunting.