The One Game Week 5: Best Loss Yet

I’m dedicating time to one game in order to try and master it. I’ve chosen The Banner Saga to be that “One Game”. Each week I’ll be reporting on my progress within the game, as well as things I’ve learned outside of it. You can follow my progress via this tag.

Week 5.
Total time played (according to Steam): 6 hours.
Matches Played / Won: 4 / 0
Achievements unlocked: 0.
Rank: 2117.
Rating: 0.
Team Power: 66.
Renown: 1000.

Another week, another reset. I’m going to stick with the same team as last week, with a couple of changes. First off, out goes the Provoker, in comes a Bowmaster. The second change I made was to max out each of my Thrashers’ armour (at the expense of strength), because I will be relying on their bloody flail ability to do damage for the most part (rather than direct damage), and I want them to be more durable. With the Bowmaster, I opted for max strength at the expense of armour, in order to do more damage.

Time to try this new configuration out. To battle!

NinjaFoodstuff vs. Weedan

The first thing that I noticed was that one of my Thrashers mysteriously transformed into a basic Raider, which was unfortunate (presumably due to a bug*). Weedan on the other hand had quite a well-rounded team, with a couple of archers, raiders and warriors.

I played a defensive game but so did weedan, and in fact I ended up doing most of the travelling, until weedan suprised me by suddenly running a siege archer down to the middle of the board and knocking my archer’s strength down to 4 (but using all of the siege archer’s willpower in the process). Then I had perhaps my best match so far, at least until I lost three of my Thrashers, with one succumbing to a skystriker’s well-placed trap. As is my custom, the game ended in my defeat.

The game still undergoing changes, and according to weedan, a new patch next week will actually mean that I won’t be able to have as many Thrashers in a single team, so I’ll have to come up with a new strategy, or at least hunt around on the forums for some example builds.

There’s also been some movement on the single-player part of The Banner Saga this week, with an update on the progress of the campaign. I’m particularly interested in the single-player

The update has all the details, with a focus on a lot of the non-combat side of the game, such as conversation and travel, but mostly it’s all about what has been happening behind the scenes. It’s all fascinating stuff, particularly if you have any interest in how games get made.

The lingering question though, is when will it be released? Factions is said to be in the process of “wrapping up”, but as for the single-player side:

To cut to the chase, we’re currently looking at mid-year for release of the Saga. We’ve said this in a few places but it’s worth repeating – when you scope the game for a certain amount of money and you make 7x that much, there’s no way around it, the game takes longer to make. We’re doing our best to mitigate that, we’re not taking anything like 7x as long. Hopefully with the progress we show in regular updates you’ll agree that we’re using the funding well and making the best decisions for the game.

*The Banner Saga is currently in beta. Things are subject to change and may not work as expected.

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2 Comments

    arnie says:

    I am now following this weekly. I love hearing of people experiences in the game. 🙂
    That bug that converted your Thrasher into a base Raider is fixed now.
    Weedan is a well known and very good player, so you did quite well. He does play defensively.
    You’re now 4 games in with 0 victories, but that’s about what others seem to go through. At about 10 matches we see players start to turn the corner as far as tactics and start winning. 1 player I played was 4/6 and I asked him how he learned the game so quickly, he replied “I watched every stream and video I could. Then read every forum post on tactics. Then started playing.” Wise words indeed.
    Can’t wait to see what happens in your journey next week!

      Ninja Foodstuff says:

      Ha! I did not know that. Glad you’re enjoying the series, sorry I’ve missed the last couple, but lots to write about this week!

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