In 20 Strong Tanglewoods, one takes on the role of their favorite fairytale protagonist in this solo dice-rolling game of adventure. Gamers looking for a card-based, solo, lightweight dungeon crawling experience should check it out. 20 Strong is a series of games from Chip Theory that use the same set of twenty dice of several different colors. These dice are then used to play any number of different games, which are purchased as additional decks of cards. Thus one only has to purchase a new deck to have a new game to play. At present, every game in the 20 Strong line revolves around rolling dice to damage and defeat a deck filled with antagonist cards. Only some of the rolled dice are recovered to be used again so a primary focus in the game is managing one’s dice use. After wading through various minions, defeat the final boss to win the game. The recent Tanglewoods series (red, white, gold, rose – I leave the reader to figure out which fairy tale is which) all tend to involve a strong movement component, whereby the player moves from location to location, triggering an event (battling something or recovering) on their way to the final showdown location. While there are many similarities between versions, a player that enjoys one deck of cards may appreciate the variety offered by another. On the flip side, all the games use a similar dice mechanic. If that is not your cup of tea, changing decks is unlikely to change your mind. Of note, there is a special Tanglewoods deck that combines three of the other Tanglewoods decks to make a linked campaign (even with a “secret boss reveal” if you don’t research reviews too closely.) If the 20 Strong line of games sounds interesting, there is a soon-ending crowdfunding campaign going on for three new decks based on the popular boardgames: Tainted Grail, Nemesis, and Etherfields. Going on limited information, they sound like they will lead the 20 Strong series another step or two in a new direction of gameplay.

20 Strong – Tanglewoods
Designer: Josh J. Carlson (also Logan Giannini & Ryan Howard)
Publisher: Chip Theory Games
Players: 1 (solo only)
Ages: 14+
Time: 30-40 min
(review copy provided by publisher)

Every 20 Strong game consists of a deck of cards (unique to each game), 20 colored dice, and a poker chip (capable of tracking numbers up to 20 or a few other options.) All the games published so far revolve around rolling dice to determine hits or misses against an antagonist. Players pick a hero (usually one of five or so) that has unique abilities to start the game. The chosen hero determines the values of the attribute dice. These three dice are special attribute trackers and only the remaining 17 dice are used in fighting adversaries. The 17 combat dice vary in color, with some colors having more “hits” and fewer “miss” sides. The default combat in 20 strong depends on those three ability dice. The first records a player’s life points; if a player takes damage and drops to zero, it’s game-over. The second die determines how many times a player can reroll dice in a combat. The third die determines how many dice a player gets back at the end of a combat. Thus if a player uses 4 dice in combat and recovers three, one of those dice are now stuck in the exhausted pile until the player can find another way to get them back. Enemies have stats that determine how many hits required to be defeated as well as how much damage they do if they are not defeated. Of course, nearly every enemy has special abilities that affect the game in some unique way. Many modify or restrict what colors of dice can be rolled and others have stats that are adjusted depending on the situation (perhaps more health if they are all by themselves.) Some of the more devious ones force a player to add in more opponents or put on a global restriction. Along the way, players can increase their three stats and pick up additional equipment at the merchant using gold received by defeating enemies. Get through enough opponents and you can challenge the last boss with whatever tools and dice you have left. Defeat the last boss to win the game.

All of the Tanglewoods series of games have a gold mechanic. Players earn gold by defeating monsters and can spend it at the merchant to buy items, upgrade items, get dice back into their usable pool, or they can save the gold to bribe monsters. Bribing a monster means you don’t have to fight it but you don’t get the reward either. In addition, Tanglewoods hero cards all have a “flip” ability which gives players different powers depending on which side is face-up at any given time. Many (but not all) heroes from any 20 Strong deck can be used in a game with any other deck, so non-Tanglewoods heroes have a mechanism that gives them a “flip” side while playing in this series.

The other commonality of the Tanglewoods decks is some sort of physical “journey” that must be travelled in the game. Cards are laid out on the board and the player can often pick which way they want to go. The various ways players travel to meet the final boss is one of the primary differences between the various Tanglewoods decks.

Tanglewoods – Red

The Red deck comes with or without the 20 dice needed for all decks, so if you don’t have the base game yet, pick it up first. However, I will note that in my experience it’s one of the more “difficult” decks to beat. In Rose, players are journeying to Grandma’s house in order to defeat the wolf. Some of the cards in the deck serve as a 3-columned map to journey through. As part of the game, players roll dice to reveal the next section card. This card could appear face-up on the friendly green daytime side or face-down on the nasty purple nighttime side. Each location on the card will trigger a pre-encounter thing (like a trap or some combat modification for the worse) as well as the main location event. This could be a rest, a draw of a random event (fairy-tale themed), or the most common – a combat encounter. Defeat the encounter to earn gold (used to buy items at the merchant or use to bribe encounters to go away) or get defeated and “earn” damage to your health stat. It should be noted that some of the encounters pit the player specifically up against a designated (slightly more powerful) wolf card. While avoiding them is nice, it can (literally) bite you on the backside at the boss fight as each undefeated wolf will add a (bad) complication to the last boss fight.

Tanglewoods – Gold

In Gold, the player is using directional cards to explore a field of cards. Monsters are drawn from a deck depending on where a player is headed. Defeat a monster card and it flips over from its day side to its night side, making them nastier. Players need to earn gold because that will let them purchase the special “Bear Bait” from the merchant. Buying bait will put a bear card into the monster deck. Put all three bear cards (momma, poppa, baby) into the deck and defeat them to win the game. Unsurprisingly, gold gold becomes particularly important in the Gold deck.

Tanglewoods – White

The White deck uses a 3×4 grid of face-down cards to represent a journey to the castle. Players make their way in orthogonal steps from one corner to the opposite, castle corner, encountering cards as they go. Several mechanisms are in play here. First, there is a night/day card that flips and, like in all the other decks, makes everything harder during the night, forcing players to plan out their route with that in mind. Cards in this deck have symbols on their back. When entering an encounter, many monsters check to see what symbols may be adjacent when deciding how they behave. Defeated cards are placed up in the top castle row. The castle row contains cards that also check to see what symbols have been placed in that location. This could make things worse, but possibly better – some might be simply defeated if the right combination of symbols are present. Of course, one doesn’t know which cards are in the castle so one use of game resources allows players to peek into one of the castle spots. Make it all the way through the castle and defeat the evil stepmother to rack up a win.

Tanglewoods – Baba Yaga

There is a special purple deck entitled Baba Yaga. This deck links the previous three decks into a sort of 4 deck mini-campaign. Survive through each deck in turn and then go up against Baba Yaga herself.

Tanglewoods – Rose

A fourth (fifth?) Tanglewoods deck is Tanglewoods Rose. Unlike the other decks, here the player doesn’t move around, instead the game is a bit of a tower defense setup. Enemies advance down tracks towards the player and must be defeated before they arrive at the end of the track and do damage to the castle (not just your hero.) Cards and hero abilities in this deck reference a “Beast” (vs Belle) form which can be triggered for powerful but high-risk abilities. Instead of gold, this game has players managing Thorns and Flowers to trigger cards or boost your defense.

The 20 Strong brand will continue next year with a tie-in to the Awaken Realms boardgame settings of Nemesis, Tainted Grail, and Etherfields. There is a crowdfunding campaign for the three decks currently going on through the end of April. Nemesis is the first multiplayer deck and has players semi-cooperatively exploring a changing spaceship map. Tainted Grail introduces a bit of deck-building to the combat. Finally, Etherfields is the first deck that is persistent. It is modified each time you play through it, making subsequent plays different from what came before. I’m looking forward to the new decks as they seem to me, at first glance, to take the game in new directions beyond what we’ve seen in decks released so far.

Verdict:

We’ve dug deep into the mechanics of 20 Strong Tanglewoods so far, so it is time to dish out some opinions. I played the first three 20 Strong games last year and I have to admit they were fine but had a lot of same-ness to them. How many dice do you roll against this foe? Do you try for critical hits (2 damage, there’s 1 critical face on each die) to use up fewer dice or do you need to chuck in some of the better dice to make sure you get enough hits in. This core decision is at the heart of every 20 Strong game, so if that sort of risk assessment does not sound interesting to you, you might as well keep walking. Thankfully, while the new Tanglewoods series still features the same sort of combat, the narrative here is much stronger. The sheer act of where to move when, significantly adjusts the flow of the game. It gives the player just a bit more agency for who to fight and at what time. I particularly like the bribe mechanic. I rarely do it (for good or ill) but it’s another solid decision-moment that makes these games different from what’s come before. I appreciate the option to link three games together into one big campaign, however I suspect the three decks are still similar enough that I don’t feel the need to play all three in one sitting. That said, I actually like how the Rose deck (not part of the 3 deck campaign) takes much of the Tanglewoods style but turns them movement on its head so the monsters now come to me. The timing of when to fight which enemy becomes even more important.

It doesn’t need to be said to fans of Chip Theory Games, but they are known for their top of the line production values. Here, it means full PVC card decks. You could (I don’t recommend it) throw your whole 20 Strong set into the bathtub and you’d only lose out on the box and instruction booklet. (Yes, the booklets are tiny to fit into the box, which is a small strike against the game…) Despite the high-end bits, the intent of the game line is to deliver inexpensive games by re-using the bits again and again. At around $20 per deck, I think that comes in at a decent price point. Good enough to give a deck or two a try. Buying all three linked decks and the Baba Yaga campaign deck would come in at MSRP $70. Maybe a bit steep for me, but not that far afield from standard-box type boardgames today. However, there’s nothing preventing someone from buying one or two decks and then getting another if they love it or want to try more in a similar vein.

If you’re looking for a nice, strategic dice-chucker I think the 20 Strong system is worth a look. Pick any of the decks (well, the Rose is the only Tanglewoods one that has the option to come with dice) and give it a go to see how you like it. I do recommend going with the Tanglewoods decks over the original 3 decks, as the fairy tale theme delivers a better narrative arc to the game. My favorite is probably Rose, due to the tower-defense sort of theme, but I also like how Gold forces me to “buy” enemies into my deck, just to defeat them.

Ted C. I have played the first three sets and none of the ones mentioned here. And, this review has made me consider them for purchase. I will not play it continually as it is rather simple and starts to get redundant. But, it is fun to pull out for an hour game every few months as a solo play.

Thoughts from other OpinionatedGamers

Love it
Like it. Ted C., Matt C.
Neutral
Not for me