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Board Game Sommelier - Spring, revisited (400 Back) · Pick Up and Deliver

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Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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as I step away from my car and deliver an episode to you while I
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walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Good afternoon, listeners. It's a lovely
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day here in suburban Chicago. Well, at least the temperature is lovely.
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The sky is kind of gloomy. It's a modeled gray, looks like it
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could rain at any moment. But who can tell? Police car is doing
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something around here. I don't see them exactly, but you can hear them.
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I imagine they're being picked up on the microphone. Well, so today
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I am doing an episode type that I do occasionally called four hundred back.
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Four hundred back is a feature I've started doing where I look at because I'm
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an episode of five hundred and some look, I go back four hundred episodes
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in my in the podcast list, and I look at what episode I recorded
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four hundred episodes ago, and I reflect on what I had then. In
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this case, four hundred episodes ago, I did an episode called board Games
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Samolier spring board Game Salmolier is a feature I do occasionally in which I choose
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a topic and then I usually choose a number of sub topics related to that
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topic, and I provide a recommendation for some media and a board game related
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to that subtopic for your enjoyment. In other words, like, for example,
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if I were to do I've done a board game Samolier on horror,
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and then maybe I choose a genre of horror like ghost stories, and I
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tell you a movie that's got an interesting ghost story stuff in it and a
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game that does something interesting with ghost stories. That's an example of something I
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might do on Board Game Salmilier. It's a music to me to engage in
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the Board Game Salmolier discussion because of the conversation I had with my wife which
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did cement that she does not listen to this podcast. Last week, I
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think we were watching TikTok together as most couples do, and I encountered a
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TikTok person who was doing a segment called Board Game Salmolier. Now I am,
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by no means the first person to use that idea. I've definitely found
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at least one video maker who has done it, and I've also seen other
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podcasters do it. I've been doing it for a while, but I wasn't
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the first so I don't begrudge anyone else. It's not that original an idea.
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But so this guy did this episode called board Game Salmilier where he suggested
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a pairing of game. I think he was just doing a game theme thing
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where he pairs a couple games together, or maybe he was actually doing a
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meal in a game. I don't remember, but it started and he said,
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I'm so and so your board game Salmilier. My wife goes board game
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savel Yeah, geso pete. How pretentious. And I was like, oh,
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check this out. And I showed her all the episodes of the podcasts
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that are board game Samiea episodes and she's like, oh gosh, anyway,
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so here's a pretentious reflection on a pretentious episode. That's right. Episode one
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two was board Game Samiya Spring. I had five sub topics for that episode.
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I had rain, bloom, birth, frantic, and vernal. So
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for Rain, I suggested watching the Shawshank Redemption that fits still one of the
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most rain focused movies there is and delightful, and then playing either Forbidden Island
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or Lowlands, which are both games that sort of focus on or build from
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the notion of rain. I don't know that I have a better suggestion from
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those, those are both great. I still have not played Lowlands. I
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still have played Forbidden Island a number of times. Another game that uses rain
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some would be Takonoko, and that actually does have the idea of rain and
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growth, so that might be a nice alternative to the Shawshank redemption. Trying
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to think if there are any other movies that I've seen since then that have
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a better use of rain or a better idea of rain as part of what
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the movie is, I could or really feel like. I definitely have seen
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movies where the people who are growing crops are waiting for rain and then the
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rain comes and it's exciting and glorious, but I cannot think of them off
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top of my head, so we'll stick to Shawshank Redemption. I'll add Takaoko
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as a potential alternative for a game about rain. Next up, we have
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bloom. I suggested watching Wild America, the television show, which is just
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full of beautiful shots of nature waking up, and to go with that,
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you could either play Ray Colet Photosynthesis or Spring Meadow. Now, spring Meadow
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is an interesting one because it's about smelting and the emergence of plants there.
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Rake Holt of course is about growing plants, and photosynthesis is of course about
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growing things in forests. The other game that I think that I could think
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of now that might be a better connection to the idea of bloom would be
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Tassi Mussy. Tussi Mussy is a button shy, wallet size game from designer
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Elizabeth Hargrave, and it's about the Victorian tradition of giving flowers to one another,
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in which the flowers have a very specific meaning and so sort of discussing
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what is it those flowers mean and who are you giving them too? So
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if you were playing a game about flowers, I think Tassi Mussy might be
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a better connection to the idea of bloom than ray Holt photosynthesis or spring meadow.
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Next up, the next keyword that I was looking out at the time
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was birth. I suggested there was a film that came out several years ago,
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and it was probably already a while ago when this came out, but
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it was called Babies, and it was a film about four or five different
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couples, how the family functioned and how they took care of the baby.
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It's a very cute movie, really nice nonfiction documentary amusing and fun to watch.
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To go with that, I said, Agricola or Agricola all creatures big
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and small, because again, these are games where family is sort of the
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crucial thing. In Agricola, particularly, you are having children, and those
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children then help make your game go better. Of course, you still have
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to feed them. There are a number of other games that involve children.
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If you want to take a darker view of it, perhaps tied into babies,
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you could play My Father's Work. In My Father's Work, of course,
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on one hand, you're making a sort of you could make a sort
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of Frankenstein's monster type creature, which from a certain perspective could be seen as
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a baby. But then you also could point to the game's three generation arc
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that happens each time you play, in which you play as yourself. You
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play as the first generation of the children of a mad scientist, and then
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you play as the next generation of children of those children, and then children
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of those children. So three rounds of babies sort of. But none of
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these games really captures the notion of having a baby. And so I mean,
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I think a Gricola is still probably my best my best suggestion for birth
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as a keyword. The next keyword to suggest is frantic. I think this
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springs out of my sense of Vivaldi's Spring movement, which is light and quick,
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and when I think of spring, I think of the reawakening of nature,
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lots of quick movements from the young animals and exciting times. So to
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go with something frantic, I guess I was leaning towards Screwball, and then
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we would get something like Noises Off or Clue, which are games that have
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this kind of our movies, that have this kind of chaotic experience, sort
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of wild and crazy. And so combine that with games that have a similar
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kind of wild and craziness. You know a couple of examples there. Of
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course, you have Escape Curse of the Temple. This is a game I
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recently revisited after having put it away for a while, but it is an
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excellent real time game in which you're rolland ice and shouting and having a good
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time. Escape Curse of the Temple is a delight. Another game which I've
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never gotten around to playing, but I hear has some of that same energy
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as Magic Maze. This is a game where you're cooperatively trying to move through
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a mall. It's a magical fantasy mall, but each player only can move
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the pond in one particular direction, and none of you are able to talk
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to one another. You have to communicate just by looks and feels and through
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There's a big signaling pawn that you can take and slam on the table in
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front of somebody who should be going and is not. That said, there
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are a number of other games that have kind of franticness as part of the
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experience. I would say one of the big ones is Time's Up. This
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is a game where you're trying to remember things off of cards and tell them
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to get other people to say them. It is a game of hurry and
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frantic clue giving and frustration when the other people aren't getting the clue that you're
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giving. And it does fit the kind of chaos that emerges from something like
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Noises Off or Clue. Definitely worth checking out if you had a chance.
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That's Times Up, I would say. My addition to these spring keywords,
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finally, the last spring keyword I have here is vernal, which, of
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course the spring equinox is the vernal equinox, and I think this was a
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bit of a joke because what I did is I used that term to point
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to Earnest goes to Camp, which is of course about a goofy man child
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who leads a bunch of children toward emotional well being at a summer camp.
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And for some reason the history in the history of the Ernest P. Warrel
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character, he was often talking to his neighbor who was named Verne, and
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that stayed in the character, so he'd say stuff like, you know what
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I mean, Verne, even if Verne isn't around. Hence the connection you
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can if you're trying to do something on the keyword vernal, you could do
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Ernest P. Warrel. I think, now, how does that connect to
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anything else? I think I chose happy Salmon in the original time around because
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I think of springtime as a time of sort of fish and silliness, so
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like, not so much the clear connection to vernal necessarily, But if I
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have a board game that feels like the board game equivalent of Ernest P.
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WHORL, it's happy Salmon. It's kind of hard to explain that any better.
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But that's that's how I feel. As I look back on the game
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four years ago, I feel like I did a pretty good job with the
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board game Samilia. I don't have a lot to add, but I did
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think maybe i'll maybe for a few minutes here at the end of the podcast,
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I could indicate something about what other keywords might pop out. You know,
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we already had bloom, certainly, but the three I thought of,
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we're green, rabbit, and flowers, are green, rabbit, and sunshine
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as additional keywords that feel like they connect to springtime and thus might be worth
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talking about in this context. So to start with green, thinking about games
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that have greenery and greenness in them. You know, we could start with
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the Pier Sylvester game Village Green, which is of course about setting up a
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green space in a village. I like that quite a bit, and that
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that game has a sort of tightness to it that is pretty fun. It's
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got difficult choices, it's funny and entertaining to play. So Village Green might
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be the game that goes with the idea of green greenery. I could also
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point to a classic tile layer like Carcassone, which you're building these big fields
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that are green, Or if we want to be literal, there is the
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farming game Fields of Green, which, as I think about doesn't feel distinctly
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green. If you wanted to take something a little more left field, you
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could always pick a freedom in free se game, which always have green theming
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in part because the green, I believe is his favorite color and he sort
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of famously has green hair. So it does leave the open question of what
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movie or book would I suggest to go with the idea of green. One
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example or one possibility would be the movie Creep Show. This is a famous
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anthology horror story, particularly the last one. There's a stone from outer space
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in which green grass starts growing everywhere. Now that doesn't really fit in any
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of the games we're talking about. Instead, what you probably want is something
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that's that feels pastoral, feels like cultivating a green experience. It's hard to
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come up specifically with film that does that, but there's an old Irish movie
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about a town where they're going to build a oil well off the coast.
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It stars Peter Sellers, I think, and it's kind of about the sad
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state of a village where corporate interests are sort of overwhelming local interests. I
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think that would be my suggestion. I can't remember the name of it.
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Go ahead and look at the show notes, and you'll find where I have
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put that answer that you're seeking. Those are those are my examples for green.
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Let's talk about rabbits for a moment. Rabbits are, of course a
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deceptive creature. They are cute and fuzzy. They also can be pretty mean.
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They have a vicious bite if they want it, and they do have
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claws that they will use to defend themselves. I say this from experience.
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We have a little rabbit. It has occasionally bitten me, and if you
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kind of get in its way when it's trying to go somewhere, it'll it'll
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make this little noise and jump at you and strike with its claws if it
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can. So it's usually very timid and pleasant. It comes over and wants
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to be petted, and but if it's nervous, it won't back down,
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which leads me to obviously the best rabbit related fiction. I guess there's two.
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There's Peter Rabbit if you wanted something sort of childish, and then there
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is Watership Down if you wanted something dark. Watership downal is of course a
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novel about a rabbit colony in a farmer's field, and they're sort of journeys
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and travails as they try to survive in the harsh world of the British countryside.
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It takes this sort of cute little rabbit story and turns it into a
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kind of nightmarish war for property. And so from that perspective, it seems
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like the obvious connection to Watership Down would be Bunny Kingdom Now. Bunny Kingdom
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is an interesting card drafting game in which you are trying to take control of
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different spaces on a board. You're trying to get large patches of connected real
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estate that have different kinds of resources available. It's a very mathey game at
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the end of it, but it is immensely cute. You have all of
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these little rabbits and whenever you put whenever you take control of a space on
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a board, you put a little rabbit on there, and so you have
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this sort of charming effect of the rabbits multiplying across the board, which is
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just amusing to look at and pretty fun to play. Rabbit Bunny Kingdom is
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an excellent game, well worth your time, and a nice pairing I think
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for Watership Down. Finally, the third one I want to talk about was
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Sunshine Now this springtime, I think we often associate with bright sunny days,
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and so thinking about a game where sunshine plays a crucial part of the game
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that feels apt to me, thinking about what is sunshine for? How do
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we do sunshine? So the way that I would think about sunshine in a
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game goes to a game that we've already mentioned, and that is photosynthesis.
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Photosynthesis is of course a pretty mean area control game in which you're growing trees
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in the forest and the trees grow and whither based on how much sun they
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get, and they don't win the actually they just grow, but you can
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block the sun that other cheese are getting by putting larger trees around them,
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and this allows you to control the space around you to earn points. A
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big part of it is getting a tree up to full size and then letting
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it die, and you get points for the tree that has died. Overall,
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it's an interesting game. It's not my favorite. It is a little
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too cutthroat, but really interesting. That's sunshine or that's photosynthesis. Now does
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beg the question what movie would we pair with that? Right? If it's
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a movie about the forest and growing things, then it has a particular angle
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that I think works really well, but fits a particular kind of story,
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ie having Sunshine. On one hand, you could go straight for the movie
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that has that name, right, there is a Stanislav Lev Oh, that's
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soilarious. There's definitely a space movie called Sunshine that he is about people going
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into space toward the sun. I think that would fit, but it doesn't
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connect very well to photosynthesis. You might point to another movie that has Sunshine
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in the title Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind. This is a indie film about
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a romance in which people are having their memories erased and thus falling in love
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again. That's a good movie, really interesting, doesn't super fit the arc
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of the narrative that we're looking at here. In terms of understanding how to
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connect photosynthesis to a thing we're watching, the big question would be, is
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there a film that engages with the question of forest in the same way that
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photosynthesis does. I don't know that there is. I can't think of,
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and there must be documentaries about the battle among forest creatures. For Sunshine,
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you know, it's possible. You could use something like Ferngully or Avatar,
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which are sort of myths about nature and the beings who protect nature, and
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or exploit it. But then it feels like photosynthesis is not really the right
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answer because that is not a movie, that is not a game about exploring
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nature. Then you'd probably want something more like ray Holt, where people are
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chopping down trees and using natural resources as part of what they're doing. But
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that game doesn't use sun at all. So Sunshine becomes a really challenging situation.
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I guess I would probably say if we look at the science fiction movie
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Sunshine, which I think is Danny Boyle, and then combine that with the
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brutal forest battle for territory that is photosynthesis, then you'd have a really interesting
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combination around the idea of Sunshine. So what keywords from Spring have I missed?
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I've now covered this subject twice, I've added on or augmented. Where
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did I make choices wrong? What There must be crucial games that fit this,
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fit these keywords, or they're crucial films or books that fit these keywords
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that I missed out on, and I would love to hear your thoughts on
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them. You can share those thoughts over on boorden Geek and our guild three
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two six nine, or you could email me Brendan at rattlebox games dot com.
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You could send me a direct mail message in boorgeen Ge messaging system.
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Wombat nine to nine is my user name there. Any of these contexts would
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be an excellent way to see the conversation continue. Thanks for joining me on
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my walk today. I hope that your next walk this as pleasant as nine
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loss Bye bye. Brought to you by rattle Box Day