Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Android: Infiltration; Minotaur Lords; Sherlock Holmes Baker Street Irregulars; Sidereal Confluence (revisited)

Transcript

Android: Infiltration; Minotaur Lords; Sherlock Holmes Baker Street Irregulars; Sidereal Confluence (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
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  out for a walk and deliver that episode to you while I stroll around.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  Greetings listeners, it's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  I'm excited to be out walking.
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  It's actually kind of a gloomy day.
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  It's overcast, but not unpleasantly so.
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  The weather is chilly, but not unreasonable for early April.
• 0:34
  It really feels more like late March weather, but I'll take it, especially given yesterday
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  when I left the house that felt like 18 degrees I had to get up my dang winter jacket
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  again.
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  So, we're not in that boat anyway.
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  So it's been a couple episodes since I've talked about what I'm playing.
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  So it's time for a board game espresso triple shot.
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  [coffee noises] Order up.
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  I don't know, I like the sound of someone working on a latte.
• 1:01
  That's my board game espresso sound.
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  I know it sounds kind of silly, but you know when I say order up, I'm serving you a heaping,
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  cup full of board game delight.
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  I have three games I want to talk about today.
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  They're all old.
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  None of them is newer.
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  I think the newest one is 2020, so it's going to be an interesting look back.
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  No new hotness today, but they're all new to me.
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  So now I'm going to talk about is an old time game from my shelf of opportunity.
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  This is Donald X Vaccarino's Android: Infiltration.
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  This is a game I have to look.
• 1:33
  Go look in the show notes folks, I'll have it there.
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  I have had this game on my top of the stack many times.
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  At least I would say at least three before last month when I achieved it.
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  And it's a game that looked fun to me.
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  I like the theme and I just never got to the table.
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  Well, I've played it now.
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  And you know what?
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  It's pretty good.
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  Android: Infiltration is themed in the Android universe, which is a fantasy flight, moderate
• 2:00
  retake of the cyberpunk universe.
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  Or they're kind of their own take on it.
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  They use the term "netrunner," which is from the cyberpunk universe, but they expanded
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  out with their own evil corporations and their own technology and all of this.
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  The plot feels almost more like shadow run than cyberpunk.
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  At least in terms of you are a group of mercenaries who have been hired to get into the facility
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  and steal as much data as you can.
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  This is a push your luck game in the long form.
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  So it's not like flip seven or something where you are each round pushing your luck and
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  then stopping or not.
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  It's more like clank where you are delving into the facility, trying to get as much stuff
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  as you can and then get out before everything goes haywire.
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  The way the game works, you set up this trail of rooms that become successively more difficult
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  and valuable.
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  Each player plays a mercenary or we play two players so you get two mercenaries if you two
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  players.
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  And the mercenaries are running into the facility, stealing information, destroying things,
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  evading security, then trying to get out before the security arrives at the end of the
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  game.
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  Like in the adventurers or clank there is a final moment where if you haven't gotten
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  out by the time that happens, you lose.
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  Now in clank of course that final moment happens when your cubes are drawn, you're put out
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  that way and the game just gets successively harder and harder to avoid having your cubes
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  get drawn.
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  In the adventurers, if the path out of the temple, the adventurers the pyramid of Horus.
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  If the path gets blocked by the falling stones, then the ability to get out of the temple
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  is disrupted and that ends the game.
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  In Android: Infiltration there is this counter that goes up to 99 and the way it works is
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  starts at zero zero, it goes up to 99.
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  Once the number should exceed 99, the game is over.
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  At the beginning it's not going up at all or it's going up like one or two per turn,
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  but as the game goes along and you activate more alarms, then it goes up more and more
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  each turn until eventually you lose.
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  We lost.
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  I made a tactical blunder and accidentally set off the alarm in a way that none of us made
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  it out of the game.
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  It's sort of like somebody picking up a whole bunch of treasure in deep sea adventure, they
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  can tank the thing for everybody and that's what happened for us.
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  But it is an interesting system and pretty fun enough so that I'm considering not putting
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  it into the math trade which I'm about to participate in, but instead keeping it because
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  it is themed around the netrunner universe which as you know is one of my favorites and I
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  really like the style of it.
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  So that is Android Infiltration from Donald X Vacarino, published in 2012.
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  Donald X Vacarino is of course the designer of Dominion.
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  Next up another game I got to try.
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  I talked about this a little bit in the Fantasy Flight Games 2004 catalog episode.
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  This is Minotaur Lords.
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  Minotaur Lords was published in 2004 designed by Reiner Knizia, published by Fantasy Flight
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  Games.
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  Rob tells me he saw that there is another game that is also called something
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  Lords and if you get that one you can combine it with this one so you have multiple decks.
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  Reminds me a little bit of like the Vlada Chvaatil game Tash Kalar in terms of the combined ability
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  in the different decks.
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  The gameplay is not at all similar.
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  In terms of gameplay the closest thing I can think of is something like a battle line in
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  which you have a series of contested spaces and each player is bringing units to the board
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  with which they will contest those spaces.
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  There is a Red Deck and a Blue Deck and you play Best of 3 and after each game the loser
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  gets to change their deck some or maybe both people do.
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  I think just the loser gets to change their deck a little bit to try to anticipate what's
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  happening with the other person's deck.
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  I think once you've played a few times then you can start altering the deck as you go.
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  I don't really remember what the factions are but the idea is sort of asymmetric abilities.
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  They are engaging with the game in slightly different ways and so you are bringing different
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  sets of skills to the table to have this battle over these control points.
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  A newer game that feels similar in terms of the outcome is Drones vs Seagulls which
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  I mentioned a couple times is a very similar game and that one again there's like 7 control
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  points I think instead of 5 but the game works very similarly on your turn.
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  You try to gain control of as many control points as you can.
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  Your opponent is trying to get control of those points on their turn.
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  The lever has the most control points at the right moment wins the game.
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  [jackhammer noises in the background] I'm walking by a construction site right now.
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  The long and short of it was: for us the game felt really unbalanced.
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  The two decks that we had one of the decks had these cards that cascaded points off of
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  one another so they'd have like a strength of 2 but they have a strength of 2 for each
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  other card of that type that's on the board.
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  So we literally had a round where Rob drew 3 or 4 of those in his deck and was able to
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  put them out and there was nothing I could do like it was literally impossible with the
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  cards I had to get enough resistance out that he couldn't win the next round or whatever.
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  And this happened a couple times.
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  Now it's certainly possible that A) I'm bad at the game.
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  Absolutely I could have been.
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  B) we're misreading a rule somewhere.
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  The one we thought about was maybe you only get the benefit if they're in the same location.
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  Not on your board but the rules written pretty clearly that they're on your board so that
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  part didn't feel true or see that it's hideously unbalanced which this is a Reiner Knizia game...
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  he is not known for making hideously unbalanced games.
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  That said, we played two games they were both over very quickly because the blue side just
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  had these cards that compounded each other's strength in a way that we couldn't find anything
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  in the red deck that had anything like that strength.
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  So we played it twice in about half an hour or 45 minutes and we were like well I guess
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  Minitar Lords is not for us.
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  At least it wasn't for me.
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  Maybe Rob is going around trying to get everybody to play at Rob are you?
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  Are you still playing Minitar lords?
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  Head over to board game geek guild 3 2 6 9 and let the listeners know.
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  But I didn't really enjoy that much.
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  So that is Minotaur Lords from designer Reiner Knizia and publisher Fantasy Flight games
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  published in 2004.
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  2004.
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  I didn't get a chance to dust off one of my top 50 games this is Sidereal Confluence.
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  I didn't even have to make this happen.
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  Somebody came to our toggle game night with a copy of Sidereal Confluence and said hey
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  everybody let's play this.
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  It was great.
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  I didn't have to teach it.
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  I just got to sit down and play.
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  I will say I was a little rusty on the basic flow of the game.
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  The person who set it up did do a sort of semi reminder of a teach but particularly
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  the way that certain things move around I was a little rusty on so it took me a little
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  while to get my sea legs under me again.
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  But it is a really interesting game.
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  I like the distinction or difference between the way the different factions play the kinds
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  of machines you have and what they do.
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  I like the wheeling and dealing of trying to get people to give you stuff that you want
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  and trying to give people stuff they want.
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  I felt like this game I didn't have a good sense of how to make my faction do what it wanted.
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  I think early on I made a really bad trade that hurt my economy in a way that I don't think
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  I ever recovered but I don't know for certain that that's true.
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  The game is only six rounds so I guess that means a bad trade early on can really hurt
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  you or there's not really enough room for it to hurt you dramatically either way.
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  So I didn't do very well but I had a good time and I love the system of Sidereal Confluence.
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  This did really make me want to play it again hopefully with some of the expansion content
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  at some point because while I have played it twice since I got the expansion I have not
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  yet used any of the expansion material just because I haven't had a chance to try it.
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  And I hesitate to inflict an expansion material on people who are new to the game.
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  So that was my experience with Sidereal Confluence again a game I think is really fun.
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  I didn't explain how it plays.
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  If you haven't encountered me talking about before or haven't heard about it on the podcast
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  Sidereal Confluence is a game about trading.
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  The subtitle is Trading and Negotiation in the Elysium Quadrant.
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  The idea is that players are representatives of alien races making their way into an intergalactic
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  trading alliance.
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  It is a game designed so that the player who trades the most and best will win rather
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  than being the player who sort of manipulates people or cheats people.
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  In fact the game specifically disallows cheating or reneging on your deals.
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  You're not allowed to say "hey I'll make a deal with you" and then not do it later.
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  The game does allow long term trades which there are a lot of games that allow long term
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  trades but don't allow, don't have any regulation against stiffing somebody so you can say like
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  hey if you give me three gold this round I'll give you six gold next round and then you
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  just not give them six gold in the game.
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  Many games would not have a response to that.
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  Sidereal Confluence has a specific rule that you have to meet your obligations and if you
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  can't there's dire penalties to be had.
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  So that part I find pretty interesting and fun.
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  I like the way that the technologies come out and the way that as time goes on you get
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  more and more stuff you can do because as people invent technologies it opens up cards
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  that you get to use.
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  I like that part.
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  I just am not very good at it.
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  Good all and all.
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  It's an interesting goofy game really a fun chance to play whenever I get a chance.
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  That's Sidereal Confluence.
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  The original subtitle was trading and negotiation in the Elysium quadrant.
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  I think at this point they just call it Sidereal Confluence.
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  So that was my, oh and that was two years and some number of days dusty.
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  Not two years one month somewhere less than a month off of two years.
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  Finally the last game I want to talk about today is Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street
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  Irregulars.
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  The should not be confused with Sherlock Holmes consulting detective the Baker Street Irregulars
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  which is the green box of that really fun mystery game.
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  Instead Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars is a comic book mystery game from
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  van ryder games and it's a really, it's a weird, it's an interesting weird system.
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  In the game you play one of four different members of the Baker Street Irregulars, this group
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  of children like homeless children and vagabonds that Sherlock Holmes is training to be detectives
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  and you are sent off on missions and the game is played with comic books.
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  The comic books remind me of the old choose your own adventure D&D books.
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  They weren't D&D specifically these the ones I had but they were like: you're in the Grand
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  Hallway.
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  If you go left you go to this number if you go forward you go to that number which is kind
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  of like a choose your own adventure but slightly different.
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  In this one there's a map of London and you are navigating your way down the map around
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  the map of London looking at different places finding different interactions and each player
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  has their own comic book which shares many of the images and ideas from the locations
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  you're going but also different slightly based on your skills.
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  So if you're the character who has a lot of charisma you might have an ability to talk to
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  somebody and if you're the character who is a bruiser you might not have that ability.
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  So the different interactions that you can have based on the numbers in the books are
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  pretty it's a really interesting system.
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  It is much more "choose your own adventure" mystery game rather than any other kind of game.
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  It is not a cooperative mystery solving game with a really neat format, this comic book
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  format.
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  We did one of the mysteries there are four I believe in the set although they're all interwoven
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  in the book itself which works really nicely because that means there's a lot of stuff
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  in each round that isn't part of the mystery you're seeing so you can't accidentally see
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  something that would ruin it because there's so much that is part of it.
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  So that works really well.
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  I thought it was really fun.
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  The designer is Cedric Asana and the art is done by Grilan looks like Gremlin without
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  the m, Grilan.
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  It's published in the United States by Van Ryder games.
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  Did you get a chance to play this one?
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  I would recommend it.
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  It's really interesting at the same time it's definitely a try someone else's copy thing.
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  I mean you know you could buy it and support Van Ryder games but it is you know a one-play
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  game.
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  It took us about 45 minutes to play one of the mysteries and there's only four mysteries
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  in the box.
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  So in terms of one-play games it's relatively slim.
• 15:11
  That said I think it cost me 20 or 25 dollars and an unlock costs 15 and that's or the
• 15:17
  the old single episode unlocks costs 15 or exit costs 15 and those take an hour to play
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  so my lives may vary.
• 15:23
  But definitely worth it taking a look if you get a chance.
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  Well that's it for my board game espresso.
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  What games have you tried out lately?
• 15:29
  Head over to board game geek guild 3269 and share your thoughts there.
• 15:33
  See if Rob showed up to tell us the answer to whether or not he's playing a lot of
• 15:37
  minotaur lords or not.
• 15:38
  Well thanks for joining me.
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  I'm off today.
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  I hope you next walk
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  is as pleasant as mine was.
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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]