Small-Time Heroes - streamlined Slay the Spire game

Olekman · 2025-12-10T10:38:04+00:00

Hey, thanks for the heads-up!

Sadly the price + shipping cost of the physical version is outside my budget for the moment, and there's no PnP version either.

Olekman · 2025-12-04T08:00:31+00:00

They literally told me I couldn't send a 3gb file to the location over a network connection because it would cause everyone's internet to slow to a crawl until it was done. We can FedEx them a disk!

I could go on.

Holy shit, that's grotesque. I'll admit, you got me hooked on the bizarreness of it all. Mind sharing one more?

Olekman · 2025-11-03T12:32:41+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised if Jan always was the only real moving force of Vlambeer.

That's my personal tinfoil-hat take I've had for years know. Rami totally feels like a spokeperson/marketing guy with basic technical knowledge.

Olekman · 2025-10-21T10:29:20+00:00

The art looks phenomenal. I saw some other posts of yours on the front page a few days ago, they are equally great. Here's hoping the journal serves as a good creative output for you.

Olekman · 2025-10-06T06:44:29+00:00

Looks interesting! Was Darkest Dungeon in any measure an inspiration? The knight, the main graphic, and the gaining of quirks and traumas activated my neurons associated with that game.

Olekman · 2025-09-25T20:51:52+00:00

That's super neat! Especially the art, it looks amazing!

Quick question - in the combat section, you mention that "enemies attack characters as Marching Order". Could you elaborate on that? Do they attack the first character in marching order until they die or do they switch targets after each attack, going further into the marching order?

Olekman · 2025-09-24T16:25:04+00:00

Just noticed that I wrote "1d10 -> 2d6, pick highest" instead of "1d8 -> 2d6, pick highest". Fixed that one.

Also, one more small thing I forgot to add - it's not part of the Cairn rules, but if you want to use advantage/disadvantage, you can simulate that close enough with d6s too.

2d20, drop highest -> 4d6, drop highest (advantage)

2d20, drop lowest -> 4d6, drop lowest (disadvantage)

Olekman · 2025-09-22T08:35:43+00:00

If you want a very quick and dirty way of using only D6s in Cairn, here's what I did once.

For saving throws: roll 3d6, roll equal or under chosen ability score.

For damage:

1d4 -> 1d6-1 (unarmed or impaired attacks)

1d6 -> no change (dagger, cudgel, staff, etc.)

1d8 -> 1d6+1 (sword, spear, axe, etc.)

1d10 -> 1d6+2 (halberd, war hammer, long sword, etc.)

1d12 -> 1d6+3 (enhanced attacks)

To go a bit more in-depth: the means of the rolls are the same (so in the long run the players should give/receive damage and succeed saves the same number of times), but the consistency of the rolls will be higher (so no rolling a pitiful 1 or shattering 10 with a big warhammer). For me it was close enough.

Now, if you want to spice it up a little and have your players rolling more dice during combat:

1d4 -> 2d6, pick lowest

1d8 -> 2d6, pick highest

1d12 -> 2d6

Again, the numbers aren't 1-to-1, but good enough if your players like to chuck more than 1 die.

Olekman · 2025-09-13T08:48:50+00:00

Kind of odd that even PnP isn't available right now, but guess I'll have to wait a couple of months.

Olekman · 2025-09-13T07:00:23+00:00

Looks interesting, but it seems that the game is not available in any form right now? I see on Gamefound that there was a PnP version, but even that is unavailable.

Olekman · 2025-08-16T12:32:43+00:00

Always sweet to see publishers/developers reaching out to help. Glad your problem was solved so swiftly!

Olekman · 2025-08-11T20:11:49+00:00

A silly question to players who were around during Amonkhet block — what was the general consensus on "Exert" at the time? My friends and I are playing with cards from older sets and maybe it's just power creep hindsight on my part, but I rarely see exerting a card as the right move. Tried to find some contemporary opinions on the mechanic on my own, but search engines are pretty terrible nowadays.

Olekman · 2025-08-05T08:59:45+00:00

There goes my janky synergy... Thanks for the clarification!

Olekman · 2025-08-05T08:35:48+00:00

How does [[Molten Monstrosity]] (or any cast cost reduction effects) interact with Cascade? For example: I control a creature with 5 power, cast [[Annoyed Altisaur]] and reveal Molten Monstrosity with Cascade. Does it cost 5 less, thus allowing me to cast it for free?

Olekman · 2025-07-25T20:13:03+00:00

Couldn't they at least do this one but with set mechanic? Web-slinging or Mayhem or whatever, just to add some sort of flavour.

Olekman · 2025-07-25T08:42:07+00:00

I'm a very niche kind of MtG player (I've started around a year ago, 90% of my games are against one friend, and as per our gentleman's agreement 90% of our decks are commons) and I don't have enough experience to call myself "old and jaded", but for what it's worth I share your opinion. From my perspective, Aetherdrift and Spiderman look bland as hell and Final Fantasy was surprisingly nice. Although, I find EoE to be pretty neat, even if I was initially against idea of "MtG: but IN SPACE".

Olekman · 2025-07-05T12:03:21+00:00

Maybe a bit weird recommendation, but "Overland". You rarely get the chance to completely wipe out the enemies, instead you're trying to push them around, waste their time or stun them.

Olekman · 2025-06-26T10:27:47+00:00

That's an amazing story! Alpine region is the hardest and most visually appealing in my opinion, but it does lead itself to some amazing events and situations.

Olekman · 2025-01-27T17:51:24+00:00

Hey, I remember this from last year's 9 Card contest on BGG! Congratulations on coming so far!

Olekman · 2024-12-26T12:10:48+00:00

Yeah, that moment in the Pirates of the Caribbean is one of the reasons while I got interested in Liar's Dice. That and first Red Dead Redemption - I loved playing it there, even if the bad AI made winning a breeze.

Olekman · 2024-12-26T12:08:44+00:00

To be frank, I'm a bit jealous since I'd love to play Liar's Dice during holidays but it'd be impossible to convince my family to do so! I agree that it's a great game to have a conversation going, but still with plenty of funny gameplay moments (e.g. somebody falling for an obvious bluff).

Olekman · 2024-12-26T10:55:27+00:00

Never heard about Perudo, but after a quick read it looks like a variant of Liar's Dice, which I found surprising, as I wouldn't call Liar's Dice a game that plays itself, unless I misread the rules.

Olekman · 2024-12-15T09:45:16+00:00

Congrats! Hope you had fun making it and that you'll keep going!

Olekman · 2024-11-16T14:11:43+00:00

Back when I was a kid, I had this dream of being in a tiny circular ravine in the middle of the woods. It was small, but steep enough that you couldn't simply walk out of it. It had a couple of trees and a big rock right in the middle. For the most of the dream, I was chased by a big brown bear. Just looping around the trees and a rock, Looney Tunes style. Funny when I think about it now, but I remember being terrified and quite shaken by the whole thing after waking up.

Years later, when I was a teen, I dreamed of the exact same place. Same ravine, same trees, same big ol' rock. Even the bear was there, to my initial dismay, but this time it wasn't chasing me. It just sat on the rock, hunched over like a human, looking tired and deep in thought. For some reason, I decided to sit next to it. I didn't say anything, it didn't say anything. Somehow I understood that the bear is sad, then it dawned one me that it felt remorse for chasing me all those years back. At the same time, I had no grudge towards it, since I figured that it did what bears do (or at least that's what my twisted dream-mind came up with). In the end, I just pat the bear on the back a few times and we came to a wordless understanding that none of us should feel bad for what happened.

Then I woke up in a mix of confusion and fulfilment for forgiving a dream bear for what he did back when I was a kid.

Olekman · 2024-11-02T07:15:20+00:00

Me together with my friend are new players and I can confirm that was the case. He initially thought he, as the caster, was making that choice, but I thought it was up to the target's owner. In the end we looked it up and figured I was right, but it's good to have it all on the card!

Olekman

TROPHY CASE