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Metro, Samurai, Samurai Spirit, Perseverance (BG Espresso) · 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 for
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: stroll around.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It's a lovely bee here in suburban Chicago. I'm out
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: for a stroll before I buckle down for work for
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the day and enjoying the early morning sun. It's about
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: eight o'clock and the weather is beautiful. Much cooler than
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: you'd expect for mid August. I would expect this weather
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: in mid June or even late June maybe, but mid
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: August it feels very cool for this temperature.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: It's nice. It's a good treat given how hot it's
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: spent lately. Well, I thought I.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Would talk to you today about some new games I've played,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: because it's been a little bit since I've done that.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: So here we go. This is a board game Espresso
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: triple Shot.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: For those of you new to the podcast, Board Game
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Espresso Tripleshot is a short review segment in which I
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: talk about three games I've played recently for the first
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: time or maybe once or twice, and then one game
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: that I've dusted off It's not intended to be full
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: reviews because I've only played these games.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Once or twice. It's first impression. With that, let's jump in.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: First game I want to talk about today is Metro.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I believe that Metro was published by Queen Games and
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the designer is Dirk Hen. I'm gonna double check that here. Yes,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Metro was published by is currently published by Queen Games,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: and the designer is Dirk Hen. This is a relatively
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: simple tile placement game in which you are creating and
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: perpetuating train lines. Think about Zero for example, as a
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: similar very similar game, or Indigo from ryner Kinisia. Both
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: these games involve laying out tiles that have a bunch
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: of lines on them, and how the lines connect can
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: result in you gaming points or not. It uses square tiles,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: as I recall, rather than the hexagons that you see
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: and Indigo, and in Metro, you have a number of
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: train cars that are sitting on the edge of the board.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: When your train line gets connected to an endpoint, you
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: get that many points in your train line and your
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: train runs.
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  Speaker 2: And is no longer on the board.
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  Speaker 1: Your goal is basically to connect your train lines to
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: places that you'll get lots of points, or as often
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: or more often to short circuit other people's train lines
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: so that they won't get very many points.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: It's a pretty mean game.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: You can gain a lot of headway by significantly attacking
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: other players. There are stations along the side and in
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the middle of the board, and basically you're just getting
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: points for connecting your trains to the stations that have
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the most points. You also get points for how many
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: tiles your train passes through on its way to the
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: final station, so making it having a train that takes
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: a longer.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Route is also good for you. It's a fine little game.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: It's a nice abstract takes about twenty minutes to play,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: probably once you all know how to play, so it's
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a good filler. I did not really enjoy it. It's
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: entirely too mean to me. It seems like, really the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: good strategy is to do as well as you can
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to help your trains, but keep an eye out where
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: you can screw other people, And screwing other people seems
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: to be the more effective strategy, especially if everyone's doing it.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: If everyone else is just working on their own, you
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: might not get very far because one person can't move
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: the lever the whole way, and if you're.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Not working on your own, then yours might.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Get routed badly just by happenstance with the other players
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: working on theirs.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: But all in all, it's a game where.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: It's way too easy to be mean to other players
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  Speaker 1: for my taste.
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  Speaker 2: So that's Dirk.
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  Speaker 1: Hen Metro also published apparently as Cable Car available from
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Queen Games. Looks like it was nineteen ninety seven. It's
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the publishing date, so it's been out for at least
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: a few minutes, but it is. I have seen it
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  Speaker 1: still in print, so it must be at least somewhat
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  Speaker 1: reliable as a seller for Queen Games, or they printed
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: way too many and you're buying a game that's twenty
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: five years old when you buy it from them. Next
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: up we have Samurai. This is a game from Reiner Kinitzia.
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  Speaker 1: It was published sort of published a number of times.
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  Speaker 1: We played the original edition, which I think was Rio
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Grande if you go on board game Geek. The latest
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: edition is from Fantasy Flight, but I'm not sure if
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: they have another one available or not. This is a
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: pretty classic Reiner Kinetzia area control game. In the game,
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  Speaker 1: you have tiles a hand of tiles and you drop them.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: You pick up more from your personal supply after you
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  Speaker 1: play them. And on these tiles you have certain kinds
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of control that you are waging. You have control over
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  Speaker 1: one of three different types of resource, and you have
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: a sort of.
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  Speaker 2: Universal control tile.
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  Speaker 1: When you play the tile on to the board, you
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: are exerting control on the spaces around it. So if
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you play a card exerting control over the pyramids, because
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: there's little abstract pieces I don't remember what the different
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: one of them is like grain, one of them is population,
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  Speaker 1: so on, you're exerting different kinds of control.
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  Speaker 2: When you exert control over one of.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: The pieces with your tile next to it, it goes
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: until that tile is surrounded and then whomever has the most.
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  Speaker 2: Control over it over that piece gets that piece.
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  Speaker 1: You can also play these wild pieces that have the
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  Speaker 1: game can gain control over multiple ones, and in fact,
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  Speaker 1: some of the individual resource tiles could gain control over
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  Speaker 1: multiple spaces because there are some tiles that are separated
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  Speaker 1: by one space, so you could put one in between
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: that tries to get control of both. The tiles that
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: you play have a different multipliers on them. After a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: location is completely surrounded by tiles. Then you evaluate who
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: has the most influence over each of the little resource
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  Speaker 1: tokens on that tile, and whoever has the most resource
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: takes those tokens at the end of the game. It's
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: a pretty simple wind condition. You check for each kind
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of token, who has the most of these tokens. If
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: there's a player who has the most, they get the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: emblem for that kind of resource. Then if there's somebody
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: else who has the most of the next one, they
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  Speaker 1: get the emblem for that resource.
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  Speaker 2: After you evaluate all three.
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  Speaker 1: Resources, then you check is there anyone who has more
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: emblems than everybody else. If there is, they win. So
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: if there's anybody who gets two emblems, they win. In
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: our case, I believe one player got one emblem and
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the other players did not get any because if it's
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: a tie, nobody gets the emblem, so then that player
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: who got the one emblem wins. It's an interesting game.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Or I might have maybe I didn't get any emblems
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and one too of the other players got emblems and
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: there's a tiebreaker, and don't recall. But that's how it
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: works is whoever gets the most emblems wins. Otherwise there's
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: a Tiebreaker based on other things. I think based on
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: how many resources of the other two types you have
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  Speaker 1: for the tiebreaker that is Samurai. Like I said, it's
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: been in a couple of editions. There was a Fantasy
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  Speaker 1: Flight edition as well as I believe a Rio Grand
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Slash hans Enngluk edition. Classic ryer kinisia game interesting. I
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: wouldn't put it at the top of my list, but
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: happily play it anytime someone brings it out, and if
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I found it a.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Goodwill I would absolutely buy it. I don't know how much.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know how cheap it would have to be
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: for me to buy it new, but it's a cute
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: load game. Next up is the game I dusted off.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: This is Perseverance. Perseverance is from mind Clash games that
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: came out in twenty twenty two, and it was a
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: big old Kickstarter and I had a gimmick where it
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: was two games and one and the idea is there's
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: going to be four games altogether that represent a progression.
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  Speaker 2: So game one, the premise is.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: A cruise liner has gone through a portal into the
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: past and are into some alternate dimension and crash landed
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: on an island full of dinosaurs, and so you represent
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: the leaders of the groups of people from the cruise
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  Speaker 1: liner trying to make a life in this new place.
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  Speaker 2: That's the first.
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  Speaker 1: Game, and then there's a second game where now you've
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: established the beach head and a colony on this island,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and now you're exploring the island. And so the second
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: one is about going out and exploring what's on the
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  Speaker 1: island and how can.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Peo what can people get out of it.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Then the third and fourth games are currently in production
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: and will be out soon, and those who represent two
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: more stages.
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  Speaker 2: Of the epic.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: They do provide a rule book to allow you to
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: play from game one to game two so that you
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: can have a unified story, although the game is meant
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: to be playable as four separate games where you don't
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: start with anything built in, you're just playing as you go.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Perseverance is a bog standard example of the mind clash
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  Speaker 1: games approach to huge game, lots of pieces, complex rules,
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  Speaker 1: interesting mechanisms that gather together, and that you have to
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: kind of keep a lot of stuff in track as
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: you work. The designers are Richer and Aman, Thomas Vondi
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Ginstpeter wolf Plank, on David Turxy. So those three of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: those you'll recognize as the designers of an acrony, and
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the other two I presume brought Perseverance to mind Clash,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and then the other three worked with them enough that
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: they share design credit. Like I said, looking forward to
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the third and fourth ones. I've never actually played episode two,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: though we played episode one.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: In terms of.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Game type, I guess it is resource management, a little
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: bit of push your luck, a little bit of sort
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: of area control or competing for majorities, and just complicated.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Rule sets the game. If you bought the deluxe edition,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: which I did, it.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Comes with little minis for everything, so you have a
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of miniature dinosaurs and fancy tokens that you're
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: moving around. I really like Perseverance. It's an interesting game.
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  Speaker 1: It is, though my least favorite of the mind Clash
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: games I own. It is a little unwieldy and the
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: rules are pretty complicated. I did enjoy my play of it,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and a mind Clash game in general is better than
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of from a lot of companies, but not
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the best of their turn of their output. Nonetheless, I
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: still had a good time. It was two years dusty
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: three months, four days, and finally I got to play
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Samurai Spirit. Samurai Spirit is a classic Antoine bowsa game
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: from I think twenty fourteen. I don't know, it's weird
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: to call it classic and have it be from twenty fourteen,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: but that's the way our gaming industry works. Yeah, it's
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. When we were learning it, Rob whose copy
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: it was, Hey, Rob introduced it as sort of or
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: he had read that it was kind of ghost stories light,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and I can buy that. It is a tower defense
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: game in which the players work together to try.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: To defeat these ghosts or.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Spirits are Ronan that are attacking this village, and you
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: represent the Samurai who are defending it. You each have
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: like a supernatural creature you can turn into, so when
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you get injured to a certain point, then you level
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: up into the supernatural creature and you get to cause
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: all kinds of trouble to the incoming ronan our incoming enemies.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: There is, like I said, a bit of push your
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: luck to the game where you are deciding how much
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: risk to take, and you kind of want to push
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: you luck, but if you push it too far, you
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: could get killed. If any one of the players gets killed,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you lose, but if you take a certain amount of damage,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: then you get to power up into your megaform, and
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: that's better for the game.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Overall.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: You're also trying to cover a bunch of tokens, a
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: bunch of different symbols in the cards that you take.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting game. Once you understand how to play it,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: it runs pretty smooth. But the rule book is garbage,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: which is also true of ghost Stories, so that fits.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: If it's like ghost Stories, it also has a bad
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: rule book. But what I mean by garbage is it's
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: just really poorly organized, so even after you read it,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: you kind of understand how to play, and then when
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: you come across a question, you can't find the answer
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: to that question, even though it is in the rule book.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Pretty emblematic of twenty fourteen rule books, honestly. And I
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: don't know if it has to do with the translation
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: that it would have been in French or German original French.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I assume with Antonine Boza, and then in translating, maybe
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: they didn't reorganize to fit expectations or needs of a
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: different reading community.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know I about enough about translation to speak
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: to that, but I do know that I did not
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: like the rule book to Samurai Spirit. That said, I
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: thought the game was fun, not amazing.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: I still think I.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Think Ghost Stories is better, but an interesting push your
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: luck element and frankly much shorter. Ghost Stories has a
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: longer play and is wickedly hard, where Samurai Spirit feels
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: hard but not unbeatable. So as a sort of light
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: filler push your luck game, I think it really fits
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the bill and the art is cool. So yeah, if
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: you get a chance to play Samurai Spirit, I wouldn't
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: turn it down if I were you. Well, that's the
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: end of the episode for today.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: What games have you played recently?
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Head over to board game geek Guild three two sixty
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: nine and show us some love in the Pickup and
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Guilt pick Up and Deliver guild over there. Let us
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: know what games you've been playing lately, and if you've
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: played any of the games I mentioned today Metro Samurai,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Samurai Spirit, or Perseverance Episode one, shout it out in
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: the in the forum and let me know if I
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: was right or wrong with my assessment. But until next time,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining me on a walk today. I hope
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: your next walk is posing's mind Walk Goodbye
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Brought to you by rattle Box