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Østby & Svensson (Great Designers) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
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  off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  Well, good afternoon listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  The sun is out, the sky is clear and crystal blue with the little hint of clouds here
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  and there.
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  A train rumbles in the background and I'm hoping I'll spot some fun birds on the walk home.
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  But it's time for me to chat with you about some more board game stuff.
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  I was thinking about what other ways I might engage with gaming, what things haven't I
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  talked about lately that might be interesting to you.
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  And I was reflecting on my recent interest and continued work on the game Revive.
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  So the game Revive is one of my newest favorite games.
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  It came out two years ago and is already my number, I think 16 game on my top 50 list.
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  I think it's really good, very interesting, really complex, lots of nuanced choices to make.
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  I'm really bad at it, but it's really fun.
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  So I'm excited to continue working on it and sort of seeing where it can go, what I
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  can do with it.
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  And in that regard, I was thinking about the designer.
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  He was a very interesting person.
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  I'm actually corresponded with him very briefly because I made some new, I don't like the player
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  aides that are available on board game geek.
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  They're a little too bulky and they're not complete because they don't include the stuff
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  from the expansion.
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  And so I was, we also have the different powers that the individual try, uh, plans get.
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  And so I made some planned specific, uh, player aides, which I then wanted to post on board game
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  geek and in order to do that, I had to get permission to do so because I was using art from the rulebook.
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  So I did get permission, so that was the correspondence.
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  "Hey, here's these player aides.
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  "Is it okay if I put them on boardgamegeek?", "yes, go ahead."
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  It was the, uh, response.
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  But that did get me thinking about the fact that I do have a bunch of his games and I thought
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  it might be interesting to talk about them a little bit.
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  And I will say most of the games that I have that he's designed are co-designed with other
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  people.
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  Almost all of them also include Eilif Svensson to the point that I almost included
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  Eilif Svensson on this list here because it would be, I think I have one, I know it's one game
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  that Østby is on that Svensson is not.
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  And I actually have one game that Svensson is on.
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  Østby is not.
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  So maybe I should just say that it's both of them.
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  Yeah, all right, I'm, I'm retconning it, and saying Eilif Svensson and
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  Kristian Amundsen Østby together.
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  So to start with, so what I'm going to do, this is a great, an episode of the great designer's
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  series.
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  Great designer's series is a ongoing, very occasional episode in which I focus on the
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  games I've played by one designer and talk about what's great about them to give you a sense
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  of a particular designer's aptitude and, uh, work for me.
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  Generally, I don't like to use a designer until they have five or more games in my collection
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  and, uh, these guys, uh, do fit that description.
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  The last, uh, great designer's game episode I did was about, uh, Kramer and Keisling, or
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  Keisling and Kramer.
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  And I talked about how I have played some of the games that each of them has designed
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  and then I have some that they both designed.
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  So it's a mix.
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  Along that line, I thought I would talk about these guys.
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  So to start with, I'll do the games that they did by themselves.
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  Kristian Amundsen Østby designed Escape Curse of the Temple, which is one of my favorite
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  real-time games.
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  It was an early addition to our collection.
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  I got it, uh, at recommendation of my friend, Rolfe.
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  And it is a really fun game in which you're trying to race through the temple to get out
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  before the timer runs out.
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  It's high tension, really goofy and silly and fun.
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  I have the big box, although I haven't played very many of the expansion parts.
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  Mostly I have just played the base game, but there's lots of really fun stuff available
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  for it.
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  and if you get a chance to play it, you definitely should because it is a hoot.
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  So that's a game that was designed, I think it's 2011 by Østby solo.
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  I also have one design that I know is by Eilif Svensson and actually another person with
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  the last name Svensson, I assume it's a sibling... could be a parent or a child, I guess.
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  Uh, and this is a Riverside.
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  Riverside is a, uh, what, uh, the folks over at Motor City Gameworks are calling loaded
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  roll-and-write, right?
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  It's a, it's a roll-and-write game that has a whole bunch of different things you can check
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  and it's got cascading bonuses that then bounce off of each other and reinforce one another.
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  It's a little simpler than the, Fleet the Dice Game or the Three Sisters, the sort of
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  high points for me of that loaded roll-and-write genre.
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  Instead, it's just one pad, it's a little more contained, but pretty interesting.
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  That's one where I, uh, I think it was not very widely distributed, so if you wanted to
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  check that out, you got to kind of seek it out.
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  So that's Riverside.
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  I'm from Eilif Svensson and another Svensson.
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  All right, I've covered the two that are solo games.
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  Uh, now I have a bunch of shared games to talk about.
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  The first one, Revive.
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  I've mentioned this a number of times.
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  It is a really interesting, it's not really worker placement, although there's a bunch
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  of different actions you can take.
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  You are sort of building out your civilization, your exploration group.
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  There are all of these different cascading bonuses.
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  The thing that makes the game interesting is the collection of different things that you
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  could score with and the complex combination of those potential scoring elements that makes
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  the game really shine.
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  There is this tech board where you get these machines and there's little, uh, activation
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  tokens that you can get when you get the machines.
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  I'm definitely not doing great as I'm playing the game at learning how to amplify and accelerate
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  that those sets of bonuses because that's where the real heart of the game goes, but the
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  people who are good at it really can, uh, rock at their score up.
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  Uh, so I'm interested in playing that some more so that I can get better at it and I,
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  uh, yeah, I'm just keen to play more rounds of revive.
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  The next one I want to mention is Trails of Tucana.
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  Trails of Tucana is one of my favorite roll-and-write games.
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  It's got a really, it's got the, it's actually a flip-and-write game.
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  Basically, it's really simple.
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  You have this map with a bunch of different terrains on it.
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  You flip a card, you draw a line between, or you flip two cards, you draw a line between
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  those two terrains.
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  Your goal is to build a series of paths that connect to bonuses on the map and those
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  bonuses then get you points, uh, and additional lines.
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  So as you go, you uncover additional bonuses, uh, your, part, you're balancing the, the idea
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  between connecting as many bonuses as you can to connecting different points on the map.
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  It's a little bit of push your luck because you're kind of paying attention to how many
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  of which card have come out so you can kind of guess what your opportunities are for making
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  connections.
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  But overall flow of the game is really fast.
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  Usually when we play, I end up playing twice because you can play the small map and then
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  play the big map in short succession.
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  Two games usually an hour or less.
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  Uh, it's really clean, easy to teach, fun to play.
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  That's Trails of Tucana.
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  I do not have the ferry expansion.
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  I don't know of any way to get it and I think the only way to get it now is to buy the
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  updated version of the game that comes with the fairy expansion in it, which is a bummer
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  because I already have the game.
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  So I don't really want to buy it again.
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  Uh, I suppose at some point I might and then just donate the game to one of our game clubs
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  and keep the version with the expansion, but I've got too many games to go buying...
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  to go rebuying games right now.
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  But that's Trails of Tucana.
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  If you think this sounds interesting, look up Rahdo's play--Richard Ham--on YouTube of that
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  game because his play, he, I think he posted a link to or you can find a copy of the map
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  for the game and so you can actually play the game with him on his thing, which I did and
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  by the end of my play, I, I had ordered it because I really liked it.
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  I thought the flow was smooth and, uh, it's excellent.
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  So that's Trails of Tucana.
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  On a related note, Østby and Svensson created a game earlier called Avenue, which was then
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  republished as Kokoro Avenue of the Kodama, but it's the same game.
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  Basically what you're doing is you're trying to draw lines on a map to connect different
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  points and connect bonuses.
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  If this sounds familiar, it's because it's not super dissimilar from Trails of Tucana.
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  I would say the big difference is Trails of Tucana feels expansive yet sometimes frustrating
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  because what you want isn't coming up.
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  Avenue feels constricting and frustrating because what you want isn't coming up.
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  So they both have this frustrating element to them, but one of them feels more expansive
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  and the other feels more constrained.
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  So it's sort of, it reminds me a little bit of the difference seen Calico constrained
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  and Cascadia expansive.
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  Either in both cases you're hoping things will come up and if they don't it's kind of annoying,
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  but yeah, so that's kind of the relationship between the two.
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  But both are good, uh, in their own ways and interesting and relatively short and fun
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  to play.
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  So if you were only going to play one, I would definitely recommend Trails of Tucana, but
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  both of them are good.
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  I have recently mentioned playing Capital Lux, so I'm not going to go into depth on that
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  one right now, but that's another one from these two designers.
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  The more I read about it, the more I sort of wish I had capital lux 2 because it seems
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  like that's the game that's got the breadth of options that can make, make it have a little
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  bit more variety, but that's not widely available right now and it's pretty expensive.
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  So I'll wait for a reprint or when I find a copy cheap somewhere.
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  Next up is The Magnificent.
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  The Magnificent is a really interesting game similar to revive actually in terms of a bunch
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  of different related subsystems in which you are making a choice about how to use your
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  turns, managing a variety of different resources, trying to complete a variety of different scoring
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  tasks.
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  The art and design is really cool on it. I think that the mask on the cover of the box,
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  which is meant to be a smile, gets a little too close to looking like 1920s American minstrelry
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  in art, which is a bummer because it certainly isn't intended to be that, but I think there's
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  sort of glimpsing overlap there that is a bummer.
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  But other than that, I don't think that's what it actually is depicting nor is it intentional.
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  The rest of the game that, so that cover art gaff aside, I think the rest of the game is
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  really compelling.
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  It's very interesting.
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  The idea is you're running a circus and recruiting people for your circus, you're managing the
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  circus grounds and I love the interplay of the different pieces.
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  It makes for a really compelling experience.
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  I have the expansion, the snow expansion, but I haven't had chance to play it yet, but
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  it's definitely on my radar to get played sometimes.
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  That's The Magnificent.
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  Finally, the last game I want to mention that I have played is Mammut.
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  Mammoth is again, I think, just Kristian Amundsen Østby.
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  I don't think Eilif Svensson is involved in this one.
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  This is an "I Split You Choose" game and my favorite "I Split You Choose" game.
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  You play members of a group of prehistoric humans who have hunted a mammoth and you're
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  dividing up the spoils of the hunt.
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  Unlike a lot of other "I Split You Choose" games where you have to settle for the split,
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  the original person made.
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  Instead in this game, you can always take one of the splits that was already claimed, but
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  just make it a little worse.
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  So you have the spoils, they get divided up into a pot.
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  The first person goes, they take one piece of the pot.
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  The second person goes, they can take one of the unclaimed pieces in the pot or they could
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  go back and take the thing that the first person claimed, but they have to take one piece
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  of what was in that claim and put it back in the middle, adding it to one of the other
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  pots.
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  And then it keeps going around until everyone has claimed something.
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  But that means that you could have multiple rounds because if people keep claiming other
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  people's things, then the stuff in the middle keeps getting bigger, but until someone claims
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  the last one in the middle, the round's not over.
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  It's sort of like a white elephant, an ongoing, never-ending white elephant where the gifts
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  get a little worse with each claim.
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  So pretty interesting, actually.
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  And then there's a bunch of different types of tiles and you score them in different ways
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  that I think is really fun.
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  So this is a game I really like.
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  I haven't played it in a very long time and it wasn't, I kept off suggesting it at home,
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  it wasn't in any play.
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  So I took it to school, it's in my college board game club where it's also not gotten
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  any play.
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  At some point I may just invoke, hey, here's the game I want to play.
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  Usually if I just get it out and set it up, somebody'll join me, but I haven't decided
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  to do that yet.
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  Maybe sometime this year.
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  I have a pre-ordered saltfjord, so when that comes in, I'll tell you about that.
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  And I did get to play a bad company which is sort of like space-based, but with a game
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  doing heists.
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  It's the easiest way I can explain it.
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  That was pretty good.
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  So, that brings me to the end of my conversation today.
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  I'd love to know which Kristian Amundsen Østby and Eilif Svensson games you think
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  are great.
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  What do you think of these designers?
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  Are they people that you're on the lookout for?
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  They are definitely top of the radar for me because I've been loving the stuff they've
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  been producing in the last few years.
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  Well, thank you for joining me on my walk today.
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  I hope that you will share with me what you think of these games and I hope that your
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  next walk is as nice as mine was.
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  Bye-bye.
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  [MUSIC]