Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, solo

Great game with all the advanced stuff today. Pulled out ahead before losing a few battles... Ultimately pushed the Horde back hard enough, emptying its deck, to win. It's not perfect, it's not the most tightly designed in my collection, but it provides so many dramatic moments.

Tried the god faction who only have one unit and use systems similar to your enemy, played as the wolf god. Got a great item combo that made them incredibly strong by bouncing around the map at will.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #nemesisgames #dirksommer #pawelmazur #corneliuscremin #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele

Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, solo 2nd handed

Reasonably close L yesterday in my solo game of Uprising, one faction got over without help but White (wood elf type faction) couldn't get there. White just got rolled by a number of different fights and ultimately got beat cycle 3 by the tricky Courtesan. I don't have a great handle on their play flow; they have great archers but no money. My biggest sin was not getting enough items to help me with the fights, that's the big strength of the hero I played.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #nemesisgames #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele #bgg #boardgamegeek

Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, solo

Having a blast with Uprising. How couldn't I, the traitor legion has a T-Rex unit!

I added all of the advanced tile content for this game and boy, let me tell you, this game can mercilessly blow you up when the advanced content comes out early and often. Uprising remains pretty swingy in difficulty and that's more extreme when you include this stuff, though the advanced stuff is also super spicy and does tons of wild, fun shit. I'll take a few Ls to RNG for the narrative arc a game of it provides.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #nemesisgames #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #boardgames #tabletopgames #tabletop #brettspiele

Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, solo

Got a comfortable win in this matchup after my close loss earlier this week. I had an interesting game this time where I tried something completely different, having one of my factions go quest heavy. It worked surprisingly well, a very interesting way to play the game that showed off its flexibility and range. My character had an ability to pick up discarded quest cards and use them in fights, so I dumped them in a final very difficult battle and rolled a huge fist full of dice in the second picture. Fun, orthogonal way to play Uprising. Uprising has that Spirit Island thing where your enemy seems impossible to overcome but combinations of your tools make it completely possible, which is a way to make the player feel quite clever.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #nemesisgames #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele #bgg #boardgamegeek

Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, solo two handed

When the absolutely insane tariffs hit I got a copy of Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor used because god knows when I'd see a copy of it again and at what price, or if the next KS would even deliver to the US.

It was a huge positive experience in person. My assessment of the game is actually a lot higher now that I've played the physical set. The game is so much better in person, it's obvious the designers sat down with every component and went through multiple drafts to get them right. It's one of the few gonzo plastic designs that I've played that has really careful considerations for playability for all that over the top presentation stuff. The play tempo was strong, with most of my extra time spent thinking looking ahead and thinking about the implications of my actions in difficult situations vs. overhead.

As for this game itself, it was a nail biter. I ended up losing by one---primarily because unexpectedly the Legion's *former* champion, Oda, at very high threat level, unexpectedly lost a battle to a low strength Spymaster of the Legion. Since the Horde ended the game way behind, I was expecting him to win to buff the Horde and then I could come in and wipe him out with my weaker side, the Tuatuan (turtle people). They had a tough loss in turn 1 and were the weak link. Instead, this supercharged the Legion VP and despite doing everything I could to pull them back I ended up falling short by 2 points of getting the win. Very tight game.

It doesn't look like it but this game has a lot of Spirit Island style considerations in it---looking ahead at the enemy AI logic to try to maneuver it where you want it and, unlike Spirit Island, actually get the enemies to fight each other and do some of your work for you.

Such a surprise revelation of a game.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #nemesisgames #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele #bgg #boardgamegeek

Uprising Curse of the Last Emperor, 2 players

I love this game, but it's just a little off balance. Not so bad that it ruins the game but it's just... swingy. This is a moment where we had five legions dropped on us mid game and thought we were done for. We managed to get several of the enemies to fight due to good placement and a lucky tile flip, though, and then won some critical turn 2 combats which left just getting efficiently through turn 3. I was trailing a bit so my partner sandbagged points for me and we ended up winning by ~10.

Uprising is so close to perfect, but it's just missing a couple key wrench tightens to make the game a touch less swingy. Swingy crazy situations like the one pictured are part of the appeal, of course, so you would want to even it out too much and throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just a nip and tuck here that ensured more consistent amount of pressure from the enemies, rather than an early T2 climax and falling action, and this would be an all timer. It is still an all timer for me, but you need to be in its wheelhouse as an old-school ameritrash fan.

With some complaints out of the way, let me deploy some sugar. This game has dialed in the ability to give you toys. That's really important in this sort of game. My friend was drawing sick but expensive items that gave him god tier archery and it felt incredible. Everything is so dialed in in this game to make you stronger than the five units per hex make you feel. It generates this beautiful fist pumping energy because late game legions and hordes are so strong, but the game gives you all these copious ways to feel smart and overcome them.

Can't wait to get a copy of this. It Gets me, though the person I was playing with thought it was good not great, which I can't disagree with totally.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #nemesisgames #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #brettspiele #brettspiel #bgg #boardgamegeek #tabletopsimulator

Uprising Curse of the Last Emperor, 2 players

Got a tts game of this in with a friend on a whim. This game was an odd one, we managed to ease the way for partner in crime with an early quest roll and then he rolled out pretty well to destroy the threat he was facing. That left us pretty lopsided, with his side fo the board pretty built up and in quite a strong position, buying all sorts of items and deploying all of his units to the board by T2. That meant we had to sandbag my side a little bit the rest of the way, pointing the Legion's Executioner at him, but ultimately we breezed to a win on nightmare difficulty due to some things that went our way and questing to drop a nasty horde on the capital to clear a threat. By the mid-third turn, we knew we were in the lead, but it was still a good time anyway. My tilt toward the game is off the charts even if I don't think it's the best game in the world.

Having done it, I can heartily endorse just throwing in all the advanced cards once you have a little experience which is most of what constitutes "nightmare" difficulty. On one hand, you can pull all advanced card and face a significantly more difficult experience. On the other hand, that's unlikely and, moreover, the advanced cards are just wackier and more complex more than they are more difficult for the most part. So you're really missing out on the fun variety in the game if you don't shuffle those advanced cards in once you're reasonably experienced. I was super hestitant to do it, but my game partner was just like, hold up, throw all that stuff in, we'll be fine. And, indeed, we were. I do think it's clear that the game does not have a strong anchoring on its difficulty, as the order and character of what comes out seriously defines difficulty level.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #nemesisgames #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames #tabletopsimulator #boardgamegeek #bgg #brettspiel #brettspiele

Uprising, solo

Listen. I'm not made of stone. You give me crab riders as basic unit and a giant lobster rider as my elite and you're a lot of the way there.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #nemesisgames #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #tabletopgames #tabletopgaming #boardgames #boardgamegeek #bgg #tabletopsimulator

Uprising Curse of the Last Emperor, 2 players

Played Uprising two players with a friend. It's settling into a game I want to buy but not a complete doors blown off masterpiece like Spirit Island with me---which ain't nothing!

We had some fun twists in this game, with my friend taking a heavy early setback but managing to rebuild a respectable position---we won by 5-6 points each over the Legion. It's an unusual co-op in that it makes you feel far worse than you are doing. I think that's because it looks pretty ameritrash inspired/adjacent, and those games are usually about KOing some bad guy at the end to reach the peak of your curve. But this game is squarely a VP game, and you can get hit pretty hard in the final cycle and still win if you've balanced the enemy scoring and done plenty of your own. In that way, it does share something with euro-leaning Spirit Island---winning a fear victory in Spirit Island while you are being absolutely overrun can be a little weird. The game is designed and balanced so that you can get hit in the face or deal with a tough roll and still win on normal; a lot of these sorts of games are not so you have to fight the feeling that you should quit and rerack and play through.

Anyway, I'm a little higher on it than my friend, but I think the game is quite well designed and a lot of little flair my friend and I appreciated---the Courtesan came out and chased him, which is fun little mirror matchup designed to make you feel good by showing off your cool powers while I faced a one-two of The Coven who I dispatched easily but not before they blanked all of my powers, which led to a complete overrun by the Mage Breaker in the enemy phase of that turn who took my first haven.

#uprisingcurseofthelastemperor #nemesisgames #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #boardgames #tabeltopgames #tabletop #tabletopsimulator #boardgamegeek #bgg #ameritrash

Uprising Curse of the Last Emperor, solo 2 handed

Played a couple more solo games of this, up to 3, the last game I finally corrected a *crucial* rules error I was making that made the game more tractable to win.

Uprising has been a huge surprise to me. Spirit Island is the gold standard in this area, and this design is good but is a little clunkier than Spirit Island so it doesn't reach those heights. But this game *does* offer quite a thoughtfully designed Spirit Island style experience, but hard shifted into a dice rolling, troops on a map, 4x package---which is not something anyone is doing. There are lots of nice levers to pull that synergize with each other and give you those nice moments where you come up with a creative solution to a problem you're having using some combination of exploration, quests, and items. You don't see that kind of work combined with a bone deep love of high stakes dice rolling and ameritrash sensibilities. Uprising also likes to give you unique toys, items, and units too, which is exactly what this style game provides that I miss in something like Spirit Island. The mercenaries expansion I'm using demonstrates this---I paid through the nose to get this rad pictured dragon unit who carried me through the rest of the game, beating back the final wave of horde invaders T3.

After playing a bit, I do think the expanded Druids expansion is mandatory to manage dice rolling early. Later on, I don't think it's overly important at all. You need to adjust to losing armies and havens and that being a totally normal outcome later. But T1 with small die numbers is a different matter, and these rerolls do a lot to prevent that.

Anyway, this game has caught me completely out nowhere. Not sure if I'm going to pay through the nose to track down a physical copy but I am tempted.

#uprisingcurseofthelasteremperor #nemesisgames #corneliuscremin #pawelmazur #dirksommer #boardgames #tabletopgames #tabletop #bgg #boardgamegeek #tabletopsimulator