This week at the shop we are featuring Call to Adventure. This Tableau Building game is powered by two brothers, Kickstarter, and fantasy authors Patrick Rothfuss and Brian Sanderson. Brotherwise Games, the makers of Boss Monster introduce a new character building experience inspired by fantasy stories. This week we played the base game, without the Adversaries and Allies addition included in the box. There are also two expansions releasing for the game. One inspired by Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind and the other by Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive.

In this game you will be competing against other players to create the most epic fantasy hero. Acquire traits, face challenges, and grow in your experiences to shape your character and their path. The game consists of three acts, where players follow a path of triumph or tragedy, either through choice or fate.

To create your character, players have choices for their origin, motivation, and destiny. Together, these form an outline for your character’s story. Then, begin the first act and reveal a choice of cards for all players. There are two types of cards in these decks. If you meet the card's requirements, you may acquire a trait or attempt a challenge. In challenges you have a choice from two paths, with their outcomes shown on bottom and top of the card.

The left side of the card will show you the difficulty of the challenge, as well as the trait, or ability runes that you are able to use to attempt this challenge. You will toss runes in this game, rather than roll dice. All players may use the three ‘core runes’, in addition to matching ‘ability runes’ shown on your player mat. Once you gather your runes, toss them onto the table to reveal if you pass or fail the challenge. If passed, add the card to your character’s origin track, where trait cards will also be placed.

The first act ends after the first player has added three additional cards to their origin track. Reveal the second act, which will play and end the same as the first act. The third and final act has the same ending trigger, and players have one more turn before ending the game and calculating points. Points are earned by cards you have played, your tracker on the side of your player mat, as well as story icons found in your challenge and trait cards. The more matching icons you have, the more points you will earn! In this way, you are earning more points the better you follow a particular storyline for your character.

Next week we will be playing another Kickstarter game, called AEGIS: Combining Robot Strategy Game.  As the name suggests, AEGIS is a tactical tabletop game where players combine robots to create more powerful forms and battle against each other in several different game modes! Join us next week to create the most beefy robot the shop has ever seen!