Tidal Blades 2 – Rise of the Unfolders

My first encounter with Tidal Blades came way back in 2019 at PAX Unplugged. I saw the gorgeous work of Mr Cuddington, already well known for Charterstone and the Brass series. The luscious, vibrant world of Naviri grabbed my attention, from the maps to the rulebook to the figurines and even squishy fruit tokens.

In Tidal Blades 2, the Eisner brothers and Mr. Cuddington have only upped their game. The team spent four years building the world and stories of Naviri to create an impressive 18 scenario cooperative campaign. Each scenario of Tidal Blades 2 takes 60-120 minutes to play for gamers age 12 and up.

Setup

Tidal Blades 2 uses two ring-bound map books side-by-side to create the play area for each scenario. Sometimes, events during play will change out one side of the map mid-game, too. Each scenario in Tidal Blades 2 has different setup instructions, from enemy count to hero and enemy placement.

Because this is a campaign, each scenario comes with some narrative to set the stage.

Players have their own setup needs too. They must configure their own Hero and Nexus Grid Boards. They also need to draw a personal goal card, and draw four cards from their Hero Deck. Finally, each player has a campaign tracking page that may require gathering additional supplies.

Like everything else in Tidal Blades 2, setup is a lot. Even with everyone working together, it’s still likely to take 5-10 minutes to get ready to play.

Gameplay

There’s too much detail in the mechanics of a campaign game like Tidal Blades 2 to go into the specifics. We’ll focus on some key mechanics that truly make this game stand out.

At the beginning of each round, each player chooses an Action card from their hand and places it face down. Once everyone has chosen, they reveal them (enemies reveal the top Action card of their deck). Action cards have actions that players can execute on their turn, but they also may have an initiative modifier icon. Once players and enemies have adjusted initiative, play continues in initative order.

Player Turn

On a player’s turn, they place their Action card on the Nexus grid. Then, they choose a horizontal or vertical line in the grid that contains that card to execute.

Then, they may perform all of the actions on the icons in that line. Squares without a card on them have default abilities. Each action card can be performed in any order. Typically, the actions on the Grid are moves, attacks, or gaining points in a given trait. If the activated line has three cards in it, discard these cards at the end of the turn.

Moving and Attacking

Moving and attacking are the primary actions players will take in order to maneuver around and defeat enemies.

Movement is simple – move a number of hexes fewer than or equal to the movement number on the Action card.

To attack, players roll a number of hero dice equal to the attack number on an Action card. Hit icons deal damage, while Focus icons can deal damage if the player spends points from their Focus trait.

There are other kinds of attack modifiers too. Some characters may have ranged attacks which also include a range number. Some attacks have a chain link icon. This means they can link two or more attacks to be a single big attack instead of consecutive smaller ones. This is especially helpful if an enemy has armor.

Gaining Trait Points or Shells

In addition to movement or attacking, some icons allow players to gain points in each of the three traits (Focus, Spirit, and Synergy). They may also gain Shells, which are put in the “Shell Shield” area of the Hero board. Shells can be used to defend against enemy attacks. If they’re unused they get moved to the “Quantum Reservoir” where they can be also spent to activate abilities.

Enemy Turn

Speaking of enemy attacks, each kind of enemy has their own deck that may modify their attacks every turn. When the enemy’s icon comes up in the initiative tracker, they move towards the closest enemy and attack them. Enemy attacks have all sorts of special modifiers and status effects as well, like stun, poison, disarm, and more.

Larger, boss monsters have even more complex mechanics, sometimes impacted by environmental conditions in the play area.

Scenario End

While each scenario does have specific win conditions, it usually involves attacking and killing most or all of the enemies in play.

Once the end conditions are met, players read the next block of narrative. This could end the scenario or lead to additional challenges before the scenario continues.

Once the scenario is indeed finished, players tally their health, track scars on their campaign tracker, and add to their stats depending on what they did in the scenario and whether or not they completed their personal goals.

If the party survived, you’ve won to fight another day! We always like to read the lead up to the next scenario because the story is so good. We’ll read it again when we play next.

Interludes

Sometimes between Scenarios there is an interlude that is more involved than a few paragraphs of narrative text. This involves the players spending a few days in Naviri, visiting the local shrines, resting places, and stores to grow their skills or pick up some tools. These interludes will typically last a few days (cycles) before the players embark on their next adventure.

Impressions

We featured Tidal Blades 2 in our inaugural 1, 2, 3 analysis episode of The Family Gamers Podcast. In this, we share impressions after the first, second, and third times we play the game.

First Play

When we first opened the box for Tidal Blades 2 it was overwhelming. We game on a 3.5’x5′ table, and there was no chance it would hold everything. This required an auxiliary table and almost an hour just to sort everything out. We immediately decided to hunt for and print out a 3d printed insert for the game (we found one). There’s also a Folded Space insert.

Tidal Blades 2 is full of systems. Most importantly, the masterful Nexus Grid system for action planning during player turns. Because of the complexity of Tidal Blades 2, being able to plan your turn asynchronously during other players’ turns smooths out the friction greatly. The Nexus Grid forces multi-level decision making: selecting the card to play and then choosing its location on the grid.

For families, Tidal Blades 2 benefits from someone who loves larger, more complicated games acting as a game manager. There’s a lot going on. But even in the first scenario, the team came together to strategize a fight that seemed at times hopeless. Coming out the other side felt awesome. This game is absolutely gorgeous and with help, kids at least ten years old can be part of the action.

Second Play

Games of this magnitude simply don’t hit the table often in a family of five without a dedicated playing space. So, when we pulled Tidal Blades 2 out six weeks after our first play, we were a bit rusty. But the 3d printed insert and some understanding of the game components easily cut setup time in half.

Playing Tidal Blades 2 a second time cemented for us that it is simply a better game than Tidal Blades. While the mechanics are very different and thus incomparable, the magnitude of Tidal Blades 1 never matched the payoff. With Tidal Blades 2, players sit back after an intense scenario, full from a great meal of a game.

Tidal Blades 2 is a satisfying experience from top to bottom. It matches its complexity with epic, story-driven gameplay and meaningful character building decisions, resulting in wide-ranging emotions.

The Nexus Grid was immediately recognized in our first play as an awesome part of the mechanics of this game. But it wasn’t until session two that we started to see how it would grow. After the first scenario, some of us got new action cards to add to our Hero decks. But as we’ll see later, not all of the additions to Hero decks are good.

Over time, players gain more powerful action cards to include in their decks, like we did. However, they also gain wounds in battle and eventually battle scars. These are action cards that stay in your deck for a single scenario or across scenarios, gumming up the work and making the Grid less effective. This is a phenomenal way to show character growth that is understandable and digestible for even less experienced players.

Third Play

Sure enough, one of us got enough wounds in our second play to start scenario three with a Battle Scar. Far from being a negative to the experience, though, it was a reminder of the last scenario. These deck additions, whether positive or negative, do a great job adding continuity to the game and the player characters.

Scenario three was also the first scenario that featured a boss enemy. The Karakeen required players to destroy elements of the environment just to be able to hit it. Of course, we had to fend off other, smaller enemies at the same time. We also had to nurse a character whose health was fading throughout the combat. Tension slowly grew over the course of the battle.

This scenario presented the group with problems to solve across a series of challenges. It constantly required handoffs of responsibility from turn to turn. The mechanics worked seamlessly with the narrative to propel the story forward and make the players feel desperate, as the characters undoubtedly would have were they in that situation (no spoilers!).

As intended, the giant three-hex mini for the boss was pretty jaw dropping. All of the minis in this game are gorgeously detailed and the sun drop finish makes them all shimmer beautifully, even without paint. You could lose some time just ogling the box of minis if you have access to them.

Additional Thoughts

Each progressive play session reinforced our thoughts that Tidal Blades 2 was a more cohesive experience over its predecessor, pairing tremendous gameplay with excellent narrative and jaw-dropping art and design.

Tidal Blades 2 continues to grow mechanically, too. Even though it’s a lot to unpack from the beginning, the campaign slowly introduces more complexity. After three plays, you start getting access to items. There are more additions starting with scenario five, and still more at eight.

The ruleset does remain pretty hefty for a family game. However, by the third play most of our rulebook checking was for edge cases. Nonetheless, this reinforces the idea that Tidal Blades 2 will be best for families that can play it on a regular basis and leave it mostly set up between plays.

In a family setting it’s also important to know that it’s possible to play a scenario with a player missing. We just wouldn’t recommend too many consecutive instances like this. You may need to house rule a “catch up” or accelerate a player’s character to get them on-level when they’re able to play again.

This is an epic game, and will lead to great stories of teamwork, amazing success, and agonizing defeat.

If you think this applies to your family, you can get your own copy of this epic adventure directly from AllPlay, on Amazon, or ask for it at your friendly local game store.

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Druid City Games provided The Family Gamers with a promotional copy of Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders for this review.

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