I need to start this review with an admission that I have met Jamey Stegmeir years ago. It wasn’t in depth. We didn’t become friends. To be honest, I didn’t fully realize the significance of the moment until much later. Wish I would have made more effort back then to ingratiate myself into getting to know him. He was still early in Stonemeir Games.

But to Vantage. This is, if you hadn’t guessed, a Stonemeir Game designed by Jamey Stegmeir.

I played it twice as a 3 player game. The game starts with a scenario of us being on a space ship that is going to crash. We reach escape pods and get to the nearby planet and safety. At this point we are each exploring the planet. Finding stuff, doing things, hoping to progress towards the mission goal we need to complete to win.

I will say that set up on this is extremely quick. The cards in the box are all in order, very little needs to be done before you start playing. The opposite though isn’t true. Clean up is a bugger. All the cards need to be put back in numerical order. There are only about 1700! Although to be fair, clean up requires putting about 50 of them away, as long as you put unused stuff away during play. If you don’t do that, it’s maybe 100. And that depends on how long you play.

The first game we played was fairly short. We lost because one player accidentally got a side quest that involved him making a building and starting a business. Thus disabling our potential to achieve the mission. Stupid jobs. Messing things up, just like in real life.

The second game was much longer. Let’s just say we played between 4-5 hours and ended the game because one player needed to leave as it was past midnight. But we weren’t close to winning. Literally we hadn’t made a single step towards completing the mission.

My personal character I was playing cast light on a problem with the game. At times you might be able to get a colored token, one of six. These can be used at times to do things. DO NOT WASTE THEM! They are very hard to acquire. And there isn’t any “way” to get them. No economy where you can buy them, or swap them. You just gotta get lucky and discover them. At one point my character had 6 cards needing a green token. I could produce yellow. Nobody playing could make green. So each of these cards had an ability to trigger or an upgrade to accomplish on them… that couldn’t be done. Because I needed a green token. Terrible design aspect to the game. If the tokens are important, there needs to be a way to get them.

As we explore the planet, we get location cards with 6 colored options on them. We choose which we want to do. After resolving that one, we must leave the location on our next turn. So game play goes … Do a thing on your turn. Wait for your next turn. Move. Wait for your next turn. Do a thing. Wait. Move. Do. Wait. Move. Repeat ad nauseum. Once a location has had something done on it, it can never be done on again. If you go back to it, you can only move away. At one point in game 2, I had travelled in a cave with only one direction to go, only to find a dead end. And had to back track 7 Move turns, unable to do anything other than move. Which was hugely frustrating, as the other players were doing things and I’m like “Move west… Oh look, a location I have been to before. Yay…. Pass turn.”

The game has interesting things happening. But for me, ultimately it had too little game in it. This was a storytelling experience. And for that it was interesting. But if you are expecting a game here, think again. Like Billy Bragg says “…rethink again. And again. And again. And again.” 

I wanted to like this. I still want to like it. But you know what I don’t want? To play it again. Would I? Begrudgingly. Because I play games to have fun with the people I am with. And that happens regardless. But to me there isn’t much joy in this game. There isn’t much game in this game. I know Jamey put a lot into this. He does with everything he works on. And not everything he designs will be a Rolling Realms or Tapestry or Scythe or Viticulture… Four amazing things he produced that will forever be a source of fun in this world. And there will be people that love Vantage.

I have a metric with games. A basic level of rating. And it is simple. Do I want to own it? The wanting to own it involves paying money to acquire it. If I enjoyed it, I will want it. I know there is the concept and expression of “You don’t have to own everything you like.” 

When it comes to Vantage, I can confidently say I don’t want to own it. Not at $100. Not at $75. Not at $50. If it was $25? Maybe… At $10 I would buy it. Because I am a sucker. I may not play it if I bought it, but I would likely read through the books and the cards. Deconstruct the game and see what makes it tick. Or rather what makes it not. My money metric gives me a bit of a rating insight here. But I can’t bring myself to rate it in the 1-2 range. I’m thinking it gets a 4. Subpar. Not terrible, but not great. Mildly enjoyable. Like jumping in a puddle. It’s great in the moment, but then you have wet socks for the next 2 hours, and that sucks.