(13) Count Down – Tokens, Tokens, Who’s Got The Tokens

Tokens.

Who’s got The Tokens?

Wait a minute! Levi was thinking again (dangerous). He remembers The Tokens! He saw them in concert what seems like ages ago (before they even started building ISS Vanguard). So he decided that listening to them might help him with his tokens dilemma!

And then it hit him (Bam!) … why not have a virtual “Tokens” concert in the Mess Hall. Maybe suggest a donation of ONE COMMAND TOKEN as an entry fee! This could be his answer! And Levi knew just the person who would be able to arrange all this since he performed and promoted music concerts back before ISS Vanguard’s lift off:

Mark Poulsen

Mark had worked with Thabisa to get the Piano Jam Sessions going! In case you forgot, it’s all logged in the Count Down article here:
=> Piano Jam Sessions

And the next thing you know Levi was planning a giant virtual concert with Mark, Thabisa and the resident Virtual Reality (VR) expert (Klara):

Levi knew all about her VR expertise without even looking at her Personnel File:

A citizen of the Flakkan – the first virtual nation to be recognized on Earth. In preparation for the voyage, Klara already completed countless simulations of the Vanguard mission against ever-increasing odds. She has no doubts that real life will find a way to test her further, and she eagerly awaits it.

And Levi was ready to let real life intersect with her VR worlds!

But first, Captain Wayman had asked him to pray a special blessing over all the crew as they were getting ever nearer to their destination! Levi cleared his throat, and spoke these words using the microphone hooked into the system wide speakers:

A friend of mine used to often pray something like this over those in his care, speaking of how God is there for each of us:
May the promise of Your spirit working in us light up our lives.
May the love You revealed to us shape our giving.
May the truth in Your Word guide our journeys, and
May the joy of Your kingdom fill our “home” here on this starship.
=> Vanguard Blessing 18 (full blessing – printable PDF with clickable links)

Now the search was on … for those pesky Control Tokens, Energy Tokens, Success Tokens, Lead Tokens and the other tokens found over here and over there!

Start Token, Turn Tokens and matching Action Token

Each “round” (do we call it a round? YES … see page 15 of the rulebook) every player takes their turn in clockwise order starting with the player designated as the “start” player (page 14 of the rulebook has the very first player randomly selected)… then after everyone has taken their turn in that round, whoever has the “start” token gives it to a player (which can even be themselves, but remember to share:)

Next, each player has a two sided Turn token … until they take their turn in the current round, keep this token by their crew board to remind everyone that this player still has not taken their turn yet:

Once they finish their turn, flip the token over to the “Turn Completed” side:

As you flip the token over, notice that it reminds you to draw an event card! Every player has to draw an event card when they have completed their two actions (ie, not just once after ALL the players have completed their turns). [note: this is waived for the tutorial]

One problem that I had playing Prototype 2 was remembering if the crewmember that I was “playing” at the moment had taken their first action yet or not. Fear not! Now there is a token to help you remember this! It starts on the 2 Actions side, then when you take your first action flip it over to the 1 Action left side:

Wonderful (really!!!) This solves my problem (I used to come up with a make shift way of remembering that I took 1 action already)

Mission Equipment Tokens

Some equipment actually gets “set up on the planet” (and not just carried around the whole time). While playing Prototype 2, it was awkward trying to place an equipment card on the game board in a specific Sector. The card was too big and blocked too much of the game board. Awaken Realms apparently solved this issue by providing an “equipment token” for all the equipment cards that needed to be represented on the game board.

I don’t have the final game, but I’d guess that you would put the equipment token on the proper Sector on the game board and keep the corresponding equipment card off to the side of the game board for your reference.

Mission Failed and Penalty Tokens

These two tokens are in the “Make My Day” category! You don’t want to see them, but at times it becomes inevitable and there they are! Page 30 in the rulebook talks about one way you get the “mission failed” token:

Here’s the deal. Anyone (yes, anyone) who is in the lander sector can choose to “Lift Off” (with the approval and agreement of all players). All crewmembers in the lander sector will lift off with the lander, but any crewmember that is NOT in that lander sector will be left behind (not good). However, it seems that this is just considered casualties of a mission gone bad. I don’t have the game so I can’t be sure (and yes, it did happen once during my Prototype 2 playthrough, sad but totally necessary). However, it does state that if you lift off without completing your mission objective your mission is declared a failure (and you are awarded the “Mission Failed” token):

Page 26 of the Ship Book talks about a failed mission, but it doesn’t tell us exactly HOW and WHY a mission would be given the “Mission Failed” token.

So, perhaps the only way to fail a mission is to not complete the Mission Objective and if any (but not all) crew die on a mission it is NOT considered a failed mission.

Next … the dreaded Penalty token (which I fortunately never saw while playing Prototype 2):

The ADRIFT rules on page 5 of the Ship Book explain this dreaded token! If your morale is “very low” and the game tells you to lower your morale … well, you get some bad consequences, including the Penalty Token!

Page 2 of the Ship Book tells you what happens when you encounter a Penalty Token while doing the Bridge Actions:

Yes… if you get a Penalty Token you end up losing ALL your Command Tokens but ONE. So, let’s call the Penalty Token the Anti-Command Token token!

Command Tokens

There are only SIX Command Tokens in the game, so you never will be able to scrounge up more than 6 (though as seen above, you can start with merely 1).

Just because six of those tokens “exist” does not mean that you get them! When the Ship Phase starts you only get as many Command Tokens as specified on the Objective card. Then the Morale status (indicated by the Morale Bridge Card) can ADD 1 Command Token if high or REMOVE 1 Command Token if low (or maybe remove 2 if VERY low). It appears that as you start your campaign you will start with only 2 Control Tokens:

You need a Command Token to gain access to each of the five special facilities aboard the ISS Vanguard as discussed in this previous Count Down article (and, yes, with only 2 Command Tokens you will NOT be able to get to each of the facilities!):
=> Ship Facilities (Day 14)

It appears that you can gain a Command Token when resolving some of the “situations”! For example:

Energy Tokens

Make sure to use up all your energy tokens during a Ship Phase because you cannot save them for the next time. When a Ship Phase ends, any remaining Energy tokens are discarded. It appears that when you start your campaign you will begin with just 3 Energy tokens:

There are only 8 Energy Tokens in the game, so you will never be able to have more than 8:

Energy tokens are used to pay for scanning a planet (though sometimes a planet scan can cost 0 energy, ie, a free scan).

Energy tokens are also required to travel about the universe, from one star system to another. This was discussed in previous articles:
=> Navigating the Star Systems
=> Navigating IN a Star System
=> Navigating DOWN to a Planet (appears to have zero energy cost in the final game)

Success Tokens

The game comes with 16 cardboard success tokens. However, if you want to bling out your game, you can encapsulate them so they feel like something more than a tiny piece of cardboard! See this article => Hard Plastic Capsules

You can gain success tokens in a variety of ways, sometimes even by just reading a log entry! Other times Special Actions on a POI card might grant a success token. Section cards also might provide a way to get a success token. Any time a crewmember with the Storyteller Skill gains a success token, they can spend one charge to gain a second success token as well. They start with two charges so they can normally do this twice in a Mission, but during the mission it is possible for them to gain another charge which then would let them do it a third time (or fourth if you manage to get yet another charge).

These success tokens are quite important. You need enough of them to rank up your Away Team crewmembers. The number of success tokens required will vary, but it costs more to rank up a crewmember from rank 2 to rank 3 than ranking up a rank 1 crewmember. One thing to know is that the success tokens ALLOW them to rank up, but you don’t actually SPEND the success tokens, so you still have them after the rank up process.

Page 27 of the Ship Book explains this procedure:

Note that you must have an empty rank sleeve for them to rank up into … if not, they may not rank up even if you did meet all the criteria!

Next (and most fun for me) is that you use success tokens to BUY MORE SECTION DICE!

On that same Ship Book page, is the procedure for buying more dice:

Dice get more and more “expensive” as the game progresses! When you begin the campaign you start with 5 Section Dice. After a Mission, you can buy more dice with that number of Success Tokens (ie, 5). When you buy more dice, each Section gets to choose ONE SECTION DIE (so you are gaining a total of 4 dice across all Sections). Later in the campaign, if each Section has 8 dice, it would cost 8 Success Tokens to buy more (but you still only add 1 die per Section). All the dice not yet assigned to a Section are available for you to buy. If there is only one die left of a particular color/type the players must discuss between themselves which Section will get that die.

If you don’t have enough Success Tokens (as often was the case for me as I played Prototype 2), you can assign a Rank 2 or Rank 3 crewmember to assist in the purchase. A Rank 2 crewmember reduces the cost by 1 while a Rank 3 crewmember reduces the cost by 2. At the beginning of the campaign you may not need to consider this, but as you get more and more dice they will be more and more “expensive” and this may be the only way to add more dice.

You also can SELL dice back to the game box (something I NEVER did playing Prototype 2). I’m not sure why you would want to do this, but if you remove 1 die from each Section (back to the game box) you gain 5 Success Tokens! Perhaps to save them for ranking up crew after the NEXT mission (the rank up for the mission just completed has already been done).

Time Tokens

Time tokens have been discussed already in this previous article:
=> Lift Off and Time Tokens

Lead Tokens

The game comes with 20 lead tokens.

It appears that the tokens in the final game may be the same as in Prototype 2, just a tad bigger. They all go into a black bag, and then during the game, whenever you are told that you gain a lead token, you reach into the bag and take one out randomly. And with tiny cardboard circles this is absolutely no fun at all. They don’t “shake” well, and it no fun shuffling your hand around tiny cardboard bits. I VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you put each lead token into a hard plastic capsule. They are not that expensive and we have a good source for them! See the article about it here:
=> Hard Plastic Capsules Update

UPDATE (Sep 17): Louis at Bison Coins sent me a note that he has just restocked the 21mm coin capsules (perfect for ISS Vanguard).

Now that The Tokens are taken care, Mark Poulsen continued preparations for the VR Concert with Levi chatting in the Mess Hall … along with Thabisa and the resident Virtual Reality (VR) expert (Klara).

Hey Levi, since we ARE on a Starship, maybe we should include the song that Lindsey Stirling did with Nicki Minaj called, ummm … Starship!

Sure Mark… put it in the concert line up and let’s use it as a preview for the Concert right now too! Set it up on repeat on the side wall. But, now that you mentioned it … let’s have Lindsey Stirlings Virtual Reality concert along with The Tokens rather than just one song. And let’s give everyone who comes a FREE copy of the eBook of 40 Prayers for A Musician!

Great idea Levi… you just get me the link to that concert before tomorrow!

At that point Klara chimed in… I will see if I can restore the recording to it’s full VR glory just like it was back in the day when it was one of the VERY FIRST FULL VIRTUAL REALITY CONCERTS EVER!

And let’s include the eBook here as well as at the concert! The eBook is formatted so nicely that it will be a great give away!

Yep … I spent some time formatting the pages of that eBook … I even put the date of the prayer inside a violin in the top corner of each day’s prayer!

=> 40 Prayers about Music for Musicians (Lindsey Stirling) – (written in 2015 for Lindsey Stirling)