![its tactical poker chip its tactical poker chip](https://www.itstactical.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/shot-show-day-three-96-768x512.jpg)
Maybe even to the point of drowning, never to break the surface again. Cloudspire has perhaps the highest count of “Oops, I wasn’t allowed to build that yet” statements I’ve seen in years.īut the stuff! The units with their keywords! The upgrades with their italic explanations about how an “artillery die” differs from a “forsaken die”! You could get lost beneath such wave of competing perks and upgrades and unit types. Wouldn’t want you slapping down that Drilling Outpost too soon. Make sure you read over these options before you make any decisions. Then there are your tiered fortress upgrades, like the Source Drill for generating extra mana source, Assemblies and Honor Pits and Strongholds that let you roll dice for extra perks or maybe nothing at all, and other spots that let you build new towers. Dispatch Platforms are towers that deal splash damage, perfect for taking out conga lines of enemy troops! Drilling Outposts occupy a defensive slot, but if they survive you’ll gain a bunch of mana source! And that’s before we flip over the chips to reveal another set of towers, both of them even meatier and more tantalizing than the first two. Before the action even kicks off, they’ve got loads to consider. Consider the Brawnen, Cloudspire’s most plain-jane faction. Each side has a small handful of towers and approximately a zillion upgrades. For now, the important thing to note is how much stuff there is to tinker with. We’ll talk about those armies in a moment. To accomplish this, the phases are dutifully arranged: a market for buying mercenaries, followed by everyone building defenses and fortress upgrades, after which armies are amassed, put into formation, and flung in your rival’s direction. Over the course of four waves, you’re tasked with breaking through enemy defenses and smashing their gate to pieces. Or maybe it’s that Cloudspire shows too much, terrified that somebody will notice there isn’t much game underneath all the neoprene and plastic. Although there’s a game in here somewhere, Cloudspire seems determined not to let it show. Pure of heart but clumsy of everything else, just like grandma used to call me. Meanwhile, you’re also building defensive towers, upgrading your fortress with new abilities, and deploying heroes with a game plan beyond “run down this road until you die.” Since your opponent has the same idea, you can expect a lot of casualties somewhere near the middle. So you hire bands of warriors who blindly hurl themselves down the paved paths of fantasyland. Like most fortress owners, you would prefer to be the only person with a fortress. The idea is beautifully pure: you have a fortress, your opponent has a fortress. If there’s cardboard in this thing, it’s hidden like an egg white at a vegan restaurant.Īnd as a notion, there’s nothing wrong with either of those halves.
![its tactical poker chip its tactical poker chip](https://www.itstactical.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ITS_May_the_Fourth_Mini_PVC_01-912x912.jpg)
It’s as though somebody had a grudge against the “board” part of board games. The box is big and heavy, laden with neoprene hexes and nuke-proof storage cases and stacks and stacks of plastic chips that practically beg you to splash the pot even though the game features no such behavior. In the latter case, Chip Theory is as faultless as ever. If I had to give the elevator pitch, I’d sum up Cloudspire as fifty percent MOBA - those lane-based strategy games that were all the rage with my teenage cousins before they gave their souls over to Fortnite - and fifty percent production values.
![its tactical poker chip its tactical poker chip](https://warriorchip.com/wp-content/gallery/corporate/thumbs/thumbs_10626_a_corporate.png)
![its tactical poker chip its tactical poker chip](https://warriorchip.com/wp-content/gallery/corporate/10626_a_corporate.png)
There is no gamer alive who does not appreciate the clink of heavy chips.