Welcome to the first blog review from Meepletown Games! These reviews are going to roughly follow the format that Dean and Jon chose for the podcast. To be difficult, and because I can, I’ve decided I’m going to give letter grads for the different parts of the game I’m reviewing. Then at the end I will share what rating I’ve given the game on the BGG scale.
Overview:
The game starts with you, a wretch, washed up on the shore of a mysterious island. Looks like you’ve been a baaad boy (imagine Leonardo DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street) and the people you’ve screwed over decided to leave you for dead in the icy sea. Surviving the ordeal gives you new lease on life. You explore the island, meet interesting people, fight monsters, and figure out exactly who you are in an attempt to make up for who you were.
The gameplay works around an action selection system. You must perform three separate actions on your turn (Activate, Move, and Visit a Region or Rest). You can perform a multitude of other, secondary actions on your turn as well, but you MUST perform the first three.
Activate means either using your character or a companion to gain some sort of resource (3 basic: Strength, Knowledge, Inspiration and 3 upgraded: Courage, Wisdom, and Vision) and possibly an ability from the card. These abilities range from end game scoring to temporary actions to augmenting other actions you might take that round.
Move works like it sounds. You start with two movement but can upgrade all the way up to five. One of the unique things about this game is the way the movement works on the board. Instead of moving across hexes that sit flush against each other, each hex is separated by a triangle. You move through these triangle spaces, staying adjacent to the hexes or locations. One of the third options lets you visit on of these adjacent regions.
The third action you must take can be one of two things. Visiting a region means you use the ability of one of the hexes your player piece touches. This is extremely important because you can control the region you visit if you have enough Conviction. Controlling regions gives you points at the end of the game as well as any time a rival player visits that region. If you don’t want to visit a region (or can’t because you can’t pay the cost) then you can rest. To explain rest, I need to explain the action selection resources in this game.
On your path to vindication you must improve your character. You do this by manipulating cubes on a player mat that includes three different attribute pools: Potential, Influence, and Conviction. The cubes in Potential cannot be spent. Resting (explained above) lets you move one cube between Potential and Influence or Influence and Conviction. Getting all of your cubes out of potential has two benefits: 1. It’s one of the requirements for becoming vindicated, which scores you points and gives you access to a more powerful character ability and 2. It gives you more action selection resources to perform other actions. You use Influence either to activate companions (you place these on the card) or to place on one of the six resource spots on the board to act as those resources. You’re limited in the number of actions you can perform or resources you can obtain by the number of Influence cubes you possess. Conviction has several uses, but it’s mainly used to gain control of areas you visit. Managing your action selection resources wisely is the main crux of this game. Overextend yourself and you’ll waste precious actions and fall behind in scoring points. Play too conservatively and risk another player Running away with the lead.
The last thing I’ll touch on in the overview portion of this review is how to score points. Vindication feels like an exploration/adventure game. This clever ruse disguises the games true nature – point salady goodness! Scoring points comes from a plethora of sources and this leads to multiple paths to victory. You score points every time you gain a card through an action, whether it be a companion, relic, trait, defeating a monster, or adding a cute little pet to your party. You can score points off abilities on these cards themselves. You score points for controlling areas. You score points when someone uses a location you control. You score points for reaching your personal objectives. You score points for becoming vindicated or upgrading your movement. Literally everything scores you points. And then, at the end of the game, you score points for having the most of each different type (six in total) of card. This is all before adding expansion modules which only increase the ways to score!
That’s Vindication in a nutshell. There’s about a thousand other actions you can perform and quite a few modular expansions to explore but I don’t have the time or space to go over them all. The game ends when someone reaches on of the End-Game Trigger cards which change from game to game. You tally up your points and see who wins!
Art and Components:
Caveat time: I own the Kickstarter edition of Vindication. I’m not sure what differences exist between it and the retail edition so this review will focus on the fancy edition I own.
Heavy and large, Vindication’s box impresses right out of the gate. I’ll confess that upon initial review I thought the large, monolithic ring in the center of the game box was a long-neck dinosaur. Still, the beautiful art conjures the feeling of the upcoming adventure on which your character will embark. The Game Trayz insert inside is one of the best I’ve seen. The individual player containers come right out of the box read to play. Everything about the tray decreases set up time so you can focus on what really matters: Playing the game. The beautiful miniatures add to the game’s aesthetic even if non-essential to the gameplay. The art on the cards is varied and beautiful. Everything is really top-notch.
The board is interesting. When I first got this game, I thought it would be a gigantic table-hog. However, keeping the players’ resources in shared pools around the board and placing the card piles on the board left plenty of room in front of each player for their own personal tableau. The board itself makes setup easier, with one side even showing faint outlines of where everything goes. My only gripe about the board? It’s dull. I get the decision as it’s only a placeholder for the hexagonal location tiles but… I feel like they missed the opportunity for even more evocative art.
The cards. Boy the cards. I HATE when companies use non-standard card sizes. I’m a habitual sleever. I know it’s a problem and I know not everyone cares about that. However, the decision to cut the cards in a funky shape with lots of corners floors me. I imagine after repeated plays that those sharp little cut-out edges would get pretty beat up. And on top of that, no standard sleeves out there fit the cards extremely well. I ended up going with the FFG blue sleeves that leave a few millimeters on either side. Still, this one issue irks me.
Art and Components Conclusion: A-
If it weren’t for the funky cards this would likely rate an A+. Orange Nebula hit it out of the park with nearly every aspect of this game’s ascetic design, including ease of setup. I’ll definitely keep an eye on any future projects this company produces.
Gameplay:
I’m gonna be honest – I backed this kickstarter largely off the broad idea of the game. I never read the rulebook or paid much attention to the campaign after clicking back. So, when I opened the game up and started reading the rulebook I didn’t know too much about what to expect. Sometimes I like doing this because my natural tendency of overpreparing and overanalyzing everything before diving in can lead to disappointment once I play the game. If I knew how Feldian the scoring system would be my expectations would have been through the roof. Uninspiring scoring systems are one of the fastest ways to turn me off a game I might otherwise enjoy. I need to feel like I’m gaining an advantage over my opponents with every move. Otherwise, why do any specific action at all?
I normally don’t love games with strict action selection rules. You MUST do all three actions? That feels too restrictive. However, Vindication lets you mix the three mandatory actions up in any order you wish. Add to that the myriad optional actions and you feel more in control than many games with similarly structured action selection. The added layer of complexity that managing your Potential-Influence-Conviction makes every decision feel meater than what it might otherwise. Because everything you do in this game is simple. The game derives its complexity from a breadth of options and decisions laid out before you, not from the depth of any particular path to points.
A side note about gameplay: While I’ve played this game several times already, I’ve not really scratched the surface of all its potential. Adding all the expansions and modules in will take many, many more plays, and that’s not even to speak about the full box expansion I own. One module in particular piques my interest. In it you all fight a central monster together, giving players rewards. Once defeated, it changes the board state and some of the rules of the game. This mode appears very thematic and I like the idea of the game pivoting in the middle with slightly different circumstances. Very cool idea. Unfortunately, that’s a mode that will wait until I teach enough people the basic game to field an experienced play group.
Gameplay Conclusion: B+
Final Thoughts:
Vindication stands right on the precipice of greatness without taking the leap. I leave every game satisfied but always thinking there could be more. I wish the actions felt more thematic. I wish the act of Vindicating yourself felt more central, revelatory, and impactful instead of an afterthought. Don’t take this as a negative review. I only feel this way because Vindication is so close to amazing. Still, it’s a game I really enjoy and one I’m sure I’ll revisit again. I only wish it were good enough to be in heavy rotation.
Rating: 8/10
