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Flipology, Miaui, Shamans, Electronic Mall Madness, Careers · 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 recorder as I step out of
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: the library and deliver an episode to you while I
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a sunny, very chilly day here in suburb in Chicago.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I'm walking home from the library, and it is a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: little warmer on the walk home than it was on
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the way to the library because I'm walking into the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: sun now, so I got sun on my face and
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: wind at my back instead of sun at my back
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and wind on my face, which was much less pleasant.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I won't have it the whole time because right now
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I'm walking south. When I turn east, the sun will
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: be not at my back, but either way the wind
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: is blowing from the west, so I won't have it
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: on my face at all. Aha, gotcha weather? All right? Well,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: last time I did a weird news segment, I'd be
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: interested to hear what you think of it. But this
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: time I'm going back to the old favorite, the old
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: standby probably the last time this year, because next episode
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: will be the last of my regular episodes and then
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have my top fifty. So in that regard.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Let's do a board game espresso triple shot with one
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: extra shot, so it's a quadruple shot normally in a
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: board game espresso triple shot. Actually, I'm gonna talk about
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: three games and then one game I dust sit off.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: This time, I'm talking about five games, so I don't
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: know where I got quadruple shot. I'm talking about five
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: games this time. None of them are dusty. They're all
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: new games, but two of them are novelty games about
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: which I don't have a lot to say. These are
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: games I played when I was completing my ten for ten.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I did talk about them a little bit during my
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Top of the Stack episode at the beginning of January,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: so hopefully I won't repeat myself too much, but I
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: thought i'd give it a try. So we're gonna do
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: three regular board game espresso conversations of a couple minutes each.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: These are first impressions. These are games I played once
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and don't have a lot more to say about yet.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: But then the other two will be novelty games I
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: played once and so I can't do thorough reviews. Okay,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: enough messing around, let's start with Flipology. Flipology was published
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen by Cheeky Parrot Games designer Rachel Riley
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and artist Tim King's Lynn. Flipology is a game that
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: was brought back to me by a friend who took
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a trip to New Zealand, Thanks Paul. And it is
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a light filler game, takes about ten to fifteen minutes
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: to play, and it's cute. It's a cute, fun game, enjoyable,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: not too hard. So here's how it works. You have
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: a bunch of cards with beautiful animal art on them,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: nice work Tim King's Lynn. And each card has a
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: number on it and then a power at the bottom.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: You're going to get nine cards. On your beginning of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the game, you're gonna pick seven of them and lay
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: them out in a horizontal line in front of you,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: face down. We're going to play three rounds, and on
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: your turn you are going to flip over one of
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the cards and activate its power. Now, the powers are
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: wide ranging and do a ton of different things, but
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of the cards the powers have to do
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: with flipping over other cards, and of course when you
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: flip over another card then its power activates. So the
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: goal by the end of the third round is to
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: have all of your good cards face up, and there
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: are a couple of cards that score if they're face
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: down or score negative points if they're face up, so
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: you might try to do that. There's also one card
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: that someone might have called the Moon, and if they
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: have that, then all the scores are turned over and
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the person who has the lowest points wins. But of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: course there are cards that let you screw with other
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: people's cards too, so it's really hard to flip the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Moon over because other people will flip it over for
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: you flip it back face down. But if you got
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: the Moon, you could do that. You're just gonna go
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: around three times flipping cards, activating the powers. It's an
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: interesting game, very simple, pretty light, lots of player interaction
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: which makes for an entertaining experience, very cute art which
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: makes for an interesting experience. All in all, this is
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: a delightful filler that I think is going to get
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of play for us because it's easy to explain,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it's easy to understand. If people don't understand or can't
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: get it, it's over in fifteen minutes. This is a
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: winner if you have a chance to play it. It's
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: called Flipology, published in twenty nineteen. Next up is another
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: game that I played because Paul brought it. I don't
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: think this was with one was from New Zealand, but
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: he did bring it over on a day that he
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: came to our place to play games. This is Miaui
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: by Bruno Fai Duti with art from Paul Mafaillon. Miaui
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: is spelled m i a ui, kind of like maui
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: with an ie in it. But the idea is that
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: all of the inhabitants of this Pacific island are anthropomorphic cats,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: sort of if cats were the cast of Moana. That's
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the art style, so it's like Pacific islander cats with
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: like spearfishing gear and surfboards. The idea is that you
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: are fishing for fish because you're a cat, and you're
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: trying to get the most points you can. The gameplay
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: is relatively simple. There is a display of cards that
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: are shallow, medium depth, and deep, and each player has
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: a set of cards from one to thirteen and on
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: their turn they're going to play one or everybody is
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: gonna pick one and play it face down. Then you
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: reveal them all whoever played the lowest number so like
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I mean the highest number who have played the number
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: that indicates the deepest dive, so thirteen is the deepest dive.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Who Ever played that card or whatever that number dives
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: deepest and takes the card from the bottom of the column.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Then whoever played the next deepest one takes the middle card,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and whoever played the shallowest one takes the top card.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: The other players get nothing. There's a process for resolving
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: ties that has to do with how close you are
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to the starting player. So if the starting player is
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: in a tie, they're going to win the tie or
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: they're going to be the one who takes the card.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It's not always winning because some of the cards are bad,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: so a big part of the game is deciding when
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: do you play your really good cards, when do you
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: play your mediocre cards. You want to navigate having good
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: things or bad things. There are cards that will eat
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: previous stuff you've taken, so you might score a good
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: fish and then the next round you score a seagull,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: which eats your last fish you scored. Similarly, you might
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: score a jellyfish, which are bad, and then intentionally score
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: a seagull so you can get it to eat the jellyfish,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and then you don't get stuck with the points. It's
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: relatively simple in terms of how those points scorings interact,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: but again, like Flipology, really interesting player interaction because you're
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: trying to read the other players, trying to decide who's
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: going to go for what, When do you want to
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: make your move, when do you want to hold off?
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Because it really stinks to play. You're thirteen at the
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: same time that someone higher up in the turnoorder plays
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: theirs and you get stuck with the middle card or worse,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: two other people play it and you get nothing. So
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: it's an interesting game, like many Bruno Fi Duty games,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: a significant level a player interaction and player scrooage, but
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: pretty fun and again really simple and light, easy to play,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: takes about twenty minutes and enjoyable. So if you get
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: a chance to play Miawi from twenty seventeen, I would
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: take it. That's Zman as the publisher on that one.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: All right. The third game that I got to try,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to talk about this one. Normally I
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: would do the dusted off game now and save the
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: third one for after, but I'm switching it up. So
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the third game I got to try is called Shaman's
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: or Shamans's published in twenty twenty one by Studio H
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: which is the game publishing arm for Heshet Studio, which
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I think publishes books mostly, but it is an international
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: European publishing house. The game that I know best that
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: they publish as Acropolis, which is pretty good. Not quite
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: good enough for me to have bought it, but I
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: definitely would buy that used if I found it. The
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: designer of Shamans is Cidric Chabouse or Shabusit and the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: artist's Maud Shaumel. Shavens is a trick taking game with
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: hidden roles in which players are trying to either help
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the good guys win or help the bad guys win.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: There are these tokens that allow you to assassinate somebody.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: There are actions that allow you to take the tokens,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: so you have to in order to assassinate someone, you
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: have to take the token and then win an assassination attempt.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Like I said, as a trick taker, but it's fairly complex.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: There are these cards in the middle that are connected
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: with each suit, and when a suit, when all the
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: cards of a suit have come out, then the person
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: who completed that suit gets to or the person who
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: won the trick during which that suit was completed, gets
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: to activate it, and like, for instance, they could assassinate somebody,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: and again you're trying to help the good guys win
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: or the bad guys win, and so the assassinate you
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: can take out somebody, but nobody knows who's on the
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: other teams. There are moves you can take to make
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: you kind of clear which team you're on, but that's
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: dangerous to do because everybody has access to the assassination tools,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and if you're too coy about which team you're on,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: you could get assassinated by accident by your own teammates,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: or do the assassinating of your own teammates by accident.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: It's a really interesting mechanism. We played about half a
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: game and then we got interrupted, but I got enough
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: of it to understand the game and to say, frankly, eh,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: it wasn't I didn't really like it. Now maybe this
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: is the kind of game where had I played it
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: all the way through, maybe played it again, maybe I
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: would come to like it a lot. I suspect that's
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the case with Aura Flame, which is a game I
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: talked about in one of these episodes a while ago
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: that had a similar kind of meh effect for me,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: but generally this wasn't my favorite. Trick takers are always
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: a little dicey because you often don't have very much
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: control over what you can do. I also found it
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: really difficult to wrap my brain around the pattern of
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: moving the cards, since you don't have to follow suit
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: in this game, which for a trick taker. A lot
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: of the strategy of a trick taker is leading to
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: draw lower cards so you can make your lower cards
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: more powerful. And the fact that you don't have to
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: follow suit, so like any card you have could remain
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: powerful just by like not following suit, I found really unpleasant,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: just as somebody who had a lot of expectations about
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: how trick taker should work. So I kept kind of operating,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and it's my fault, I'll get it. I didn't adapt.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: I am a dinosaur dying from the meteorite fallout, but
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I did find that frustrating. And maybe again, this is
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: one of those things where with sufficient play, I would
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: have wrapped my brain around the way cards move around
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: and would have enjoyed that better, but as it was,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't. So Shamans from twenty twenty one was a
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: middling review. For me, I'm short on time, but I
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: do want to take talk quickly about two novelty games
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I played in December, on December thirty first, to be precise,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: right before the time ran out for my ten for ten.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: This is electronic model Madness, designed by Michael Gray, published
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: by Hasbro in nineteen eighty nine, and Careers, designed by
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: James Cook Brown in nineteen fifty five. The edition I
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: had was published by Parker Brothers in the seventies. Both
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: of these are sort of lifestyle games about moving around
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a board and doing stuff. In mal Madness, you are
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: trying to find the perfect combination of goods that your
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: particular character likes. It's a roll and move game, so
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you're moving from store to store and you're trying to
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: buy the things that fit your shopping list while also
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: not spending too much money, because if you spend too
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: much money, then you have to go to the ATM,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and that takes up turns to go to the ATM
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and get money out. Because it's electronic, there's this thing
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: where you're pushing a button and it talks to you,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and it sort of lets you know whether you buy
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: things or not. Sometimes there'll be a saale a store.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: You'll go to a store and they'll be like, sorry,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: we're all out of that. The weird thing is like,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: you can come back later and they'll have it. So
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: there's a weird element of like very hyper fast restocking
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: that doesn't really make a lot of sense. But otherwise
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty interesting It's a pretty interesting little novelty game.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't suggest it as a game that you'd want
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: to play if you're in the mood for a serious game,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: but we had a goofy time having the thing talk
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: to us and running around and buying stuff in the mall.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty nine, that was Electronic Mall Madness. The
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: other game was Careers from Parker Brothers. This game is
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting because it imagines trying to get through life
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: and succeeding. And the two things that were much more
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: interesting for it than or about it than a game
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: of this era usually has is the wind condition and
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: dice mitigation. So the wind condition was really interesting. There
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: are two kinds of points you can score in the game.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: There is happiness points and money, and the way the
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: game works is that you need both. You want to
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: have lots of money. You want to have lots of happiness.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Oh maybe there's a third one. Yeah, there's three happiness
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: points money, and it's the other one fameiness, money and fame.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And so there are three things you can earn. And
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the game, before you play, you
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: pick you have to get a combination of fifty points
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: or sixty points, but you get to pick how you
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: on to distribute those sixty points. You could go twenty happiness,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: twenty fame, twenty money, or you could do it like
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I did. Twenty I had ten money, ten fame, forty happiness,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: with the idea that I was going to lean into
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: earning happiness. Now, had I gotten twenty twenty twenty, I
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: would have won, because I ended up getting kind of
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: an even spread of everything, and I had at the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: end of the game, I was one turn away from winning,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: and I had like thirty nine happiness, twenty eight money,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: and twenty three fame. But whatever. Yeah, And so, like
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of games in this era, it's a roll
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: and move game. You roll the dice, you move your piece,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: you do what it says on the board. But the
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: thing that makes it interesting is that throughout the board,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: there these little paths where you can start a career,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: so you could land on science and decide, ah, I'm
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: going to start a science career. And then you go
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: through the Science path and instead of rolling two icy
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: roll once you go through it a little slower, but
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: it's a small loop, and when you come out of there,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you achieve one pat one arc through the Science path.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: And the thing is, if you go through there three times,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: you get this extra bonus and you get stuff for
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: having done that. But you also, over the course of
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the game, you get quite a few dice mitigation tokens
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: which allow you to or cards. There's achievement cards or
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: success card, experience cards I think they're called, which allow
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: you to decide to move a certain distance rather than
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: rolling dice. And that's really nice because as the game
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: goes along, you get better and better at choosing where
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: you're going to go rather than just randomly going somewhere,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: which worked really well, I actually thought. I mean, the
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: game it's still a lot of luck, and it's still
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: pretty simple, but those two mechanisms gave it a lot
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: more spirit and heart than a lot of games from
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: this era, and I like it quite a bit more
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: than I thought I was going to. So if you're
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: going to play a novelty game from that era, I
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: think Careers isn't that bad. So that's Careers from nineteen
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: fifty five, designed to by James Cook Brown in the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies version had art from Marta Olson. That's h
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: l SSN. So have you played any of these games? Listener?
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you. You can head over
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: to board game Geekild three T six nine and post there.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: We've got a lively conversation started about books we read
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: late recently. Thank you Gabriel for starting that. Yeah, I'd
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You could also reach out
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: to me through board game gee against direct messaging. Wombat
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: nine two nine is my user name there, and you
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: could also send me a note via email Brendan at
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: rataboxgames dot com. I don't check that super often, but
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: you could try that. All right, that's about it for me.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me on my walk. I hope your
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: next walk is as pleasant as mine was.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Bye bye.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Brought to you by rattle Box