Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Wyatt Earp, Thunder Road Vendetta, Brian Boru, Downforce (revisited)

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Wyatt Earp, Thunder Road Vendetta, Brian Boru, Downforce (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
• 0:08
  as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk
• 0:10
  home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a
• 0:23
  lovely day here in suburban Chicago. The sun is setting. It's around four
• 0:27
  o'clock, and it's got a weird temperature today. It's colder than it has
• 0:33
  been the last few weeks. I'm wearing my stocking cap and I'm not wearing
• 0:37
  gloves, but my hands are a little chilly. But it is February,
• 0:40
  so that's the right temperature for that kind of day. But it feels like
• 0:44
  it should be warmer anyway. It's weird. Well, I thought to you
• 0:47
  I would talk to you today about some games I played for the first time.
• 0:52
  These are games from back in December. Still, I'm working through that
• 0:54
  list, getting caught up. That's what happens when you go two months without
• 0:58
  making an episode. I am working on my best of twenty twenty two lists,
• 1:03
  which is coming soon. I also am due to do a new best
• 1:08
  top or top fifty list. I'm not sure when I'll get to that.
• 1:11
  It's been pretty busy lately, so finding time to do that has been tricky,
• 1:17
  But it has been more than two years since I made a top fifty
• 1:19
  and it's probably time to do it again, all right. So to start
• 1:23
  with, so this is a board game Espresso Triple Shot. That's the sound
• 1:30
  of espresso. The board game Espresso Triple Shot is a short review episode where
• 1:34
  I talk about give sort of first impressions of three games I played for the
• 1:40
  first time recently, and often one game I dusted off as well. So
• 1:45
  that's let's just jump right in. So the three games I'm going to talk
• 1:48
  about are all games that I played when I visited my friend Chris upon visiting
• 1:53
  Minnesota. Chris is a regular listener. Hi Chris. When I was in
• 1:56
  Minnesota, I got a chance to go around his place and play some games
• 2:00
  with him and his friends. And these are the games we've played, or
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  three of them anyway. So the first game I want to talk about is
• 2:06
  called wyatt Irp. Wyatt Irp is a classic, and this game is apparently
• 2:10
  part of the Mystery Rummy ouvra, but it isn't actually called Mystery Rummy Something
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  Something, which the other ones do have Mystery Rummy in the title. This
• 2:19
  one's called wyatt Earp. Thematically, you are sheriffs in the Old West and
• 2:23
  you're trying to catch outlaws who have been causing trouble. The game has a
• 2:29
  kind of Old West look and feel to it. It's played with kind of
• 2:31
  cards that look like standard poker cards, and then there are some images of
• 2:38
  old Western fellas and ladies with wanted posters, and so what you're doing is
• 2:45
  you're playing down sort of rummy style sets of cards depicting the person that you're
• 2:52
  trying to arrest, and then the person who plays the most points for that
• 2:57
  person that when they're trying to arrest gets to take the card for them and
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  get points. It's a hand management, set collection style game. A little
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  bit of ladder style work there, but a lot of it is sort of
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  just balancing when you choose to put things out and where you're going to put
• 3:15
  them. This was a fun game, I can see. It's the sort
• 3:17
  of game that's like a twenty minute filler with a lot of thought to it.
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  If you were to play with a group that played it regularly, I
• 3:23
  bet it would be very fulfilling on a first play, just kind of getting
• 3:28
  the hang of it. I had a good time, certainly, but some
• 3:31
  combination of the theme and the gameplay didn't spark a lot of inspiration for me
• 3:37
  to come back and pick it up again. I don't think I would probably
• 3:40
  buy it, although if I found it at like Goodwill, I would probably
• 3:45
  pick up a copy, But barring that, I don't think I would pick
• 3:47
  up wide er for retail or even used game prices. Nonetheless, a fun
• 3:53
  time, and if you get a chance to try it, it might be
• 3:57
  more fun for you than it was for me. That's why att RP.
• 4:00
  I believe Ego Griffin was the publisher, but I don't remember. It's from
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  the mid two thousands, so you're definitely not buying a new copy of it
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  at this point. The next game I want to talk about we played was
• 4:10
  thunder Road Vendetta. So thunder Road is one of the latest, if not
• 4:15
  the latest game to come out from restoration games. Restoration games philosophy is to
• 4:20
  take classic games that have a lot of nostalgia and love but maybe are lacking
• 4:27
  in contemporary game design innovations and bring those games up to modern standards while still
• 4:34
  maintaining the old philosophy or the old magic that made the games fun and bring
• 4:40
  them out in a new packaging with new art that's fun to play. In
• 4:44
  particular, thunder Road was a game back in the day that was sort of
• 4:48
  like a board game version of Mad Max, and thunder Road Vendetta is exactly
• 4:54
  that. Each player represents a faction, and as part of a faction,
• 4:59
  you have a small car, a medium car, a large car, and
• 5:01
  a helicopter. And over the course of the game, your cars are blasting
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  through the wasteland and your goal is to get one of your cars across the
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  finish line before any other player gets across the finish line. When you cross
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  the finish line, if you're the only player to make it across in that
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  turn, you win. I think if someone else makes it across in the
• 5:23
  same turn, then whoever got further across wins, but I'm not sure.
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  The gameplay is relatively simple. Each of your cars gets to move. When
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  you move, you're going to maneuver around obstacles. You're going to set yourself
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  up to shoot at cars in front of you to dodge things. You have
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  these helicopters that you can place on the board that will shoot at cars going
• 5:43
  by. There's oil slicks, there's special powers. It is sort of it's
• 5:47
  pretty fun, but it's kind of the height of what, in many circles
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  is often called a meritrash gaming, really massy gameplay, fiddly and fun.
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  You certainly can and we actually did have somebody who had I think two of
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  their three vehicles get destroyed in the first turn, one of them before they
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  ever got to move it. Or maybe that's not quite because you can't shoot
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  at somebody until they're off the first tile, although maybe it crashed I don't
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  recall. But it is certainly a game where the chaos could result in a
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  lot of stuff happening to you that you have no control of, and that's
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  part of the idea of the game. There's dice rolling, there's explosions,
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  and it's a good time. The pieces are fun, the cars look cute.
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  The board has lots of tiles that give you different kinds of things to
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  look at. We were playing with an expansion that allowed somebody to use a
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  team of motorcycles instead of a team of three cars, so they had five
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  motorcycles instead, and the motorcycles are fast but extremely vulnerable, so they get
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  more of them. All in all, like the art Venda and thunder Road
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  Vendertta is pretty strong. It's got that kind of Mondo style limited color palette
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  dramatic reminds me of the poster for death Proof if you remember that, the
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  crentin Tarantino, grindhouse style movie. So I had a lot of fun with
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  it. Ben with thunder Road, I would happily play it again if somebody
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  got it out. It's not the sort of game that my family would enjoy.
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  Maybe my son, but honestly probably not even him, in which case
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  there's little purpose for me picking up a copy. But I would happily play
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  it if somebody else had a copy for the theme alone. And you know,
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  I like a good time ameritrashy, silly game, and that's what this
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  is. So if you think it'd be fun to drive cars through the wasteland
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  and crash and blow up stuff at chute people, then thunder Road Vendetta is
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  probably for you to try. Okay, next up I did. While I
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  was in Minnesota. I also got to visit with some family and they had
• 7:51
  a copy of Downforce, and I believe it was actually the first time I've
• 7:56
  played Downforce on a table before that I've played a number of games of it
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  online on board game Arena, so I counted it as a game to play.
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  This is a game I had played before, not a game I was
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  new to, but it was my first time playing it on the physical table.
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  It had been more than a year, though, so I'm calling it
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  a game I dusted off. Down Force is another Restoration Games game, and
• 8:18
  it's a classic in the car racing genre. In Downforce, you at the
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  beginning of the game, you bid to purchase a car, or more than
• 8:28
  one car if you want, and these cars have special powers attached to them,
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  so part of what you're buying is the car with the ability to do
• 8:37
  something. It's a minor spiff, a minor game breaking rule that lets you
• 8:43
  do something a little bit better than your competitors, but generally they're not game
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  breaking. You get a deck of cards, and on the deck of cards
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  there are these sort of tracks with different colors and numbers on them, and
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  the goal is to win with your car, but also each round there are
• 9:01
  each game, there are three spots where once a car passes that spot,
• 9:05
  everybody has to bet. They like place their first bet, place their second
• 9:09
  bet, place, their third bet and at the end of the game,
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  you win money based on where you bet which cars you bet would finish where.
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  And you can just sort of like double down and triple down betting on
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  the same car over and over again, or you can hedge your bets by
• 9:24
  betting on multiple cars. Of course, if you bet on one car over
• 9:28
  and over again and that car wins, you're in the catbird seat. But
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  if they lose then you get nothing, So there's a there's a gamble to
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  the betting, which isn't surprising. You also get an award for the place
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  that your car finishes in as well, because you own the car. Downforce
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  is a simple game. Oh and the cards that you play to move the
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  cars have like I said, stripes and numbers based on the colors of the
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  cars, So on your turn you're not just moving your car, you're moving
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  a bunch of cars. And one of the things that can have and is
• 10:00
  you play cards in a way that are designed to make it hard for other
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  people to play cards that let them move their car as well, because like
• 10:09
  thunder Road, actually as you're playing, the track gets blocked by the cars
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  in front, and so you have to find the right time to kind of
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  scooch by or use a big card to accelerate. I'm generally not a huge
• 10:24
  fan of racing games, particularly car racing, but of the games I've played,
• 10:28
  Downforce is among the better ones. I still think I like automobiles better.
• 10:33
  I like the bag building part of it, but generally, especially as
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  an entry level game, Downforce is really solid, pretty fun, and easy
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  to learn. So I've also seen it. Because it's been around a while,
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  they made a deal with Target and stuff. You can probably find a
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  copy relatively inexpensive, which is always a nice bonus for a solid entry level
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  game. So that's Downforce from Renegade Games, well worth checking out. The
• 11:00
  last game I played at Chris's house that I wanted to talk about today is
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  a game that I enjoyed so much I'm spoiling it here that I went and
• 11:07
  bought a copy for myself. This is Brian Boru, High King of Ireland.
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  Now, on the face of it, this isn't a game that I
• 11:15
  thought I would like one. While the box art is beautiful and the art
• 11:18
  on the cards is very nice, the game art on the board is extremely
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  simple, to the point of being reductively like not attractive. Because it's so
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  reduced it reminds me a little bit of the age of steam art from Ian
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  O'Toole, which has incredibly simple, crisp graphic design which is easy to read,
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  but I think just looks too simple to be pleasurable aesthetically, and that's
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  the way that Brian brew Board looks. It's very plain, although really easy
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  to read, which is probably the most important thing for a area control game.
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  Designed by Peter Sylvester published by Osprey Games, and Brian Borrew has a
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  really compelling mix of mechanisms. It's got a deck of cards and at the
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  beginning of each round your delt eight cards and you draft them. You keep
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  two past their hand, take two past their hand until you have eight cards
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  that you've drafted, and then the game is played over a series of tricks.
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  So it's a trick taking game in which the winner of the trick gains
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  control of one of the villages in Ireland and all the other people in the
• 12:31
  trick get to activate the cards to get bonuses. So the way it works
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  is there are three colors. There's red, yellow, and blue, and
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  then there are also cards that are white. Now the white cards are wild,
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  so they count in each round as the color of the town that is
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  being disputed. So basically the way that you play a trick is that the
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  person who won the last trick gets to pick a city or a town to
• 13:01
  fight over, and they put this little ring around the town so everybody knows
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  which time you're fighting over, and then everybody and then they have to play
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  a card that is the color of that town or white, because again white
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  is wild always matches the color of the town. Then, having done that,
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  then the other players all play, and they may play a card of
• 13:20
  the same color, or they may play a card of a different color.
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  They may play a card of the same value or of a lower value,
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  or they could play higher. If they play a card of a higher value
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  and it's either the color of the city or white, then they win the
• 13:35
  trick. If they play a card of lower value or a card of a
• 13:39
  different color, say it was a city the red, they play blue or
• 13:43
  yellow, then they lose the trick. Well, after the trick is resolved,
• 13:46
  the winner resolves the payment at the top of the card, which is
• 13:52
  often something naggad like you something you have to spend, and the players who
• 13:58
  did not win the trick resolve one of the lines on the bottom of their
• 14:01
  card, which is almost always a benefit. So what happens is you are
• 14:07
  moderating when you want to win and which cards you choose to lose with so
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  that you can gain a benefit or not. And then it's an area control
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  game. You're trying to control regions of Ireland, You're trying to marry one
• 14:18
  of the royal children and so on. Brian Borough is really interesting. I
• 14:22
  liked it a lot. I'm looking forward to playing it again this month.
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  I do have it on my shelf of opportunity because when I buy a game
• 14:30
  that I have played before, I have to play it again in order to
• 14:33
  get it off my shelf, so I'm looking to do that this month.
• 14:35
  It was really fun and I like it a lot. It's weird but really
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  good. That's Brian Boru Hiking of Ireland from Oscar Games. Well that marks
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  the end of this podcast. Thanks for joining me, man, I'm i
• 14:48
  walk today. I hope your next walk mine was So bye. Two lists
• 15:13
  which is coming soon. That guy needs a new muffler, all right,
• 15:24
  So the best of twenty twenty two list is coming soon. Brought to you
• 15:28
  by rattle box,