Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Ponzi Scheme, Free Radicals, Moon Colony Bloodbath

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Ponzi Scheme, Free Radicals, Moon Colony Bloodbath · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
• 0:07
  off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
• 0:11
  I'm Brendan Riley.
• 0:12
  Well, good afternoon listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  Temperatures are high.
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  I'd say mid to high 70s.
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  And it is the last day I have to go to campus before the end of the semester.
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  I usually have Thursday class, but I've canceled it.
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  And because it's a twice-a-week class, and when we met on Tuesday, that really was the
• 0:41
  end of what we needed to do.
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  So it didn't make sense to meet again on Thursday.
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  And I don't have any more meetings this week, so I am effectively done with my semester.
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  Now I have a whole bunch of grading to do in the next 10 days, which is fine.
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  In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to talk to you about some games I've been playing.
• 0:59
  That's right, it's time for a board game espresso triple shot.
• 1:04
  Board game espresso triple shot is an episode in which I talk about three games I've played
• 1:09
  recently for the first time, and one game that I revisited or tried in expansion or something
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  like that.
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  These are generally not a elaborate review.
• 1:19
  They're more like first impressions.
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  So take everything I say with a little bit of a grain of salt, because they are my impressions,
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  but we all know when you play a game a second time, a third time, a fifth time, a tenth
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  time, your experience of it changes.
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  So with that in mind, let's jump right in.
• 1:35
  All right, the first game I want to talk about today is Ponzi Scheme.
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  As you know from the top of the sack, this is one of my games from April.
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  I did manage to get it played in April right at the end of the month, and so I'm happy
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  to talk to you about it now.
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  Charles Ponzi of course is the famous scammer who ran the Ponzi Scheme.
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  Of course at the time he didn't call it that.
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  He called it an investment opportunity in international postal coupons.
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  The game isn't really about that, instead it's about running a Ponzi Scheme and trying
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  to not be the one caught running the Ponzi Scheme.
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  If you're not aware of what that kind of scam is, a Ponzi Scheme is where you offer an
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  investment opportunity with an unreasonably high return on investment.
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  And then when the time comes to pay the return on investment, you pay out the return with
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  the money from other investors rather than with money you've actually earned through the
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  investment opportunity.
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  The reason this is bad of course is that at some point you won't have new money from new
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  investors coming in, and thus you won't be able to make the pay-outs that
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  you've promised in the whole thing of the collapse.
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  So the way that the game Ponzi Scheme works, your goal is to acquire shares in businesses
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  that are worth as much money as you can and have the most of these valuable shares in businesses
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  when somebody is unable to pay their obligations.
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  The way it works is each round you can take a contract or an investment contract, and
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  that investment contract gives you cash but has a very high payoff rate at some time in
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  the future.
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  So first you have to pay off your obligations with that money, then you can use the money
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  to buy a property, and then you can also make a trade offer with another player.
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  The trade offer mechanism is actually pretty neat, it's very similar to the exchange offer
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  in Isle of Skye, although it's individual and secret.
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  But basically what you do is you put some money in an envelope and you hand that envelope
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  to another player, and you say I'd like to buy your blue share.
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  You can only offer to buy a share in one of the, each there's five companies and they have
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  different colors.
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  You can only offer to buy a share in a company where you already have a share in that company
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  at least one.
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  So remember I said the first thing you could do is buy a share in the company so you're
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  allowed to, oh that's what the investment part is.
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  At the beginning of the round you take a share in a company with it comes in an investment
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  contract.
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  So the shares in the company are what you're scoring.
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  This gets you at the end of the game.
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  The more shares you have in each company the more points you get.
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  So having three shares in one company is better than three separate shares in a company, for
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  example.
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  But it's much more expensive to take a share in a later company that is to get an earlier
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  one.
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  Once you have at least one then you're allowed to offer to buy more from your opponents.
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  The way that works is you put money in an envelope and you hand it to an opponent and you
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  say I want to buy a share in the blue company from you.
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  And they look at the amount of money you offered and they have two choices.
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  They can either accept your offer and give you the blue share that you just offered and
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  they keep the money.
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  Or they can put that amount of money in the envelope.
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  So if you put in $10 let's say they can put in $10.
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  So now the envelope has $20 in it.
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  They hand you back the envelope and now you have to sell them the blue share.
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  So what you're doing is you are trying to find a level at which your offer is more
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  valuable to them than the share they have.
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  But you aren't spending so much money that you're emptying out your coffers because if you
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  can't pay your bill when it comes to you lose.
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  That's the whole game.
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  Basically go around and because every contract you take has a higher payout and you have
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  to keep paying them out over and over again.
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  You have to keep taking more money until somebody can't pay their bill and then the game is
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  over and you add up points.
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  It's fun and theory, it was mediocre in practice.
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  Part of it was some of the people playing weren't super into it.
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  They were kind of playing it because I said hey let's try this and they didn't really like
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  it.
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  But I think it's got potential.
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  I would enjoy playing it again at some point.
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  But it's also a very strictly financial kind of abstracted game.
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  The theme is pretty dumb or pretty uninteresting.
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  I think the mechanism of constantly trying to stay ahead of the ever rising tide of debt
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  is an interesting mechanism in the game.
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  But ultimately it was just okay.
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  That is Ponzi Scheme, designed by Jesse Li with art by Chih-Fan Chen.
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  It was recently republished I think in 2021 or 2022 with a new art on the cover.
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  I haven't actually seen that version in print.
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  I have the old version.
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  At the next game I'll talk about is called Free Radicals.
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  This is a game I heard about many times because Richard Ham or Rahdo really likes this game.
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  He thinks it's an incredible game.
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  And I will say Richard Ham really liking a game is a thing he does a lot.
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  I've learned to sort of stop putting too much faith in him saying a game is really great.
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  At least to the point of buying it without trying it myself because he, when he talks about
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  a game it's usually because he really likes it.
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  And sometimes that matches my taste and often it doesn't.
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  But him saying he really liked it did put it on my radar.
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  One of the students in my board game club brought it for us to play.
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  And they let me know ahead of time they were going to bring it so I got to review the rules
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  a little bit.
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  And I was excited to try it out.
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  The way the game works there are five different player colors.
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  Each player color has a player board that's double sided.
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  One side of the player board is a faction and on the other side of the player board is a
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  different faction.
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  Kind of like you know revive or something has two player boards one of each faction.
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  There has some double sided player boards where there's different versions of the faction
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  on each side.
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  The factions in this game are much more dramatically different.
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  There are ten different factions to per each player board.
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  So there's five colors.
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  If you're going to be red you're going to be one group or the other and that's true for
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  all the colors.
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  Okay so I've started to explain that.
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  So what makes the game interesting is there are these buildings in the middle of the board.
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  In each building is a useful place to go.
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  Think of lords of water deep right?
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  There's a useful thing that you can go to.
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  You can't go there until someone builds it.
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  So there are buildings like that.
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  There are those buildings.
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  There are ten of them.
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  Each one of them benefits one of the players extra.
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  So there's one building if you're the entrepreneurs is one of the groups or the hotelliers is
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  another group.
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  If you're the hotelliers one of the ten buildings in the middle of the board is extra good
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  for the hotelliers and you can go there and get the regular benefit or you can do the
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  hotellier benefit.
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  There are also some shared currencies.
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  There are three different kinds of resources and there's money and then there's points.
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  Then there's also the prestige token which is the sort of like, I don't know it's a point
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  generating token.
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  If you have it at the beginning of your turn you get a point or two points and if you take
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  it during your turn you get a point.
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  I think you get a point if you have it during your turn and if you take it during your
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  turn you get a point.
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  If you already have it and you do the action that would normally take it you get another
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  point anyway.
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  The prestige token can be a way to get points.
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  What makes the game interesting to play though is the fact that there are ten different
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  factions.
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  Each faction is playing a different game.
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  You have these shared components and shared some shared goals but the actual game play
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  that you're doing is dramatically different.
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  I can't remember what the name of my group was, the underground.
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  I had eight different little characters, each of whom could be upgraded three times.
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  At the base level they're able to do or they could be upgraded twice.
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  On level one they're able to, each character has a thing they can do and if they're upgraded
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  to level two they have a different slightly better thing they can do.
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  If they're upgraded to level three they have a different, even better thing they can do.
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  The way the game works is or the way that my character played was on your turn you get to
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  activate like four of your characters.
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  Sometimes more than that depending on how things shake out and the characters that you
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  activate you can pick what level thing they do if they're upgraded.
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  So if you have a character that's upgraded to level three you have three different choices
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  about what they do on their turn when you activate them.
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  The activation comes through cards.
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  Okay.
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  The player who is playing hotelliers they are playing a polyomino placement game where they
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  get bonuses based on where they play the polyominos.
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  Another player is playing a elaborate Mancola game sort of like Trajan.
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  I mean at least the mechanism for determining your turn was like Trajan.
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  It's less complicated there.
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  There's another character who is playing a pickup and deliver game.
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  So there are ten different mini games in the game and depending on which faction you're
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  playing the mini game for your faction.
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  And then there are central things that everybody is trying to do to score points.
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  I really liked this game.
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  I thought it was pretty neat.
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  I thought that the different factions were interesting.
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  I liked the theme of the game.
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  And there was an element of you can do things to build in the center board like loads of
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  water deep and then people can take those actions that are helpful to them but you get
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  a little bonus when they do that.
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  And the game has a bunch of things where like you help other players you get a bonus of
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  a token of their player color and getting other player color tokens is a big part of where
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  you get points at the end.
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  So you want to help each other which is really neat.
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  I like free radicals a lot.
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  I thought it was a nifty game.
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  In fact I liked it so much I went and looked.
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  It wasn't all that popular so it's relatively inexpensive.
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  I think it was $35 and I had some points so I was able to order it without spending any
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  cash.
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  So I actually bought it because I liked it so much.
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  Which means it's on my shelf of opportunity even though I just played it because when I buy
• 11:32
  a new game it goes on my shelf of opportunity until I play it.
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  That was free radicals designed by Nathan Woll with Art by Thomas Chistowski.
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  I think I'm going to skip the, I'm just going to go straight to the third game because
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  I've used up a lot of time talking about free radicals.
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  The third game that I played that I wanted to share is Moon Colony Bloodbath.
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  This is a neat little game.
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  It's not incredible but it's neat.
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  It's a fun game to play once or twice I think.
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  It's got a hilarious theme and it's really good.
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  It's a really good theme like well crafted maintained throughout both through mechanisms
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  and art.
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  It's got a funny title, Moon Colony Bloodbath.
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  It's a great title.
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  The premise is each player is running a Moon Colony and there are robots and the robots
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  start to go out of control and kill everybody.
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  And your goal is to have the most people left in your colony when somebody runs out of
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  people entirely.
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  So again, kind of like Ponzi Scheme, one player loses and then the player who's doing best
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  of the remaining players wins.
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  This is a deck, it's sort of a engine builder.
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  In the game you, it is, there's a shared deck and there are several cards in the deck that
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  let you do positive actions in your Moon Colony.
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  So early in the game, those positive actions help you build up your colony by drawing cards,
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  by building, building things by managing resources and generally trying to recruit more
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  and more people to your colony.
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  And then as the game goes along, the shared deck acquires a bunch of bad events.
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  And these events keep coming back over and over.
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  Think of like a deck builder, you know, if you have a card that does something that card
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  comes up over and over again.
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  Well the way it works is these bad events go into the deck and then the cards that let
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  you do positive things in your colony are fewer and farther between as more and more
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  bad things get put into the deck.
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  So the bad things start accumulating, your people start dying, you start having to
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  destroy buildings to get more people because the people living in the buildings are kind
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  of banked there.
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  So if you need to four-foot-five people, you might choose to forfeit a building that has
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  five people living in it.
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  And eventually somebody runs out of people and then whoever has the most people left
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  wins.
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  It was pretty fun.
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  It reminded me a little dominion in that the person who had played before did the best.
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  They kind of understood how it was going to work and had the most opportunity to really
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  succeed.
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  I mean overall it was an interesting game.
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  Definitely one I would play again if somebody offered it.
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  I would certainly pick it up if it were, if I found it somewhere pretty cheap, but I'm
• 14:00
  not going to go out and buy it at full price.
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  I thought was fine, but it won't be a game I would play a ton of times even if I had a copy.
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  That's MoonColony Bloodbath designed by Donald X Vaccarino.
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  I don't know if I said that with art from Franz Volwinkle.
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  Donald X Vaccarino, of course, is the designer of Dominion.
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  So that's not surprising.
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  He knows how to make a game that has interesting card combos.
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  Well that's about it for me today.
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  I'm not going to revisit a game because I'm home and I want to go inside.
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  So thanks for joining me on the walk.
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  I hope your next walk is pleasant as mine was.
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  Bye bye.
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  [MUSIC]
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  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
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  [MUSIC]