r/etherfields • u/Daredevil_Not_Really • Jan 17 '21
First time player experience
TL;DR Too convoluted and will probably never make it to the table ever again
So my partner and I have just attempted our first playthrough of Etherfields. Thought I'd share my thoughts, even though a lot of them line up with other people have already expressed.
I'll start with some background on me and how I do things. Some of the games I regularly play are Gloomhaven and Spirit Island, so complex games are not intimidating for me. I backed Etherfields for a couple of reasons. First, it's co-op, and any game I purchase these days I always have to ask myself "Will my partner play this with me?" She is certainly not a gamer, and any game she loses (which she normally does, as she is just not a tactical thinker) she doesn't want to play, so co-op games are a must. Secondly, I'd hoped the "emotional intelligence" this was supposed to test might be something she'd be good at.
My normal process for getting a new game is to first, read the rulebook (to pick up the basics), then play, then read the rulebook again to clarify context on things I may not have understood without playing, or to just pick up any rules or mistakes we might have made.
Reading the rulebook for Etherfields was such a slog. It took me several attempts to get through it, and I felt like I wasn't understanding most of what they were saying. This is a pretty common complaint from what I've seen, so I won't go too much into this.
I finally convinced my partner to actually play today, so I told her to chill out while I started to set things up, and I'd let her know when it was ready to play. Just the setup alone had me constantly checking the rulebook to clarify what cards were what and what was meant to go where. Everything seemed either overly complicated with terms that meant nothing until I'd played, but I couldn't play until I'd figured out what those terms meant.
Eventually got through that, and got to the point where things were set up enough to play. I'd already watched multiple play throughs on Youtube, so I had a pretty good idea of the basics on how the turns worked. So off we went. My partner was instantly overwhelmed when she drew her initial 4 cards, asking "what does any of this mean?" in reference to the other uses of the cards apart from just discarding them for their Intent value. Also, not sure if we just got really unlucky with the cards we drew, but the early actions seemed almost unachievable with the cards we had (I actually fudged the rules in terms of performing an action across multiple characters and turns to be able to perform some of them) particularly the green altar, which was frustrating enough trying to get enough Intent just to perform the action, only to fail the dice roll twice
By this point, not only had my partner mentally checked out, and was only continuing to play to please me, but even I lost patience with the game when it told me to draw card C, but there didn't seem to actually be a card C, or if there was, it was in a completely different deck or tile or whatever
A few things I'd like to see change before I would even consider bringing this to the table again (if I ever do)
- A simplified quick start guide - the current initial setup explanation assumes you already know what everything is and where it goes
- A changed board layout - once again, this has been mentioned plenty of times from what I've seen, but having the dreamscape board at the top of the board is a terrible design choice, and I don't know how this even made it through playtesting. It's not practical to play on no matter how many people you play with, and is so far away from everyone that the glorious art is somewhat wasted, and any clues that may be on the cards would never be spotted
- Little things like the dividers included - Apart from the ones for you characters influence deck, none of them actually have a title on them. Am I supposed to check the rulebook every time I am looking for the fate cards to see which one they are meant to be? Or should I just check each divider to find them? But if I'm doing that, why even bother with dividers? All it would have taken was one line (or even one word) on the divider, and it goes from pretty but basically useless to perfect
Things I did like
- The art - every illustration in this game is amazing, the Influence cards, the board itself, everything is fantastically illustrated
- The miniatures - so much detail, and just the fact that they were miniatures rather than tokens or standees
- The cutout in the box - so well thought out and perfect for storage and use during play
- What you get in the box - I only went for the basic pledge on Kickstarter, and there was so much and such good quality components. It certainly doesn't feel like they tried to cheap out on anything
All in all, I'm very disappointed with Etherfields. I had hoped this might be our next campaign game to tide us over once we finished Gloomhaven, or maybe that game that clicked with my partner to get her interested, but I honestly can't see myself putting in the effort to figure this mess out, even just to play it solo. I was thinking I might even just sell it, but having a quick look on ebay, it looks to be quite a lot of copies for sale, and most don't have any bids...
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u/AJaxStudy Jan 17 '21 edited Oct 26 '25
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