Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / HITSTER, Look at the Stars, Evolution, Pig Mania (revisited)

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HITSTER, Look at the Stars, Evolution, Pig Mania (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

0:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I
0:06
Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorders, I leave the hardware store
0:08
Speaker 1: and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
0:11
Speaker 1: I'm Brendan Riley. Well, Good afternoon, listener, Good morning listeners.
0:24
Speaker 1: It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. It's still
0:26
Speaker 1: December thirtieth. I'm still recording and I'm still walking home
0:29
Speaker 1: talking to you about games I've played recently. You know,
0:32
Speaker 1: last episode, we did an espresso flight where we did
0:34
Speaker 1: little shots of a bunch of different games that I
0:37
Speaker 1: thought we're worth sharing that I played, but probably not
0:40
Speaker 1: worth doing a lot with beyond that. Today, I'm going
0:43
Speaker 1: back to a normal board game espresso episode, talking about
0:47
Speaker 1: games that I played that do have a little bit
0:49
Speaker 1: I do have a little bit more to say about.
0:51
Speaker 1: So that's what we're doing today. I'm gonna start with
0:54
Speaker 1: hit Stir. That's it's like hip st but with a
0:57
Speaker 1: te hit Stir. This is a music folk game designed
1:01
Speaker 1: by Marcus Carlson, published by Jumbo Publisher. Apparently is web published.
1:07
Speaker 1: The person I played it with said they had to
1:09
Speaker 1: order it online, and I think maybe over order it
1:12
Speaker 1: from overseas. It's not available in stores. At least that's
1:15
Speaker 1: what I understand to be the case. Anyhow, in this game,
1:20
Speaker 1: it is a I don't know, it's not trivia game
1:23
Speaker 1: per se. I guess it's a moot. It's kind of
1:25
Speaker 1: a music trivia game, but it's about music recognition more
1:29
Speaker 1: than musical skill. In the game, you are trying to
1:35
Speaker 1: figure out which song when a song came out. That's
1:39
Speaker 1: the basic idea. So the way the game works is
1:41
Speaker 1: everybody gets at the beginning of the game, you get
1:42
Speaker 1: a card, and on the card has the title of
1:44
Speaker 1: a song, the artist who sings it, and the year
1:46
Speaker 1: it came out. And these are i would say, broadly speaking,
1:50
Speaker 1: pretty popular songs or songs that would have been pretty
1:53
Speaker 1: popular in the day. They're not entirely one hundred percent recognizable,
1:57
Speaker 1: but they're not obscure by any means. And so the
2:00
Speaker 1: idea is you start with that card in front of you,
2:03
Speaker 1: and then essentially it's kind of like a game of Timeline,
2:06
Speaker 1: which is a historical trivia game, only all the cards
2:10
Speaker 1: have a QR code on the back. So on your
2:12
Speaker 1: next turn or your first turn, you'll get a card,
2:15
Speaker 1: but you get it faced down, so you see the
2:17
Speaker 1: QR code, but nothing about the game. Right the song
2:20
Speaker 1: and whoever is doing the QR codes or somebody whatever
2:24
Speaker 1: will scan the QR code and it'll go to the
2:26
Speaker 1: Spotify entry for that song without revealing it, and it
2:29
Speaker 1: will play that song. I'm not sure exactly how it
2:31
Speaker 1: works in terms of like we never heard ads or anything.
2:34
Speaker 1: I don't think you have to be a Spotify subscriber
2:37
Speaker 1: to hear it without ads. It might be the case
2:40
Speaker 1: that you do, but I'm not sure exactly how it works.
2:42
Speaker 1: But my understanding is it works with Spotify and it
2:45
Speaker 1: will play the end. It will play a song. Basically,
2:47
Speaker 1: it just starts playing the song and you go. You
2:49
Speaker 1: get to listen to the whole song if you want.
2:52
Speaker 1: Generally people listen to thirty seconds to a minute of
2:54
Speaker 1: the song or whatever, and they pause it and then
2:56
Speaker 1: they would say they would take a guess at the
2:59
Speaker 1: year can out, or they would take a guess at
3:01
Speaker 1: the name of the song and the artist, and then
3:04
Speaker 1: they put it in their timeline. So at the beginning,
3:06
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy. You have a timeline, you have a year.
3:09
Speaker 1: You just have to come up with do you think
3:11
Speaker 1: the song is newer or older than that? Song. But
3:13
Speaker 1: as the game goes on, you're building a timeline in
3:16
Speaker 1: front of you, and each song you bring out you
3:18
Speaker 1: have to put into the timeline in the correct spot. Now,
3:22
Speaker 1: if the game, if the song is the same year
3:25
Speaker 1: as another song in your timeline, that's fine. You can
3:28
Speaker 1: either side of that will work. They don't go more
3:31
Speaker 1: specific than that. You don't have to know the month
3:33
Speaker 1: or day the game the song came out, but you
3:35
Speaker 1: do have to guess the year, and it's mean it's
3:38
Speaker 1: pretty fun. If you're good at music, maybe you can
3:41
Speaker 1: name the artist and the name of the song specifically,
3:44
Speaker 1: in which case then you can get a bonus point.
3:48
Speaker 1: You get this little token, and you can use the
3:50
Speaker 1: token for several things. One you can use if you
3:52
Speaker 1: have three of them, you can just exchange it. You
3:55
Speaker 1: can use it to I don't wait. Three of them
3:58
Speaker 1: or five of them gets you a free card. You
4:01
Speaker 1: just take a card, flip it face up, put it
4:02
Speaker 1: in your timeline. It's like and you have to get
4:05
Speaker 1: ten to win. So now, if you put in the
4:07
Speaker 1: wrong spot, you lose the card. But you also can
4:10
Speaker 1: use one of those tokens I just talked about to
4:11
Speaker 1: steal someone else's card. If you think they put it
4:13
Speaker 1: in the wrong spot, then you could say hitster and
4:16
Speaker 1: you put it where it should go in their timeline,
4:19
Speaker 1: and if you are correct, then you get to take
4:22
Speaker 1: it instead of them, and the game goes on like that.
4:25
Speaker 1: It's a little bit long because you go until someone
4:27
Speaker 1: has ten cards, so if you're playing in a big
4:29
Speaker 1: group like we were six of us, it goes a while.
4:32
Speaker 1: There's a lot of fun ribbing, especially if you play
4:34
Speaker 1: multi generational. We played with my kids who are clearly
4:38
Speaker 1: Gen Z, including in I guess my sixteen year old
4:43
Speaker 1: is on the cusp of being Gen Alpha. We had
4:47
Speaker 1: several millennials at the table, a couple and a couple
4:50
Speaker 1: Gen xers, so a nice mix of folks at the table,
4:54
Speaker 1: also with different tastes in music and different experience with music,
4:58
Speaker 1: so a lot of fun, a nice party game if
5:01
Speaker 1: you like music. Like I said, you have to use
5:03
Speaker 1: your phone, so it's definitely digitally focused, not just a
5:07
Speaker 1: tabletop game. But it was a really good time. It
5:10
Speaker 1: was more fun than I thought it would be. So
5:12
Speaker 1: if you get a chance to play that, that's called
5:13
Speaker 1: Hitstir all right. Next up is Look at the Stars.
5:19
Speaker 1: Look at the Stars, hold On. Look at the Stars
5:23
Speaker 1: were designed by Roman Caen and art is by Adrian Lacauz,
5:29
Speaker 1: published by Bombix and Pandasaurus Pandasaurus here in the US.
5:35
Speaker 1: Look at the Stars is a drawing game. So you
5:39
Speaker 1: have a board with different dots on it, and basically
5:43
Speaker 1: your goal is to draw constellations that will score you points.
5:47
Speaker 1: The game has played in a relatively short time. It's
5:49
Speaker 1: definitely in the filler length, maybe half an hour, and
5:52
Speaker 1: it is a shared flipping right, so everybody is drawing
5:54
Speaker 1: on their board at the same time. You all get
5:56
Speaker 1: the same card, so or hold on, maybe you draft
6:00
Speaker 1: the cards. Now I think you all get the same
6:02
Speaker 1: card and you're drawing, but you all have different goals
6:05
Speaker 1: that you're trying to aim. Maybe you draft your goals.
6:08
Speaker 1: It's been a little while, and frankly, the game didn't
6:11
Speaker 1: stick all that hard. I mean, I would definitely be
6:13
Speaker 1: able to glance at the rules and play it again
6:15
Speaker 1: in a five minute review, but generally what I remember
6:19
Speaker 1: is that you're drawing these constellations. It's an amusing filler.
6:22
Speaker 1: That's the category I would put this game in. Amusing filler.
6:25
Speaker 1: It's really pretty, and so that's the thing. If you're
6:28
Speaker 1: trying to get folks to hop on board because the
6:31
Speaker 1: game looks good, this one fits that. The box is beautiful.
6:34
Speaker 1: It's got this lovely character on the front with the
6:38
Speaker 1: constellation behind them, and it's just a lovely game to
6:42
Speaker 1: look at. It's components wise, I found it a little
6:45
Speaker 1: bit annoying. Like Twilight inscription. It uses these grease pencils
6:50
Speaker 1: that draw in a light color on a black board.
6:53
Speaker 1: In this case, it's drawing in white on a blackboard.
6:55
Speaker 1: Because you're drawing constellations on the night sky. It would
6:58
Speaker 1: look dumb to draw them in black on a whiteboard. However,
7:02
Speaker 1: the grease pencils don't erase the same way that whiteboard
7:05
Speaker 1: pencils do and or whiteboard pens and it was just annoying.
7:10
Speaker 1: You also face the problem of when those dry up,
7:14
Speaker 1: what do you do. You don't have extras of those
7:16
Speaker 1: laying around. They're not a universal component the way that
7:19
Speaker 1: whiteboard markers are. So from a component maintenance standpoint, not
7:24
Speaker 1: my favorite, but a beautiful game. It was fun to play.
7:27
Speaker 1: We had a nice time. I don't remember it being
7:30
Speaker 1: particularly vicious in the competition realm of things, but we
7:33
Speaker 1: had a nice time. So if you have a chance
7:35
Speaker 1: to play Look at the Stars, I would take it
7:38
Speaker 1: all right. For my extra game. Remember, in a board
7:42
Speaker 1: game expressive episode, I usually do three games that I've
7:44
Speaker 1: played for the first time recently, and then I'll usually
7:46
Speaker 1: add one game that I dusted off, or one game
7:49
Speaker 1: that I tried for an expansion that I tried for
7:53
Speaker 1: the first time, something like that. And the game that
7:55
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that it dusted off this
7:57
Speaker 1: time was pig Mania, also known as Past Pigs. Now,
8:00
Speaker 1: this is a game I founded goodwill. It's old, it's
8:03
Speaker 1: been around for a long time, and I pig Mania
8:06
Speaker 1: is the original version of the game. It was published,
8:09
Speaker 1: and like three years later they came out with Past
8:11
Speaker 1: the Pigs, and Past the Pigs is the one that
8:13
Speaker 1: has stood the test of time, and I know why.
8:15
Speaker 1: So we played Pigmania, and I had played Past the
8:18
Speaker 1: Pigs before, and I remembered it being an interesting push
8:20
Speaker 1: your luck game. When we played pig Mania, it was
8:23
Speaker 1: not an interesting push your luck game. It was fun,
8:26
Speaker 1: but the push your luck element was almost absent because
8:31
Speaker 1: in Pigmania, you don't get to pick when you stop.
8:33
Speaker 1: The way Pigmania works. Oh so if you haven't played
8:36
Speaker 1: this game at all. Both Past the Pigs and Pigmania
8:39
Speaker 1: are games where you have these little rubber pigs in
8:43
Speaker 1: sort of poses where they're standing up, leaning forward slightly
8:46
Speaker 1: with their snout raised, such that when you drop them,
8:49
Speaker 1: they could land in a variety of poses. They could
8:51
Speaker 1: land on their side, they could land on their feet,
8:53
Speaker 1: they could land on their back, they could land kind
8:55
Speaker 1: of leaning forward, leaning on their nose. It's possible for
8:59
Speaker 1: them to land forward even more so that they're balanced
9:02
Speaker 1: on their nose and their ear and their shoulder, I think,
9:06
Speaker 1: And they also can occasionally land on top of each other,
9:08
Speaker 1: both casually touching and like literally stacked. You get two
9:12
Speaker 1: of them, you roll them out of a cup like dice,
9:15
Speaker 1: and Past the Pigs the game that you've probably played.
9:17
Speaker 1: There is a way that the most common way they
9:19
Speaker 1: land is on their side. And if they both land
9:22
Speaker 1: on their side, and they're both on the same side,
9:24
Speaker 1: like they're both on their left side, then that has
9:27
Speaker 1: one name and you get a point or something. You
9:30
Speaker 1: keep going. But if they land on or maybe it's yeah,
9:33
Speaker 1: but if they land on opposite sides, then you bust
9:36
Speaker 1: and your turn is over. So the whole thing in
9:38
Speaker 1: Past the Pigs is how many times do you keep rolling?
9:41
Speaker 1: Especially if you get one of some of the more
9:42
Speaker 1: rare things, like one of them is standing up, or
9:44
Speaker 1: they're both on their back, that kind of thing. Then
9:47
Speaker 1: you get a bunch of points. You have to decide
9:49
Speaker 1: do I stop or do I keep going? Or you know,
9:52
Speaker 1: if you stop, you bank the points, but your turn
9:53
Speaker 1: is over, and the first person to a certain point
9:55
Speaker 1: score wins. I don't remember, particularly because I have Past
9:58
Speaker 1: the I have Pigmania. In Pigmania, you don't decide whether
10:02
Speaker 1: you go again. You keep going until you roll that
10:06
Speaker 1: thing that was a bust, in which case your turn
10:08
Speaker 1: is over, in your bank your points, or if you
10:11
Speaker 1: roll that the pigs are touching, then you lose all
10:14
Speaker 1: your point and you lose all the points that you
10:16
Speaker 1: have earned that turn in Past the Pigs. If you
10:19
Speaker 1: roll so that they're touching, if you roll it and
10:22
Speaker 1: they and they stop and they're touching, you lose all
10:24
Speaker 1: the points that you've earned for the game so far.
10:27
Speaker 1: So it escalates the danger of the touching pigs. But
10:31
Speaker 1: you get to choose whether you keep going or not.
10:33
Speaker 1: In Pigmania, you don't get to choose and Pigmania is
10:36
Speaker 1: demonstrably the worst game in fact, we played it. Once
10:38
Speaker 1: we got done, I'm like, I could have sworn this
10:41
Speaker 1: game was better than that. I remember having fun with
10:43
Speaker 1: it because I didn't realize that there was a difference
10:45
Speaker 1: between Pigmania and Past the Pigs. I thought they just
10:48
Speaker 1: changed the rules, because board game Peek says they just
10:51
Speaker 1: changed the rules. So it's interesting to me to see
10:53
Speaker 1: that difference because I went and looked up the rules
10:56
Speaker 1: for Past the Pigs and I'm like, oh, yeah, this
10:58
Speaker 1: is how the game should be played. Actually put those
11:01
Speaker 1: rules in with my copy of pig Mania, and that's
11:04
Speaker 1: how we'll be playing it in future. Yeah. Interesting to
11:06
Speaker 1: see how that one rule change is what makes the
11:09
Speaker 1: game fun to play. So that's pig Mania, originally out
11:12
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven. Although board game Geek literally thinks
11:16
Speaker 1: they're the same thing, they actually aren't. All right. So
11:19
Speaker 1: the third game I want to talk about today, a
11:21
Speaker 1: third new to me game is Evolution. Now. Evolution is
11:25
Speaker 1: not a new game. It's been out for quite a while.
11:28
Speaker 1: It was designed by Dominique Dominiq Krapuchet, the former boat
11:33
Speaker 1: captain who designed Wits and Wagers and then founded North
11:35
Speaker 1: Star Games out of it. The art is by Dmitri
11:38
Speaker 1: Knor and Serghi Mackkin. Oh Dimitri Crenor and Sergi Mackin
11:44
Speaker 1: are also listed as designers. The artist is jj Ariosa,
11:50
Speaker 1: Giorgio Di Michelle, Catherine Hamilton, Kurt Miller, Jacoby O'Connor, because
11:56
Speaker 1: there's a lot of art in this game. Evolution is
11:59
Speaker 1: a game where you are evolving a species or multiple specieses,
12:03
Speaker 1: and you are evolving them by giving them traits, and
12:07
Speaker 1: it sort of reflects the evolutionary pressure of natural selection
12:14
Speaker 1: in that the traits you give them make them easier
12:16
Speaker 1: or harder for other creatures to hunt. And if you
12:20
Speaker 1: evolve a creature that's a predator, it's worth more points,
12:23
Speaker 1: but it has to eat other creatures, and so you
12:25
Speaker 1: need to be able to catch them. So like somebody
12:28
Speaker 1: might have a predator, but then you might have you
12:30
Speaker 1: might evolve camouflage, so then they can't hunt you unless
12:34
Speaker 1: they also evolve observant or heightened eyesight or something, right
12:38
Speaker 1: like it's an arms race kind of. And then so
12:41
Speaker 1: you have different strategies you can take. You can try
12:44
Speaker 1: to pile evolutionary traits on a single species and really
12:49
Speaker 1: lay it down on that species, or you could get
12:52
Speaker 1: multiple lots of different species and you know, make it
12:54
Speaker 1: hard to put you out of the game by just
12:56
Speaker 1: having a variety or both a combination there would be
13:00
Speaker 1: to have a species that is a little bit hard
13:02
Speaker 1: hunt but then just has big numbers, so even if
13:04
Speaker 1: you get hunted a little bit, it doesn't matter. You
13:06
Speaker 1: have so many That is another trait that you can
13:09
Speaker 1: pursue as well. Now you don't always get a choice
13:12
Speaker 1: about what you're going to get. You draw cards and
13:14
Speaker 1: you apply those cards, and it is a very cutthroat game.
13:17
Speaker 1: You are constantly taking each other's stuff. Especially if you
13:21
Speaker 1: evolve a predator, you have to eat the other players things.
13:24
Speaker 1: But there are also cards that come up that interfere
13:26
Speaker 1: with other players and so on, and there's limited food
13:29
Speaker 1: to the watering hole. So one of the reasons to
13:32
Speaker 1: become predator is then you're not fighting for resources at
13:35
Speaker 1: the watering hole. Instead you're fighting for the resources of
13:38
Speaker 1: the other characters. I did a long time ago play
13:41
Speaker 1: the sequel to this, which was Evolution Oceans or Ocean
13:46
Speaker 1: I think it was just just been called Oceans and
13:48
Speaker 1: Evolution game something like that, and I like that one. Okay.
13:53
Speaker 1: I thought the deep sea creatures, why I fire the
13:55
Speaker 1: most interesting part of it. This game is older and
13:57
Speaker 1: it feels that way. Say. The teach that we got
14:02
Speaker 1: was okay, but not amazing. There was some stuff I
14:05
Speaker 1: didn't really understand going into the game. It was just
14:07
Speaker 1: clarified later. I find that not ideal, but you know,
14:10
Speaker 1: then again, I wasn't the one teaching it, and often
14:12
Speaker 1: when I teach games, I forget things, so who am
14:14
Speaker 1: I to complain? But ultimately this was not for me.
14:18
Speaker 1: I didn't really have very much fun with it. I
14:20
Speaker 1: found the take that parts not that interesting because like
14:24
Speaker 1: when the game forces me to attack another player, I
14:27
Speaker 1: don't find that as fun as a game where I
14:29
Speaker 1: can choose whether I'm going to attack or not and
14:32
Speaker 1: that choice becomes part of it, or forces other players
14:35
Speaker 1: to attack me, don't. I don't know. It didn't suit
14:39
Speaker 1: my taste for when I enjoy player on player combat.
14:43
Speaker 1: The art was very pretty. Some of the animals were
14:45
Speaker 1: really cute. Actually put this in my cute animals category
14:49
Speaker 1: because these aren't actual animals. These are fictional animals, but
14:53
Speaker 1: some of them are incredibly adorable. I think I had
14:56
Speaker 1: one that like burrowed underground, and so after the first
15:00
Speaker 1: feeding phase you could turn it sideways and then it
15:02
Speaker 1: couldn't be predicated or whatever. I don't remember exactly how
15:05
Speaker 1: it worked, but I remember something about that, and it
15:08
Speaker 1: was really cute. It was sort of in the neighborhood
15:10
Speaker 1: of one of those mice that has the giant ears
15:13
Speaker 1: or something like that. All in all, I mean, Evolution
15:16
Speaker 1: was interesting as a game system if you get a
15:18
Speaker 1: chance to play it, and this sounds like your kind
15:20
Speaker 1: of game. If the gameplay I described sounded fun to you,
15:22
Speaker 1: even if the my reaction to it didn't, definitely go
15:26
Speaker 1: check it out. It's widely available, should be easy to
15:29
Speaker 1: play without having to work too much at it if
15:32
Speaker 1: you want to go to try. But that was Evolution. Well,
15:35
Speaker 1: that brings me to the end of my walk. Thanks
15:38
Speaker 1: for joining me. I'm not sure when I'm going to
15:39
Speaker 1: publish this. I'll hopefully get it out before the end
15:41
Speaker 1: of the year. If if I do get it out
15:44
Speaker 1: before the end of the year, Happy New Year. I
15:46
Speaker 1: hope you have a great New Year's Eve. I want
15:48
Speaker 1: to talk to you in the new calendar year. If
15:51
Speaker 1: I don't weird. Flashback to something I said before the
15:55
Speaker 1: before twenty twenty five. Ooh, good time machine, all rights
16:00
Speaker 1: writing me a walk today. I hope your next walk
16:02
Speaker 1: is the busins in mind. One by bye, brought to
16:25
Speaker 1: you by Rattle Box