Favorite Game for December 23rd

#2 Vantage

There are a bunch of RPG-In-A-Box style games out there. Vantage isn't one of these, but it looks like one. There are a bunch of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style games out there. Vantage isn't one of these either, but it looks like one. Vantage is best described as a mix of these two styles of games.

Like an RPG-In-A-Box style game, players have a character and character advancement. Like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style game, game play is about paging through a story to see what happens. Both of these experiences however, are ... reduced ... distilled. Vantage takes a little from both of these ideas and blends them together to create something that is (at least for me) greater than the sum of its parts.

Each player has a character card and a location card. On the location cards are actions that the character you "control" can take. You choose an action, and read from a book to see what happens. You might have tokens and other cards that represent things your character is good at, which can suggest a certain course of action to you. Once you have taken an action at a location it is time to move on to the next location to take a new action.

Actions require payment in resources to achieve. These resources are represented by tokens and dice rolls. You can place the dice on cards that you have acquired during play or pay the resource cost on a central board. However, you don't want to use the central board if you can help it, because those resources are finite, and once they are gone your adventure is over.

Vantage is a game of discovery. The fun is in both exploring the environment and in observing what your character is going to do next. You don't so much "control" your character as you "follow them around." The choices that you make aren't clearly defined. 

Frequently, when you select a course of action, what follows is nothing like what you were expecting. This seems to be the norm rather than the exception. For this reason, Vantage isn't going to be for everyone. Players have to be willing to relinquish a certain amount of control and just allow the game to entertain them. 

The game itself is mostly cards and a handful of tokens. There are "story books" but the entries are very brief. This isn't a narrative heavy game. Vantage gives you a taste of what's happening and wants you to create the details in your own imagination. The story entries are also available in app form that makes accessing them with your phone fast and easy.

Vantage is also single-session. Each game is unique and self contained. Players are not tied to a long term campaign. Set-Up is quick and each session plays in a few hours. Some experiences will be better than others. The first time I played, I wasn't sure that I liked Vantage. Once I figured out the kind of experience that the game was offering and leaned into that ... Well, Vantage is currently my 2nd favorite game of all time.

I don't know if Vantage will stay so high on my list, and I know that it isn't for everyone. Julie likes it. I really like it. It's a "big box" style adventure game in a regular sized box that I can get to my table and play. To me that makes Vantage kind of miraculous.