Charterstone Review, Thoughts after a full Charterstone campaign, plus playing again after it's done
Channel: Tabletop Bellhop
Date: 2022-06-17

In this review we share our thoughts on our Charterstone campaign as well as what we thought of how the game played once the main campaign was finished.

In this review we are careful to not spoil anything until the very end so you can easily stop watching before we go there. Note even in the spoilers section, we don't talk at all about the storyline for the game. We just get into some of the mechanics that get unlocked during gameplay. 

This review is one segment of episode 175 of The Tabletop Bellhop Gaming Podcast, Let Your Hair Down. You can watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/tMgC8TrloCw

If you dig our content, be sure to subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/tabletopbellhop?sub_confirmation=1 and consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopbellhop. 

Disclosure: Stonemaier Games was awesome enough to provide us with a review copy of Charterstone. 

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Timestamps:

00:00 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
02:16 CHARTERSTONE COMPONENTS
04:31 HOW TO PLAY CHARTERSTONE
15:59 THOUGHTS ON THE CHARTERSTONE CAMPAIGN
22:48 PLAYING CHARTERSTONE AFTER THE MAIN CAMPAIGN IS DONE
26:30 PLAYERS DROPPING IN AND OUT OF CHARTERSTONE
28:35 WHO SHOULD PICK UP CHARTERSTONE?
31:20 THOUGHTS ON UNLOCKED MECHANICS (SPOILERS)
39:22 CLOSING

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From the publisher:

The prosperous Kingdom of Greengully, ruled for centuries by the Forever King, has issued a decree to its citizens to colonize the vast lands beyond its borders. In an effort to start a new village, the Forever King has selected 6 citizens for the task, each of whom has a unique set of skills they use to build their charter.

In Charterstone, a competitive legacy game scaled for 1-6 players, you construct buildings and inhabit a shared village. Building stickers are removed from cards and permanently added to your charter on the board, becoming action spaces for any player to use (kind of like Lords of Waterdeep, Caylus and Ora et Labora). Thus, a few available buildings soon grow into a bustling village with dozens of actions.

Charterstone features the following:

*  streamlined starting rulebook: learn as you play and add rules as you unlock content
* engine-building elements within each game and over the course of the campaign
* a branching storyline where short-term decisions have a long-term impact
* a secret component found in only one other board game
* 75+ “crates” to unlock, 36 metal coins, 350+ unique cards, and 230+ wooden tokens (exactly 12 of each resource: wood, coal, grain, brick, iron, and pumpkin)

Your journey through Charterstone’s many secrets will last 12 games, but it doesn’t end there. Your completed village will be a one-of-a-kind, variable worker-placement game. Or you can purchase a completely optional recharge pack to play a second campaign.

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Links:

Head over to the Tabletop Bellhop blog where you'll find more tabletop gaming content, including game and game night advice, reviews, and more: https://tabletopbellhop.com 

Read more about Charterstone in our written review on the blog:
https://tabletopbellhop.com/game-reviews/charterstone/

Pick up your own copy of Charterstone (affiliate links):
US: https://amzn.to/3xWe30P
Canada: https://amzn.to/3mXDRmW
UK: https://amzn.to/3Oqcr4V

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