Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Scooby Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion; Sand; The Game of Wolf; Patrician (revisited)

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Scooby Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion; Sand; The Game of Wolf; Patrician (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
• 0:07
  as I step out for a walk and deliver an episode two while I stroll
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  around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners. It's a
• 0:23
  lovely day here in suburban Chicago. Looks like the sun is gonna rise up
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  and it's gonna be brutally hot once again. It's very hot yesterday. I
• 0:31
  expect it'll be very hot today. It'll probably be very hot tomorrow. But
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  for now, it's early morning. It's just after six, and so I'm
• 0:39
  going for a walk, looking forward to enjoying weather before it gets too unpleasant.
• 0:45
  Well, it's been a couple of days since I talked to you last,
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  and it feels like it's time to do another Board Game Espresso Triple Shot.
• 0:56
  For those of you knew the podcast, Board Game is presso Triple Shot
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  is an episode where I do a short a series of short review segments about
• 1:03
  games I played for the first time recently, give you my sense of how
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  they work, what they're like, and try to give you an idea if
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  it's worth checking them out. Of course, I've only played these ones,
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  so these aren't proper reviews. They're just sort of first impressions. There's a
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  tiny little bunny. True, tiny little bunnies. What are you doing?
• 1:19
  Guys? They're running away from me, which isn't surprising their tiny little bunnies.
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  It's a tiny little bird too. Well, let's just jump right into
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  it, shall we. First game I want to talk about is Scooby Doo
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  and the Haunted Mansion. Scooby Doo in the Haunted Mansion is designed by Jay
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  Cormier and Seng Fung Limb, who are a design team that have done a
• 1:37
  number of interesting games. It was designed for the op Games with art by
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  Rich Hutchinson and Rob Lundy. It's part of a series called the Coded Chronicles,
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  which are essentially an escape room style game, but with a lot more
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  sort of mystery elements or story elements, and then little puzzles that come in
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  envelopes. Something that makes this one feel a little different than something like an
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  unlocker and exit is you have these envelopes that have different information that you get
• 2:06
  at different time. So at the beginning, each person plays one of the
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  characters of the Scooby Doo story and you get information related to that character,
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  and then each character is able to find different things in the Scooby Doo mystery.
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  Now, I assume everybody listening is familiar with Scooby Doo as a property,
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  but the general idea of Scooby Doo is a team of interested young people
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  I think teens or early twenties who I think in the cartoon they originally they
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  were high schoolers, but or in the more recent ones they were sort of
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  high schoolers moving into college. They were adults in the original show because they're
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  driving around in a van solving mysteries, but they're younger adults Anyhow. The
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  beginning, you get your envelope of stuff for your character. You get a
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  little sheet that tells people playing the game what's going on with your character.
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  And then as the game goes along, different characters are able to solve different
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  mysteries by using different of verbs. So when you encounter something, you can
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  look at it, you can try to smell it. If you're Scooby,
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  you can investigate it. If you're Velma, you can do something else with
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  it, if your Fred. I don't remember exactly all the verbs, but
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  so part of it is trying to figure out who can interact with that object.
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  In what way, and then you look it up in your book to
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  see what happens. Then as you solve those mysteries, you're going to lay
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  stuff out and then you eventually get to open up different envelopes and work your
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  way through the story. You know, it's fun, entertaining, not very
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  difficult. It's definitely like a family weight game rather than more complex. But
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  we had a good time with it, and I certainly enjoyed good So I'd
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  recommend playing that if you get a chance that if you like sort of mystery
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  or story focused games that I have this sort of one play element to them
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  and Scooby Do in the Haunted Mansion. This is a good one. This
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  is from the Up Games. Next up we have the game Sand. Sand
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  was public by Devere Games. The designers are ariel To con Constantino are Contanzo
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  excuse me, and Javier Pealasiari with artists Modo Pena and Ernest Sala. So
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  Sand is sort of like what would a trading and economics game set on the
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  world of Doune be like. In the game, you play a trader in
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  your moving things around. It is very much a pick up and deliver game.
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  The gimmick is that you have a worm that is your big, sort
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  of goofy looking cartoon worm that is your main transport, and you can upgrade
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  the worm as the game goes along, and is the upgrade the worm,
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  you can move farther and do more stuff with your actions. You can have
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  up to four actions during the game, and you use the actions to do
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  different things. As the upgrade the worm, the worm can do more stuff
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  with a given action. Basically, like I said, it's a pick up
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  and deliver games. You're picking up cubes moving other places. One of the
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  interesting gimmicks is that when you're carrying a cube, you have to use an
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  action to be carrying that cube, so you can't so you get less actions
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  during the game. So there's a lot of consideration about efficiency. How quick
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  are you going to move to do a thing, et cetera, et cetera.
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  The game has a limited number of rounds. Aside from upgrading your worm,
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  you also are trying to get the different cubes, and as you trade
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  them, those actually help your game as well. So you upgrade your worm
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  by doing the trading that you're going to do anyway, rather than like in
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  Kingsvary and steam to upgrade your airship, you actually end up doing something instead
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  of the trading as one of your actions, or you spend money to upgrade,
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  so you're sacrificing your point getting engine in order to upgrade your airship.
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  In Sand, you upgrade your worm as you are getting points, so there
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  is an element of win more in that. If you're doing well, then
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  that's going to accelerate the choice to do the thing that helps you do well.
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  The game does have another set of choices that's interesting. You have four
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  helpers that you can get as well, and when you get a helper,
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  you pick which of the four helpers you want, and of course each of
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  them does something different, so getting one of the particular helpers gives you a
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  particular kind of upgrade for your worm or for your process. The look and
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  feel of the game it's very sort of Aracus coded. I guess the whole
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  place is really dusty, that these little cities that are drawn in there.
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  The art style is cartoony but not silly, except for the worms look kind
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  of silly. They have very sort of big eyes, and they look like
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  cutesy art cutesy worms even though you're riding them The art style reminds me somewhere
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  in the neighborhood of the Miko, although less angular, if that makes any
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  sense, and not quite as scratchy as waste land delivery service, but somewhere
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  in that neighborhood as well. So if you draw a continuum from waistline delivery
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  Service to say, the Traders of the Eastern Sea or whatever. The most
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  recent Chevin Phillips games are sand is halfway between that, or it's a third
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  triangle or third point on a triangle. With those two games, That's how
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  I would describe the art as a person who doesn't know how to describe art.
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  The gameplay was fun. It's definitely the kind of game where as you've
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  played two or three times in a short window, you would kind of figure
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  out the rhythm of it. Like many pick up and deliver games, it
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  feels like it would be very much the same on the second or third play
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  as it was on the previous one. You would start to learn the efficiency
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  more. But it's all about tactics. It's all about evaluating the board in
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  front of you, keeping track of what your opponents are doing. Because the
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  board is tight enough that there is a decent chance that you're going for something
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  you will inadvertently get in someone else's way, which happened to more than one
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  of us during this gameplay, and that was the sort of driving factor in
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  terms of figuring out who's next or what you're going to do next? Is
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  the person before you would take would ruin your plans? They would take the
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  thing you wanted to do, you know? All in all, I found
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  Sand interesting but a little too complicated for what it was like. I don't
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  mind a complicated game, obviously, I love complicated games, but I want
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  the complication to be embedded in a game that's worth that amount of complication.
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  And I feel like the game just had enough sort of overlapping magisteria that it
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  became a little unwieldy in terms of trying to determine how it worked and what's
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  going to happen. So enjoyable worth checking out if you get a chance.
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  I did like my time with it, but it's sort of middling for me.
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  You wouldn't displace kings Varian Steam in my collection where it's not good enough
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  that would say, oh I need to get rid of kings Verren Steemen get
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  Sand. I'd happily play either of them, but that's kind of where it
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  is for me. So that's Sand from de Vere Games. It does have
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  that small box profile that Divi Games has kind of become known for. So
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  if you're looking to keep the space on your shelf nice and tidy, this
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  Sand might be the game for you. I recently got a chance to return
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  to a game that I played once before, and this is Patrician. Patrician
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  is a game about sort of gaining favor with wealthy folks in Italy. I
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  know that's an unusual kind of theme for euro games. The game was designed
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  by Michael Shatched, who I think is known for Zuleareto, Zuleretto or Colorretto
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  best, although yeah, Zuleretto is probably his best known game, but he's
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  designed a lot of things. The artist is a collective or a group called
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  Design Slash Maine and it was originally published by Amigo, although I feel I'm
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  not sure who published the edition that I played. I didn't feel like it
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  was Amigo, but what do I know? Mayfair It was published by Mayfair
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  as well, which would make sense for the game of the Air. So
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  it is from two thousand and seven and it is very much a two thousand
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  and seven euro game. It's got kind of a musty dusty theme, a
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  kind of musty dusty look to it. It has relatively simple mechanisms but really
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  interesting gameplay. So the idea is there's a board full of these different cities.
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  Each city has two spots where you can put blocks, and there's a
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  bunch of cards that get dealt around the game. It's basically the way it
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  works is you have a couple of cards in your hand, you play one.
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  It will tell you to add one or maybe two blocks to one of
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  the cities, and or do something else like move a block, or certainly
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  you can move a block. Oh you could take from a different city.
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  There's a couple different minor things, but the whole idea is there's like six
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  or seven different cities on the board. You play card that lets you put
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  out one or two blocks in one or both of the tower spots. Then
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  you take the card that is next to that city back into your hand,
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  and the cars that are next to the city are not from that city,
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  they're just around the board. So the big thing is you're trying to get
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  area control of the cities by having the most blocks in the towers of two
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  of the cities. Each city has a limit to how many pieces can be
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  in that town, So if you have a limit of seven, then you
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  could have one tower with four blocks and one tower with three, or you
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  could have one tower with six blocks and one tower with one, or even
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  seven and none. But once all the blocks allowed are in that city,
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  that city is closed. Whoever plays that last block will take the last card
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  from there, and now no more cards go there. And the way the
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  game is made, you're only putting things in a city when you play a
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  card with that color, so the cards themselves will prevent you from going there
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  again. You also score the city immediately, and basically the person who has
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  dominance in the larger tower gets the better scoring chip, a person who has
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  dominance in the lesser tower gets the lesser scoring chip, and basically just trying
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  to get the most scoring chips. You also then at the end of the
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  game, when you play the cards, the cards have the things they're doing
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  in the cities, and they also have the face of one of the nobles
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  of the city on them. At the end of the game, you get
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  points for having sets of multiples of the same Noble, and those can be
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  quite valuable as well. Like I said, this is a classic euro game
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  with a really good system of sort of simple mechanisms that work really well.
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  This is definitely a game I would pick up if I found it cheap.
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  I don't know if i'd pay ten dollars for it, just because my collection's
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  too big to buy a game that I would play occasionally. And I don't
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  know if my wife would like this one or not. But if I found
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  this for five or three, I definitely would get it, just because it's
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  an excellent little play. It takes about twenty minutes once everybody knows what they're
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  doing, and the decisions are simple but interesting. It's tactical and somewhat strategic.
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  Is really the clever part is deciding when you're going to play your card
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  for a city to try to get the card that's on that city. That
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  is the big thing. So let's say you're trying to get control of the
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  purple city. Well, you might have a card for the yellow city.
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  Say there's already a bunch of stuff there. You don't care about the yellow
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  city. But if there's a card with the purple icons on it, in
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  the yellow city, then you want to play to the yellow city, so
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  you can pick up the card with the purple on it and you can play
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  the purple next turn or whatever. It's also a huge amount of timing because
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  there are cards that let you move blocks back and forth within the city,
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  so you want to be careful about when you play there so that your opponent
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  can't rearrange things in a way that screws with your victory in that city.
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  You also do have the advantage of, like if you have a card that
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  lets you put two blocks in the city. Once you have that card,
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  there's no way to lose that card. There's no way to get shut out
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  of putting those two blocks in the city because the cards are exactly set up
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  so that exactly the right number of blocks come out to close the game.
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  I really like that because there is certainly tension, and there certainly race,
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  but part of it two is also trying to decide when you're going to make
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  your move and how you're going to get people to do the things you want
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  them to do and or make a mistake like you want them to make.
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  So that is patrician by Michael Shach definitely worth checking out. I really like
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  that game actually, and the more I think about it, the more I
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  like it. It's some one of my favorite things when you're playing it,
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  when you play a game and it gets better over time. All Right,
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  last game I want to talk about today is another game I found at goodwill.
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  This was unplayed, which is always fun to find a copy of this.
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  It's a game designed by Joe Barron and the art is done by Louise
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  Diaz and it was published by Gray Matters Games. This is the Game of
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  Wolf. So the Game of Wolf is a trivia game with an interesting group
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  dynamic that I think actually works pretty well. It plays two to six or
• 14:54
  three to six players, and it really is the kind of game you want
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  to play with five or six playing with fewer than and that I don't really
• 15:01
  see why you would no point. So, like I said, it's a
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  trivia game. And the way it works is you're going to play three rounds,
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  and on each round each player gets to make gets to be the leader
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  one time, so you'll get to be the leader three times, and over
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  the course of the three games that will determine what you're doing that determines your
• 15:22
  score. The way it works on your turn, you draw a card.
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  Actually you just look at the card in the box, you don't pull it
• 15:28
  out yet, and you look at the category for the card, so it'll
• 15:31
  be something like, I don't know, the category will be something like,
• 15:35
  well one of them was college sports teams. And then you decide do you
• 15:41
  want to be a lone wolf or you want to be in a pack.
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  If you're in a pack, you pick someone to join you, and then
• 15:48
  that person is in your pack and the other people around the table are in
• 15:52
  an opposing pack. I feel like it does play six. I feel like
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  the scoring is set up around okay, so you pick someone else to be
• 16:00
  in your pack, or you go alone, and then the other people on
• 16:03
  the in the team are on their own, are in their own pack.
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  And then what happens is a set of questions gets put on the table and
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  both teams come up with their answers to the questions. You and your if
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  you're the leader, you and your partner have to come up with answers,
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  and then the other people that team come up with the answers, and then
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  you check which team got more right if the loan, if the Wolf team,
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  the person who's active player got more right, then they get points based
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  on did they have a teammate or did they go alone. If the other
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  team gets more right, they get points. I think the more I think
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  about that on morrow morning, if that's not the case, if you loan
• 16:41
  wolf it and you get it wrong, then you lose points and it's a
• 16:45
  pretty significant gamble to do that. This is a cute little trivia game,
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  definitely a fun time. I'm certainly going to keep it in my collection for
• 16:53
  a while. The team versus lone wolf aspect is fun. There's some hubrists
• 16:59
  that goes with choosing to be the lone wolf, and when you fail then
• 17:02
  you feel like a doof, but a fun doof. The production design is
• 17:06
  really nice, comes with these whiteboard markers and really nice good cards and a
• 17:12
  fun little box, good art. My main complain is that it's a trivia
• 17:17
  game, so it's very uneven like the game we played of it. We
• 17:19
  had a good time, but we got three or four sports questions out of
• 17:22
  the fifteen rounds, and one person in the room was a much bigger sports
• 17:26
  person than everybody else, and so he just dominated on those and when he
• 17:30
  would draw on for himself, then he'd loan wolfed and really go to town.
• 17:34
  So that part wasn't my favorite, but that is inherent and trivia game.
• 17:38
  Sometimes you just get trivia questions you're not good at. Nonetheless, the
• 17:42
  Game of wolf was pretty fun. I like the dynamic there. I hope
• 17:45
  I scored it right. The more I think about now, the more I'm
• 17:48
  wondering whether you only score points if it's your turn or you're part of the
• 17:51
  active team the other people are just trying to prevent the scorer or the active
• 17:56
  player from getting points. That doesn't seem right, but that might be how
• 18:00
  it were otherwise. Yeah, worth checking out if you get a chance.
• 18:03
  That's the Game of Wolfe, published in twenty nineteen. Well that's about it
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  for me today. I hope that you're able to get out and enjoy a
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  walk. I hope that you head over to board game geek Gil three two
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  sixty nine and let me know what you think of these games that I played,
• 18:18
  or any other new games you've tried recently. And finally, I would
• 18:21
  love to know that your next walk is as pleasant as mind walking. Cod
• 18:26
  Bye. Brought to you by Rattle Box