Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Dungeon Scrawlers, Cosmocotopus, Star Wars Deck Building Game, revisiting City of Horror

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Dungeon Scrawlers, Cosmocotopus, Star Wars Deck Building Game, revisiting City of Horror · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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  as I step out of the hardware store and deliver an episode to you while
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  I walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. I'm on my way home from
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  my errands, and I thought I would talk to you about some games.
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  I went to the hardware store to get something because I remember this morning going
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  like, oh, I got to take a walk today, and that's something
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  I should get from the hardware store. So I'll just go there. And
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  I could not remember what I needed from the hardware store. It's fun getting
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  old folks. So anyway, I thought I would talk about a home about
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  three new games I played recently. That's why it's time for another board Game
• 0:48
  Espresso triple shot. That'd be a latte, wouldn't it the steaming of the
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  milk whatever coffee sounds. Coffee sounds. For those of you knew to the
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  podcast. Board Game Espresso is an episode in which I triple shot is which
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  I quickly espresso talk about three games that I played recently for the first time
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  the trip. That's the Triple Shot part and usually one game that I dusted
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  off. The idiots just give you a little taste of the game. I've
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  only played them once. It's the first impressions discussion and it's a delight.
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  So that's what I'll be talking about today. The three. The first of
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  the three games that I want to talk about is Dungeons and Dragons Dungeons Scrawlers
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  Heroes of under Mountain. This game was designed by Vangelis Boggy boggyar Takas and
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  Costantinos Cardianus. The artist is Anthony Cornorier and Whiz Kids is the publisher.
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  Vangelis boggyar Takis is the designer behind Hegeminy most recently, but also Kitchen Rush
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  and Dice Hospital and a number of other games, so well established designer.
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  This game is a light, sort of very quick game play in like ten
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  minutes or something, and the idea is that you are racing through a dungeon
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  trying to get as much loot as you can before your friends get their loot.
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  You each have a sheet in front of you that shows the dungeon and
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  are a dry erase board, and you have a dry race marker and the
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  idea is that you are racing through the dungeon by drawing a line. You
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  put your pen, your dry race pen down at the beginning of the maze,
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  and then you have to scrawl your way through the dungeon. You know,
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  I'm not allowed touch the walls, so you have to it's a dungeon's
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  amaze, of course. And when you get to a room that has something
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  in it, you have to solve that problem in some way. So like,
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  if there's a monster in it, you have to scribble out the monster.
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  If there is a piece of treasure in it, you have to circle
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  the piece of treasure. There's a bunch of different things you have to do
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  with your marker started maintaining contact with the paper, and you're allowed to cross
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  over your line and all of that. It's not super picky, but the
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  whole thing is you have to do it quickly and without drawing touching the wall
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  as you're drawing. So once you like, let's see you your pen goes
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  into a room and there's a couple goblins in there, you have to scribble
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  them out before you can move on to the next room. And the whole
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  idea is that you're supposed to get to a certain place, and the person
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  who gets their first wins or stops the game, and then everyone adds up
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  their points. So it's a weird, little fun goof of a game.
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  It's silly, it's fun, it's easy to play. It comes with I
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  think four different maps, so there's lots of different maybe eight. Actually maybe
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  it's four double sided map sheets, so it's eight maps something like that.
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  It's a bunch enough that you can play a few times and not get sick
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  of it because it's the same thing over and over again. I mean,
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  it's a relatively limited experience in terms of what you're doing, but it's pretty
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  interesting and frankly, pretty different than almost everything else I've played recently. I
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  can't think of another real time maze solving game, which competitive maize solving is
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  kind of the if you were going to pitch a log line of this with
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  mini games. It was a fun time. If you get a chance to
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  try it, well worth it. That's Dungeons and Dragons dungeon scrawlers. The
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  next game I want to talk about is called Cosmoctopus. Cosmoctopus was a game
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  that we acquired at the holidays. It actually was my mother in law's Christmas
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  gift from the Christmas game master. I think I've shared that family tradition with
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  you. Cosmoctopus was designed by Henry Audubon, who's best known for Parks.
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  The designer or the artist was George Destutopolis, and the publisher is paper Forward
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  Games. Lucky Duck is the sort of most well known of the distributors for
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  the game. Cosmoctopus is a relatively simple engine builder in which you are acquiring
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  cards of different types, and those cards are different types give you bonuses or
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  accelerators that allow you to acquire tentacles, and the idea is that there is
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  the Great Inky One is a big plastic octopus that is in the deep void,
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  and you are one of its adherents trying to summon it to your planet.
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  So over the course of the game, you are playing cards and getting
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  cards, with the idea of spending resources to put more cards into play,
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  and over time those cards will acquire you tentacles, and once you get eight
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  tentacles, you summon the Great Inky One and you win. In gameplay,
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  there's a lot of overlapped thematically with or not thematically, but sort of the
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  base bones of it. If you follow its linear tree back, you're going
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  to something like Splendor, where you have a market of things, and at
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  the beginning you don't have much in the way of being able to do it.
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  You might take turns where you're just getting resources, but as the game
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  goes along, you acquire more and more of those resources, and pretty soon
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  you can start buying cards that give you free resources to make it easier to
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  buy more cards later. When we played this, we found there was a
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  tipping point, not entirely unlike Century Gollum edition, where you have to shift
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  from building your engine to acquiring points, and if you wait too long to
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  do that shift, other people will start getting points before you and it'll be
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  hard to catch up. Now, we only played this once. I thought
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  it was fun, but it ran really long. I think it's just a
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  combination of playing with a full player a count and having people who are a
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  little indecisive. But it feels like a game that should take less than an
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  hour, and I think it took us closer to two on the first play.
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  But it's a pretty simple, really fun game, excellent graphic design,
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  fun little components. Cosmoctopus is a cute little game that you definitely should check
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  out if you get a chance, especially if you like stuff like Gizmo's or
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  Splendor. Cosmoctopus is in the similar boat similar vein in terms of building an
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  engine of things that will help you get things faster and trying to accumulate stuff
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  to win. Plus it comes with low plastic tentacles. So that's fun.
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  That's Cosmotopus. It was new last year at gen Con, I believe all
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  right. Next up, I wanted to talk about a game I dusted off.
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  In January. Did get the opportunity to play two board games with my
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  board game class. I was going to play three, but the second Friday
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  of January that was teaching my zombie class. Excuse me, zombie class,
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  not board game class. The second Friday of the January where I was teaching
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  my zombie class, there was a huge blizzard coming in and it was going
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  to be a real pain in the butt to get home, and so I
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  made a deal with my family, or I sort of agreed I would not
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  stay late to play board games on the day of the big blizzard. So
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  I talked with my students and said, hey, I'm not going to play.
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  We're not going to stay late for board games today, So that's what
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  that was. So we only played games two weeks instead of all three.
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  So in the second week we played or in the third week we played City
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  of Horror. A City of Horror is one if I were to line up
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  all the games I own and put them in order of how mean the game
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  wants you to be to other players, City of Horror would be right near
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  the end, right near the mean side of that scale. Because while there
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  are some games that are directly confrontational, I don't generally consider those mean games.
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  You know, something like Nexus Ops, which is just I have.
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  It's a war game, right, you and I are competing, We're attacking
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  each other. I don't generally consider that mean. It is aggressive, certainly,
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  but not mean. Right, we're actively attacking each other. Mean games
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  are ones where you like manipulating people and betraying them and stuff, and City
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  of Horror is the ultimate one of those that isn't going to take you eight
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  hours. It's like a ninety minute or sixty minute to ninety minute experience.
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  In City of Horror, you play a group of humans that are trapped in
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  a city where zombies are showing up and you have to try to get as
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  many of your humans through the night as you can. There is a zombie
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  vaccination that you can take that will prevent you from becoming a zombie, or
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  there's a cure or whatever, and there's a helicopter coming in the morning.
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  So if you have a human that's alive and they have one of the vaccines,
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  they can get antidote. That's called antidote, then they can get on
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  the helicopter. So you have to keep your humans alive through the night and
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  get them antidotes. Now, the tricky part is each building has a limit
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  to how many zombies can be outside. There's several buildings in the city each
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  round. You have to move one of your people from one building to another,
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  and if you ever try to move to a building it's full, then
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  your character ends up in the middle of the city, open to being predated
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  on by zombies. And basically just the if and then more and more zombies
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  show up. So if outside of the building of a outside of a building
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  is full, then the zombies threatened to break in. The only way to
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  pass fight them is to throw someone in the building into the street to be
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  eaten by zombies and The way that works is each human in the building gets
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  to vote, so as a player, you control two or three humans,
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  So you could have both your humans in the same building and have them gang
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  up on the person that's there, but if that person leaves, then one
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  of your humans has to be thrown out. It is, like I said,
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  it's a really mean game narratively, and it results in players having to
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  be really vicious with each other. The great part is that at the beginning
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  you have these cards, and the cards help you fend off the zombies and
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  stuff, but the cards you don't get more cards that very limited resource.
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  So at the beginning, everybody's got a bunch and you feel sort of flush
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  and you're willing to share them and help each other out. But by like
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  round three of four, things are getting nasty. So it's a fun game,
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  really enjoyable, and it fits the zombie theme really well. But yeah,
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  I don't play it that often. It did technically become dusty this year
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  because the last time I played it was one year and five days before I
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  played it this time, And that's the rule. A game is dusty if
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  you haven't played it in a year. So that City of Horror designed by
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  Nicholas Normanden. The artist is Michael Combra or Miguel Coinbroo, excuse me,
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  Miguel Coinbra, and it was produced by Repost Productions. I will say one
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  thing, this is a very French feeling game in terms of the art,
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  the particularly from the two thousands. I think this game is a twenty twelve,
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  so it reflects that a little bit. The characters are a little bit
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  exaggeratedly drawn. You're sort of French versions of American stereotypes. And there are
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  a couple images particularly there's one character called the Blonde that is not great.
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  It's pretty misogynist and it's setup. But that's City of Horror, all right.
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  The last game that I want to talk about that was new to me
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  is Star Wars the deck Building Game. This was a gift from my friend
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  Chris. Hi. Chris, thank you for Star Wars the Deck Building Game.
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  It is a lot of fun. This is a game from Fantasy Flight
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  Games, the people who own the Star Wars license, and this one is
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  a really tight little deck building game where you have money and attack power and
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  you spend that to do stuff and then you discard your cards draw new cards
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  out of your drop pile. When your dropile is done, you refresh.
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  It's probably built on the ascension model more than dominion, and that you don't
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  have a market of cards to buy from, you have a river of cards.
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  The clever thing about this is Star Wars. The deck building game is
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  a duel. One player plays the Rebellion and the Forces of Good. The
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  other player places the Empire and the Forces of Evil or the dark side of
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  the Force. And when the cards come out into the river, they can
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  be purchased by one or the other of the players. However, you can
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  also attack them for their purchase value. So you know if a card costs
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  four to buy or would I think it's your purchase value. It was a
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  month ago that I played it, and now I can't recall if it's your
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  purchase value or it's life value. I think it's purchase But you can attack
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  it in the market to keep the other person from getting it. So if
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  a really good card comes out, instead of attacking my opponent, I could
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  just attack the card in the market to kill it before they get a chance
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  to buy it on their turn. But otherwise the sort of given take works
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  very much like Star Realms It's probably the closest analog that you have this engine,
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  you're building up, and you have bases you're defending, and if your
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  opponent wipes out all your stuff, you lose. And that's pretty much how
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  Star Wars the Deck Building Game works. Is very simple if you've played other
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  games like that. If you haven't, this is a great way to get
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  into the deck building genre. I don't have a lot more to say about
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  it because I've only played it the once so far, and while I enjoyed
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  it and certainly will play it again from time to time, it's not super
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  deep in terms of doesn't feel super deep in terms of like Rezar Khana,
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  which feels like a similar weight, has a lot more depth than this game
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  seems to but I could be wrong. But also if they release then expansion,
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  I'll probably give it because it's a good little game and it it'd be
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  fun to have more cards, so that Star Wars the Deck Building Game,
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  I'm glad to have it. Thanks Chris for a nice gift. And that
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  brings me to the end of this board Game Espresso episode. What games have
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  you been playing lately? Head over to board Games He killed three T sixty
• 13:46
  nine and let me know. You can always send me a message. Wombat
• 13:50
  nine two nine is my user in there and that's the fastest way to get
• 13:52
  a hold of me. So thanks for joining me on my walk today.
• 13:54
  I hope your next walk is opposing to the mind. While say bye bye
• 14:20
  this game and others goes damn, it is this street cleaner following me?
• 14:24
  He is hold On. Brought to you by rattle Box Game