Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Amun-Re, Puerto Rico 1897, Pit, The Isle of Cats (revisited)

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Amun-Re, Puerto Rico 1897, Pit, The Isle of Cats (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:05
  Welcome to you pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio
• 0:07
  recorder as I step off the train and deliver an episodes to you while I
• 0:10
  walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Oh, good morning, listeners. It's
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  a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. I'd put the temperature in the high
• 0:26
  thirties and the sun is just setting walking home from the train, and it's
• 0:32
  a lovely day. So, given that I still have a few episodes left
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  in the season, I'm not quite ready to start anything sort of orderly or
• 0:39
  organized. I thought I would just give you another of your favorite types of
• 0:43
  episodes, my board game espresso triple shot. If you've picked up a new
• 0:47
  podcast for the new year and you're wondering what the heck is a board game
• 0:50
  espresso triple shot? That sounds weird. The idea is it's a quick espresso.
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  I know espresso does have anything to do with express, but whatever.
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  It's a quick take on three games that I tried recently for the first time.
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  These aren't reviews. I haven't played the games usually, I've only played
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  them once or twice, so I don't have a thorough sense of the game.
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  I have a one or two play understanding of it, and it's a
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  first impressions review. I also usually mix in one out of the Dust game,
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  which is the game I have played before but haven't played for over a
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  year, and I got it out again and I'm reflecting on it. With
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  a new year comes a new approach to the boy game Espresso one thing I'm
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  going to try to do. We'll see how long I can remember to do
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  this. I wouldn't be surprised if I forget, but I'd like to sort
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  of grab one thing I really love about the game from each review. So
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  maybe I'll start with that and then I'll go back and talk about the game
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  a little bit more. Now, I'll probably talk about the game first.
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  Well, we'll see how it goes. So the first game I'm going to
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  talk about today is Amnray twentieth Anniversary Edition. This is from Ryner Kinisia as
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  the designer. The art for this edition is from Vincent to Trey and it's
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  published in twenty twenty three, the original game being in two thousand and three.
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  It's really funny I actually went and looked up when the original one was
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  published, even though I had the title down as am and Ray twentieth anniversary
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  edition just didn't click in my head. So AHM and Ray is one of
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  several games Ryner Kanitzia has made about Egypt, and it is an economic game
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  with a relatively tight and interesting set of things to dicker over. It is
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  sort of an auction game in that you are bidding on different properties and you
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  get them based on when and where you bid and how much you bid for.
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  And it's an area control game as well, so as the game goes
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  on and you buy these properties, you then get points for different kinds of
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  for the rewards that they give you and the places that you put those rewards.
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  As far as Reiner Kanitzia sort of auction or auction adjacent games go,
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  it is about what you would expect. It has interesting and varied scoring mechanisms.
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  It has decent theming that holds up it makes for interesting play. I
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  think the thing I liked best about it is the way that those distinct scoring
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  conditions I mentioned interconnect with one another. That there is a really interest,
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  There is a really compelling set of concerns that shape how you are trying to
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  decide which properties you want to go for, and a lot of them depend
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  on what kind of scoring condition you're leaning into that. Like a lot of
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  games with varied scoring, you can't do everything, and if you try,
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  you end up with a garbage score. This game does, I would think
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  benefit repeated plays or experience plays, because you have a better sense of which
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  things really score well and how to do that. But that's true of most
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  good games. I think you do better if you've played before, So that's
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  the thing I like about it quite a bit. I did enjoy the game.
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  I thought that the tension was compelling, the game length was pretty good.
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  There was enough going on of different potential possibilities that you could find different
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  things to do. There are these advantage cards that you could get depending which
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  spaces you won, and those cards would then let you monkey around with different
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  aspects of the scoring conditions. For example, one of the big things is
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  if you bid on a place. Let's say you bid one dollar on a
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  place and someone else then bids two dollars on a place, then you have
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  to take your bidding marker off of that place and put it somewhere else higher
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  up, and you're generally not allowed to go back to the space that you
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  just got booted. Out of so that part of it is pretty compelling.
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  On the other one of the cards that you can get, however, lets
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  you just come right back to the place you were at. So there's this
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  interesting bluffing mechanism where your first bid sometimes you want to put it on a
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  property you don't want because you're pretty sure the property you do want is going
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  to be contested, and you want to be able to move to the property
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  you want rather than starting at the property you want so that you don't overbid.
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  On the other hand, sometimes you could just bid up and it turns
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  out no one else wanted anyway, and you could have gotten it for one
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  pretty compelling interesting game while worth a try that said, probably not a game
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  I'm going to go out of my way to request a bunch and certainly not
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  a game that I played it and it went onto my purchase less or anything.
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  So mom and Rey interesting game. Ryner Knitsia fantastic designer well Worth said,
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  look, if you get a chance, beautiful art from Vincent Duke tre
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  I think Elfqreak Games published it, but I'm not one hundred percent of that.
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  You can go look on board game Geek or on the show notes for
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  this episode, where I will link to the board game Geek page about that
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  game. Next up is Puerto Rico eighteen ninety seven. Puerto Rico is a
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  game that's been around a long time, although this edition was published in twenty
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  twenty two from Aliya. The designer is Andreas say Forth and the artists are
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  John Morro and Gabrielle Ramos. We also it was also partly developed by Jason
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  Ramirez of shelf Stories on YouTube. Puerto Rico eighteen ninety seven is a re
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  theme of the original Puerto Rico game by Andrea say Firth that has been around
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  a long time. The new edition of Puerto Rico also includes several of the
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  expansions so that you have a variety of different buildings you can get that weren't
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  in the original game, and a couple of modules as well. I think
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  there are two sets of extra buildings and then two modules that you could put
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  into play now. I myself had never played Puerto Rico. If you're unfamiliar
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  with the game entirely, Puerto Rico is a very well known and sort of
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  famous game about It's an economic efficiency game which you're trying to make money activating
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  different powers in a good timing. But the clever trick that the game pulls
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  is that each round you're going to pick a role and you're going to execute
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  that role, and everyone else who picks a role or everyone else is also
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  going to execute that role, only they're going to do it in a slightly
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  less good way than you are. You get an extra spiff or an extra
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  bonus, or a slightly more powerful version of the action when you're the one
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  who picked it. Now, if that sounds familiar, it's because that idea
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  has been taken and used in a lot of other games, I would say,
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  most notably in Race for the Galaxy and later Terriforming Mars Areas Expedition both
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  take advantage of this idea of triggering a role. Now. Arias Expedition really
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  uses the Race for the Galaxy version, which is, instead of each player
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  taking a role and executing it and everyone else following that or not. Instead,
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  in a Race for the Galaxy, players each secretly pick one of the
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  phases to activate, and then when you all reveal, only phases that were
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  chosen to get activated, and anyone who picked a particular phase gets the powerful
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  version of it. And if you picked the If you didn't pick it,
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  you still get to do that phase, just the less powerful version, so
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  you can see the genetic similarity there. As a game published by a European
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  publisher for Europeans, Rio grand Rio Grande I think had the original license for
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  it. In America, Puerto Rico has been sort of infamous for its clumsy
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  handling of the setting, which was European colonists making money exploiting labor in Puerto
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  Rico. The game did not do a very good job of thinking about who
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  the laborers were or representing them as self determined, and it in fact kind
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  of elighted the history of slavery among the colonies in Puerto Rico entirely. So
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  Puerto Rico has been kind of a poster child or poster game for this sort
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  of thoughtless use of setting. Thus, the re imagining of Puerto Rico as
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  Puerto Rico eighteen ninety seven it specifically aimed to maintain the solid core gameplay that
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  was such a big part of the original game, but to rethme it in
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  a way that it becomes palatable for people to play. So the re theme
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  is focused on eighteen ninety seven because that's one of the years that Puerto Rico
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  was not colonized by a foreign power. In fact, the people in Puerto
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  Rico had their own destiny in their hands at that point. And so you
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  play the owner of a farm, and you're trying to develop your farm in
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  the same way that you would have in the previous version. It's just that
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  the theme is set around a time when that's a matter of doing for yourself
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  rather than doing for someone else. The art has been redone by, as
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  I understand it, Puerto Rican artists, and all in all, it's good.
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  It's a really good rethme. There were some production issues that cause a
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  little bit of trouble, but overall the game is great and I think it's
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  really fun now. I taught it to my board game class this fall,
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  but I didn't actually get to play it until when I get to try it.
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  I will say I can see why people think it's really good. It
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  is really good. The mechanisms are pretty interesting, the interactions are complex.
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  There's emergent complexity there that is very compelling that you can't always see what you're
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  going to get from what you're doing, but building up an engine and generating
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  points and building buildings works really well. So it's a game I definitely will
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  keep on my shelves and I'm looking forward to playing again in the future.
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  And I'm pleased to have gotten to play it when I did. That's Puerto
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  Rico eighteen ninety seven. Favorite thing about it, it's got to be the
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  art on the player boards. I love the different farmers you can pick from.
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  They all have a lot of character. It reminds you of the purpose
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  of the game. That works for me. All Right, I'm gonna take
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  a moment now to do a to talk about a game I dusted off recently,
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  and that was The Isle of Cats. Now, The Isle of Cats
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  is a game that came out in twenty nineteen, and I think I got
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  a retail copy of it in twenty twenty, and we really liked it.
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  It's a lot of fun. There's cute cats, and there's interesting stuff going
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  on in the game. It's very fun to play. I really like it.
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  So when they came out with the Big Box expansion, I went pretty
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  I went pretty deep in. We got all of the different boards, we
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  got a couple different expansions, and I even sprung for the Wooden Organizer,
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  which is really nice for setting up the game. The Isle of Cats is
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  a game that has a lot of pieces, so it's nice to be able
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  to pull out those pieces and arrange them in a way that's pretty fun.
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  But we hadn't played it in a while, and so we were really happy
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  to get the game out. We tried it with a couple expansions. We
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  tried the Beast's expansion and then the Kittens expansion, and we tried alternate boats
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  each time. We played two games of it right in a row. And
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  the thing I have always liked about The Isle of Cats is the challenge of
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  trying to get as many cats as you can on your boards, the challenge
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  of filling the board, because the game has relatively punishing penalties for failing to
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  fill parts of the board, and so when you are able to play some
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  clever cards and grab the right combination of cats to fill up big pieces of
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  it, that's super fun. And I really like that. The art in
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  the game is adorable. The game was designed by Frank West and the art
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  has done by Frank West, but the lead artist is credited as Draglico.
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  That must be an art studio, but the arts are very cute. It's
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  kind of got a cartoony flare, and the cats are all adorable. The
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  tiles are all cats legging in funny shapes, which is something cats like to
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  do. So if you haven't played The Isle of Cats yet, you really
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  should. I will say my one complaint is that the game has a the
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  at the beginning. It should not be called The Isle of Cats because it
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  ruins the pun at the heart of the game, which is the fact that
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  Isle of Cats sounds a lot like I love cats, and when you say
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  them together the Isle of Cats or I Love Cats, Isle of Cats,
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  it's almost indistinguishable, and that makes it funny. But by putting a thaw
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  on there, you throw it. You screw threw off the joke. Boo
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  for that. Yeah, for everything else, The Isle of Cats, I
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  like it all right. The last game I want to talk about, I'm
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  calling it a new game because I don't remember for sure that I played this
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  game when I was younger, but I'm pretty sure I saw it played.
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  So this game has existed since nineteen oh three. It was designed by Edgar
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  Casey, but there are three credited credited designers, one of which has the
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  last name Parker and this is the game that was published by the Parker Brothers,
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  and that is Pitt. Pitt is the game of stock trading, which
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  sounds lame, but the idea is that you are trying to corner the market
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  in a commodity future. The way the game works, you have deck of
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  cards, and in the deck are nine cards for each commodity, and you
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  have as many commodities in play as you have players in play. Some commodities
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  are worth more than others, but each of them has nine cards. The
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  version I have has the original art from nineteen oh three and comes with a
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  silver bell which you used to start and stop the round. Everyone has dealt
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  nine cards, and when the round begins, everyone starts trading commodities as though
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  you're on the trading floor or in the pit. The way you do that
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  is you hold up a certain number of cards one, two, three or
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  four cards and they have to be all of the same commodity, and then
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  you say like, I've got two, who wants to I got to want
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  to trade two? I've got two, and you find someone else who's also
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  trading two commodities and you trade with them. The thing is, you don't
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  know what they're trading you. Sometimes you'll trade with somebody and realize you just
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  handed them two of the same card they were handing you. Other times you
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  give away two and then you do another trade of two and you get back
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  the two that you were trying to get that you got rid of the first
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  time, or something like that. It's a wild and silly game. It
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  goes pretty fast, and eventually somebody has nine car of the same cards in
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  their hand and then they ding the bell they stopped the round. At that
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  point they get points based on which card they cornered. That's it. That's
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  how the game works. You go until you've got I think two hundred and
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  fifty or five hundred points. Pretty short game, but really fun. Played
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  maybe six rounds or eight rounds, depending on how many players there are and
• 15:13
  how widely you spread. The winning pitt is an excellent game, really fun.
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  There's a reason it's still available even though it was created in nineteen oh
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  three. It's just good, so check it out if you get a chance.
• 15:24
  That's pitch from Parker Product. Well, thanks for joining me on my
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  walk today. I hope your next walker put into the line was by bye
• 15:52
  brought to you by rattle Box