Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Pushing Your Luck

Transcript

Pushing Your Luck · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
• 0:07
  as I step out for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
• 0:09
  stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, greetings friends. It is Thursday,
• 0:24
  May something something, and I am out for a stroll while I take
• 0:29
  a break from grading. I'm nearly done with grading. I've got most of
• 0:33
  it done. I have a few papers left to look at. I may
• 0:36
  finish tonight or i'll finish tomorrow morning. I'd like to finish tonight. Then
• 0:40
  I have a couple that I have to finish at noon tomorrow because I'm a
• 0:42
  pushover and I keep telling people, Okay, you can have one more day,
• 0:46
  but noon tomorrow is the hard deadlines. I have to grades in by
• 0:49
  five and I don't want to, you know, I don't want to wait
• 0:52
  till the very last minute. So yeah, noon tomorrow, but I want
• 0:56
  a break. I didn't get any exercise today, so I thought I would
• 0:59
  take a walk and what I would do is talk to you about games.
• 1:03
  And I was looking and I can't find anywhere on the podcast that I actively
• 1:07
  have talked about push your Luck game. I may have done so, but
• 1:11
  I couldn't find anywhere on the podcast that I have. I tried searching both
• 1:15
  for the phrase push your Luck and for a couple of the games that I
• 1:19
  thought I would have mentioned in push your Luck games, and neither of them
• 1:22
  were there. So what I thought I would do, I opened up the
• 1:26
  board game geek list of games that are marked with the push your Luck mechanism.
• 1:30
  I'm just going to go through and talk about the ones that I know,
• 1:33
  and a little bit about why why I think they are good or not
• 1:37
  good push your Luck games. And while I'm going along, I'm maybe going
• 1:40
  to pick out, say, five that I think are really good push your
• 1:44
  Luck games. Now, one criterion for me in the is it a really
• 1:49
  good push your Luck game is going to be is that the main thing that
• 1:51
  it's about. So a game that has push your luck in it but is
• 1:55
  not the main thing is push your luck, I wouldn't probably count that among
• 1:59
  the best your luck games. Doesn't mean I won't count it as you push
• 2:01
  your luck game. It just won't be one of the best ones. So
• 2:05
  let's jump into it. A feast for odin. What I guess there is
• 2:07
  push your luck in it. When you go whaling or hunting because you roll
• 2:10
  and sometimes you could spend a bunch of resources to win the hunt, or
• 2:15
  you could roll again and try to get better, but you might roll worse
• 2:17
  and not be able to complete the hunt. So I guess let's push your
• 2:20
  luck. I don't think that's a very good push your luck game. I
• 2:23
  have not played Clank Legacy Acxisitions Incorporated, but all the Clank games are built
• 2:27
  around push your luck. I will call that push your luck because a huge
• 2:30
  part of what you're doing in Clank is trying to decide when do I turn
• 2:34
  around and go back? And it's all about like, do I think I
• 2:38
  can take one more turn before I start heading back to get that one last
• 2:40
  piece of treasure. There's a long form push your luck game, meaning over
• 2:44
  the course of the whole game, you're pushing your luck, as opposed to
• 2:47
  other games where you do it shorter. Clank also has the time element how
• 2:52
  long can I stand on there? But also the noise element am I willing
• 2:55
  to just take more risk in order to do better? So those things together
• 3:01
  make Clank certainly a good push your luck game. Arkham Horror the card game,
• 3:07
  I would not call this push your luck. I don't know why they
• 3:09
  would. I guess because there is the risk factor thing, And when you
• 3:16
  are making your decision about how much to challenge, you have to decide how
• 3:22
  much luck to mitigate in order to draw a tile a thing that's gonna succeed.
• 3:28
  But if that's push your luck, then every game that has dice that
• 3:30
  you can mitigate is push your luck. And I'm not I don't accept that,
• 3:34
  so I say no to Arkham Horror. Have not played Sleeping Gods.
• 3:37
  Quacks of Quedlinberg perfect example of an excellent push your luck game if you haven't
• 3:40
  played this one. You are a herbologist making potions. You're a quack.
• 3:47
  It's sort of some sort of medieval land or town, and you're making potions
• 3:52
  to sell at the market. And you make your potions by putting ingredients in
• 3:55
  to the pot, and if you put too many ingredients in, it will
• 3:59
  explode. Particular, there are these white, bad mushrooms that you can draw
• 4:03
  out of your bag. If you draw too many of those mushrooms, your
• 4:06
  pot will explode. It's not really clear to me why you can't just look
• 4:11
  at what you're putting in the pot before you put it in there, but
• 4:14
  that's the way it works. So that's Quacks of card Lindberg again a very
• 4:19
  very much a game that is about the push your luck elements. That's what
• 4:23
  the whole game is. You're deciding how long do I keep going, how
• 4:26
  much do I risk about drawing those seven that we have Clank again Clank in
• 4:30
  Space, which I have not played. Code Names is listed as a push
• 4:33
  your luck game. I guess I can see how you might be able to
• 4:38
  articulate that if you can count in pushing your luck the idea of like hoping
• 4:43
  your friends will pick up on the thing you've been doing all right, Like
• 4:46
  in Code Names, you're pushing your luck because you could just say one card
• 4:50
  and give a very clear clue, or you say two cards and have to
• 4:54
  find a clue that's in between. Or if you go above two then you're
• 4:58
  looking for like a category card it fits all three. Maybe you're asking people
• 5:00
  to stretch their meaning a little bit. So that is kind of pushing your
• 5:03
  luck. But I wouldn't call it luck because if they get it right or
• 5:06
  not depends on all sorts of factors that are not at all about randomness.
• 5:12
  They're about, you know, do they understand the thing that you're making.
• 5:15
  I mean, yeah, so I dispute push your luck as codenames Ticket to
• 5:20
  Ride even more so this War of mine. Haven't played it raw. I
• 5:24
  know it's an auction game and has to do with drawing tokens out, so
• 5:28
  you're trying to decide how long do I stay in or something. So that
• 5:30
  sounds like it is there. Dead of Winter has a push your luck element
• 5:34
  in that you have gift to decide how often to move around. That's really
• 5:39
  the big thing. But again I don't think of the game. The game
• 5:43
  is not about pushing your luck. To my mind, another Ticket to Ride
• 5:46
  entry the codenames entry GOA. I haven't played that. Wonderlands War now.
• 5:51
  No, Wonderlands War is a bag building game where you're drawing stuff out of
• 5:56
  a bag. I haven't played it, so I don't know if there is
• 6:00
  a draw stuff out of your bag till you bust or stop before you bust
• 6:05
  kind of element to it. If that is there, then I would say
• 6:09
  certainly the game has push your luck elements. Question is is that what the
• 6:13
  game is about or is it a side mechanism like in fees for odin tapestry.
• 6:17
  I have no idea why they'd have tapestry on there, except if the
• 6:20
  idea is you're pushing your luck on how long to wait to do a thing?
• 6:24
  Can you get away with waiting another round? Or someone else will get
• 6:27
  there ahead of you, in which case, like any game is about push
• 6:30
  your luck at that point, if it's if part of pushing your luck is
• 6:32
  waiting to see what your opponents do. Nah boo. I haven't played Oath
• 6:36
  Sworn. I haven't played Ethnos Nemo's War. That's an interesting one. That
• 6:41
  one is much closer to that original idea of you get a role it's not
• 6:46
  great, do you try again or do you settle for the not great role?
• 6:49
  Do you expend resources to finish the role as is? I think that
• 6:55
  that is a better connection to the kind of thing we're looking war. Nemo's
• 7:00
  War. I haven't played that much. I've played it once or twice,
• 7:02
  I think twice, and I liked it, and then I put it away
• 7:05
  and haven't played again. Another Dead of Winter Lost Cities. Oh, that's
• 7:10
  an interesting one, you know. I guess Lost Cities is a bit of
• 7:13
  a push your luck game in that you have to decide when to start your
• 7:16
  adventures because there's always cards coming out of the deck. There's always cards your
• 7:19
  opponents are holding, and you never know exactly where they are. And so
• 7:24
  yeah, key part of Lost Cities is deciding when you are going to pull
• 7:29
  that trigger, when are you going to stop pushing your luck? So yeah,
• 7:31
  I think maybe maybe Lost Cities is a push your luck game. I'll
• 7:35
  take that. Return to Dark Tower. I guess it's a push your luck
• 7:40
  game in that you're managing the outbreaks or whatever their column in that game,
• 7:45
  the corruption, but that feels like a minor part of that game. I
• 7:48
  played Abiss online a couple of times, but I haven't I don't remember how
• 7:51
  it works. King of Tokyo again, is that kind of do you reroll
• 7:57
  kind of push your luck. It also is the element of you stay in
• 8:00
  the city for another round or not, because that part I think it is
• 8:03
  pretty interesting. So King of Tokyo is more of that push your luck style
• 8:07
  and that you are using Yatzi dice rolling to decide how to spend what to
• 8:13
  do with your dice, and often you're trying to decide do I keep this
• 8:16
  mediocre roll or go for a really good one. There's also the element of
• 8:20
  do I stay in the city or do I let someone knock me out.
• 8:24
  If you stay in the city, you could you just take a lot of
• 8:26
  damage really fast, and you could just lose the game. So that's a
• 8:30
  big part of it. Yes, I will I will say King of Tokyo
• 8:33
  is a push your luck game. Up till now, I have not encountered
• 8:37
  a ton of push your luck games that I would say are amazing push your
• 8:41
  luck games. The two that I would say that we've encountered so far are
• 8:45
  Quacks of Quilemberg and Clank on there. You know, there've been like four
• 8:48
  different versions of clank that I ran into here. But in terms of thinking
• 8:52
  about which games I would call great push your luck games, those are the
• 8:54
  two that we've encountered so far. I like King of Tokyo, I wouldn't
• 8:58
  call it a great push your luck game. If nothing else. I don't
• 9:01
  really feel like Yatzi style dice rolling is inherently push your luck. I guess
• 9:05
  it is, but I feel it's best to sort of like, I don't
• 9:09
  know, decide whether that was a good roll or not. It doesn't feel
• 9:11
  like there's a because it's just three dice rolls and then you and you know
• 9:16
  it doesn't feel like quite the same stakes as some of these others code name
• 9:20
  pictures, Is there qubitos. I know that one has a kind of similar
• 9:22
  to christ So Kreedlenberg thing, Clink, Catacombs, Black Orchestra. Haven't played
• 9:28
  Mystic Veil, now, this is an interesting one. Definitely, Push your
• 9:31
  luck is a key element to it, because you have these cards and as
• 9:35
  they come out, they reveal symbols, and if you reveal too many of
• 9:37
  the bad symbols, then you bust and you don't get much, or you
• 9:41
  don't get anything. I don't recall it's me in a while, but that
• 9:43
  is the main mechanism, right You're altering your cards. You're trying to make
• 9:46
  a better and better deck. But a key part of it is you can
• 9:50
  keep drawing cards as long as you want, but if you bust, you
• 9:52
  don't get anything. And so there's a question about how many cards should you
• 9:56
  draw, how close to the limit, how long you push your luck?
• 10:01
  So I think that one fits really well and certainly would be a push a
• 10:03
  solid push your luck game in the context of the pandemic the Cure. I
• 10:07
  have not played no, thanks, I guess a little bit. I don't
• 10:13
  really think if that is push your luck. Friday is an interesting one.
• 10:16
  Here's a question for you, listener. Is risk mitigation or risk assessment the
• 10:22
  equivalent or equally important as push your luck? Because if so, then then
• 10:28
  yes, I would say Friday is a push your luck game. But Friday's
• 10:33
  all about managing the risk. How much risk am I willing to take?
• 10:35
  How much damage do I take to solve this card versus the risk of not
• 10:39
  solving this card, etc. Etc. Haven't played Freedom the Underground Railroad.
• 10:43
  Port Royal is Back to one is a very specific push your luck game.
• 10:50
  In Port Royal, you have a series of cards that are coming out and
• 10:54
  you are checking to make sure, like is this card? Does this card
• 10:58
  fit what I want? Do I want to take it? Do you want
• 11:01
  to draw another one and see what comes out? But then you can bust
• 11:03
  if you draw too many. So Port Royal is very specifically a push your
• 11:07
  luck game. That is sorry, we'll put that in the list of yes.
• 11:11
  I think this game is firmly a push your luck game, as opposed
• 11:15
  to a game that happens to have push your luck in it. The Grizzled.
• 11:18
  Yes, that's another push your luck game. Atlantis Rising a little bit.
• 11:22
  But if you're gonna put Atlantis Rising in there, and then you're gonna
• 11:26
  put in Pandemic and all the co op games that have predictable but random drama
• 11:31
  that you have to deal with, those are all kind of push your luck
• 11:35
  games then, And I wouldn't say push your luck is the main mechanism or
• 11:39
  the main thing that you're enjoying about those is like solving the puzzle and mitigating
• 11:43
  risk rather than I think we can let this go one more round and see
• 11:46
  how it goes. I haven't played Tobago, I haven't played Evolution. I'm
• 11:52
  gonna stop announcing them out loud, just because there's more and more I haven't
• 11:56
  played. You have Escape Curse of the Temple on here. You know,
• 11:58
  I guess that is a bit of a push your luck again, because you're
• 12:01
  dice rolling, and so if you have a couple bad ones, maybe you
• 12:05
  try for one more room, or you try for one more treasure before you
• 12:09
  go back. You definitely are thinking about luck and trying not to get it.
• 12:13
  But when I think about what kind of game is this, and I
• 12:16
  think about what is the main mechanism push your luck is not the mechanism I
• 12:20
  think of. I think of real time dice rolling. So maybe what I'm
• 12:22
  thinking of when I consider what is a push your luck game, I am
• 12:28
  thinking about the main thing that you're doing when you play the game, is
• 12:33
  pushing your luck or not? In that case, We've got the four we've
• 12:37
  seen so far. We have Clank, we have Quacks of Kudlinberg, we
• 12:43
  have Port Royal, and we have Mystic Veil. So those four games together,
• 12:48
  I would say, are the only the only real push your luck games
• 12:52
  I've encountered so far. This is interesting. The Fister game, Oh my
• 12:56
  Goods, that's one of the games that feels like you could call it push
• 13:00
  my luck push your luck, because it's got this element where you bring out
• 13:03
  these cards each round to try to solve problems, and the number of cards
• 13:07
  that come out depend on the items that are on the cards, and you
• 13:11
  get these resources, and so a big part of the game is thinking about
• 13:15
  like what resources am I going to get this round? If I get the
• 13:18
  right ones, what will that do for me? So that is a kind
• 13:22
  of push your luck. But what you what I think that game is really
• 13:24
  about his engine building, so does not does not land onto the list?
• 13:30
  All right, bang the dice game. No, I haven't played it.
• 13:33
  Deep Sea Adventure, Yes, Deep Sea Adventure is a push your luck game
• 13:39
  full stop. You dive down, you get treasure, you come back up.
• 13:41
  You have to decide when you're gonna try, and the dice reward or
• 13:46
  penalize you, and your luck plays a huge role. Deep Sea Adventure for
• 13:50
  sure. Can't stop for sure. This is a game where you roll the
• 13:52
  dice, you move your thing up the chart. You decide do I want
• 13:56
  to keep going or do I want to stop? If you stop, you
• 14:00
  get to lock in one of your positions I think, or maybe both.
• 14:03
  I don't remember if you lock in one or both. I think you lock
• 14:05
  in one or you could keep going and maybe you get all the way to
• 14:09
  the top, but probably not. Can't stop for sure. So now we're
• 14:13
  up to six fully push you luck games as I think of it, Quacks
• 14:18
  clank, Mystic veil, Deep Sea Adventure, can't stop, and Port Royal.
• 14:24
  We've got living Forest bullet and we run into ink and Gold. Ink
• 14:30
  and Gold is absolutely number seven. I love inco and Gold. I think
• 14:33
  in gold absolutely fits the Push your Lock game. If you haven't played that
• 14:37
  one. You are going through a temple. You're trying to decide do I
• 14:39
  keep going or do I stop? If you keep going, you might get
• 14:43
  more treasure, or you might get killed. And if you get killed,
• 14:46
  none of the treasure at while you know hurt and you have to run out
• 14:48
  whatever I get. If you run into one of the traumas for the second
• 14:52
  time, then you lose all the treasure you're carrying and you get nothing for
• 14:56
  the round. There's five rounds. Person as the most at the end of
• 14:58
  the five rounds wins. It's great. There's nothing that feels better in gaming,
• 15:01
  almost to a top five experience in more gaming is going it alone Ink
• 15:07
  and Gold and going one more room and having that just payoff dramatically or even
• 15:11
  and then going one and more room after that and having it blow up in
• 15:15
  your face. It's awesome. Inc and Gold is the best. Celestia is
• 15:18
  Push your Luck, but it's as much bluffing as anything else. I'm skipping
• 15:24
  a bunch here because most of these at this point I haven't played. They
• 15:26
  have the reckoners in here. Again, that's the Yazzi style. Pandemic style.
• 15:31
  Push your Luck not really my bags. I've gone through three pages of
• 15:37
  games that are called Push your Luck, and I've picked out seven that I
• 15:41
  think are really good. So I think I'm going to call that for the
• 15:43
  day in terms of listing and talking about push your Luck games. So Push
• 15:50
  your Luck is one of my favorite lighter game styles in a game that's going
• 15:54
  to take less than an hour. I really love a game that encourages you
• 15:58
  to think about risk, take some risk, try to mitigate your risk.
• 16:03
  It throws you up and down the curve. It challenges you to try and
• 16:07
  figure out are you gonna win? Are you gonna lose? How are you
• 16:11
  gonna win? How are you gonna lose? All based around how much can
• 16:15
  you rely on your luck? And the sweet spot for that. Oh,
• 16:18
  I did leave out one another one, an eighth one. I'm gonna put
• 16:21
  it in the final. It did not. It was not in the top
• 16:22
  seventy five, and it should be. This is dead Man's draw. Dead
• 16:26
  Man's draws a fantastic filler style game in which you have a deck of cards.
• 16:30
  On your turn, you're taking a card off the deck and you get
• 16:34
  to do whatever the card does. Each card, there's like eight different symbols,
• 16:38
  and each symbol does a different thing. When you draw the card,
• 16:41
  you do the thing the symbol does, and then you put the card in
• 16:44
  front of you. Then you decide do I draw another one? Or am
• 16:45
  I going to stay? The thing is you can keep drawing as long as
• 16:48
  you want, but as soon as you get a second card of the same
• 16:52
  type, you bust. And so it's a matter of using the odds and
• 16:56
  trying to figure out, like, am I gonna do it? There will
• 16:57
  be some rounds where you just yet hose you draw the same things two cards
• 17:03
  in a row, Well, too bad. There are other rounds where you
• 17:06
  get five, six and you're like, should I do a seventh's? It's
• 17:10
  amazing, it's really good. So that's a dead man straw. We'll call
• 17:14
  that our eighth really good push your luck game that I encourage you to try.
• 17:18
  So, listeners, what games did I miss? I know there are
• 17:21
  push your luck games out there that I missed. Maybe I didn't miss them,
• 17:23
  maybe I decided they aren't push your luck games. For instance, some
• 17:27
  people might call games that are primarily bluffing push your luck games. Maybe you're
• 17:33
  talking about Skull. Maybe you're talking about Liar's Dice. These are games that
• 17:36
  involve an element of pushing your luck, but I do not think of them
• 17:40
  as push your luck games. I think of them as bluffing games. So
• 17:42
  what games did I miss that you think I should definitely call push your luck
• 17:45
  games? Which of these eight that I've listed do you think are the best?
• 17:51
  Head over to board game get Killed three, two, six, nine
• 17:52
  and share your thoughts. They're about push your luck games. I want to
• 17:56
  hear them. In fact, I'm saying them right now. I'm gonna taking
• 18:00
  another opportunity to ask. I want to hear them. I'm pushing my luck.
• 18:02
  No, I'm kidding. You're determining whether it works or not, So
• 18:04
  it's not pushing my luck. It's play or interaction or something. I don't
• 18:07
  know. If you wanted to chat with me or send me a question,
• 18:10
  you can email me Brendan at rautleboxgames dot com. You can send me a
• 18:12
  direct message on board game geek Wombat nine two nine is my user name there
• 18:18
  if you want to play a game with me asynchronously. I play on board
• 18:22
  game Arena and Yukata dot D. I am also on Bladaju, but it
• 18:26
  looks like they are sun setting that service, so I would not recommend going
• 18:29
  there. But either of those other two are excellent. I'd be happy to
• 18:32
  play a game with you. Just send me a message. Wombat nine two
• 18:33
  nine is my user name in both of those places. Well, thank you
• 18:38
  for joining me today, Thanks for pushing your luck one more time and finding
• 18:41
  out whether this is a good episode or not. Let me know and I
• 18:45
  look forward to next time we walk together. I hope your next block business
• 18:49
  posess his mind laws gohe bye. Brought to you by Rattlebox three year