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Dive; Civilization; The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire; Set (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

0:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast where I
0:05
Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I step off the
0:07
Speaker 1: train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
0:10
Speaker 1: I'm Brendan Riley. Well, greetings, listeners. It's an unseasonably cold
0:24
Speaker 1: day here in suburban Chicago. We're more than halfway through March,
0:27
Speaker 1: and it snowed last night and the snow is still
0:29
Speaker 1: on the ground today. So we're hovering in the mid twenties,
0:33
Speaker 1: which is chilly and unpleasant when you are in March.
0:37
Speaker 1: In March, I don't want to be in the twenties, thirties.
0:40
Speaker 1: I can tolerate twenties, no, thank you, but it is.
0:43
Speaker 2: What it is.
0:44
Speaker 1: So I'm walking home. I thought I would talk to
0:46
Speaker 1: you a little bit about some board games. That's right,
0:49
Speaker 1: it's time for a board game Espresso Triple Shot.
0:53
Speaker 2: Order up.
0:54
Speaker 1: The board game Espresso Triple Shot is an episode segment
0:57
Speaker 1: in which I talk about three games I tried for
0:59
Speaker 1: the first time recently and one game I dusted off.
1:02
Speaker 1: It's a chance for me to talk with you a
1:04
Speaker 1: little bit about what I've been playing, So let's jump
1:06
Speaker 1: right in.
1:07
Speaker 2: First game I'm going to talk about today is Dive
1:10
Speaker 2: This is.
1:10
Speaker 1: A twenty twenty one game from designer Romaine Caterjean and
1:15
Speaker 1: Anthony Perone, with art from Alexander bon Volo, and it
1:21
Speaker 1: was published by sit Down Games sit Down as the publisher.
1:25
Speaker 1: Dive is one of those games that I will probably
1:29
Speaker 1: keep in my collection longer than it deserves because it's interesting.
1:35
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's a game that's just neat. It's a cool
1:38
Speaker 1: idea you can show somebody. They'll be like, oh, that
1:40
Speaker 1: was neat. No, I don't think anyone's going to play
1:42
Speaker 1: Dive and be like, oh, that is my favorite game.
1:43
Speaker 1: I want to play that every week. But it's definitely
1:46
Speaker 1: the kind of game you could show somebody I think
1:48
Speaker 1: it's neat, maybe they want to play it a few times.
1:50
Speaker 1: The way it's themed around people free diving for oysters
1:56
Speaker 1: and fish, that's the theme in the game. You are
2:00
Speaker 1: going to dive five times, and each dive your goal
2:03
Speaker 1: is to go as far down as you can getting
2:06
Speaker 1: capturing fish and oysters and other things when you can.
2:10
Speaker 1: The way that the dive works on your turn, you're
2:13
Speaker 1: going to predict. You're going to set five levels of
2:17
Speaker 1: the dive, and on each level you're going to give
2:19
Speaker 1: yourself a speed, and then you're going to say whether
2:22
Speaker 1: or not there are sharks on that level. And then
2:25
Speaker 1: the way it works is it looks you reveal each level,
2:28
Speaker 1: and if there are sharks on the level and you
2:32
Speaker 1: said there were not any, then your dive is over. Similarly,
2:36
Speaker 1: if there are not sharks on the level and you
2:38
Speaker 1: said there were some, your dive is over. So if
2:40
Speaker 1: you get the shark prediction wrong for any level, your
2:44
Speaker 1: dive is over. You only get what you got so far. Meanwhile,
2:48
Speaker 1: the speed with which you get to each level, governed
2:52
Speaker 1: by the child the token that you put in for
2:55
Speaker 1: that level, determines whether you get the fish or not,
3:00
Speaker 1: or the thing, the valuable thing on that level or not.
3:03
Speaker 2: So each level has a some levels have a thing.
3:06
Speaker 1: So what do I mean by levels, I haven't explained
3:08
Speaker 1: to the central mechanism. So in the middle of the
3:10
Speaker 1: board there is a cardboard, a rectangular cardboard holder holding
3:15
Speaker 1: a stack of translucent cards, transparent cards with stuff on them,
3:22
Speaker 1: and they are tinted blue, and each card has stuff
3:27
Speaker 1: drawn on them. Some of them have like little bits
3:29
Speaker 1: of coral, some of them have little fish, some of
3:32
Speaker 1: them have points scoring things, some of them have nonsense
3:36
Speaker 1: that doesn't score points, and then a lot of them
3:38
Speaker 1: have sharks. These are put into a stack, and that
3:44
Speaker 1: a lot of them have holes in them too, And
3:47
Speaker 1: then these are put into a stack, and you look
3:51
Speaker 1: at the stack and try to figure out which things
3:56
Speaker 1: that you can see in the stack are ware in
3:58
Speaker 1: the top five layers. So when you're looky, you're looking
4:02
Speaker 1: at the pile of cards and trying to figure out
4:06
Speaker 1: which layers have sharks on them and which layers don't,
4:08
Speaker 1: and then which layers you want to swim fast to
4:10
Speaker 1: get to so that you can get the points scoring thing,
4:13
Speaker 1: trying to anticipate which of your opponents will or won't
4:17
Speaker 1: hurry to a thing.
4:19
Speaker 2: Like I said, it's an interesting game.
4:22
Speaker 1: There's some cleverness to it in terms of trying to
4:25
Speaker 1: anticipate which things your opponents are going to go for,
4:29
Speaker 1: although on the one play of it we had, the
4:32
Speaker 1: reality was most of the time people got the shark
4:35
Speaker 1: question wrong in one direction or another, and then they're
4:38
Speaker 1: dive ended. So if you managed to get the shark
4:42
Speaker 1: question right about all five layers, you generally got to
4:46
Speaker 1: have the thing on the last layer, because you're the
4:48
Speaker 1: only one who made it there. It's a, like I said,
4:54
Speaker 1: an interesting little game that's a silly gimmick, but fun.
4:59
Speaker 2: The the cover is really nice. I don't know.
5:01
Speaker 1: Anything about the veracity of the theme. It wasn't clear
5:07
Speaker 1: to me if this was meant to be a specific
5:09
Speaker 1: place or just generally people free diving in Polynesian Pacific Islands.
5:14
Speaker 1: The people depicted in the game look like islanders. They're drawn,
5:20
Speaker 1: I think in a reasonably respectful way, not without too
5:22
Speaker 1: much stereotypes. Except to say that the game depicts people
5:29
Speaker 1: at a sort of no name Pacific island, and I
5:32
Speaker 1: believe that's the case, but don't hold me to that.
5:35
Speaker 1: It may be specified in the rules that I missed it.
5:37
Speaker 1: That is Dive from twenty twenty one an interesting game,
5:41
Speaker 1: definitely worth trying if you get a chance.
5:42
Speaker 2: I got.
5:43
Speaker 1: I picked up the copy in that warehouse sale I've
5:45
Speaker 1: talked about, so I think I paid ten bucks for it,
5:47
Speaker 1: and you know it's worth it. I'm gonna play it
5:50
Speaker 1: a couple times at least, and I'll probably hang on
5:53
Speaker 1: to it for a while, just as an example of
5:54
Speaker 1: an interesting choice. Next up, we have Civilization, published in
6:00
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty designed by Francis Tresham with art by Ed
6:05
Speaker 1: Dovey and several other people. The edition I played was
6:08
Speaker 1: the Avalon Hill Bookshelf edition, although it looks like it
6:11
Speaker 1: has been published in a number of other ways. If
6:14
Speaker 1: you wanted to play this game now, you'd be looking
6:16
Speaker 1: for a game called Mega Civilization, which is the way
6:18
Speaker 1: it's published now, because somehow along the way, sid Meyer's
6:22
Speaker 1: Civilization became the board game that got to have the
6:25
Speaker 1: name Civilization, and so the Francis Tresham game is not there.
6:30
Speaker 1: I have not played the Sid Meyers game, so I
6:32
Speaker 1: don't know how related they are or not. But so
6:35
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Francis Tresham game here. I will
6:38
Speaker 1: also say I am talking about the first forty percent
6:42
Speaker 1: of a game of Civilization. I was at an event.
6:45
Speaker 1: We had four hours, four and a half hours, and
6:47
Speaker 1: we had five hours to play. And the person there
6:51
Speaker 1: we were trying to figure out a six player game,
6:53
Speaker 1: and one of the people's like, well, I have Civilization.
6:55
Speaker 1: It plays six and I'm like, well, how long does
6:56
Speaker 1: that take? Because I had in my head it takes
6:58
Speaker 1: a very long time. And he's like, oh, get done
7:00
Speaker 1: about four hours. I'm like, okay, yeah, no, we couldn't
7:04
Speaker 1: We played four and a half hours. Then when we quit,
7:07
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, it probably would have taken us till midnight.
7:10
Speaker 1: I was like, midnight, that's a game, full pat. I
7:13
Speaker 1: am certainly guilty of occasionally underestimating how long a game
7:17
Speaker 1: is going to take. In my head, the game takes
7:19
Speaker 1: two hours, and it actually takes three. I've done that
7:21
Speaker 1: a number of times. That is a miss. That is
7:24
Speaker 1: certainly a misrepresentation. And if you had a strict two
7:27
Speaker 1: hour time limit and I told you a game took
7:28
Speaker 1: two hours and it took three, I could see you
7:30
Speaker 1: being mad at me. But saying a game takes four
7:33
Speaker 1: hours when it takes twelve, that's a whole.
7:35
Speaker 2: Another That's a whole nother ballgame. Anyway.
7:38
Speaker 1: So the game is you start as one of the
7:41
Speaker 1: pre modern civilizations in the Mediterranean cradle. So you could
7:46
Speaker 1: be Egypt, you could be the sort of pre Italians.
7:49
Speaker 1: You could be, I was Babylon, you could be any
7:52
Speaker 1: number of these early civilizations. In the game, you are
7:55
Speaker 1: managing your population, you're managing your crops, you're trying to
8:00
Speaker 1: expand while also watching out for a variety of different things.
8:04
Speaker 1: The main engine of the game seems to be taking
8:07
Speaker 1: land and building cities. Cities allow you to get trade cards,
8:12
Speaker 1: and the trade cards get better the more cities you have,
8:14
Speaker 1: So if you have a lot of cities, then you
8:16
Speaker 1: get to take cards from these bigger trading decks or
8:20
Speaker 1: higher number trading decks that have more valuable things on them,
8:23
Speaker 1: and then you spend your trading cards to buy technologies
8:27
Speaker 1: which help make your civilization better. We had a really
8:29
Speaker 1: good time. I will say it was interesting, certainly not
8:33
Speaker 1: in the category of I wouldn't want to play that again.
8:35
Speaker 1: I would want to play it again at some point.
8:37
Speaker 1: I think I might want to play it again with
8:39
Speaker 1: four people who are four or five people who are
8:42
Speaker 1: sufficiently good at games that we could have a couple
8:45
Speaker 1: sideboard games going as well, because there's a lot of
8:48
Speaker 1: down like when it's your turn to expand your civilization,
8:51
Speaker 1: because there's a population growth phase that's easily five minutes
8:54
Speaker 1: per player, so if you're playing six players, you do
8:57
Speaker 1: your five minutes and then you got twenty minutes sitting around, which,
9:01
Speaker 1: to be fair, you do spend that time strategizing. Like
9:03
Speaker 1: I never felt bored during the game, but I have
9:05
Speaker 1: a high tolerance for downtime in games, so that is
9:08
Speaker 1: my biggest criticism of it. It's also stunningly random in
9:13
Speaker 1: its punishments. So one of the cards that you can get,
9:16
Speaker 1: and I'm specifically thinking of this one, one of the
9:18
Speaker 1: cards you can get is a volcano card. When you
9:20
Speaker 1: get the volcano card, if you have a volcano in
9:22
Speaker 1: one of the areas you own, it erupts and it
9:25
Speaker 1: kills all your people in that region, or in the
9:27
Speaker 1: case of Italy, the volcanos on the border between two regions,
9:31
Speaker 1: so it kills both regions. If you have a city there,
9:33
Speaker 1: the city's destroyed. If you don't have a volcano, when
9:36
Speaker 1: you draw the volcano card, then you get an earthquake
9:37
Speaker 1: in one of your cities is destroyed. So no matter what,
9:40
Speaker 1: when you draw that card, you lose in the city. Well,
9:42
Speaker 1: we played I think five turns, and one person drew
9:45
Speaker 1: the volcano card three times. So we're a big enough group.
9:49
Speaker 1: We were cycling the level one deck over and over again,
9:51
Speaker 1: and the volcano card is in the Level one deck,
9:53
Speaker 1: so just on bad luck, this one person drew the
9:55
Speaker 1: volcano card three times. So by the time we got
9:58
Speaker 1: to turn five, I had nine cities, which is the
10:00
Speaker 1: most you can have. She had one because she kept
10:04
Speaker 1: having her second city get destroyed. Now there's an argament
10:06
Speaker 1: maybe after the second time because it's destroyed, don't build
10:08
Speaker 1: up by the volcano. But you know, if she didn't anyway,
10:11
Speaker 1: that really stunk for her. I think she did not
10:13
Speaker 1: have a So it's an interesting game, and I'm interested
10:17
Speaker 1: to play the night. I have the two thousand the
10:19
Speaker 1: Year two thousand games sid Meyer's Civilization. I think it's
10:22
Speaker 1: the first edition of that board game. They've done two
10:24
Speaker 1: or three now, so I'd like to try that and
10:27
Speaker 1: see how they compare. But it was interesting and I'm
10:30
Speaker 1: glad to have played it, or I played a part
10:32
Speaker 1: of it anyway, So that Civilization for nineteen eighty designed
10:35
Speaker 1: by Francis Tresham. Next time I dusted off the game set.
10:39
Speaker 1: It had been several years since I played set. We
10:41
Speaker 1: played it at my college board game club. I remember
10:44
Speaker 1: this one person bringing a copy one time and having
10:48
Speaker 1: a lot of fun with it, And then I found
10:49
Speaker 1: a copy of Goodwill, so I acquired it for the
10:51
Speaker 1: board game club and we got to play it. It's
10:53
Speaker 1: a good time. Set is an interesting game if you've
10:55
Speaker 1: never played it before.
10:56
Speaker 2: Oh.
10:56
Speaker 1: It's designed by Marsha Falco with art by John Langdon.
11:00
Speaker 1: It's published in nineteen eighty eight, and it's like Quirkle,
11:03
Speaker 1: it's its own company. There's the set set International as
11:06
Speaker 1: a game, a company that just publishes This is a
11:08
Speaker 1: pattern recognition game where you have cards that have one, two,
11:14
Speaker 1: or three shapes on them, and the shapes have so
11:19
Speaker 1: there's a number of shapes one, two, or three. There's
11:22
Speaker 1: the shape of the shapes. They can be diamonds, or
11:25
Speaker 1: ovals or squigglies. I think that's the three diamonds ovals
11:29
Speaker 1: of squigglies. And then they can be one of three
11:32
Speaker 1: different colors and one of three different patterns, either solid
11:36
Speaker 1: or patterned or empty. So that's a lot of different variables.
11:40
Speaker 1: I just described. What you're supposed to do is find
11:42
Speaker 1: a set of three cards where for each characteristic, the
11:46
Speaker 1: qualities of those cards are either all of the same
11:48
Speaker 1: or all different. For example, maybe you find a set
11:51
Speaker 1: of red squigglies that are all solid but are numbered one, two, three.
11:56
Speaker 1: There's one squiggly, two squiggly three squeeze, so they're the
11:58
Speaker 1: same because they're all read. They're the same because the
12:00
Speaker 1: solid the same because they're squiggies. They're different because there's
12:03
Speaker 1: one on one two and second card three on the
12:05
Speaker 1: sets a set of three cards where most of the
12:08
Speaker 1: stuff is the same but one thing for each quality.
12:10
Speaker 1: It either has to be all the same or all different.
12:12
Speaker 1: And what you're doing trying to do is find a
12:14
Speaker 1: set of three cards. You stay set, You point out
12:16
Speaker 1: the three, the other players confirm yes, that's a set,
12:19
Speaker 1: You collect it. Then the game person who collected the
12:21
Speaker 1: most sets win. It's fun, it is brain burning. It is, however,
12:25
Speaker 1: the kind of game I feel like where I mean,
12:27
Speaker 1: you certainly can get better at it if you play
12:29
Speaker 1: it a lot, but I feel like generally when you
12:32
Speaker 1: start playing, by the time you get halfway through, whoever
12:34
Speaker 1: has gotten the most sets by halfway through the game
12:36
Speaker 1: is probably gonna win. You generally don't get better at
12:38
Speaker 1: it fast enough to win over somebody else. So like
12:41
Speaker 1: the skill level you have coming in, it doesn't determine
12:44
Speaker 1: the winner. But it's a huge So that is set
12:46
Speaker 1: an interesting game, not one i'd want to play a lot,
12:49
Speaker 1: although I think if I did play it a lot.
12:50
Speaker 1: And finally I got a chance to play The Godfather
12:52
Speaker 1: Corleon's Empire. This is a twenty seventeen game from designer
12:56
Speaker 1: Eric Lang with art from Nicolas Fructus, Carl Kopinski, and
13:01
Speaker 1: Richard Wright, published by Command Games or Siemon The Godfather.
13:05
Speaker 1: Corleon's Empire is an area control gangster game with a
13:10
Speaker 1: really interesting set of mechanisms that interplay in really interesting ways.
13:15
Speaker 1: You have a group of soldiers of foot soldiers and
13:19
Speaker 1: family members who work for you, and you put them
13:22
Speaker 1: out in different places and you collect different resources, and
13:24
Speaker 1: those resources you can do you can use two complete contracts.
13:29
Speaker 1: The contracts get you more resources or get you money,
13:32
Speaker 1: and then you use that money to buy more soldiers
13:36
Speaker 1: I think, to complete more contracts and so on, and
13:39
Speaker 1: your goal is to bank the most money. There's a
13:42
Speaker 1: really interesting element where you have this little box. It's
13:45
Speaker 1: like a briefcase, a suitcase, and there are various times
13:48
Speaker 1: in the game when you can put money into the
13:50
Speaker 1: suitcase or.
13:50
Speaker 2: Take money out of the suitcase.
13:52
Speaker 1: At the end of the game, the money in the
13:54
Speaker 1: suitcase is your score, but you can't spend the money
13:58
Speaker 1: in the suitcase. In order to to buy stuff during
14:04
Speaker 1: the game, you have to spend money that you have
14:06
Speaker 1: in your hand, so there's this interesting element where you
14:09
Speaker 1: have to decide how much money to bank, knowing that
14:11
Speaker 1: the money you bank is no longer available to you
14:13
Speaker 1: to help power your engine by which you get more money.
14:17
Speaker 1: There is a secondary element that's really interesting. At the
14:20
Speaker 1: end of each round, you get to try to bribe
14:22
Speaker 1: these city officials, and you bribe them using money from
14:26
Speaker 1: your suitcase. So there's an element where you're deciding how
14:29
Speaker 1: much money from your suitcase to spend in order to
14:32
Speaker 1: decide how much to bribe them for. It is an
14:34
Speaker 1: area control game, so not surprisingly it's very stabby. There's
14:38
Speaker 1: a bunch of cards that allow you to do stuff
14:39
Speaker 1: like wipe out all the soldiers in one region or whatever.
14:43
Speaker 1: So there is a lot of take that, but I
14:45
Speaker 1: think you would expect that in a game about mobsters.
14:48
Speaker 2: But the theme works pretty well.
14:49
Speaker 1: In the game. You are underlings in Corleone Empire, Vito Corleoni,
14:55
Speaker 1: the Mylon Brando character. So we played it once. I
14:58
Speaker 1: thought it was pretty interesting. I would definitely play it
15:00
Speaker 1: again if asked to. I certainly would pick up a
15:04
Speaker 1: copy if I found one on the cheap, because I
15:07
Speaker 1: know people who have it. I probably wouldn't go out
15:09
Speaker 1: of my way to buy a copy. Not on the cheap,
15:11
Speaker 1: but yeah, enjoyable, really good components, interesting gameplay. That's the
15:17
Speaker 1: godfather Cole Oons. Well, that brings me to the end
15:20
Speaker 1: of this episode of board Game Espresso.
15:22
Speaker 2: I would love to hear what you've been playing lately.
15:24
Speaker 1: You can let me know about heading over to board
15:25
Speaker 1: game Geek guild three two sixty nine and answering the
15:28
Speaker 1: questions there.
15:29
Speaker 2: Posting in the guild.
15:31
Speaker 1: You could send me a message on board game Geek
15:33
Speaker 1: user name Wombat nine two nine. You could also just
15:36
Speaker 1: send me an email Brendan at radoboxgames dot com. Any
15:39
Speaker 1: of those channels would help me know what you've been playing.
15:43
Speaker 1: It would help me better discuss that well. I want
15:47
Speaker 1: to say thank you for joining me on my walk today.
15:50
Speaker 1: I hope your next locks as pleasant as mine was.
15:52
Speaker 2: By bye. Brought to you by rattle Box