you can now easily score your entire deck with all the cards (except your forgotten pile of course lol) and click a button and it will instantly announce your score and how many cards you have in your deck. Scoring is so easy now its crazy.

We added a coded scoring zone to the game too :)

I tried the first time but it was unsuccessful. I figured that out and fixed it. Thank you Crusha, once again helping me to make this better lol. You rock.

Ah, didn't notice that you uploaded the new changes as a separate workshop item. Is there any reason why you didn't update this one directly? It has more existing subscriptions after all.

Hey Crusha!

We have updated the game with the layout grids in place among the Manifest and I have tested it. It can fit 9 cards and works perfectly even if some extra cards get shoved below it. They don't interact with the hands so I believe I placed them back far enough lol.

Thank you for this update reminder. I didn't realize TTS was being this awesome to its card players :)

Thx for the ideas and concerns all around.

Have you been able to play any more games? I will be doing a weekly game night playing with some newbies and regulars every week until we launch. If you are interested, let me know in a PM. :) Thank you again.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

That is definitely an annoying aspect of the game and probably slows it down quite a bit. I'll get to work on that layout zone and let you know :)

Thank you again.

Thanks for the elaborate response. I'll try to keep it in mind when playing the game next time.

On a different note: The most recent update to TTS added "Layout Zones", which are areas where you can drag cards to automatically have them neatly spread out and/or organized into groups. I think they are perfectly suited to be used in the Manifest area of each player's board, to help with the fiddly nature of it and prevent the played cards from accidentally spilling into the Consciousness or Forgotton pile.
You'd have to pull the Hand Zones back a bit, though, since the Layout Zones will start pushing the cards into a new row if they don't all fit into the current row, and if the Hand Zone is too close, it will push the cards back into the player's hand.

Also, the game changes when you play with the same people over and over. You start to pick out their character traits, and see where they like to go every game. This will help you find counter-buys early on when they don't always have the opportunity.

You too will adjust your gameplay as you learn more and more about the strats involved and how to manuver around others' strats.

Again, thank you so much. We really appreciate your attention to detail :)

I hope that helps :)

Let us know what you found out!

Finally, if someone is going to go Runic, and they are adamant. You could also go hard Runic, and steal their cards. Knowing they have hard competition for blues might make them think twice about using it. if not, then it's just a VP race to the end lol.

P.S.
We are redoing the look of the game and it is getting a complete overhaul and it's going to be much nicer and better.

So again, thank you so much for responding. We love to hear feedback and need as much as we can get in every stage of this.

I encourage you to play more 4 player games and think outside the box for some strange strategies that might surprise you in the end.

How many personality traits did you guys each buy? They cost 5 and almost all of them provide 5 VP, so 2 of them give you 2 abilities that can be static and can help you every turn, rather than just 1. So if you peg anyone going for a VP win, don't buy knowledge cards. Make them have to buy EVERY SINGLE ONE if they want to end the game faster. They will spend all their time trying to get 10 experience every round while you get 5 easily, and have the option to change your entire turn progress by simply changing your personality trait to one that suits your current needs. You can easily get more VP's that way. I've done it, and it's a more viable option for most as you can get 5 exp in your hand no problem. but 10 is pretty difficult without sacrificing VPs from the other cards.

And if you have 3 or 4 players, and one guy goes RUNIC, you know who to gang up on or lose to ;) lol.

I have played games that end EXACTLY how you described. But I do believe this to be coincidental and perhaps indicative of the need to change up the strat. There are multiple ways to get VP's, knowledge cards aren't the only way.

When you play 2 or 3 players, the game is wholly different from its 4-player version but with the same rules. It is as much a social strategy game as it is a mechanical strategy game. This is very difficult to quantify when play-testing in the alpha phase because we generally didn't have the social atmosphere a regular game has. We crunched numbers and recorded wins and what not. So your strategies and thinking must change to suit this change in dynamics. I know that is a very general statement, so I'll get into the specifics now.

When you run Runic ONLY, you aren't a threat, so there is no need for me to run a "Mixed" deck as I won't need much defense. maybe a few of the cheaper cards here and there to boost the defense a little and draw a few cards here and there. Maybe get a decent BOON to run the game with (Provided it doesn't get removed or destroyed). But I know that you WILL NOT be attacking me, so I don't have to worry about VICTORY POINTS, I can go for the elimination win.

First, I would just like to thank you for your critique. It was perfectly laid out and I know exactly your sentiments in this instance.

I would like to address some aspects of the game that might help clear up some of your observations.

So Runic is VERY STRONG. There is no doubt about the fact that giving yourself points and cards and defense is going to be a bit more valuable when it comes to a VP goal of winning. That being said, the game IS balanced for 4 players. So as you examine it from a 2-3 player perspective, it could stand to reason that it might appear to fall short of the "balanced" status.

But it does not, and here is why;

The game is ever-changing, ever-evolving. The strategy in the game changes while you play. So going for a static strategy from beginning to end will probably result in failure, as "counter-buying" will almost always be the contingent.

I've played this once with 2 players and once with 3 players now. Maybe it's just bad luck or due to newbies playing, but in both occasions did a player who went with a full Runic built win out massively in score over players who went with a mixed build.
The full Runic one easily got their defense back up to full and the mixed players just did not have enough firepower to put any dent into it. And since Runic often includes "Draw Cards" abilitiies, they also had no problem snowballing into being able to buy one or two Knowledge cards each turn and end the game with the majority of victory points.
Maybe that's less of an issue in a 4 player game where there may be enough players that can focus a single Runic player down before it's that player's turn again, but the balanced may be a bit skewed in less populated games.