I’m a big fan of the folk at Leder Games. Not only do they produce one of my favourite games Root, but they know how to explain games well and provide great player aids. I was keen to see how far back this philosophy extended and so last year I picked up Leder’s first title Vast: The Crystal Caverns.
Vast: The Crystal Caverns is designed by Patrick Leder and David Sommerville with art from Kyle Ferrin.
Each player takes on a different role, each trying to win in a different way, with a range of mechanisms across the roles. It’s extremely asymmetric.
The Knight is our protagonist, making their way through the dark of the Cave to defeat the Dragon. The Goblins in the Cave want to kill the Knight. The Dragon is awakening and eager to leave. The Cave, yep someone plays the Cave, wants to grow and collapse upon everyone else. The cursed Thief is doomed to wander the Cave until they have found a way to break their curse (by stealing lots of treasure).
Each player goes about these objectives with different mechanisms, much like its successor Root. Root smooths its asymmetry by making the game all about the points. Of course you get there differently, but it is easy to parse how you are doing at a given moment and also the momentum your opponents have. In Vast all the objectives are different. I found thismade it much harder to get a hold on how each of us was doing at a glance.
The different mechanisms and different objectives of the game meant that our first play involved quite a bit of figuring out how to get to our objectives as well. For some roles that is easier than others. The Dragon awakens slowly, and can be sped up by good choices from the player. The Cave acts like more of a timer on the game, with some ability to accelerate that. The other roles have more choices about them, which makes the path to victory a little harder to see.
All this said, I was very charmed by our first play of Vast. I had the miniatures expansion and it was easy to see what was happening on the board at a given moment (the base game comes with lots of nice wooden tokens which would equally do this job).
Each player not only gets an aid, but a sheet to explain all the nuances of their role and how they interact with the other roles. These are both excellent and really help with getting you through your first game. They aren’t quite as good as the aids found in Root, but that would be an incredibly high bar to set. In the context of the majority of other games I’ve played these are incredibly good.
Vast is the most asymmetric game I’ve played. Your objectives are different, your mechanisms are different, how everyone interacts with the board and the other roles is different. It’s definitely the sort of game that is going to require a good few plays with the same folk to figure out. Whether or not it rewards those plays, remains to be seen.
These are my impressions of a game after I have played it for the first time. It is not a full critical review.