pReview: Ember

What's going on everyone!? It's been a rough couple of days with the weather change. I believe I'm getting a sinus infection which REALLY sucks because I only get sick about 2 times a year.

You know what doesn't suck though? This awesome card game I've had the chance to review called EMBER by District 31 on KICKSTARTER NOW! So sit back, grab that favorite potion of yours and lets take a look at EMBER!

 

As usual, here's a excerpt for you:


"Midnight at Arcane Academy, yet the apprentice wizards are far from their beds. They have slipped away under cover of the soft autumn shadow to the woods where whispered spells conjure a campfire away from prying eyes. Huddled around the flames with a bottle of starmead, the young wizards play a game. Someone casts a fragment of elemental flame into the midnight sky, whoever conjures that mote into the most powerful mythical creatures is the winner. This is Ember."


In EMBER, Players take on the roles of the apprentice wizards battling it out for the most powerful creatures as read above. Now, with that known, the game itself is VERY easy to learn but still offers a challenge to players. 

To start out, you separate the cards into two piles essentially, Creatures and Characters. Once this is done, you shuffle all the character cards together, this is going to be your draw deck. The characters in the game are the different wizards of the elements(Earth - Green, Wind - White, Fire - Red and Water - Blue) and each have numbers on them which go from 1 - 13. Once you have these cards all shuffled up you place the deck in the near the dealer which players will randomly choose.
 
 

Now it's time to set up the creatures. You first need to divide them into respective piles with number values matching. Then, depending on the amount of players, you randomly leave a certain amount of them there (In our case, we played a 3 player game so we had 2 of each numbered creature on the table).

This is the creature pool from where you and the other players will be summoning the creatures. 

 
Each turn you have 3 things you can do:

• Draw a card(if your at the hand limit which is a default of 5 you can discard a card so you can draw one.) 
• Summon a Creature(To summon a creature you "pay" that amount of cards that are specified on each creature card.)
• Discard down to your hand limit. (Some creatures abilities allow you to draw more cards, because of this there may be times you have more than you should by the end of your turn. Simply discard down to the limit size.)

 Drawing a card is pretty straight forward, you can do this once at the beginning of your turn. 

Summoning a Creature is also pretty straight forward. On each creature card in the pool, there is a "cost" to summon that creature. This could be something like "3 of the same color wizard" which means you would discard 3 of any one color wizard with any number on them.

 
Once you do, you take the creature card that you summoned and place it face up in front of you. If at any time you would like to use the ability, you can do so by "burning" or flipping the card so that the back of the card is now face up effectively killing or using the creature. There are some creatures that have continuous effects, these creatures do not "burn".

Once a creature is burned, it is effectively useless other than for victory points at the end of the game. However, there are some cards that will let you flip it back to face side up so you can use it again. This is also known as "reviving" the card.

 

 
So over the course of rounds players will be doing these steps while trying to best their opponents. Once you have reached the predetermined VP total the game ends and the player with the highest wins!
 

On to my opinion:
Game Art: The game art is AMAZING. You can tell that there was a LOT of care that went into this and it reflects it beautifully.

 Game play: The game play is fast and fun. Games don't last too "long" or "too quick" and if they do, you can adjust this by setting the VP goal which is a nice change up from "you HAVE to score this many points".

Game Quality: Now, being that I have a prototype preview copy I cannot accurately say how the game is. I have seen some shots of the finished version and they are amazing. I know this is going to be a top notch item when it hits shelves and I'll be sure to have a copy on mine as well.


CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT EMBER!


Please keep in mind that the images on the cards that I've used may not necessarily be the "final version" of them although I know that some are. This is still a prototype copy so things are bound to be different than what I have/show.

As always, Thank you very much for reading and take care! :)
-Tim