Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Wrath of Fire Mountain, Sky Team, Harmonies, XCOM (revisited)

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Wrath of Fire Mountain, Sky Team, Harmonies, XCOM (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver it the podcast where
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I pick up my audio recorder as I step out
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: on a walk. Welcome to pick up and deliver the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: leave the library and deliver an episode to you while
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. It's crisp
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: but pleasant. I'm on my way home from the library
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: where I picked up a DVD and the Hardware Story
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: where I picked up some blue tack to use on
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: my ten for ten shelf, which we've already started accumulating
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: games markers on, which isn't surprising since at the beginning
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: of the year it's really easy to get achievements on
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the ten for ten shelf. As the game goes on
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: goes along, it'll get a little more challenging, but for
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: now pretty easy. Well it is that time. Last episode
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: was more directed, so this episode, it's time to do
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: another board game. Espresso Triple Shot. For those of you
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: new to the podcast, the board game of Espresso Triple
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Shot is a short review segment in which I talk
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: about three games i've played recently for the first time,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and one game I either dusted off or played as
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: an expanded game, I played a new expansion. Each of
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: these is a first reaction kind of review. I played
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the game once so far and now I'm talking about it.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: But it's not a game I've played thoroughly, and so
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: it's probably not even really fair to call it a review.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It's more of a first impressions. So that's where we are.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: The three games that I'm talking about today are all
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: games that came into our house as part of the
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Christmas season, and the flashback game is actually one I
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: played for the ten for ten last year. So let's
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: jump right in. The first game is Wrath of Fire Mountain.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: This is a twenty twenty four game published by Game Right,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: designed by Eric m Lang and Phil Walker Harding, So
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you know it's gonna have good player on player conflict
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and really tight turns. Those are I think what those
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: two designers are best known for. The art is by
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Christopher Lee. The third I don't know if that's if
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that person is related to Christopher Lee, the movie star.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna imagine in my head that it is because
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: that's fun as an idea. Wrath of Fire Mountain is
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: a game about cave people tribes trying to take control
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of land in a sort of prehistoric space. You have
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: this tile grid of it's a five y five tile
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: grid as I recall, with a volcano in the middle,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and you have a bunch of cave person figures that
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: are on your team, and on your turn you roll
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: dice and you can roll three times Yatzi style to
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: try to get the combination of actions that you like,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and then you can spend the dice to do different actions,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: such as putting cave people on the board, using cave
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: people to try to raise dinosaurs, which the idea is
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: that you have a certain number of cave people off
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: on the sideboard and you can spend them to recruit
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: a dinosaur egg and then thus get yourself a dinosaur,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and then you can send people to worship at the volcano.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Each of these things gets you benefits in different ways.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: The dinosaurs are all special rule breakers, the people are
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: your main engine for doing the area control bits, and
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the people worshiping the volcano will get you points and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: also trigger the scoring phases. It's a pretty simple game.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna explain it in too much more detail,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: but I'm just gonna say it's very well made in
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: terms of it's easy to understand. It runs smoothly. The
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: miniatures are cute. They're very small, but cute. The Dinosa
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: stories are the highlight of the show there. It's pretty accessible,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: so it runs quickly. It does come in the game
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: right larger game ten, the same ten you'd get if
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: you were buying Forbidden Desert, for example, which isn't my favorite.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: But overall, it's a fun filler game that pays off
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: if you like area control games. It's not too aggressive,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: but you do certainly because it's area control. You're battling
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: other players for control of the areas, and you're also
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: some of the dinosaurs can eat the cave people, so
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: you might get a dinosaur that's eating people as well.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: But it's pretty solid fun. I heard about it from
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the Secret Cabal podcast. Jamie liked it a lot and
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: gave it a good review, and it was not very
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: expensive when I bought it, and so I'm happy to
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: have it now. It's a delightful addition to the collection.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: It's not, like I said, it's not amazing, but it's
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: a delightful fit that's Wrath of Fire Mountain next of his.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Sky Team. Sky Team is a twenty twenty three game
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: designed by Luke Remont with artists Eric Hbilier and Adrian
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Adrian Reeve or rivez Rivs, published by Scorpion Mask. It's French,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: so apologies for mangling any of those names. Ski Team
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: is a game about working together two pilots working together
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: to land a plane. In the game, there is a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: control panel that has a sort of vague resemblance to
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: what people might think an airplane control panel looks like,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of dice placement spots. Each player
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: gets a fistful of dice and a privacy shield. Basically,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the game is played over several rounds. Each round, each
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: player is going to roll their dice and you get
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: to do Gatzi style rolling again, which is three rolls
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: rerolling any combination of the dice each time. You don't
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: have to do three rolls. You can stop whenever you like,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: but after your third roll you're stuck with what you have.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Then you take turns placing the dice out on the board. Basically,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: you have to communicate together about how you're going to
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: place them. Even though you're not allowed to say anything,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: you can kind of make plans, but you can never
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: refer to what your dice actually say. The game has
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: a bunch of different mechanisms that you have to pay
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: attention to. There is an element where you are trying
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: to keep the plane pointed in the right direction. You're
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: trying to have it be level. You have to have
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: it level when you come in for the landing. You
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: are managing the speed, so as the plane comes in,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: you have to put the landing gear down, and the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: landing gear slows the plane down, so then you have
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: to ramp up the engines to counteract that. And then
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: you're also trying to talk to the radio tower to
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: make sure that the runway you're coming into is clear.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: And this is represented by these tiny little planes on
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: this sort of progressing track, and if you ever get
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to a spot where you're there and there's another plane there,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: then you crash. We've played it a couple times and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: it was pretty fun. We only played on the easiest level,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: but it was interesting and fun and definitely a game
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: i'm looking forward to returning to. There's a reason it
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: won the Spiel The Spiel does Yar this year. It
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: is very much that kind of game. It's very accessible,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's accessible for sure, really fun, a
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: good two player game. There are a bunch of different
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: scenarios which we didn't even crack into yet because we
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: were just trying out the base game. But yeah, those scenarios,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I'll give you different ways to engage with the game,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: different puzzles to handle. So yeah, sky Team's a winner
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: if you get a chance to play it. I really
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: enjoyed our plays of it so far. So that's sky
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Team for my dusty game. Today, I want to talk
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: about Xcom the board game. This is a game that
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: came out in twenty fifteen. I played it around that time,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: and it was just before I was regularly logging all
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: my plays, so I don't know exactly when I played it,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: but I know I played it the first year that
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: it came out. Now, it was a game that had
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of hullabaloo around it because it included an
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: app that you pretty much had to use to play
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the game. You can't play it without the app, and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: basically the app serves as the interface from the co
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: op player. It gives you things that you have to do.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: It keeps track of the time and so on. Basically
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the idea of the game as each player represents a
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: different officer in a worldwide task agency that's designed whose
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: job it is to fight out aliens, very much like
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the classic video game. In it, you are deploying soldiers
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: around the world to fight the aliens. You're managing satellite networks,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: you're managing a budget, you're dealing with politics, and you
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: have to do it all in real time. So it'll
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: say do this, and it starts a timer. Then when
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: you're done doing it, the person running the app hits
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: a button that says we're done. Now, it says do this,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and it starts another timer and so on. If you
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: finish with time to spare, that's good. If you finish,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: if you go over your time, bad stuff happens. Yeah,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: it works pretty well. It's incredibly hard. We just played
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the one game and we got really pummeled. I think
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: you have to survive five or six rounds, and we
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: did three maybe, and we weren't even close. Like it
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't a squeaker to get to round four, Like we
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: barely made it to round three. I might be misremembering
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the numbers somewhere in there, but I know that it
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: was a resounding failure. We had a good time with it,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: but that resounding failure was frustrating, and we did have
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the experience that I remember having nine years ago, which
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: is it's really annoying not to have a physical rule book.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: The rule book for the game is entirely contained in
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the app, and so you can't look anything up because
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: there's nothing to look any thing up in except for
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the app, which is annoying. It's a good demonstration of,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the simpler answer is the better one,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and in this case, the simpler answer is give me
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: a dang rule book. You know, as an experiment, it's
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: really interesting. It's a game I had fun playing. I
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: think I played with my friend Paul. I don't think
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: he's going to get rid of it either. I don't
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: think he's playing to get rid of it. I think
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: he found it interesting as well, but we both realized
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: brutally hard. So that is XCOM the board game from
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, designed by Eric Lang. Well, it's two Eric
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Lange games today, published by Fantasy Flight back when they
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: were still still publishing original properties.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Oh boy.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Although that is an ip now that I think about it,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's not a game that's been around
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: a long time. So all right. The last game I
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: want to talk about this is from twenty twenty four.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I suspect this will be nominated for the Spiel. It's
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: pretty great. This is called Harmonies. This is available on
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: board game Arena if you'd like to try it. It
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: was designed by Johann Benvenuto with the artist Meva da
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Silva and publisher Libelud. Harmonies is a pattern creating game
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: very much like Calico or Cascadie.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: In fact, I'd say if you drew a line, a
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: sort of metaphorical line from Calicota Cascadia when you got halfway,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you'd be at Harmonies is. It challenges you to draw
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: from a relatively small pool of spaces, drawing three tokens
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and putting them on your board. There is a relentless
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: requirement to put them on your board. You can't save them,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: you can't rearrange them later, which makes for really challenging gameplay.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: There are also a whole bunch of different animal cards
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: that you can recruit, and then when you make the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: patterns on the board with the ant that matched the
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: animal patterns on the cards. Then you get to put
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: a cube on the appropriate spot on the pattern of tiles.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So there's this back and forth that works really well
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and I like it quite a bit. I did have
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: one frustration that was really very annoying, which is that
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the rule book, I feel like is unclear. And I've
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: talked on Board game Geek about this. I complained a
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: little bit. I'll put a link in the forums. A
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: couple of people disagree, but most people say like, oh, yeah,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: that could be clearer, or I can see why that's confusing.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: So basically, in the game, there are three actions. You
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: do one every turn, you do the second one. You
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: do one one of the actions you must do every turn,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: but you do it one time. Then there's the second
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: action that you can do either before or after that
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: first action, and you may do it one time. You
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: do not have to, but you may. Then there's a
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: third action that you can do before or after the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: other actions, and you may do it multiple times. So
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: you got that Action one, you can do it once.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Action two you can do it once. Action three you
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: may do it multiple times. So in the overview at
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the rule book in the banner at
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the top of the actions, and on the rule summary
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: in the back the quick summary. The three phrase summary
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: of what you can do are take token that says required,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: take tokens and play someone your optional, take one animal
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: card optional, take place one animal. Now, if you read
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: into that, if you read into detail, it says you
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: may only take one animal card, you must take tokens,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: and you may repeat the place animal action as many
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: times as you like. But the summary says place one animal.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: The part where I was frustrated is that they could
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: very easily have said place animals or place one plus animals,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Like there's a bunch of things they could have put
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: that would have served the purpose and just help remind us, hey,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: you can do this more than once. The result is
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that we played the game wrong two and a half
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: times three and a half times, which was very frustrating.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Then finally I read the rules correct fully, and we've
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: played it correctly since then, and it's more fun this way.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: But I thought that the you can only play one
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: animal turn was one of the restrictions designed to make
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: it challenging. That part was frustrating. That aside harmonies is
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: really good I strongly recommend it. If you can get
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: onto board game Arena and give it a try, you should.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: It's really fun. If there's an't out there who wants
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: to try it with me, send me an invite or
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: put me a message on board game Geek. My user
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: name as Wombat nine ju nine in both places. I
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: like this game and I'm looking forward to playing it more.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: So.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: That brings me to the end of my episode for
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the day. I've talked about three games I tried for
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: the first time in one game I dusted off, and
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I think that that gives us an opportunity to say
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining me on my walk today. I'd love
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: to hear what games you're playing. You can let me
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: know what that is over on board game Geek and
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: kild three two six nine, And I thank you for
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: joining me on my walk today. I hope your next
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: walk is as pleasant as mine wants.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Bye bye.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Brought to you by rattle Box