Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Dracula’s Feast, Glyphics, A Gest of Robin Hood, Heat (revisited)

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Dracula’s Feast, Glyphics, A Gest of Robin Hood, Heat (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
• 0:07
  off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
• 0:11
  I'm Brendan Riley.
• 0:21
  While greetings listeners, it's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
• 0:25
  The sun is out, the sky is blue and almost without interruption.
• 0:30
  When you look toward the horizon, there is a haze of white rather than blue, but I don't
• 0:35
  see any clouds, so I think that's the effect of the light more than any kind of overcast
• 0:41
  nature.
• 0:42
  Instead we just have bright white sun or bright blue sky, bright light on us. The temperature
• 0:49
  on my phone indicates that it's low fifties and that's about what it feels like.
• 0:53
  I've got a warmer jacket on, no hat or gloves and I suspect I will not need to put any
• 1:00
  hat or gloves on as I'm walking.
• 1:02
  All right, weather is firmly in your mind, so let's talk some board games.
• 1:07
  It's been a couple episodes since I did one of these, so it's time for a board game
• 1:10
  espresso triple shot.
• 1:12
  [Coffee noises] Order up!
• 1:15
  For those of you new to the podcast, the board game espresso triple shot is an episode
• 1:18
  where I talk about three new games I've tried recently and one expansion or game I've
• 1:24
  dusted off or some other significant play.
• 1:26
  Yeah, that's what it is.
• 1:27
  Why don't we jump right into it?
• 1:29
  Just as a reminder, these are not full reviews, these are first impressions because they're
• 1:32
  games I've played once or maybe twice.
• 1:34
  Or in the case of one of these, I think four times, but we'll get there.
• 1:41
  So first game I want to talk about today is Dracula's Feast.
• 1:45
  There's a 2017 game designed by Peter C Hayward with art by Tania Walker and published
• 1:52
  by Jelly Bean Games.
• 1:55
  This is a social deduction game in which players are different supernatural
• 2:04
  characters from, kind of from the universal monster pantheon, but they're all the generic
• 2:10
  versions of those.
• 2:11
  And the idea is that you are trying to figure out what everybody's identity is.
• 2:16
  In the game you go around and there are a number of ways that you can interact with the
• 2:20
  different players which can reveal to you things about their identity, including maybe
• 2:26
  even looking at their card and figuring out their identity.
• 2:29
  And the goal is to be able to identify each player based on those reactions on your turn.
• 2:37
  It's a pretty simple game.
• 2:40
  I imagine the depth comes from the variety of different characters that you can be.
• 2:43
  I think we used like about two thirds.
• 2:45
  We played a sixth person game or five person game.
• 2:48
  We used about two thirds of the possible options.
• 2:51
  There were additional options available, but we didn't get to try those ones.
• 2:58
  I would put this in the category of fine.
• 3:00
  It was fine.
• 3:01
  We had a nice time with it.
• 3:03
  The art on it is really great.
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  Antonia Walker is the winner here.
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  Very dynamic.
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  It has a sort of 1950s feel to it, but it isn't 1950s art.
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  I really like the feel of the game from that perspective.
• 3:18
  It was easy to understand.
• 3:20
  We had a quick learning session that worked out very nicely.
• 3:24
  And overall it was fun to play.
• 3:27
  But it's also pretty unmemorable.
• 3:29
  And certainly after one play we weren't like, oh, let's make this a regular game.
• 3:34
  I certainly didn't put it on my to buy list.
• 3:37
  It was fine.
• 3:38
  So, but that was Dracula's Feast from 2017.
• 3:42
  Next up I recently got to try Glyphics.
• 3:45
  This was published in 2022 designed by Eric Olson, who has made a splash this year with
• 3:51
  a game published by the OP.
• 3:53
  This is Flip 7.
• 3:55
  It's his newest game, which has really taken the board game review space by storm.
• 4:00
  I really like it.
• 4:01
  It's an excellent little push your luck game.
• 4:04
  Very similar in feeling to Dead Man's Draw.
• 4:07
  In fact, solves one of the problems of Dead Man's Draw, which is that in a larger player count
• 4:11
  game there's a long time between turns.
• 4:13
  Flip 7 gets rid of that by having everyone take turns drawing cards rather than having
• 4:17
  you draw cards until you bust and then someone else goes.
• 4:20
  But we're not talking about Flip 7.
• 4:22
  We're talking about Glyphics.
• 4:24
  Glyphics is a party game based around the central core idea of a lot of party games
• 4:28
  which is trying to get someone to guess a word.
• 4:32
  Unlike games like Taboo or Charades, you aren't operating on teams in Glyphics.
• 4:38
  Instead, every player is playing by themselves.
• 4:41
  But the goal is when you're the one giving the clue, whoever gets the answer and the player
• 4:45
  who's giving the clue gets the score.
• 4:47
  Alright, so the way the game works is you have a card with six different clues on it.
• 4:52
  You're going to play five rounds.
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  So one of the clues you will not do, you will do the other five.
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  The game comes with a bunch of small plastic pieces and those pieces have a variety of
• 5:05
  shapes.
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  Some of them are straight, different lengths of straight.
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  Some of them are curved or wavy or they're circles or ovals or squares or rectangles.
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  There's a bunch of different shapes.
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  All of them are hollow so a rectangle, it's not filled in rectangle, it's a hollow rectangle.
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  They're two-dimensional.
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  And then there's a couple people, a couple little stick figures, a couple more.
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  Weird or elaborate shapes.
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  So maybe there's like maybe 20 to 30 pieces of plastic on the table in various shapes and
• 5:35
  sizes and arrangements.
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  On your turn you're going to pick one of the words on your card.
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  Like for instance one person had the clue "faucet" and then you're going to like make
• 5:48
  a picture with the pieces on the table and you're allowed to move the pieces so it can
• 5:54
  be a moving picture.
• 5:56
  So you don't have to do.
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  So like the person doing faucet, they took one of the wavy symbols that means that they
• 6:04
  were intending to mean water and they kind of wiggled it and then they had it go down into
• 6:08
  the curved thing that was a bowl.
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  So like you can manipulate the pieces, move them a little bit and your goal is to communicate
• 6:15
  the experience or communicate the clue and have to get someone to say it.
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  You're allowed to point, you're allowed to like wave your hands to trying to get people
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  to follow up with what they were saying but ultimately you are just trying to get people
• 6:30
  to guess the word.
• 6:31
  It was more fun than I thought it was going to be.
• 6:34
  Actually liked you quite a bit.
• 6:36
  It would definitely be a game I would play occasionally.
• 6:38
  If someone was like hey you want to play around the glyphics, certainly I do.
• 6:41
  That's a fun little party game.
• 6:43
  I'm not inclined to like go out and buy it but if I found it at for a cheap price at
• 6:49
  a discount store or at a used store I certainly would buy a copy.
• 6:54
  Because I think it's interesting and it'd be a fun game to play occasionally.
• 6:57
  There are a couple major problems with the publication as far as I'm concerned.
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  One, it didn't come with anything to count score.
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  There's no note pad and pencil, there's no score pieces.
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  Admittedly that would raise the price but that's part of the danger of making a game.
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  But I'm not a big fan of not giving people what they need to play the game in the game
• 7:19
  and there's no pieces to keep score with.
• 7:21
  So I think the overall flow of the game would be better if there were.
• 7:27
  When we played we just grabbed a copy of Incan Gold and used a little gems from that to
• 7:30
  keep score.
• 7:31
  That worked fine.
• 7:32
  The score is went between like 11 and I think on the low end somebody had like 5 or 6.
• 7:38
  So you know you could if you had like 80 little plastic pieces that's probably enough.
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  70 even would have been fine.
• 7:46
  The game also doesn't come with a way to keep track of the minute.
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  You're supposed to spend one minute.
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  The game wants you to provide a timer.
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  Now the reality is almost everybody's got a phone in their pocket and that can keep track
• 7:56
  of a minute.
• 7:57
  But again, I like a game that doesn't require you to go get other things.
• 8:01
  So a sand timer would have been nice.
• 8:03
  That said, those are minor complaints.
• 8:05
  They're just warnings if you decide to pick this up.
• 8:08
  So this game was called Glyphics.
• 8:10
  If that were it isn't, clicking in your head, just think of Hyroglyphics without the Hyro.
• 8:16
  It's published by BigG Creative Designer Eric Olson.
• 8:20
  Next up is the game I've only played.
• 8:22
  Next game up is the game I played once online and once on the table.
• 8:26
  Maybe twice online, once on the table.
• 8:28
  This is Heat.
• 8:30
  Heat came out in 2022 to much regard.
• 8:33
  I heard a lot of people really excited about it.
• 8:35
  I believe it's a days of wonder publication, which means pretty high production values,
• 8:40
  really nice art, really nice pieces, thoughtful game.
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  It was designed by Daniel Skjold Pedersen and Asger Harding
• 8:52
  Granerud.
• 8:53
  It's got art from Vincent Dutrait.
• 8:55
  And it's not his Agricola style, cartoony art.
• 8:59
  It's the more realist style, think of something like Tenpenny Parks.
• 9:04
  Heat is a car racing game in which you are sort of deciding how to navigate your car
• 9:10
  through the racetrack, trying to account for other drivers, trying to account for how much
• 9:15
  we wear or heat you're putting into your engine and trying to arrange it so that by the end
• 9:21
  of the second round when we play there were two laps.
• 9:24
  By the end of the second lap, you're the first one across the line.
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  Or if other people cross the line in the same round as you that you get further in that
• 9:31
  round past the finish line than they do.
• 9:34
  It's a well designed, really thoughtful, interesting game in it you have a bunch of cards that allow
• 9:42
  you to go different speeds and then there are these heat cards that you get for doing different
• 9:47
  things in your deck.
• 9:49
  And basically you're deciding you draw a certain number of cards and you decide which
• 9:53
  cards to use and when.
• 9:55
  The main nuances of the game are you can push your engine to go a little bit further, you
• 10:01
  can take heat and draw a card to go a little faster.
• 10:05
  The heat itself kind of gets in the way it slows down your ability to do stuff.
• 10:10
  There are cards that are there are if you're going slower than the heat dissipates you can
• 10:15
  discard it out of your deck back into the supply.
• 10:18
  There's a mechanism where if you're going too fast when you go around a corner you might
• 10:23
  spin out in which case then a bunch of stuff happens you have to kind of reset and that's
• 10:27
  bad for the race unless a lot of people are spinning out I guess.
• 10:31
  All in all I thought this was a pretty fun game when I played it on the table which was
• 10:35
  this last time last time I played it it was really fun to play even though I don't really
• 10:40
  like the theme I don't particularly care for racing games I really don't care about car
• 10:44
  racing.
• 10:45
  In that regard I did like the bicycle racing game that the same design team made called
• 10:50
  Flamme Rouge.
• 10:51
  I did like that game quite a bit it had very similar mechanisms this one does have a drafting
• 10:56
  mechanism where if you end up right behind another car then you can like basically
• 11:01
  go forward one or two extra spaces optionally and it did have this neat mechanism where
• 11:08
  the corners if you're going too fast when you go around the corners then you take a bunch
• 11:12
  of heat or you spin out I think you take a bunch of heat and that can cause a lot of trouble.
• 11:18
  So there's a big element of kind of brinksmanship where you try to get right up to the corner
• 11:23
  without going over it unless you are willing to take a bunch of heat and it's all about
• 11:27
  managing your cards and your expectations so that when you're in the final push that you
• 11:32
  have enough speed to get across the finish line before anybody else.
• 11:36
  Now I could see this I've heard things about this game being very hard to learn from the
• 11:39
  rules I was taught it when I played it recently I was taught it by somebody who really knew
• 11:43
  what they were doing and that worked out really well.
• 11:46
  I did play this twice on board game arena when it first appeared on that platform and
• 11:50
  I didn't really enjoy myself very well in part because I don't think I really understood
• 11:53
  the rules.
• 11:54
  I watched a video but as is often the case when I play a game online it took me longer to
• 12:00
  grasp the rules than I was willing to wait to play so my first couple plays were a little
• 12:04
  blind.
• 12:05
  Overall this is an interesting game if you like the theme you're probably going to think
• 12:09
  it's great.
• 12:10
  If you don't like the theme it's pretty fun but not a game I'm going to go out and buy
• 12:14
  because I don't care about racing games.
• 12:16
  That is heat from 2022.
• 12:19
  The final game I got to try recently is A Gest of Robin Hood.
• 12:23
  This is a 2024 game from GMT.
• 12:26
  It's recently appeared on board game arena and has become one of my sort of constant
• 12:32
  games.
• 12:33
  I'm playing that with Chris, (hi Chris) and we're playing sort of in a constant play at
• 12:37
  refresh, play at refresh.
• 12:38
  Which is very interesting.
• 12:39
  It is a two player game.
• 12:41
  I believe it does fall into the category of coin games in that different players have
• 12:48
  vastly different things they can do and different ways of achieving victory.
• 12:54
  In the game one player plays the sheriff of Nottingham and his henchman, the other player
• 12:58
  plays Robinhood and his daring band of Merry Men.
• 13:02
  And the idea is you're trying to accomplish the things that that side would want to accomplish.
• 13:07
  As the sheriff you're trying to arrest or suppress the Merry Men and you're trying to enrich
• 13:14
  yourself as Robin Hood you are trying to achieve justice to get the land into revolt through
• 13:21
  various kinds of daring do and robbing people.
• 13:24
  The gameplay on your turn you're going to pick one of three actions.
• 13:26
  You can either do one plot, you can trigger the event card or you can do one plot and one
• 13:32
  deed.
• 13:33
  They cost different amounts of money so you have to manage your money.
• 13:35
  They involve moving your pieces around the board.
• 13:38
  It's very tactical that way.
• 13:40
  So far I haven't done great although Chris gave me some advice that really helped on the
• 13:44
  Robinhood side in terms of just kind of what you think you should be doing.
• 13:48
  I need to continue working on that.
• 13:50
  I think everyone one of our four or five games that we've played so far but I'm interested
• 13:54
  in continuing to learn.
• 13:55
  It feels a little bit like learning Pax Rennaisance which was a process of very slowly learning
• 14:00
  what the game does.
• 14:02
  It's pretty interesting.
• 14:03
  I think it would be fun to play on the table if I had someone to play with regularly
• 14:06
  but it's definitely complicated enough that it's a game you need to learn in order to
• 14:10
  do well.
• 14:11
  It's kind of game you can just play once in a while probably because I can't.
• 14:16
  A Gest of Robin Hod was designed by Fred Serval with Robert Altbauer, Terry
• 14:22
  Leeds, Chechu Nieto.
• 14:26
  Published by GMT Games and I've been playing it on board game arena.
• 14:30
  Definitely worth checking out if you think that sounded interesting which... I think it's
• 14:34
  interesting.
• 14:35
  Well that's about it for me today.
• 14:37
  I hope that that has given you an insight into some of the games I've been playing and
• 14:40
  some of those sound interesting.
• 14:41
  I'd love to hear what you think of them.
• 14:43
  You can share that with me over on boardgamegeek.
• 14:47
  Wombat929 is my username there or if you go to guild 3269 you can see what we've been
• 14:52
  saying over in the guild and you can sure your thoughts there.
• 14:55
  I'd love to hear them.
• 14:56
  That's about it for me today.
• 14:57
  Thanks for joining me.
• 14:58
  I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine was.
• 15:00
  Bye bye.
• 15:01
  [Music]
• 15:21
  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
• 15:26
  [music]