Played RBv1 ages ago and just picked up the RBv2 to play with my son. We came across a gamelocker last night (our first game). Now, granted, with foresight this can be avoided, but it seems too easy to get into this situation (unless I misread the rules):

My son's first first couple of exp upgrades included +1 wounds, allowing him to only attempt blue/red cards. He was NOT strong enough for red encounters, so blue was the only thing he could go for.

There was a blue event card on the table.

There were no more blue tokens on the table.

Thus, he couldn't flip any more cards to reset the 'starred gem' spots on the board.

This caused a definite flatline of his game until I was kind enough to start flipping yellows until a new event was lifted (even though discarded, it refreshed the star gems).

Did I miss something? Is there another way to refresh the gems? There are very few blue gems and I can imaging with 3-4 players this lockout could occur fairly frequently? Or is this a case of 'be aware this can happen, so don't be too anxious to boost health' ?

Zug said:

I don't see anything wrong in what happened, except that it happened. Health bonuses are by all means the last thing to go for, as you don't need that additional health except in the very last part of the game (maybe you never need).

If this causes a Hero to stop advancing, because he depleted all challenges and cannot face the Red ones, he did something wrong. Anyway, this looks very strange to me: who defeated all Blue Challenges then? If your son defeated all Blue Jewels alone he should have been more than ready to face Red ones, if he spent his money in some good Item/Ally.

There's no much chance that all players get stuck because nobody can draw an Event, even with 5-6 players. However, it is pretty common that one or more players take great advantage over the others and play for victory, while the others take the peanuts. This is very common, a complete game lockout for some players is not very likely (though possible sometimes).

Well...in all honesty, I managed to do most of the blues (I played to crush the whippersnapper). Thus I outpaced him. It seemed to lock him down while I maneuvered across the board without fear of his catching up.

Zug said:

Well, eventually you could have drawn the Red Event before being able to win the game, but he won't have been able to catch up.

Generally speaking, a +2 bonus in Life should NEVER be taken. Green Challenges start to become useless when you start with the Blue ones, but Yellow Challenges always give you good Rewards and 2 Experience points. You needn't boost Life until you are unable to face Yellow Challenges, perhaps this is the reason why this never happened around here.