Anyone have an opinion on Space Alert? I adore anything by Vlaada Chvátil but missing this and Through the Ages. My group really likes coops, but was curious anyone's thoughts on the game.
We absolutely hated it, and suspect all the praise was from back when an "app" driven co-op game was a far out idea.
Unless you really, REALLY love programming games, I'd stay clear because you're basically playing co-op Robo Rally. Every game we tried was crazy anti-climatic. A stressful planning phase build up, and then an auto-pilot execution phase where everything plays out and either goes perfectly, or one little mistake early on torpedoes everything and you might as well not bother processing the rest. It had all the thrilling adrenaline of running a program code compiler and finding out the whole thing didn't work because you forgot a comma somewhere.
I would be potentially interested in giant coop descent, but I'm entirely out on giant coop descent that's actually a clunky video game. I like the art and the crazy 3d terrain toy aspect is fun, but the app just turns me off instantly.
My experience with some of their other apps (JIME, XCOM, MOM2) is that they're basically functioning as stat trackers and randomizers, and removing having to juggle a bunch of decks and tokens to handle the opposition (and/or having at least one person know the future to some extent and pretend they don't, for map reveals etc.) It's not for everybody for sure, but they've never felt like playing a clunky video game any more than for instance Gloomhaven does. If anything it's less clunky.
e: with the exception of XCOM, which intentionally feels like a video game.
Once it's to the point of the only way you can interact with anything in the game is by dragging things around in the app then why play a boardgame at all? Combat is drag your character icon onto the enemy icon in the app, watch combat animations, enter your dice results, it spits numbers back at you. Just cut out the $175 worth of plastic and play a video game at that point, they handle it better and you don't have to bumble minis around.
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Darkest Dungeon. The Cove was one of the areas in the game. I suspect the problem is people would expect all the game's original dungeons in the base product? But I dunno, I'm guessing. I'll let Pink spell it out.
The Creuss found the wormhole that led to the ancient world of Ixth. the Argent Flight tried to stop them, but could not overwhelm the fleet that was sent.
So they get there, and find instead that the world is a tomb for the last of the Mahact Gene-Sorcerers. Who proceed to GO HAM and manipulate the Creuss expedition to do their bidding.
With the wormhole open, the Mahact decide.. nope, not gonna be prisoners again. So they fucking rip time and space asunder to fling their home planet into the core of the galaxy, instead of far outside its rim.
This.. has some less than positive results on the wormhole system. And reality.
They then start waking up their sleeper agents around the galaxy. Most notably, the Titans. But they've decided they do not want to be ruled by the Mahact again! So they are gonna try to force a logical hierarchy on the galaxy.
Meanwhile, a strange race of space-bound observers shows up and acts creepy and weird. Also this one dude who seems to have infinite money and can appear all over the galaxy at any time, who keeps going on about saving the future. So that's fun.
Oh! And this small outcast coalition of linked races? Yeah, they took that wormhole knowledge they discovered and used it to basically become big shots themselves.
... This is very much not doing the fiction justice.
Darkest Dungeon. The Cove was one of the areas in the game. I suspect the problem is people would expect all the game's original dungeons in the base product? But I dunno, I'm guessing. I'll let Pink spell it out.
The two things people are pissed about is that there's 2 heroes in the expansion (they think all heroes should be in the core box) and that Mythic should have said that there would be paid expansions from the beginning, what they would be and how much they would cost.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Darkest Dungeon. The Cove was one of the areas in the game. I suspect the problem is people would expect all the game's original dungeons in the base product? But I dunno, I'm guessing. I'll let Pink spell it out.
The two things people are pissed about is that there's 2 heroes in the expansion (they think all heroes should be in the core box) and that Mythic should have said that there would be paid expansions from the beginning, what they would be and how much they would cost.
Didn't the kickstarter launch like last week? Weren't they upfront about that stuff? I have no clue, haven't looked at it, and am genuinely curious.
Darkest Dungeon. The Cove was one of the areas in the game. I suspect the problem is people would expect all the game's original dungeons in the base product? But I dunno, I'm guessing. I'll let Pink spell it out.
The two things people are pissed about is that there's 2 heroes in the expansion (they think all heroes should be in the core box) and that Mythic should have said that there would be paid expansions from the beginning, what they would be and how much they would cost.
Didn't the kickstarter launch like last week? Weren't they upfront about that stuff? I have no clue, haven't looked at it, and am genuinely curious.
They didn't say there would be paid expansions but that's because no one does; it's just a thing most Kickstarters do.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
A minor recap of the last week of games while I wait for a hot pack to heat up ...
We had a rare extra game night last Friday, to which only three of us could attend. Since the Three Kingdoms had come up recently, we decided to bust out The Three Kingdoms Redux and have a go. That game is interesting in a lot of ways. Firstly, it's a game themed around one of the most famous Chinese eras, and somehow it is strictly and unapologetically a euro instead of a dudes-on-a-map game. I view this is a plus for the approach taken, but I would like to note that I would view a game that's a bit more Inis-like themed to this era and having a Three Kingdoms-y focus on heroic figures as very enticing. Anyway ... So the asymmetry at work is neat, as the game has a minor element of forced alliance between the "players who aren't winning" and sees each of you start with a pretty dramatic disparity in resources to represent the relative strengths of the factions at the outbreak of the conflict. Additionally, the only random elements at play are a small handful of cards you can build, and the lords you will draw from your deck of like 20+ unique characters. Every character has a couple of stats reflecting how effective they are at politics and war, and a unique ability. Since you only see a literal smattering of these, they'll form the core of your strategy and experience each game. Gameplay beyond that revolves around bidding on action spaces using your lords, and collecting and exchanging a bunch of resources. There are numerous game-ending conditions but none of them guarantee the person who triggered them will win, so you have to be a bit more tactical about how you plan to end the game.
Ultimately, I quite enjoyed the experience, though I'm not sure the game itself has the legs I wish it did. A lot of the action spaces are honestly kinda boring and the life of the game comes from the lords and how they change the value of particular actions for you and the other players. I feel like this is an interesting case of a game that has a lot of good ideas going on, but has an overly simple core that isn't all that fun when you get to the heart of it. Still, I would absolutely play it again, and it's genuinely a cool experience which I would recommend to anyone even mildly interested.
At regular game night we played A Feast For Odin. I don't have nearly as much to say about it. I'm just not an Uwe Rosenberg fan, it seems. I enjoyed it the most of the games he has designed that I've played, but it still felt a bit hollow, that there wasn't quite enough tension between us, and that the cards still had more of an outcome on how the game is played and who got a bunch of points than I would like. It's a cool puzzle, but I think I would typically prefer to play Isle of Cats instead when I want that itch scratched. You certainly get a lot of cardboard in the box, but I think it's hard to justify as a $130CDN game too, at this point.
Folks, it’s finally here! I’ve been waiting for this for literally years.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I am so torn. I want to play season 0 something fierce... But it has been an activity done with my coworkers for the two previous seasons. During season 2, one of the players moved away and we got it to work over zoom, but... Well... The world isn't in a great place for that now, so I wonder if I should save my money.
I picked up and played Black Rose Wars without realizing it was a Kickstarter at first. That is a lot of content I'm ultimately going to miss out on. Shucks. But the retail box still offers a good time even without all the fancies. (As a retail bonus, however, the US publisher has fixed up a great many spelling and formatting errors that apparently plagued the Kickstarter edition.)
It's a deck building death match where you choose a mage, create and improve a grimoire from six different schools of magic, and beat the heck out of each other with spells and summons. You program your actions, as well, deciding what spells from your hand to use and in what order you wish to activate them. Beautiful production values, easy to learn, and silly fun. There is no player elimination, so it's not that punishing when you get knocked out. However, it's a mean game with some spells that can really screw someone over for an entire round. And when the rounds and overall game are long (roughly three hours), not being able to do anything on a round can really dampen spirits. Despite that, we've enjoyed it a lot. I really hope Ares releases the re-worked mages and their dashboards, additional mages, and further magic schools as retail expansions now that the Kickstarter wave 2 content is about to arrive at people's doors.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
Is Pandemic Legacy Season 0 a prequel or a whole separate game? I played all of Season 1 and most of Season 2 with the same group but then I got a divorce and the pandemic happened. Can I play 0 with a new crew or are they going to be lost by not having played through 1 and 2?
PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Is Pandemic Legacy Season 0 a prequel or a whole separate game? I played all of Season 1 and most of Season 2 with the same group but then I got a divorce and the pandemic happened. Can I play 0 with a new crew or are they going to be lost by not having played through 1 and 2?
I think thematically it is a prequel, but like S1 and S2 there isn't any mechanical links, just easter eggs and "aha" moments in the plot if you played the others.
Like there's a really fucking cool moment later in S2 that means nothing if you haven't played s1 (as in you don't lose anything missing it but the vet players in my game were just floored by it, including myself).
We’ve so far played Season 0 until April. Still a really good game. We are waiting for the inevitable Spring Twist. It was smooth sailing for the first three months, but we fucked up on April. One more turn and we would have won, as is tradition in Pandemic.
Hm. Can someone make some suggestions for a relatively quick (as in, bout a half hour or so) fun game for up to 5 players? We're hosting some Tabletop Simulator today and as usual I'm in charge of finding games, but due to things we're going to have some people show up a bit later and I figured I might as well introduce some quicker stuff while we waited. But all the quick games in my RL shelf only go to four.
Hm. Can someone make some suggestions for a relatively quick (as in, bout a half hour or so) fun game for up to 5 players? We're hosting some Tabletop Simulator today and as usual I'm in charge of finding games, but due to things we're going to have some people show up a bit later and I figured I might as well introduce some quicker stuff while we waited. But all the quick games in my RL shelf only go to four.
The Creuss found the wormhole that led to the ancient world of Ixth. the Argent Flight tried to stop them, but could not overwhelm the fleet that was sent.
So they get there, and find instead that the world is a tomb for the last of the Mahact Gene-Sorcerers. Who proceed to GO HAM and manipulate the Creuss expedition to do their bidding.
With the wormhole open, the Mahact decide.. nope, not gonna be prisoners again. So they fucking rip time and space asunder to fling their home planet into the core of the galaxy, instead of far outside its rim.
This.. has some less than positive results on the wormhole system. And reality.
They then start waking up their sleeper agents around the galaxy. Most notably, the Titans. But they've decided they do not want to be ruled by the Mahact again! So they are gonna try to force a logical hierarchy on the galaxy.
Meanwhile, a strange race of space-bound observers shows up and acts creepy and weird. Also this one dude who seems to have infinite money and can appear all over the galaxy at any time, who keeps going on about saving the future. So that's fun.
Oh! And this small outcast coalition of linked races? Yeah, they took that wormhole knowledge they discovered and used it to basically become big shots themselves.
... This is very much not doing the fiction justice.
An ancient, dormant race shows up to dominate again, using squid ships and mind control to bring others INto DOCTRINE.
Meanwhile, a mega wealthy, elusive dude is mysteriously working to prevent it?
Well, in the end I went with a round of Sushi Go per puppies's suggestion and then remembered I also have King of Tokyo which does go to five. Both games were popular with the crowd, so, overall, success.
The Creuss found the wormhole that led to the ancient world of Ixth. the Argent Flight tried to stop them, but could not overwhelm the fleet that was sent.
So they get there, and find instead that the world is a tomb for the last of the Mahact Gene-Sorcerers. Who proceed to GO HAM and manipulate the Creuss expedition to do their bidding.
With the wormhole open, the Mahact decide.. nope, not gonna be prisoners again. So they fucking rip time and space asunder to fling their home planet into the core of the galaxy, instead of far outside its rim.
This.. has some less than positive results on the wormhole system. And reality.
They then start waking up their sleeper agents around the galaxy. Most notably, the Titans. But they've decided they do not want to be ruled by the Mahact again! So they are gonna try to force a logical hierarchy on the galaxy.
Meanwhile, a strange race of space-bound observers shows up and acts creepy and weird. Also this one dude who seems to have infinite money and can appear all over the galaxy at any time, who keeps going on about saving the future. So that's fun.
Oh! And this small outcast coalition of linked races? Yeah, they took that wormhole knowledge they discovered and used it to basically become big shots themselves.
... This is very much not doing the fiction justice.
An ancient, dormant race shows up to dominate again, using squid ships and mind control to bring others INto DOCTRINE.
Meanwhile, a mega wealthy, elusive dude is mysteriously working to prevent it?
Custom SpecialI know I am, I'm sure I am,I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered Userregular
Months ago my Mayday crokinole board arrived damaged so I had to email them and get a shipping label to send it back. Due to the popularity of the Kickstarter, they didn't have any extra boards from the initial shipment so I had to wait until the second wave arrived recently for my replacement.
It arrived this weekend without blemish! We played it as a family last night in teams for fun.
My 5yo son did a great job managing to hit discs on his shots. My 7yo daughter (on my team) also did great, though with a few more shots blasting discs off the board. But she had the play of the game on her last shot, somehow bouncing off a center peg and knocking both opponent discs clear into the gutter, it was insane!
Very much liked it, I think this new board came pretty well prepared (not that I have any comparison) and it felt like the discs glided pretty nicely for us. My daughter is very excited to play again and get out the purple discs to use.
Tonight the girlfriend and I sat down and played a full match of BattleCON: Devastation of Indines, which I won 2-1 but just barely. We were just playing with the starting characters, Eligor and Shekhtur, and she was enraged when I successfully predicted and countered one of her attacks using one of his special abilities. Glorious. I predict we'll be playing this a lot during lockdown
Tonight the girlfriend and I sat down and played a full match of BattleCON: Devastation of Indines, which I won 2-1 but just barely. We were just playing with the starting characters, Eligor and Shekhtur, and she was enraged when I successfully predicted and countered one of her attacks using one of his special abilities. Glorious. I predict we'll be playing this a lot during lockdown
That's my favorite game that I only played three times then sold. Just did not fit me or my group at all. It's a LOVELY game tho.
Yea battlecon is awesome if you have an opponent that wants to play a 1v1 fighting game a lot. I could never get it to the table so I sold mine too, but man it's great.
I have a buddy I play fighting games with consistently, so we have played a bunch of BattleCON, but it's definitely tricky finding a consistent opponent or two for a game like this. It really has to be played regularly.
It's a shame the free to play version on Steam is abandonware. I hope there's a TTS version of it, actually...
BattleCON is probably the best 2-player game I have. I have the whole thing, and I should have the updated kickstarter edition soon. Sadly, in the year and change between me backing this and me getting this, my two reliable opponents moved away, so it's been months since I got to play.
Currently in month September. Our game in April (which we messed up) really scared us straight for the next few games. The game does a good job of setting up situations where you can accomplish a partial victory with consequences that affect you long-term or risk stretching out the game to try for a full victory (but with worse consequences if you fail). Because of the catastrophe in April, we have been settling a lot for partial victories instead of risking it in the final stretch. Also, we have made some suboptimal choices for end of game upgrades, which only became clear to us after playing (not because the game changed, but because we over/undervalued some of the mechanics and it is biting us in the ass). The current board state gives me much anxiety.
All of the above is completely true for the other seasons!
Actual spoiler:
I am loving the Alias mechanic. It's a great way to incorporate the "New Assignment" event card in an organic way in the game. Each person eventually has 3 different roles that they can swap between. And "burning" an Alias isn't as catastrophic as losing a character, since you still have your other Aliases attached.
When was pandemic season 0 officially released? Our store hasn't seen any copies...
I pre-ordered my copy directly from Asmodee, so it was delivered directly to me from them. I'm pretty sure it's officially released, but I'm not sure when stores will see any inventories.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
The remaster of Sidereal Confluence seems to have been delayed again. Oh well, it's not like it's possible to get that many people together right now
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
I actually got my copy of BattleCon Unleashed on Friday, have been slowly moving stuff over into the tuck boxes and the Collector’s Boxes over the weekend. The rule tweaks and updates to characters so far look good. Got War and Fate in there so far, although a little scared about doing Devastation.
I feel a little bad for the shippers, since they had to put the shipping case for the Continue pledge inside a much larger box due to having gotten a couple of the extra promo characters as well.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
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We absolutely hated it, and suspect all the praise was from back when an "app" driven co-op game was a far out idea.
Unless you really, REALLY love programming games, I'd stay clear because you're basically playing co-op Robo Rally. Every game we tried was crazy anti-climatic. A stressful planning phase build up, and then an auto-pilot execution phase where everything plays out and either goes perfectly, or one little mistake early on torpedoes everything and you might as well not bother processing the rest. It had all the thrilling adrenaline of running a program code compiler and finding out the whole thing didn't work because you forgot a comma somewhere.
Once it's to the point of the only way you can interact with anything in the game is by dragging things around in the app then why play a boardgame at all? Combat is drag your character icon onto the enemy icon in the app, watch combat animations, enter your dice results, it spits numbers back at you. Just cut out the $175 worth of plastic and play a video game at that point, they handle it better and you don't have to bumble minis around.
Kickstarter: "I don't understand..."
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/b6/d9/b6d969a2-21c2-4b1e-8d6f-ac6fec456b88/guide_to_the_imperium_10_web.pdf
Long story short:
The Creuss found the wormhole that led to the ancient world of Ixth. the Argent Flight tried to stop them, but could not overwhelm the fleet that was sent.
So they get there, and find instead that the world is a tomb for the last of the Mahact Gene-Sorcerers. Who proceed to GO HAM and manipulate the Creuss expedition to do their bidding.
With the wormhole open, the Mahact decide.. nope, not gonna be prisoners again. So they fucking rip time and space asunder to fling their home planet into the core of the galaxy, instead of far outside its rim.
This.. has some less than positive results on the wormhole system. And reality.
They then start waking up their sleeper agents around the galaxy. Most notably, the Titans. But they've decided they do not want to be ruled by the Mahact again! So they are gonna try to force a logical hierarchy on the galaxy.
Meanwhile, a strange race of space-bound observers shows up and acts creepy and weird. Also this one dude who seems to have infinite money and can appear all over the galaxy at any time, who keeps going on about saving the future. So that's fun.
Oh! And this small outcast coalition of linked races? Yeah, they took that wormhole knowledge they discovered and used it to basically become big shots themselves.
... This is very much not doing the fiction justice.
The two things people are pissed about is that there's 2 heroes in the expansion (they think all heroes should be in the core box) and that Mythic should have said that there would be paid expansions from the beginning, what they would be and how much they would cost.
Didn't the kickstarter launch like last week? Weren't they upfront about that stuff? I have no clue, haven't looked at it, and am genuinely curious.
They didn't say there would be paid expansions but that's because no one does; it's just a thing most Kickstarters do.
We had a rare extra game night last Friday, to which only three of us could attend. Since the Three Kingdoms had come up recently, we decided to bust out The Three Kingdoms Redux and have a go. That game is interesting in a lot of ways. Firstly, it's a game themed around one of the most famous Chinese eras, and somehow it is strictly and unapologetically a euro instead of a dudes-on-a-map game. I view this is a plus for the approach taken, but I would like to note that I would view a game that's a bit more Inis-like themed to this era and having a Three Kingdoms-y focus on heroic figures as very enticing. Anyway ... So the asymmetry at work is neat, as the game has a minor element of forced alliance between the "players who aren't winning" and sees each of you start with a pretty dramatic disparity in resources to represent the relative strengths of the factions at the outbreak of the conflict. Additionally, the only random elements at play are a small handful of cards you can build, and the lords you will draw from your deck of like 20+ unique characters. Every character has a couple of stats reflecting how effective they are at politics and war, and a unique ability. Since you only see a literal smattering of these, they'll form the core of your strategy and experience each game. Gameplay beyond that revolves around bidding on action spaces using your lords, and collecting and exchanging a bunch of resources. There are numerous game-ending conditions but none of them guarantee the person who triggered them will win, so you have to be a bit more tactical about how you plan to end the game.
Ultimately, I quite enjoyed the experience, though I'm not sure the game itself has the legs I wish it did. A lot of the action spaces are honestly kinda boring and the life of the game comes from the lords and how they change the value of particular actions for you and the other players. I feel like this is an interesting case of a game that has a lot of good ideas going on, but has an overly simple core that isn't all that fun when you get to the heart of it. Still, I would absolutely play it again, and it's genuinely a cool experience which I would recommend to anyone even mildly interested.
At regular game night we played A Feast For Odin. I don't have nearly as much to say about it. I'm just not an Uwe Rosenberg fan, it seems. I enjoyed it the most of the games he has designed that I've played, but it still felt a bit hollow, that there wasn't quite enough tension between us, and that the cards still had more of an outcome on how the game is played and who got a bunch of points than I would like. It's a cool puzzle, but I think I would typically prefer to play Isle of Cats instead when I want that itch scratched. You certainly get a lot of cardboard in the box, but I think it's hard to justify as a $130CDN game too, at this point.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Folks, it’s finally here! I’ve been waiting for this for literally years.
It's a deck building death match where you choose a mage, create and improve a grimoire from six different schools of magic, and beat the heck out of each other with spells and summons. You program your actions, as well, deciding what spells from your hand to use and in what order you wish to activate them. Beautiful production values, easy to learn, and silly fun. There is no player elimination, so it's not that punishing when you get knocked out. However, it's a mean game with some spells that can really screw someone over for an entire round. And when the rounds and overall game are long (roughly three hours), not being able to do anything on a round can really dampen spirits. Despite that, we've enjoyed it a lot. I really hope Ares releases the re-worked mages and their dashboards, additional mages, and further magic schools as retail expansions now that the Kickstarter wave 2 content is about to arrive at people's doors.
I think thematically it is a prequel, but like S1 and S2 there isn't any mechanical links, just easter eggs and "aha" moments in the plot if you played the others.
Like there's a really fucking cool moment later in S2 that means nothing if you haven't played s1 (as in you don't lose anything missing it but the vet players in my game were just floored by it, including myself).
Medici, ra, northern Pacific, Paris connection
RftG only supports 4 out of the base box although I can't speak to TTS.
An ancient, dormant race shows up to dominate again, using squid ships and mind control to bring others INto DOCTRINE.
Meanwhile, a mega wealthy, elusive dude is mysteriously working to prevent it?
Tsuro fits the request, I think?
ah yes... the "reapers"
It arrived this weekend without blemish! We played it as a family last night in teams for fun.
My 5yo son did a great job managing to hit discs on his shots. My 7yo daughter (on my team) also did great, though with a few more shots blasting discs off the board. But she had the play of the game on her last shot, somehow bouncing off a center peg and knocking both opponent discs clear into the gutter, it was insane!
Very much liked it, I think this new board came pretty well prepared (not that I have any comparison) and it felt like the discs glided pretty nicely for us. My daughter is very excited to play again and get out the purple discs to use.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
That's my favorite game that I only played three times then sold. Just did not fit me or my group at all. It's a LOVELY game tho.
It's a shame the free to play version on Steam is abandonware. I hope there's a TTS version of it, actually...
Currently in month September. Our game in April (which we messed up) really scared us straight for the next few games. The game does a good job of setting up situations where you can accomplish a partial victory with consequences that affect you long-term or risk stretching out the game to try for a full victory (but with worse consequences if you fail). Because of the catastrophe in April, we have been settling a lot for partial victories instead of risking it in the final stretch. Also, we have made some suboptimal choices for end of game upgrades, which only became clear to us after playing (not because the game changed, but because we over/undervalued some of the mechanics and it is biting us in the ass). The current board state gives me much anxiety.
All of the above is completely true for the other seasons!
Actual spoiler:
I feel a little bad for the shippers, since they had to put the shipping case for the Continue pledge inside a much larger box due to having gotten a couple of the extra promo characters as well.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch