Scythe: The Wind Gambit Unboxing Reaction

Hi! it’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table, and i’m going to unbox… who cares?! Because that’s not the point of this video AT ALL. i don’t know what you’re seeing now. Maybe the quality looks a little bit different from what you’re used to when you’re watching stuff on my channel, but this is very very exciting and very scary and nerve-wracking for me, because the point of this video is for me to try out a couple of new pieces of gear that i’ve picked up that will enable me to go live to tape, which is a teevee term that means – you know – it’s not live to air, but you’re doing it, and you’re… you’re… switching cameras on the fly, and that’s all getting recorded by my hard drive in my laptop. Usually the way i make these videos – these these unboxing videos – is i have my overhead camera, and i have my Ryan camera, and they’re recording to two different cards, and then i take the stuff and i import it, and i bring it into Premiere, and i painstakingly cut it all together, and it takes hours. i mean, if you knew how much editing that i did on my stuff, and how long it takes me, you would be aghast! Probably aghast. It’s more than it should be. So this is why i got a few new pieces of gear, because i’m able to do this stuff just talking right at you, and then if i want to switch cameras, check this out: i push a button… ahhh-ha-ha… and there’s the overhead camera, and then i’ll go back, and there’s the Ryan camera. So that’s how i’m gonna try to do it. The logo just popped up, i just noticed… i’m workin’ on it! i’m working on it. This is my very first time. If you’ll allow me to suck at something, i really appreciate it. It might suck for a little bit, and then it’ll get super good. So how did i do all this, you ask? How did this marvelous technology come to be? Well, it’s thanks to my amazing patrons who, over the past year, have been chucking money at me, which i’ve stored up, and i’ve used it to buy a couple of other pieces of equipment. More stuff on the way. i’ve got a very cool camera coming, and a very special thing. Now, the person who drove me to do all this is a fellow named Rahdo. You may have heard of, you may not. Do i have a picture of Rahdo? i think… yeah! That’s him. So Rahdo encouraged me to get more equipment. There’s the logo again! Hey: why don’t we just show the logo again? Rahdo encouraged me… Rahdo’s a backer, too, on Patreon. i really appreciate his support, as well as everybody else’s, but he encouraged me to get a setup like this, because he has something similar, and it enables him to do live to tape runthroughs with absolutely no editing, which is wonderful. And what this will allow me to do in the near future is to actually be able to do some – you know – live streaming of gameplays. You might have seen a couple of videos that i did with Radho where my camera would shut off every 12 minutes, and that’s just a limitation of DSLRs that shoot video. They can’t go longer, because somebody told me that would put them in a different tax bracket, they’d be priced as completely different devices, so they don’t do it. So it’s not my particular camera – it’s all DSLRs can’t go over 4 megabytes or.. or 12 mega… Megabytes? Gigabytes? i have no idea what i’m doing, if that wasn’t obvious earlier. What are we doing? Are we gonna try to unbox this thing? i think we are. Ah, but i was gonna say: i’ve got other pieces of equipment coming, and i’ve got something fancy that even Rahdo himself doesn’t have. So as of now, i’m switching using this little number pad that’s sort of sitting to the side of me. Here’s what it looks like: an external number pad. But i got something more slick on the way that i’ll show you later. And i also have… this is at Rahdo’s suggestion… a webcam on the way that shoots straight down, and i’m able to punch a bunch of keys and have it zoom in to different parts of the board, just like Rahdo! Isn’t that exciting?? Now, it’s impossible these days in the Area… in the Era of the Pandemic… (see, i normally would have edited that flub out.) …in the Era of the Pandemic, it’s impossible to actually get a webcam. They’re sold out across the board – the good ones are, anyway. So i have to wait quite a long time in order for that to arrive. i thought i would do a trial run with this crazy gear anyway. So this is Scythe: The Wind Gambit, and a very… it makes me sad, because just before the pandemic hit, and everything was was shut down here in Ontario, i’ve been playing Scythe with my dear friends Derek and Emily, and we started into the Rise of Fenris campaign, which is a story-based campaign that you go through in steps, that you add to your Scythe game. Super excited,and you… you don’t need to have The Wind Gambit, but i’m slowly putting together all the different pieces that i would normally have if i were to have backed to the original at 80,000 bucks or whatever it cost, so i’m slowly buying the extra cards, and the metal coins, and… and – you know – actual human Russians to put on the board… it’s fine. They’re stuffed. They’re taxidermied. But… oh! That’s another thing i should mention! Tha pause! i can’t do the pause any more! When i do these videos, if you see a little blip, a little edit, it’s sometimes because i’ve edited out an “um,” but many times, it’s because i haven’t even thought about what i’m going to say next. So i’ll say to the camera “The interesting thing is…” and then i’ll go “….. DUHHHHHHH” for, like, fifteen minutes! And then when i think of what i’m gonna say, i continue, without moving my hands or anything, so it’s – you know – minimally disruptive as possible. So there could be… sometimes i’ll just go have a sandwich. So there could be vast chunks of me not knowing what i’m doing in between those little blippy edits. So i just caught myself doing it. i can’t pause like that. i have to keep you entertained all times during this video. What was i saying? The Wind Gambit. So i actually rushed out to buy this thing right before the pandemic hit, because we’re playing Rise of Fenris. You don’t NEED to have this when you’re playing Rise of Fenris, but i thought it would be cool to have, because the first scenario says “play without The Wind Gambit,” and then i’m sure the second scenario will say “Go to your FLGS and buy Wind Gamibt. SMRP.. MSRP is 40 bucks,” or whatever it costs. i can’t remember. it’s been so long. i haven’t spent money or engaged in commerce in months! Back to this: there’s nothing exciting in here. All it is, is – i think – just five or six different plastic airships, and i think a couple of cards that change the way the end of the game works. But here we go: let’s unbox it. Doing an unboxing like this is so nerve-wracking when you can’t screw up or go back because, you know, once the genie’s out of the bottle, that’s it. You ca… you can’t… you can’t really… i’ve never – in case you’re ever wondering if “Gee, does Ryan ever, like, shrink-wrap the game again if he screws up an unboxing?” No. i never do that. i just lose it. And i’ve only lost a couple of unboxings. Silent, but deadly. Box Fart-O-Meter: zero. Oh, wow! They’re much larger than i expected them to be. Why don’t i show you? Much bigger ships than i thought they would be. So let me dump them all out, because i think that’s what’s… ooh, and… i didn’t expect card, either. Oh! And i didn’t expect cardS, eith… oh, and plastic b… what’s goin’ on? This is more than i thought it would be. Here we go. So there are – what? Five factions in the base gama… aha! We got sneaky little tape under here. i can already tell: the… the way that i got the overhead camera to work so far, is this is just my webcam. This isn’t how i’m gonna do it fully, but i can tell there’s a bit of lag on it, because it’s actually going over Wi-Fi, which is the dorkiest way to do this. So hopefully it’s not… lag’s not too bad. i probably did that completely backwards. You’re supposed to flip it upside down. But, here we go! They look… they’re much, much bigger than i thought they would be, and they all come with… looks like this is a little baggy of stands… i wonder how high they sit? Let’s find out. (humming) Little stands, and little sticks. These remind me of.. whoa-ho-ho! Whoa. If you’ve ever seen… if you’ve ever seen Fraggle Rock, with the little… little green Doozers that make Doozer sticks out of radishes, and then the Fraggles adore eating radishes, and so they come and they eat the constructions, which the Doozers hate, but they love buildings so they’re okay to build again. So it’s a symbiotic relationship. One of the very first introductions i ever had to symbiosis. And here we go. And there’s the… is that Polania? i can’t remember which faction has red but, i am currently, in Rise of Fenris, playing the purple Japanese faction, and it looks like… are they all identical? Yeah. It looks like the same mold for all of the ships. Cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap! What do you think you’re doing, Stonemaier Games? i see… i see you. Unique faction ships, one mold. Oh well. That’s fine. i’m not too burned about that. They’re cool… they’re cool, though. Like, i wanna… i’d fly that around. i’d… i’d fly peasants around in that airship. Why not? Cool! Wha’ else? Wha’ else? Wha’ else? Couple of empty plastic baggies. Cards we’ll look at in just a second, but i’m interested to see what this stock is. Oh – wow. So some of the famous Mr. Werewolf art on which the game was based. “Bombard,” it says. Ah – that’s another thing that i’m gonna get, is Rahdo has a great little setup, where… and Shea Parker does, too… where they have a little camera that focuses on a green piece of construction paper, and whenever they want to show a card or an element up close, instead of – you know – certain other youtubers who will throw it as close to the cameras they can, and it’s wiggling all around and it’s getting all fuzzy and out of focus, you can’t understand what’s going on… they’ll put that down on the green screen sheet, and it’ll pop right up in front of the view, and you can see it much more closely. i think that’s a brilliant solution ,and i’m working on it! It’s coming! So! Let me read this to you anyway. “Bombard: before you engage in combat on your airship’ territory you may pay 1/2/3 resources from this airship to reduce your opponent’s power by 1/2/3.” So the airships can carry stuff around, and they can affect combat. That’s pretty cool. It’s pretty exciting. More lovely artwork. You know, one of the biggest reasons to buy this game, of course, is the artwork. It’s all nice. i don’t know if this stuff is repeated, or how many of these paintings are repeated, or if they’re all unique? i somehow doubt that they’re unique. That would be a whole lot of work. But… not sure. “The first player to have five or six stars on the triumph track during their turn will gain five bucks, and complete their turn.” These are more little… looks like maybe mid-game goals? Or – yeah, goals to grab while you’re playing? There are eight of them? Aaaand these are more… i’m thinking achievements? Yeah. So this is another achievement thing, but it’s related to the airships. So it’s a little bit goofy, and i haven’t used it yet, but the original game comes with an achievement list where you can say “Oh! i was the first to… flip the table during a game of Scytyhe,” or whatever, and you check that off. i don’t like writing on the stuff that comes in my games, unless… especially on such a nice stock. Like, if you meant for people to write on that, just put it on something more chintzy. i don’t know if i would feel… it lowers the resale value of a game i am never going to resell. AaaaAAAnd… cards. If i were to estimate, that deck of cards is probably… we can just count ’em right there… probably… like… yeah. 50,000. So they have a new symbol on the back that i’ve never seen before. “Mission: Possible. During setup, place one of the Automa’s star…” oh, this is Automa stuff. i see. Right, right, right. Because you would need to be able to have Automa rules for the… for the airships flying around. You know what i find interesting about the word “automa”? i forget which Stonemaier game they explained it in, but they say… oh yeah. It must have been Scythe. They s… or maybe Wingspan? They say “Oh, we use the word ‘Automa…’ it’s autoMATa (or auTOMata) in English, but we use the Italian word for Viticulture, which is our game about wine country,” but… There. i would have edited that long pause out. “But – you know – we like the word, so we kept using it for all of our games,” and sao… so now i notice that other publishers and designers are using the word “automa,” the italian word, i think, thinking that that’s the word for an automated… the English word for an automated… it ain’t! Xheck your dictionary, fellas! What have we learned today? Ryan sweats buckets when he’s out of his comfort zone. Uh… um… i had a backup picture of a kitten, just to keep you entertained in case this all went completely south, but it seems to have gone okay? i won’t know until i stop the recording, and notice that i forgot to do XYZ, and this was…. this m… this majestic presentation was all for naught, and you didn’t catch any of it. But what should i say in closing? i should say “thank you so much” to my patrons. You guys made this fancy new gear possible. i’m excited to keep using it, to get more stuff, and to do exciting new forms of content for you! i’ve got stuff in the pipeline that i think you’re going to be really excited about. Uh……. (edit!) And i’m very excited to not have to edit this piece! i even put my outro videos at the end of this which you’ll see in a moment. Hopefully, i don’t mess it up! Thank you so much for bearing with me, and allowing me – maybe – to fail a little bit? i don’t know! We’ll see when this goes up! Did you just watch that whole thing? Oh – hey! To 100% this video, click the badge to subscribe, and then click the bell to get notifications when i’ve got new stuff! [Music – Board Game Boogie by Ryan Henson Creighton]