The Inns and Outs of Pub Crawling!
about 3 years ago
– Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 12:00:52 AM
Greetings Slugfans!
Today we want to take a moment and talk about the most exciting, titular part of the RDI8, the Pub Crawl! This new game variant lets you explore the other fine drinking establishments around the city of Greyport, sampling from their unique menu of drinks and dealing with their own fun brand of mayhem. You can learn how the Pub Crawl works by reading the draft of the rules or watching our stream about it on YouTube. The short version is this: when a player reveals a chaser, they get to choose the next tavern that the party goes to. Whenever a player Orders a Drink, that Drink comes from the current tavern. If a tavern runs out of Drinks, it closes, and the person who Ordered the last Drink chooses the next tavern to go to. The party may not go back to a closed tavern, and they may not return to The Red Dragon Inn until all other taverns are closed.
But now we're going to dive into some of the strategy you can find behind this new way to play.
Strategy? We aren't just wandering around randomly?
Each tavern has a unique ability called a Tavern Event. These abilities trigger when the party crawls to that tavern, and those events can have big consequences! Over the course of the game, you’ll be interacting with them in two important ways:
- When you reveal a Chaser as part of your drink, you are in the driver’s seat. You’ll want to look at the state of the game, what cards are in your hand, and what your opponents may be capable of. If someone is running low on Gold, then crawling over to Startusk’s for some much-needed sobering at the cost of 1 Gold may be just the ticket to give you an edge!
- When another player reveals a Chaser, then you’re along for the ride. It pays to make sure you keep an eye on what Taverns are still open, and which ones your opponents are likely to go to. If you know that a number of players are low on Fortitude, you can bet that they’ll want to go to the Harmonious Cup so they can discard cards to gain some Fortitude. With that info in your pocket, you’ll want to make sure you hold onto one or two extra cards so you can keep up with their healing, or maybe even hold onto some gambling cards so you can take their money after they’ve already discarded!
Whether you luck out and get to choose where the party crawls, or whether you're shoring up your options so you can best take advantage of where someone else is taking you, there are always plenty of choices to make!
Wench! Bring some drinks for my friends... Later!
Usually it's a good idea to play this card immediately (if you can afford to). Ensuring your opponents have stacked Drink Me! Piles puts them at risk for chasers and is almost always good for you in the long run. However, crawling adds an extra wrinkle to the game that may have you holding onto these cards for a more opportune time.
When you Order the last Drink from a tavern, you close it out and crawl to a new one! Making sure you are the player closing out a tavern means you are also in control of where the party crawls next. Sometimes when the stars align, you may even close multiple taverns at the same time!
Let's say you are at the Harmonious Cup on your Order a Drink Phase, there are 3 players in the game, 5 drinks in the Harmonious Cup’s Deck, and you have a copy of “Wench! Bring some drinks for my friends!”. You could play it now, Ordering 3 Drinks, and ensuring someone else closes the tavern and chooses where you crawl, or you can hold onto the card and potentially close out the tavern on your next turn! Of course, someone may get a chaser before it gets back to you, but being able to order 3 Drinks in one go is very powerful once a few crawls have already happened.
(Remember: You only take cards from a tavern when your card effect specifically says "Order". In all other cases, those drinks will come from the main Drink Deck.)
We think the new Pub Crawl Variant is a fun and flavorful new way to play RDI (with new characters or old ones!) and we hope that you agree. Please ask any questions you might have in the comments, and we'll see you again with a new update tomorrow!
