Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Ethnos; Red Rising; 51st State: Master Set; Pulsar 2849

Transcript

Ethnos; Red Rising; 51st State: Master Set; Pulsar 2849 · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
• 0:07
  out for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I stroll around.
• 0:11
  I'm Brendan Riley.
• 0:21
  While greetings listeners, it's been a lovely day.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  The sun is out, the birds are chirping, the jet is flying overhead.
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  All of the great background noise that you've come to expect from this walkin' and
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  talkin' podcast.
• 0:34
  Today I am heading up to the library to drop some stuff off and maybe pick something up.
• 0:39
  And I am enjoying talking to you when I get the chance.
• 0:43
  I'm trying to figure out the rhythm of my summer podcasting.
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  Last week I was so drowning in grading that I didn't have time to get out and do my
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  walks.
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  And this week has been just very busy.
• 0:55
  I got a couple wisdom teeth removed.
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  So if I seem dumber, now you know why.
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  And now I'm getting into the summer rhythm.
• 1:02
  It's the today is May 30th.
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  I'm gonna record a couple episodes today, one of which I'll publish today.
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  The other one I'll publish after the top of the stack, which will be the next episode
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  after this one, I think.
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  So that's my plan, but that's not why you're here to talk, listen to my plans about
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  what I'm planning to publish.
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  You wanna hear what I have to say about games?
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  That's right, it's time for another Board Game Espresso: Triple Shot.
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  Board Game Espresso: Triple Shot is a segment in which I talk about three games I've tried
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  recently for the first time and maybe one more that I revisited or I tried an expansion
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  for.
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  Again, this is not a in-depth review segment.
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  I've only played the game once, maybe twice.
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  And so I'm giving you quick impressions of it rather than deep thoughts about it.
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  So let's jump right in.
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  This first game is a game I've heard about a lot.
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  And frankly, I always kind of thought I wouldn't like that much, but when a game keeps being
• 2:00
  talked about as being really good, then I think I should try it.
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  And I got the opportunity at the Borde game meetup where I traded 29 games away and got
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  20 some games back, the Chicago No Ship Math Trade, which I talked about already on the
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  podcast.
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  But anyway, people played both before the meetup and after, people played games and I got
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  the opportunity to play Ethnos.
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  It was published in 2017 by C'mon Games.
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  It's designed by Paolo Mori and has art by John Howe.
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  Now, this game has a poor reputation from the art and design standpoint because it's
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  very bland.
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  The board is kind of blah.
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  The cards have reasonably fine sort of standard generic art on them, but they're not particularly
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  colorblind friendly.
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  And I'm told that makes it very hard to play for colorblind players.
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  And also the theme, the name is kind of meaningless.
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  I'm sure somewhere there's a definition of what Ethnos means and it sounds sort of like
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  races, which there is an element of competing factions kind of like small world.
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  But I don't really have a signifier for or signified for the word ethnos.
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  It's just a kind of empty term that means to me, Borde game, that could talk a lot about.
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  So I wasn't that pumped to play the game going in.
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  But I can see why it has the reputation it does.
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  I thought ethnos was great.
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  This is a game where it's an area control game where you are trying to accumulate sets of
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  cards and the cards let you place things on the board and having things on the board
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  lets you control areas.
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  And there's a lot more to it than that, but in terms of gameplay, it's relatively simple.
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  You can get cards.
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  You spend cards to put out control.
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  Use the control to take control of areas.
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  The game scores three times and you win based on how many points you got from controlling
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  areas.
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  The different factions of cards that you're collecting allow you to put control on the
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  board in different ways.
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  So there's like a Merfolk track and when you play Merfolk cards you get to put out a
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  token on the board, but you also get to advance on the Merfolk track, which is a different
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  layer of control.
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  When you play these other cards you get to do something else like each different faction
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  or race has a different thing that you get to do when you play those cards on top of
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  putting something onto the board to help control areas.
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  In addition, there are not something like 10 or 12 factions in the game, but you only use
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  five or six of them during any individual play, so there's a ton of replayability.
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  I don't think I'm doing a great explanation of it, but hopefully you can hear from the
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  enthusiasm in my voice.
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  I thought this game was great.
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  If it was a commercially available right now I would have it on the top of my to buy list.
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  As it is, they're publishing a second edition, which apparently is a pretty good return
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  to what the original game was, except apparently they made the graphic design even worse.
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  So if I do buy it, I will have to look a little bit at maybe altering cards to make them playable
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  for colorblind players, but it's a really interesting game and I liked it a lot.
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  Paulo Mori seems to be a pretty reliable designer as far as these things go.
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  So that was Ethnos.
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  The version I played is from 2017, published by C'Mon.
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  They also did a re-implementation of the core idea in the game called Archaeos Society,
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  but apparently they changed some stuff that makes it much less fun, according to whatever
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  I've read.
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  So that's Ethnos.
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  Actually I guess three of the four games I'm talking about today are re-implementations.
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  The second game I'm going to talk about is Red Rising.
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  Red Rising is a Stonemaier production produced, themed around the Red Rising young adult
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  dystopian novels, which feel to me.
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  I started reading one, I read a chapter two and I'm like, "No, this isn't for me.
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  I might try them again at some point because I keep hearing that they're pretty good, but
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  it felt to me just like a sort of new take on either the divergent idea or the Hunger Games
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  or Brave New World where there's a bunch of different levels of society and you're stuck
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  in the level you're in and the people who are higher up abuse the people who are lower
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  down, that's sort of the theme or it seemed to be the theme that I got from about, I don't
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  know, 50 pages or less.
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  And then I was just like, "No, this isn't for me."
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  That said, the Red Rising board game is not really about that at all.
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  Instead it is a slightly more elaborated version of Fantasy Realms.
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  Fantasy Realms is a gin style game that I've talked about a number of times in which you have
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  a hand of cards and you draw a card and discard a card and you do that until you have met
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  the, until somebody meets the end game condition, until somebody, until a tenth card in Fantasy
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  Realms is the tenth card is on the board.
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  And then everybody compares their hand and you see who has the best hand.
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  The gimmick, the very clever gimmick with Fantasy Realms is that all the cards have scoring
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  conditions on them that play off all the other cards.
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  So there's definitely a game that benefits repeated play because when you're first starting out
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  you have no idea how difficult it is to get a particular card or get a particular combo
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  to score points with.
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  Red Rising takes the same approach but is slightly more elaborate.
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  There are, there's this board and when you discard a card you're actually playing it to
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  one of these locations on the board and you get something for putting the card in that
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  location.
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  The cards also benefit from each other in different ways and the game uses these color
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  factions which is, I mean, suits, it's the same as Fantasy Realms.
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  Like I would say like 80% of the gameplay is the same as Fantasy Realms but it has some
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  extra stuff there that makes it interesting but also complicates it in ways that I, I
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  don't know that I like it better than Fantasy Realms.
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  I would also say as much as Fantasy Realms graphic design and art is pretty basic, almost
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  too basic.
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  Red Rising goes the other way, the graphic design is very sleek and the art is nicer but
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  the text on the cards is really small, very hard to parse at a distance.
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  This is the game where you need to know whatever card says and so there's an awful lot of picking
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  up cards and looking at them studying them to see what they say.
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  I think like Fantasy Realms this is a game that would benefit from a bunch of plays where
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  you know what the cards are and how they work but in early plays there's an awful lot
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  of picking up cards and reading them which makes it go pretty slow, makes it go too slow
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  for what the game is.
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  I thought Red Rising was fine, I do have a copy of it and I'm not playing to get rid of
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  it before I play it again but I don't know how excited I am to play it again.
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  Mostly it's just that my son really likes Fantasy Realms so he might like Red Rising
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  also although again he hasn't read the books either.
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  So that is red rising designed by Alexander Schmidt and Jamie Staigmeier and I suppose
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  it would be reasonable to say and Bruce Glasgow since Bruce Glasgow is the designer of Fantasy
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  Realms and this is very clearly an homage or a re-implementation of Fantasy Realms ideas.
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  Art from Miles Benzke, Jackie Davis and Justin Wong published in 2021 by Stonemire Games.
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  Next up I got a chance to revisit or replay Pulsar 2849.
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  Pulsar is a Vladimir Sushy game and as such it is one of my favorites.
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  This is from my top 50 list as you know I try to play one of those a month or ideally
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  two but this is the one I tried really hard to get played this month.
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  The art is by Sorin Mending although most of the art I would say is in the realm of graphic
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  design there's a little bit of art here and there some pictures of ships on the cover
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  but for the most part this is a very graphic design heavy game with symbols rather than art.
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  If you haven't played Pulsar 2849 broadly speaking it is a game of multiple paths to victory.
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  You are trying to get points by putting things out on the board.
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  You are what is that person doing?
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  Somebody just yielded right of way on a road where they didn't have a stop sign.
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  Why would you do that?
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  That's crazy.
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  Pulsar 2849 you're generating points in a variety of different ways.
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  The namesake of the game are these like interstellar power stations that you're building
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  kind of a space power grid where you're building these power stations and you have to
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  claim the planet you have to buy the machinery and then you have to activate it.
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  Doing all three of those things starts the power station generating points and every
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  round it generates points so the earlier you get that power station running the more
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  points you get out of it.
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  There are also a number of the sort of technologies that you can invent and when you invent them
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  then you get to use them for the rest of the game and they give you bonuses of various
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  types often the efficiency generators or other kinds of points and then there are also other
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  kinds of bonuses you can get by different kinds of technologies you can generate by exploring
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  and putting building research stations around the galaxy.
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  There's a whole bunch of different things you can do which is kind of a Vladimir Suchy staple.
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  I like Pulsar.
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  It's got a really interesting action selection system that I haven't seen in very many other
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  games that's a dice drafting mechanism but the dice you draft raised or lower you on these
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  two tracks and the tracks end up being pretty important at the end of the game.
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  So Pulsar 2849 gets a winner for me I really like it.
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  I like it more every time I play it or at least equally so and this time I really enjoyed
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  it.
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  I do want to get back to the table again soon so that we can play maybe with a bit more
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  elaborate setup.
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  Probably fitting a group of people who've all played the game before so that is Pulsar
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  2849.
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  And then finally I got a chance to try 51st state master set.
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  51st state is a classic or classic in the hobby space from Ignacy Trzewiczek of Portal
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  Games.
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  This is a game about groups of colonies in a post-apocalyptic hellscape sort of a Mad Max
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  type future.
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  A lot of like skulls on stuff and in the game you play one of these colonies and you're
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  trying to do your best to survive by building buildings and recruiting people and etc.
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  etc.
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  The game I played it on board game arena so my grasp of it is a little narrower than
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  it would be if I had played it on the table but I had also previously played Imperial
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  Settlers which is a re-implementation of this scheme and it also played Alien Artifacts
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  which I didn't see that listed as a re-implementation of this scheme but it feels very similar
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  in a lot of ways.
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  Both of these games involve accumulating resources which you then use to buy and implement
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  cards and the cards let you score points in different ways.
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  All in all it's an interesting setup and worth checking out.
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  I didn't particularly enjoy it the first play we're on our second play now and I feel
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  like I get it a little bit more and as such I'm enjoying it a little bit more.
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  The art is reasonably post-apocalyptic and creepy which I enjoy and the theme is a fun
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  one.
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  All in all reasonably enjoyable play but not something I'm probably gonna aspire to choose
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  a bunch of times.
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  I think you can really explain what it is.
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  You're card drafting and you're building a tableau and a tableau features a variety of ways
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  to use the different resources in the game to generate points.
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  So I think there is a little bit of interactivity but I didn't find it yet in terms of doing
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  stuff that you're a point that will affect your opponents.
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  That hasn't been a key part of my play so far but it could end up that way.
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  So apparently 51st State Master Set is the collection of all the expansions.
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  Again I played this on board game and a refined version of the rules and graphic layout.
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  Again I played this on board game arena so I didn't get to see how it compares to the
• 14:02
  other things but it seems relatively well refined.
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  So that's 51st State Master Set.
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  Well that's about it for me today.
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  I want to say thank you for joining me on my walk.
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  It's been lovely talking to you about games I played recently and if you have played any
• 14:16
  of these I'd love to hear from you.
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  You can share your thoughts on them over on boardgamegeek in guild 3269.
• 14:22
  I'd also love to hear what games you've been playing.
• 14:25
  Share those things as well over there.
• 14:27
  If you want to reach out to me directly, Wombat929 is my username there.
• 14:31
  Also have an email address at random@raddleboxgames.com that you can send to and I would enjoy
• 14:37
  hearing from you there as well.
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  Well that's about it for me today.
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  Thanks for joining me on my walk.
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  I hope you're next walk because it's pleasant as mine wants to.
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  Bye bye.
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  [Music]
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  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
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  [Music]