Earthborne Rangers – a solo review

The world as we once knew it, was destroyed, thousands of years ago. However, like the tough species we are, we survived; endured. Humans have been given a second chance on earth, one we won’t pass up. We are seizing this opportunity with both hands because it is also really the last chance to make something of our stay on earth. We are protectors, rangers – borne of earth, earthborne – and this is our final chance to find balance and harmony with and within our habitat.

Name: Earthborne Rangers (2023)
Designer: Andrew Navaro, Andrew Fischer
Publisher: Earthborne Games
Play type: deck construction, variable setup, event deck, hand management

What the game is about

Can you explore the bright and colourful valley of the beautiful world of Earthborne Rangers, connecting with new friends and interacting with all kinds of beings and obstacles along the way?

I was provided with a review copy of this game by Earthborne Games in return for an honest review. My thoughts remain my own.

How the game works

Eartborne Rangers is an exploration card game set into the far future, in a place called the Valley. You start by taking a prebuilt deck or one you can construct yourself through the prologue. There is a set number of cards you can get from specific subsets, often further restricted by the aspect you chose. This is a card that represents your four basic skills (awareness, spirit, fitness, and focus) and how well-versed you are in those on a scale of 1-3.

The game takes place over a number of days as you explore the Valley. Each day, you are free to do as you please – you can try to complete missions you’ve unlocked, or you can just explore; visit new locations, talk to new people, or do a bit of sightseeing. It’s really up to you!

The game is played over a number of rounds, each consisting of a few player turns. During your turn, you can play cards (using your aspects to pay for them) or take tests (again, using tests, but with the option of boosting your effort with abilities or cards from your hand). If you take a test, after you’ve determined the effort you want to put in, you draw a challenge card with a modifier (ranging from -2 to +2) and a symbol that could potentially trigger effects on path cards. You draw a path card each round, but there is no dedicated phase where those ‘act’; they only trigger when you interact with the world through tests.

What is the goal of the game, and how do you win? Again, this really is up to you. You get a mission to complete at the start of the day, and something occurs after the third day, but besides that, you are free to roam. The basic way to do this is by traversing; connect with your current location until it has enough progress tokens to clear; then, you travel at the end of a round. You can visit multiple locations in a single day, provided you can clear them easily and you won’t get bogged down by obstacles.

Game cards can either be (from close to far) in your personal play area, within reach, or in the surroundings. If you want to interact with a being that’s along the way, all cards within reach fatigue you – you add the top card of your deck face-down to your fatigue pile. If there’s an obstacle in the way, you can interact with anything beyond it until you’ve cleared it!

Without real win conditions, the game’s timer is your deck. Once that runs out, the day is done. Every fatigue you suffer essentially shortens your playtime. You can still draw those cards by soothing fatigue, but it doesn’t give you more time.

The day can also end when you choose to camp after travelling, if you have three injuries, or when the game tells you to (usually after completing a mission). There is no real winning or losing in the game; the only real goals you have are the ones you set for yourself. However, completing certain missions will give you specific rewards, so the game does incentivize you to make progress in some form.

Theme, setting & narrative

Earthborne Rangers takes place in the remnants of a world that once was Earth, on a continent that once was America. We don’t know how it got that way – that’s over 4,000 years ago. What matters is that you are here now and that your actions impact the world around you. This just might be the most hopeful and upbeat post-apocalyptic story you’ll ever encounter!

The world feels vibrant, alive; something that was there before you got the game, and will still be there afterwards. Because the designers chose a scope far smaller than the we-need-to-succeed-or-else-the-world-is-doomed scale, you don’t necessarily feel like heroes, and that’s okay. It makes the game feel more relatable because the characters aren’t gun-toting killing machines; they feel like regular folks.

In other words – fantastical beasts and trappings aside – the game feels more grounded, relatable, and palpable. Everything you do in the game makes thematic sense, too; whenever you take an action, it first says which stat it uses, and which symbols you can raise your effort with; but then it says what you’re actually doing.

Yet despite all that, the game is actually trying to say something about the current state of the world. Post-apocalyptic fiction feels like something that happens to other people, worlds apart. However, high temperatures, floods, forest fires and rising sea levels tell us something is not right. Does Earthborne Rangers belittle us, or spur us to action? No, it does not. Rather, their game is in more ways than one meant to show how games of its ilk can be something different: in terms of story and setting, but also in manufacturing. In the end, the message here is a hopeful one – not pedantic, but inviting.

How does it play?

‘This is an invitation to explore.’

That’s the first line in the rulebook, setting the tone for what you can expect. Which is something that feels similar and comfortable, yet turned on its head. There is comfort in similarity, yet latency always lies there as well. Earthborne Games set out to create a game that shakes up what we know – not just of games like this, but of games in general.

It’s as if the designers were talking to themselves when they wrote this line because it also sums up the exploratory ethos behind Earthborne Rangers. The designers set out to create a product that can stand beside similar games, making an effort to do something else beyond what’s expected or custom. What I mean by that is that, on the one hand, it is a living card game in every aspect but the trademark; a game system built around constructing a deck beforehand and working your way through a story that the cards and the lore book tell as you encounter specific points. On the other hand, it makes a deliberate effort to differentiate itself from its lauded cousins.

Narration

Let’s start with the obvious ones. While there is an overarching story, you’re not bombarded by it. Earthborne Rangers adopts a sandbox-style approach where you can follow the main storyline, but there is plenty of space to explore. Viz: the first line of the rulebook. There is no real win condition to each session, and neither are there concrete ways to lose. Some effects cause you to end the day prematurely, which you could count as a loss, but it’s never explicitly stated that you lost. Or that you won, for that matter. Success is only the measure you apply yourself.

What Earthborne Games has managed to do is weave two life lessons into the game, seemingly at odds with each other – one, that you get more done if you focus on doing one thing instead of doing everything at once; and two, that it is okay to just get up and ask yourself ‘what am I going to do today?’. That is because the narrative is much more free-form than you might expect from other campaign-style games, leaving you room to roam – go on adventures, help the locals, whatever you come across. But on the other hand, you can still set goals for yourself and focus on those. Whether you allow yourself to get distracted (hi there, Skyrim side quests!) is entirely up to you. I found that this game gave me a real sense of focus when I needed it. When a day concludes, I can look back satisfied with what I achieved.

While the main story is very unobtrusive, there are some triggers built into the system to propel you forward (although some of them have gotten crucial errata, as I experienced myself) – ‘note <journal entry number> X days from now’. But even then, the main story is very loose, built not as a rollercoaster you need to strap in, but rather as a theme park with multiple rides you can enjoy in the meantime too. And yet, the storybook elements of the main storyline still manage to feel more frequent and impactful than other games of its ilk. I think that’s mighty impressive.

Release model

Earthborne Rangers has a different kind of pacing; not just in the game, but also in the way new content is released. Living card games used to release their content as one big box, followed by several smaller card packs. The idea was good – give players something to come back to the store every month. In practice, however, it was less than ideal: lots of unnecessary waste, costs, and an increasing difficulty to collect it an x-amount of time after its release.

They did change it, though, and the new structure is very similar to what Earthborne Games does here: fewer releases and more content per pack. It removes the FOMO impetus to keep collecting and makes the format more viable for crowdfunding, which also means they can sell directly to the customer and keep the lines of communication between them short and effective.

It also doesn’t hurt that the Earthborne Rangers base game is very complete and can easily facilitate multiple playthroughs without feeling repetitive. While there is a main storyline you need to follow, you can do so at your own leisure, and there are branching paths – not to mention the different ways you can build your ranger deck. After my first campaign, I plan to record my deck somewhere (for when the expansion campaign drops) and build something radically different. My first deck was a special one – I modelled my artificer after Ellie from The Last of Us, and I love that this game not only enabled me to do so, but to do so in a convincing and thematic manner.

Game mechanisms

Earthborne Rangers uses an economy based on energy. Every turn, you’ll get energy tokens based on the values of your Aspect card; Awareness (green), Spirit (yellow), Fitness (red), and Focus (blue), with values ranging from 3 to 1 (always totalling 8). Energy has dual use: you use it both to pay for cards you want to play, as well as tests you want to initiate.

The cards in your deck are either personality, role, background, or outside interest cards, where your aspect further dictates which cards you can pick. If your Spirit aspect is 2, you cannot take level 3 Spirit cards. The rules of how many cards of each you can take are pretty easy, if maybe a little tight, but that’s not something that a future expansion cannot fix. The game has a pretty fun narrative tutorial that both teaches you the basics of the game, as well as taking you by the hand to show how deck construction works. Your deck is the main timer of any given game; when you cannot draw any more cards when you need to, the day ends. Things that fatigue you essentially shorten the day, but I like how the game pushes you to not avoid fatigue, as soothing fatigue is basically free card draw. A little fatigue never killed anyone!

Tests in the game are taken much like in Arkham Horror: pick a test, determine your effort (by paying energy, using abilities, or discarding cards for their symbols), draw a modifier (from the challenge deck, ranging from -2 to +1), and check if you succeed or fail. When you have no more energy tokens of a certain aspect, you cannot take any more tests, even when you have cards in play or hand that could help you; energy tokens are your main currency in this economy.

Challenge cards function as a random modifier for tests, but you know to a certain extent what you’ll get – if your effort is 2 above the threshold, you’ll always succeed. This means the game can’t throw a wrench in your plans if you plan carefully. It makes me conscious of my resources and how I spend them; to play cards, or to initiate tests. It is a tight economy, but not necessarily one that requires min-maxing. In fact, I’d dare claim the opposite – that doing too much can actually hurt you. Most features and being only act when you draw one of three different symbols displayed at the bottom of an aspect card. In other words, the world only responds when you act, so you don’t have to min-max your energy tokens every turn, because it might harm you. Min-maxing can also speed up the game. It’s another example of the game asking you to reassess things you thought you knew about things like efficiency versus enjoyment. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. You can play suboptimal and still thrive – quite possibly, you need to slow down and enjoy the journey, not stare yourself blind on the destination.

Narrative

Campaign games like this need to have a sense of progression; both story-wise, gameplay-wise, and player-wise. Without going into spoilers, I appreciate how they managed to succeed on the first two fronts with a story that’s there, but not in your face, unless you want it to be. As for the latter, the way you can unlock cards for your deck is specifically tied to missions: help person X, get an X item. I think this helps to make your actions feel more impactful – you helped that one guy when you went to that location and did that thing, and now this specific card in your deck reminds you of that little adventure every time you draw it. The possible drawback here is that you’ll know exactly what you’ll get next time, but then, there are so many people you can help in the Valley that you might not encounter a specific person (or just elect not to help them) in future playthroughs.

With a game so focused on narration and making decisions with consequences, there is bound to be some bookkeeping. You track your campaign progress is on an extensive guide (a single-sided sheet of paper) – from what day it is to active missions, the weather, and your location and path deck should you put the game away. It makes tracking things rally easy, but on the other hand, I found the game to be prone to breaking when you missing some tiny yet crucial piece of information – you can suddenly feel aimless when this happens, forcing you to backtrack and re-check campaign guide entries. The fact that there already is errata for some crucial cards doesn’t help either, but all in all, this is but a minor gripe (if not barely a nuisance).

What you might like

• This game shows how it can be different – both from a gameplay and production standpoint
• A free-form approach allows you to craft your own narrative, gameplay experience, and even your own goals
• The value you’ll get in this package is amazing; a single playthrough can take you upwards of 20 days, and you just can’t complete (or even encounter) every side quest in that time
• The energy system is a clever construct that both fuels cards and tests, but also almost actively dissuades you from min-maxing, since doing too much might hurt you
• There is no encounter phase where enemies act – rather, whenever you initiate a test, cards might have a trigger
• Card unlocks are tied to specific events, making your actions feel more impactful

What you might not like

• It is easy for the player to miss something in the campaign guide or on a mission, forcing you to retrace your steps
• Once you know what happens when you help person X, you’ll always get the same reward

Expansion

Initially set to release alongside the base game, the first expansion is Legacy of the Ancestors. It will get its own crowdfunding campaign once fulfillment of the current one is done. This campaign also included a reprint of the base game. What was originally planned as one expansion has been split up into two: Legacy of the Ancestors is the campaign expansion, whereas Stewards of the Valley contains only ranger cards.

Conclusion

Playing Earthborne Rangers has been – and still is – an absolute joy to play. 20+ sessions in, I’m still not at the end of the campaign; which, I suppose, is the only thing holding me back from giving it a five-star rating (that, and the fact that this game is clearly a mere peek into a much grander game system and world of lore). And yet, for all its intricacies, four out of five somehow feels woefully insufficient at the same time. Earthborne Rangers is a game that really invites you to explore – its mechanisms and world, first and foremost, but let’s not forget how it challenges you to rethink a lot of things, both inside the game and outside. This game is bigger than you think, in a lot of ways.

Rating: ★★★★☆

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