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 Content Warning: Dark themes. Will update this as I find out more, I'm going into this mostly blind. quote:"Welcome to your career as a Hostage Negotiator! This expansion is the culmination of my full vision for the Hostage Negotiator product line, and I am so thrilled that it is finally complete. If you are going on this journey it probably means you already love the game, or at least think you will! I just want to thank YOU, as it would not be possible without all of the support we have gotten from our fans and loyal customers over the years. Now, take your training academy diploma... and good luck in Year 1 and beyond!" I hope that this Let's Play will drive more people into buying this awesome solitaire card game rather than replace the need! If you want to support Van Ryder Games, there is also an iOS/Android version, but a physical copy of this game would be a lot of fun. It also makes a great gift; the Career expansion, unlike other persistent Legacy campaign games, can be reset so someone else can give it a go with your copy after you have. Hostage Negotiator is a board/card game for one person, although multiple people can play it together by sharing the decision making process, as we are going to. In it, you play as a member of the Municipal Police Department's Crisis Negotiation Unit. Build a rapport with the abductor, manage their emotional state, consider the pros and cons of giving into their demands, rescue the hostages, and ultimately, capture or eliminate them. How does all that play out? It's a bit like a puzzle deck building game plus Craps. Each Abductor has their own mechanics which get revealed the first time you play them. Any attempt at talking with the Abductor carries risk. How you manage that risk and how and when you try to make your moves determines your success and failure as much as sheer luck does. This is going to be kind of a hybrid LP. We're going to go over the mechanics and play at least two practice rounds before diving into the game's Legacy style Career expansion. I'll be playing the game in Tabletop Simulator. Once we get started in career mode, we'll decide how much control you want to have over the gameplay. Having you guys make every decision every round might make the game too slow, but if you want to do that we can try it. If there's any strategies you want to see me employ, I will. In the Career mode you will get to make some fun choices that'll have permanent consequences on the campaign. The thread will always get to make these choices. For this first game, we're going to be playing with the base game only. We'll introduce stuff from Crime Wave, and the add-on packs soon. Let's introduce our first Abductor!  quote:Arkayne is angry. As the leader of a terrorist organization, he was none too pleased when over half his team was taken into custody by special forces agents in a surprise raid while he was away. Arkayne is the Abductor that the rules suggest playing against first. He's a very straightforward antagonist with zero twists. Pure vanilla, as far as hostage takers go. Arkayne has 7 Hostages, starts at 4 Heat, and has 1 Major Demand and 1 Escape Demand. So, let me teach you the game! Each turn of the game plays out in three phases:
 This is the Tableau, tracking the game's current state. Features include:
Let's have a look at a typical Conversation Card:  When you play one face up, you roll the number of Threat Dice you have, which is determined by your Heat level but can also be modified by cards.  These are Threat Dice. Three sides are blank, one side has two cards on it, and two sides have a badge on them, which represents a Success. That means getting a Success is only a 33% chance on each die. This makes the likelihood of getting at least 1 success on a two-die roll about 55%. Almost a coin flip. If you get a two-card symbol on a die roll, you can immediately play two Conversation Cards face down to turn it into a Success. This is a harsh price but it might save you from a dire fate. After you roll the dice, you consult the card to see what happens. Under the two successes result, the Heat level goes down by 1, and you get a conversation point.  This card has some other symbols on it. On two successes, you save two hostages. On one success, you save a hostage but the Heat level goes up by one. On a failure, one hostage is killed, and the conversation immediately ends. You can't play any more conversation cards, play immediately proceeds to the Spend Phase. Any conversation cards you have left in your hand can carry forward to the next Conversation Phase.  This card costs 5 conversation points to buy, the cost is in the lower right. Two successes give you two extra Threat Dice for the rest of the conversation, one success gets you one, and a failure removes the card from the game entirely. Since there's only one copy of this card in the store, this option is lost to you forever if you mess it up. The game ends a few different ways. You win if all of the following things are true:
You lose the game if any of the following things happen:
That's basically it! There's a couple more details like the Second In Command, which replaces the Abductor if you kill him while there's still hostages in the Hostage Pool, and of course I haven't shown you all the different Conversation Cards there are, but you know what you need to know to start watching and participating. The Videos - El Generico fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 07:17
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| # ? May 9, 2024 18:52 |
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This looks really cool and I'm here for it.
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Aug 16, 2021 08:37
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvaBMxWSCuc This round was played only with the base game. Next time we won't be playing with any of the base game components, but only those that come with the standalone expansion, Crime Wave. After that, we can do a bit of mixing and matching. Results: 8 Hostages Saved, 1 Hostage Killed, Elimination Victory, thanks to fantastic luck against this, the easiest possible opponent. I hope some of you come up with some strategy tips for me, or Career is gonna whoop our asses. (Honestly not going to be upset at all if it does though) Royalty free music is courtesy Purple Planet and Incompetech, full attribution is in the Youtube video description. Let me know how the audio levels are. I re-recorded once because my dice luck was total garbage, but I promise we will never do that again. It's Ironman mode from here on out, I just wanted this first vid to be more instructional than an absolute failthrough could've been. My second recording was scrapped due to a major rules fuckup. This is the third attempt and actually I did some stuff that made the video better so it was worth it.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:35
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Nice to see more digital boardgames being LP'd! Bookmarked  EDIT: also can I say it is a bold move to send in a bemused Agent Smith as an hostage negotiator? 
That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2021 09:14
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I’ve been interested in this one since I saw the Shut Up and Sit Down review, but it’s been out of stock everywhere! I noticed one rules mistake and one strategy mistake near the end. Rules-wise, the terror card you drew near the end said to discard half the remaining red cards rounded down - so since you only had one red card left, I think it was actually harmless. And strategy-wise, that final turn would have been the absolutely perfect time to give the dude a helicopter. You had conversation points to burn and you were going to lose at the end of that turn anyway, so it would have been two extra dice on the sniper roll completely risk-free.
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Aug 17, 2021 11:20
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 at the last turn, fluff-wise: "sniper, take the shot! ... no, no, i didn't mean that, what i meant was" BLAM
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Aug 17, 2021 13:42
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Oh, nice. I'm a big fan of this game (even though I suck at it), so it'll be nice to see some actual play of it. I have a bunch of the content but haven't grabbed Career Mode so it'll be interesting to see how that works out.
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Aug 24, 2021 01:05
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Bought the game thanks to this thread.
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Sep 15, 2021 02:53
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This looks interesting. Looking forward to the next run!
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Sep 16, 2021 06:29
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This reminds me of a more compact version of the "Legendary" deck building games. Here's your objective and a countdown timer. Here's your deck of lousy base cards. Here's the card store. Buy better cards to do more things, but watch out for the Event deck that wants to gently caress you over but good. I can understand the terror deck really screwing you over.
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Sep 27, 2021 01:12
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| # ? May 9, 2024 18:52 |
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Does a surprisingly good job keeping the appropriate tension, especially how fast things could flip from "going great" to "oh poo poo!" on you with just a little bad luck, especially from the aptly named terror deck (love how it went from possibly resolving things peacefully to needing to kill the guy with just one unfortunate draw for the heat). Downright nail-biting right to the end really. Also, great thread title, it must be said.
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Oct 4, 2021 21:52
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