Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / There's Been a Murder; Mind MGMT; Axis & Allies: Guadalcanal; Poetry for Neanderthals

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There's Been a Murder; Mind MGMT; Axis & Allies: Guadalcanal; Poetry for Neanderthals · 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 off the train and deliver an episode two while I walk home.
• 0:11
  I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a lovely
• 0:23
  day here in suburban Chicago. I'm heading home from another day at work and
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  looking forward to talking to you about some games. I don't remember where I
• 0:32
  am in the game in the episode publication schedule, or what I've done recently,
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  so when in doubt, talk about some more games I've tried recently,
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  that's right. Today I'm playing. Today, I'm doing a board game Espresso
• 0:45
  Espresso triple shot. For those of you new to the podcast, Board Game
• 0:53
  Espresso is an episode where I talk about three games that I've tried first for
• 0:56
  the first time recently, and usually one game I've done it off to talk
• 1:00
  a little bit about something I haven't played in a while. It's pretty great,
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  So today I am going to talk about. First off, There's been
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  a Murder. There's Been a Murder as designed by Steve Darlington, published by
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  ten Star Games. This is a game my friend Paul brought over for us
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  to play. It's a very light card game with a simple mechanisms in the
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  neighbor. It actually is a little bit reminiscent of coup because There's been a
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  murder. You get one card or love letter I guess, you get one
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  card, and then you draw a second card, and then you play one
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  of the two cards that you've drawn, and the goal is as a group
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  to discover the murderer and identify them, and we win the game in one
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  of two ways. One if the investigator and the murderer are ever in the
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  same hand at the same time, then we win because the investigator reveals the
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  murderer, or if someone else is able to force someone to discard the murderer
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  card, then we win. Now, as I said, it's sort of
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  reminiscent of love letter or a coup, because the other thing about it is
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  really short. We played three games of There's Been a Murder, and I
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  think the longest one was six minutes. And this is just a function of
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  the way the game works, and I think demonstrates a real problem with the
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  game, which is that one of the things that can happen is that you
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  just draw the card that makes the game end if you have so you always
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  have two cards and you can play one of them. The whole thing is
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  if, like, if you have the murderer, you actually wanted to get
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  revealed, but of course you're not allowed to reveal anything about what you have
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  except through the card play, So there's an element of like hiding, but
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  you actually want to get caught. If you're the murderer, you don't.
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  We're all working together to find the murder and having the murderer card is sort
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  of like having some evidence and you're trying to prove it or something. So,
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  like I said, there's a variety of ways that you can do that
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  is to there are a number of cards that will move cards around or get
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  cards sort of played out. If you discard the murderer, that's one of
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  the ways to end the game and win. The other way being if you
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  have to if you draw the Investigator when you have the murderer, that will
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  end the game as well. And this is the place where just the game
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  ends itself. We had two of our three games ended with somebody drawing the
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  Investigator when they had the murderer, and that was the end of the game.
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  The first one it happened literally in the first round of play, like
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  player one drew a card, did something. Player two drew a card,
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  did something. Player three drew the investigator already had the murderer in hand.
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  I think had the murder, had the investigator in hand, drew the murderer,
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  and boom, the game was over. Now this was a little while
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  ago, so I might be missing a little bit of nuance and how the
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  rules work. I may have the names of cards wrong or something. But
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  the effect was exactly as I described it, which is you could draw a
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  card and have it end the game. And from that regard, it just
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  wasn't. It wasn't a fun game for us, not a lot of interesting
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  decisions. Not probably worth pursuing. There's been a murder can be left on
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  the dust bind of history. I think that said, it was very easy
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  to play, like it's a very conversational game. You can play it without
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  having to do a lot of mental thinking. So if you want something very
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  simple, I guess right. The second game I want to talk about is
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  Mind Management, the psychic espionage game. If you're looking to buy it,
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  it's spelled mind and then MGMT. It's named after the graphic novel a series
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  of the same name. In fact, the artist from the series. Matt
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  Kint did the illustrations for the game as well, and apparently it's pretty heavily
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  involved in it. This is a hidden movement one versus many game where one
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  player plays the recruiter for the evil government agency trying to recruit psychic espionage people,
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  and the other players play this group of renegades who think the government should
• 5:02
  not be in the business of recruiting psychic assassins. And so you're trying to
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  find the assassin the psychics and get them before the recruiter does, or you're
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  trying to find the recruiter. Like I said, it's a one versus many
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  game, and at its core it was. It was an interesting one.
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  I mean, there's a little bit more going on than something like a Scotland
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  yard, but a little bit less going on and something like a Fury of
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  Dracula. It was a really interesting start to the game, and the hidden
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  person had a number of interesting choices to make as they went along. One
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  of the things that I've heard about this game that seems like would be true
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  but I did not get to try, is that it's meant to be played
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  with the same group of people over and over again. And the team that
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  lost in the last game gets to open up a thing and get some extra
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  spiffs for their team on the next round. So one of the effects of
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  it is its self balancing. The more you win, kind of like the
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  bonus cards and pandemic. The more you win, the fewer bonus cards you
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  get. The more you lose, the more bonus cards you get. Mind
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  management works the same way. Now. The actual gameplay itself I thought was
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  good, but not I don't particularly remember super strong how it worked and how
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  it was different than others, except that you could tell from the board what
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  kinds of things the secret agent was trying to do, and so then as
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  the other team I was on the non secret agent team or the non hidden
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  movement team, you can try to counteract those by anticipating where they're going to
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  go and putting obstacles to the way or getting there yourself, that sort of
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  thing. It was very accessible. The teach was pretty short and we were
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  playing in quick order, but there definitely was a lot to think about and
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  a lot to do. I mean, it had more deduction I think than
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  something like Fury of Dracula, and it had more to do, like I
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  said, than something like Scotland Yard. It was right nice. It was
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  really nice right in the middle, and I think it was about an hour
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  to play. So it's hard for me to judge this game in the long
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  term because one play really is not a good way to judge a game that's
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  got unfolding elements and skills that emerge as you play multiple rounds. It's a
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  campaign game, but I definitely say it's if you're likely hidden movement games,
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  it's definitely worth trying. Again, I think it's among the best in class.
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  I liked it just as much as I like spect Your Ops. So
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  the last big hidden movement game that came out, or Fury of Dracula before
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  that. So that's mind management from Ja Cormier. I mean, send fun
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  lim art by Matt Kin to the comic artist from Off the Page Games.
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  Try it out if you get a chance. Next time is off my dusted
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  off game. So I don't know how much I've mentioned it here in the
• 7:44
  podcast, but occasionally I play games with my neighbor. My neighbor is definitely
• 7:49
  an avid gamer, but hasn't isn't really in the hobby the way that I
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  am. I mean, he's played a few things. In particular, he's
• 7:57
  played games I've had him play and off. When you hear I played a
• 8:01
  big, meaty two player game, it's because my neighbor and I had a
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  game night. So I think I have maybe six plays of Star Wars Rebellion
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  under my belt, and three of them are with my neighbor. Similarly,
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  every play of Access and Allies that I have in the last five years is
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  with my neighbor. So those are two of the games we tend to play
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  often, but we've also played other things. My wife and I go over
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  sometimes and play games with him and his wife. That's a different dynamic,
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  but still lots of fun. So the other night, my neighbor invited me
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  over to play a game, and so I went over there and we played
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  Access and Allies Guadalcanal. Now, this is the one of the sub games
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  of Access and Allies. There are a bunch of these that we had played
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  before, and I was happy to play it again. Although I will admit
• 8:48
  I'm terrible at Access and Allies. I don't think I've ever beaten him,
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  or even come close to beating him in any of the games of it we've
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  played. But it's a good time. Nonetheless, now, those of us
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  in the hobby I think sometimes see Access and Allies with a bit of a
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  jaundiced eye, in part because there's so much role to resolve, and the
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  thing is that something has taken me a while to kind of come around on.
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  But I think it is definitely true if you are going to use role
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  to resolve, you want to have more dice and play. The more dice
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  in play, the more likely it is that the odds kind of even out
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  and you get most of the time what you should get a game. You
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  don't want to have a game where a huge decision depends on a single die
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  roll. But you know, if every decision you make depends on dice rolls,
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  and you're making dice rolls throughout the game, the abstract nature of dice,
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  the nature of randomness, will work out roughly in the balance that it
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  should. Now. Part of what makes it fun is like an any individual
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  moment, the dice may or may not go with you, and that could
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  swing the battle. But that's true. I think I feel like that's sort
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  of true of war in general. So if you're playing Guadalcanal, you are
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  either the US forces or the Japanese Force. You have planes, two different
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  types of planes, you have three different four different kind of ships, and
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  you have a couple different kinds of land units troops and artillery, and essentially
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  what you're trying to do is get points. You gain points for holding objectives
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  and basically first player to ten points wins. So being the game, you
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  each have one objective held, and there are several islands that you can take,
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  and if you hold the island, then you get another point. So
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  it's pretty interesting. One of the things I like about the game, the
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  dice are really interesting. They the way the dice work. You have a
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  box, a thin box with dice that's tall, and so you could shake
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  up the dice by closing the box and shaking the dice, and then when
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  the dice that once you're done shaking them, then you slide out the bottom
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  of the box. It's like a drawer that's one die wide, and so
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  it's got a line of dice and each die is lined up with a marker
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  over it that tells you which kind of unit it is represents, and you
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  can see how you rolled. So there's a really interesting thing where if you
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  have a certain kind of plane, then you scan up the list until you
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  find a dye that corresponds with that troop type to see how you did.
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  It's a really interesting mechanism, pretty easy to use once you get it.
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  It also solves the problem of what do you do with all those dice and
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  then learning to read them that you know when you're playing a standard game of
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  Vcxsuscenala. Is there any big war game that's got lots of dice? They
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  go all over the place unless you have a dice tray. You have to
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  learn to read them. There's lots of sorting and complicated stuff. It's not
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  nearly so complicated with Guadalcanal, and the little dice box is a really interesting
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  innovation. So Exsciised guadal Canal is not generally going to be my favorite,
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  but it was. It's pretty interesting. The second or third time we've played
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  it, I think that we're going to try to play it again within six
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  months or so, so I remember how to play and it we're kind of
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  fresh on it. We'll see if I do any better. I did quite
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  poorly this time, but like I said, part for the course in that
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  group. So that's Access and Allies. Guadalcanal published by Avalon Hill. Now
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  all the access now this stuff has been picked up by Renegade, I believe
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  and designed by Larry Harris Junior. So that's the game I dusted off.
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  Finally, last game I want to talk about it is a little party game
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  that I played at Tago Gaming one night. We had a few minutes left.
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  One of the people is like, hey, I got this new party
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  game. Can we try it. We're all like sure, and it's not
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  new new, it's new to him. It's called Poetry for Neanderthals. This
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  game is published by the Exploding Kittens Company, drawn by Matthew Inman and designed
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  by Matthew Inman and Elon Lee. Actually just designed by Elon Lee. It
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  is a party game and the idea is that you are trying to get your
• 12:43
  team to say a word or a series of words or something. And the
• 12:48
  big twist on it is that we only say one syllable words, so you
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  end up kind of talking like a caveman, or so stereotype of caveman because
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  you're saying just speaking in one syllable words and you're trying to get people to
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  say things. I mean, that's really the it's taboo with one syllable words.
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  It's basically the idea. It's goofy fun. I mean, any game
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  in that genre that has a slight twist on it, it's probably going to
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  be fun. It's a reliable formula for a reason. The game itself comes
• 13:18
  with a plastic club, inflatable plastic club that you use to bop people on
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  the head when they use say a word incorrectly. We did not inflate the
• 13:28
  club. We just said wrong or gurr or whatever. We did something else
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  instead because we didn't really want to bop people on the head. It's fine.
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  I am definitely not going to go out and buy it, but I
• 13:41
  have in the past passed it up at Goodwill, and I think if I
• 13:45
  found it at Goodwill for three dollars or less, I would probably buy a
• 13:48
  copy because it is a goof and it's kind of fun, and Matthew Edmund's
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  art is very funny, as it always is, so that's poetry for Neanderthals
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  worth a try if you get a chance. I wouldn't spend a lot of
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  money on it, but it's a hoot, and that brings me to the
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  end of the episode. I hope that you've had a lovely day. I've
• 14:09
  had a lovely day, and I've had a lovely walk. What games have
• 14:11
  you been playing lately? You can share that information with me over on board
• 14:15
  game geek and are killed three two sixty nine. You can send me a
• 14:18
  direct message Wombat nineteen nine is my user name, or you can reach out
• 14:22
  to me at one of the asynchronous board gaming sites what does you or kata
• 14:28
  dot ee. Thanks for joining me, I moan today. I hope your
• 14:31
  next walk. This is pleasant as mind was, byebye. And the big
• 14:56
  twist on it is that you you can only say one sentence, one word
• 15:01
  syllable, one word sense, one syllable words. You only say one syllable
• 15:05
  words. So brought to you by rattle box mm hm