So last night 4 of us teamed up to solve the Commonwealth’s problems and we had a great time. Based on the guys’ comments I think this is their favorite FFG board game I’ve brought to game night. It will take longer than advertised especially the first run. Stopping occasionally for snacks and drinks took us about 4.5-5 hours.

I don’t want to ruin anything but we experienced just about everything in the game (except for encountering a vault but we had the first card unlocked) if anyone has any questions. Three of us ended up with a shared victory supporting The Railroad. At first I was skeptical of the card system as designed, but it’s brilliant and I like how the quests progress and cards are added in. The only thing I could see being an issue is figuring out all of the cards especially the starting ones. Hopefully they expand the starting decks if they make an expansion.

Do yourself a favor and even if you own the game, don’t cheat and read cards. It makes it a lot more fun. Definitely strong shades of Choose Your Own Adventure in the card system.

We played all of the characters except the Wastelander. The only person who didn’t get enough influence was the poor Vault Dweller. The hapless Super Mutant leveled quickly early but then was relentlessly slaughtered by raiders for several rounds. The Ghoul was pasting enemies left and right and definitely played to his vilified status like he was in an RPG. He had a hilarious follow-on encounter with some folks at a settlement after he had done something awful that got the new encounter added to the deck. Yours truly was the Brotherhood Outcast. The movement limitation kind of blows but the armor is amazing. I never died and I didn’t even have a weapon all game. I became vilified for doing something I thought was a good deed. Seems the good folks of Diamond City didn’t see it that way.

Ghoul, Outcast, and Super Mutant all had the right amount of influence (8) based on the difference in influence between The Railroad and The Institute. Fortunately, no one was batting for The Institute so it made those agendas easier to complete. Can’t wait to play another scenario!

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience!

22 hours ago, Ziggy0134 said:

Do yourself a favor and even if you own the game, don’t cheat and read cards.

Man I'm with you there, I think reading outcomes to see what's what is the fastest way to ruin this game (or any other game like this).

Did you get the feeling playing the same scenario will become repetitive quickly? I understand there are 150+ cards but I wonder how much replay you can get.

The easiest expansions for them to make would be a few scenario cards and their associated unique tiles. You don't really need new generic enemies (they've covered all the classics), and the generic tiles are varied enough to work for any scenario.

my only complaint so far is that the scenario cards are a non-standard size, making em incredibly difficult to sleeve. Im probably going to have to laminate mine...

5 hours ago, Juan4aigle said:

Did you get the feeling playing the same scenario will become repetitive quickly? I understand there are 150+ cards but I wonder how much replay you can get.

Yeah I think since only certain cards are for certain scenarios I think if you replayed the same scenario more than a few times in a row it certainly could. I wish they had doubled the starting encounter decks (or even tripled). My plan is to play each scenario before we do any repeats so it should be at least a few months before that happens.

I love this game but replayability is one of my biggest concerns.

About the cards, btw: are the test and reward sections in the exact same place on all the cards? I was thinking about making card sleeves with some "black rectangular block"- style censorship for use in solo play. To cover the reward section(s) so you'll suprise yourself with what you get out of the deal.

18 minutes ago, Fnoffen said:

About the cards, btw: are the test and reward sections in the exact same place on all the cards? I was thinking about making card sleeves with some "black rectangular block"- style censorship for use in solo play. To cover the reward section(s) so you'll suprise yourself with what you get out of the deal.

Unfortunately they are not uniform.

You can use clear sleeves and take a black sharpie to the sleeve, cover up the necessary section on a card-by-card basis.

10 hours ago, Ziggy0134 said:

My plan is to play each scenario before we do any repeats so it should be at least a few months before that happens.

I love this game but replayability is one of my biggest concerns.

Yeah I did the same (and I do) with Mansions of Madness for example. Some scenarios are too tightly knitted to play them in a row and you need time in between. I guess Fallout is ripe for expansions as well, like Eldritch Horror and its first expansion Forsaken Lore, which was a bunch of cards to add to almost every deck in the game (a lot of cards actually). It would be easy to add more cards and scenarios to it in a few months, even new characters and monsters.

If you play every scenario twice, that's still eight games and around 20 hours gameplay I guess, which is not entirely bad.

Hey, I just got this game and I have a question about shopping. When you go onto a settlement, do you have to do an encounter in order to shop or can you shop first and THEN do the encounter? Also, depending on the level of the settlement, does that determine how many items you can buy or sell? That second question is if you can shop whenever you get to a settlement without having to do an encounter

You do the encounter, and the encounter will have the result of shop. Or... it may not. You kind of risk the possibility of not being able to shop

Haha! Yeah shopping...the people that want it end up getting into fights and the people with empty inventories end up shopping. Although to be fair, some of the cards just let you totally ignore a situation to shop and the choices are worded to be funny in those cases.

It seems like the game is very much in the flavor of Runebound. By that I mean a exploration/RPG kind of game. Am I off base in seeing the game in that light?

4 hours ago, simpatikool said:

It seems like the game is very much in the flavor of Runebound. By that I mean a exploration/RPG kind of game. Am I off base in seeing the game in that light?

Haven't played it yet but watched some gameplay. Seems to me that's a perfect comparison.

Sounds like I need to check out Runebound. Same characters as Descent?

34 minutes ago, Ziggy0134 said:

Sounds like I need to check out Runebound. Same characters as Descent?

Same universe, so I'm assuming there should be some overlap. Mechanically it's very different from Fallout, fights are definitely more complex and there is less narrative. Not to say it doesn't have it, you just don't have the big branching story deck, individual encounters don't generally trigger other things. Instead of collecting points for victory, there's a villain depending on the scenario that you're trying to be the first to kill. The similarity is the basic concept of wandering around building up your character/race to the finish and no real direct conflict with the other players.

After playing all 4 scenarios (and The Commonwealth over again) I have to say I still greatly enjoy the game, but agree with a lot of posts that due to the agenda cards that align with a certain faction, the game can end quickly without the opportunity to really delve into side quests and especially vaults. The last scenario we played was Far Harbor. Definitely the trickiest one. When we replayed The Commonwealth I had a win condition in about an hour or so, but due to a combination of having a good time and a pint or two of rum, decided to not declare victory and extend the game. I still won when the time came so that was good. Haven't played with less than 4 people. I feel that my initial suspicion that you don't want to play this game every day is well-founded as even playing once a month, we had most of the starting encounter cards figured out. Anyone have any reflections now that they have experience with the game?