Rocky Mountain Man from Blast City Games

Yeah, not many counters and like thirty something cards, I think.

36 cards and somewhere around 50 counters. Map is relatively small too and then just a few charts.

$5 shipping to Maryland. Can't complain about that.

Scratch that. $9. A little more what I had expected.

Played it today, exactly what is promised by the box. Tried to map the Colorado but we got into the desert and three people died of thirst, basically putting the nail in the coffin.

The reusable crayon just soils the crew counter, lol.

Yeah I've been hitting this hard the past couple of weeks. Probably going to write about it tonight.

I think the campaign game is definitely better than the shorter scenarios of mapping the Colorado or reaching the Great Salt Lake. Mostly this is because there's no reason to pursue victory points or establish an economy through trapping in the short game. Also, the decision on when to head back to St. Louis is pretty interesting.

Campaign can be pretty damn long though (10 plus hours if you take your time).

mc wrote: Postage I believe is a killer O/S (actually, Andi, what was the damage, do you remember?) Nate said he will work on getting a PnP up at some point for purchase. How many counters are there? From the video it doesn't look like it would be a massive job?

Can't remember off-hand. I usually bundle up when ordering from EEE but it was a substantial amount. I think I grabbed it and the new lurker mag and that didn't give much change from $100.

Terrific read by Charlie here.

playerelimination.com/2021/04/26/rockymountaincharlie/

Agreed.

Also this sold out right after I bought it last week???

Yep, I'd say SpaceBiff helped with that, which, I know the print run was probably pretty small, but, way to go SpaceBiff.

Also someone over at TOS in the forum for the game said Nate had told them he's about 80% done on the PnP files.

Your hard-core crayon rails player uses these instead of crayons:

www.amazon.com/Diamond-Peel-Off-Markers-...id=1619537753&sr=8-6

Before I went away for the holidays I had been playing this game a fair bit and have some thoughts. I like this game but I also feel like I want to like it much more than I do.

Beyond learning the rules, I agree with Charlie in saying that it seems like the campaign game is the one to play with the advanced rules including weight management. I will concede that busting out the crayons and mapping out tiles is the best part of the game so I get the appeal of the shorter scenarios but I think you really should be playing the campaign game; the seasons alone add a lot of texture to both the gameplay, through their effects, and to the narrative, by indicating the passage of time.

Despite my recommendation to manage weight, I also find that aspect of the game somewhat tedious. There's a lot of writing and erasing on my supply sheet. I ended up getting some laminated sheets with which I'm using some dry erase markers. This has definitely made things easier for me.

My other complaint is that the difficulty of the game seems to be imposed by internal motivation and external time constraints rather than anything inherent to the game itself. I chose to do a campaign game in 30 minute increments which fit into my schedule most conveniently but there doesn't seem to be any pressure to move forward towards the end game beyond the time you have to commit to the game. I suppose a second player moving forward might provide you with that motivation but there's no way in hell I'd sit down with another person to play this game; adding another set of dice rolls to bot out a competing expedition could address that problem. As a solitaire game, perhaps this lack of tension is thematic as it reflects my suitability to succeed in this venture were I to try it for real. Playing conservatively and moving slowly may suit my personality but would also make me a very ineffective mountain man.

The rules are adequate at best. The core game loop is straightforward enough but I felt as if many of the card effects and specific interactions were left up to my interpretation. I'm still not really sure how exactly my interactions with the natives are supposed to occur; am I allowed to try being friendly at every opportunity? It doesn't seem like there's a cost for me doing so. At first this bothered me but as I played more I started to realise that the reasons I enjoyed this game were not because of its gameplay but because it was a pretty great story generator. I will definitely remember the winter my expedition spent hunkered down in their cabin eating rations as I rolled a six five times in a row causing a blizzard to strike each day. I remember the doctor and soldier of my troupe falling in love with members of a local tribe and having their spouses join us as guides. I also remember when one of those members died due to an attack by wolves. The rules were silent on what would happen to my relationship with the tribe if the person in the relationship died but I assumed that the permanent friendship resided with the member and not with the expedition as a whole and probably suffered as a result. There is lots of interesting story telling happening through an otherwise terse set of tables, cards and capricious die rolls.

I'll play it out until I get bored but I'm not sure my troupe will ever make it to build a trading post; I don't really think that matters as I'm glad to have played it for a while. After re-reading Charlie's review I realise that my takeaways tread a very similar ground to his with only a fraction of the eloquence and intimacy but I thought I'd share nonetheless.

I've only tried the scenarios. They are actually hard because you're pushing yourself pretty hard and doing dangerous things.

Gary Sax wrote: I've only tried the scenarios. They are actually hard because you're pushing yourself pretty hard and doing dangerous things.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to write the scenarios off as that tension and incentive to do dangerous things is what I felt was missing from the campaign. According to my (potentially flawed) understanding of the rules, all I need to win the campaign is to build a trading post which I do by hiring a garrison for $4k and then building it with a series of build actions. That doesn't even require me to reach the mesa if I just explore hexes in the Rockies and make enough discoveries.