Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Bora Bora; Oriflamme; Set Cubed; Donner Dinner Party (revisited)

Transcript

Bora Bora; Oriflamme; Set Cubed; Donner Dinner Party (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast where I
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I step off the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Brendan Riley, Well friends, and preparing for this episode,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I discovered that I've finally done it. A major blunder
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: gone out on the podcast. I'll just leave it on
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: there as a monument to my shame. One or two
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: episodes ago, I did a Board Game Espresso episode in
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: which I covered Rats Of with Star and the Hunger
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and Bullet Heart. Well, looking back, I just discovered that
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: maybe five episodes before that, I covered Rats Of with
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Star and the Hunger in.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: A previous episode. Oh boy.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I apologize for the repeated content. I'm sort of curious
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: whether the content was different or the same. Did I
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: talk about the games in the same way twice? I
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: don't know, and I'm not going to go back and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: listen now. So there are two episodes where I talk.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: About the same games.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I did not play them again. I just covered them badly.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But onward to new and better things. This is a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Board Game Espresso episode as a reminder, Board Game Espresso
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: is a segment that I do where I pick out
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: three games that I've played recently for the first time,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and one more game of note, usually in expansion or
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: a game I've dusted off, and I talk about my
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: experiences playing them. Generally, this is a very short review
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't actually rise to the level of review
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, because I haven't played the
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: games enough to really do a fair job reviewing them. Instead,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing is giving you some first impressions and
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: a sense of whether I'm inclined to play the game
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: again or not. So with that in mind, let's jump
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: into it. I'm gonna try to talk about games I
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: haven't talked.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: About yet, starting with Bora Bora.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Bora Bora is a Stephenfeld game which was on my
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: shelf of opportunity for a long time. I finally cleared
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: it in October. It is a point salad game in
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the style of many early Stephenfeld games, very similar to
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Bonfire or Not Castles of Burgundy. It's pretty different than
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: that one, but it reminds me of Bonfire a little bit.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: It reminds me of.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Trajan a little bit in that more Bonfire in that
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: you have a series of different ways that you can
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: score points, and a series of different ways that you
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: interact with those different ways you score points. Many of
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: those things provide efficiencies for you, and you get points
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: or you get benefits from.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Those efficiencies that you're getting. The game works.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: You have dice and you spend the dice to activate powers.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: The powers activate at the strength of the die you play,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: so if you play a level four die, it's stronger
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: than a.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Level two die.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: However, when you activate a power, you have to play
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a die on it that's smaller than the dice that
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: are currently on there. So if there's a four and
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: a two on a power, you can activate that power,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: but you have to use it one.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: So there's an element of turn order jockeying.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: There's an element of sort of being careful about using
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: your high value dice or using low value dice to screw.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Other people out of playing things.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: There are, of course, cards that mitigate various pieces of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: those rules, so you could still play even if you
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: don't have the lowest die, but you have to spend
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: a thing and have a thing. The theme of Bora
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Bora is fine, but a little insensitive. It is not
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Europeans colonizing another place, that's not Europe, but it is
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: also not entirely germane to the place, because Deefenfeld is
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: a German, so he's germane German. I didn't mean to
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: do that, but Steffenfeld is a german Man. He doesn't
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: live in Bora Bora as far as I know, he
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: hasn't studied Borabora intensely. But he made a game set
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: in Borabora where you have a bunch of different stuff
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: you can do. And I mean, it's all fine, but
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: if it were set on an alien planet or a
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: fantasy world, it would work just as well and it
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be colonialist. I feel like this is a lesson
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Feld had learned for a while. When you look at
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: his games from the Tasty Minstrel Crew, those games from
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: that era tended to have things that weren't connected to places.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: He made Aquasphere, he made Bonfire, although Bonfire is not
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Tasty Minstrel, but it feels like of that era.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I feel like.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: There's one more game from Tasty Minstrel that he did
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: that I'm thinking of, but the Oluna. But each of
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: these is in a sort of fantasy world where concerns
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: about how real life. People are being depicted can be
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: removed or downplayed. So from that perspective, Bora Bora is
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: not a step forward. But it also isn't offensive, like
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I would play it again just fine. I don't think
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: it does injustice to the people of Bora Bora. It
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: just is not particularly thoughtful about them. It seems to
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: be it feels to be just a setting from which
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: you can play an interesting point slid game. I would
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: happily play Borabora again. I'll keep it in my collection
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: for a while. Like Bonfire, it is really complicated, and
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: so I feel like it's probably not going to get
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: a ton of play, and ultimately I probably can decide
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I don't need both Bonfire and Bora Bora. They serve
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: similar purposes or similar play styles. But I had a
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: good time with it and would happily play again. That's
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Bonfire from Steffenfeld.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Next up, we have a or a flam or a Flamy.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: This is a This is a card game in which
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: you're anticipating what other people are going to play and
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: trying to play things in the right order. Was designed
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: by Adrian Hasling and Axel Hesling, with art by Tomas
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Sudruzek and published by Studio.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: H which is Hashet Studio.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: This is an interesting card game in which you are
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: setting out cards in a line and then activating or
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: not activating those cards as you go along. The cards
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: have different interactive features and when you put them out,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: they are going to interact with each other if you
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: flip them over.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: If you leave them face down.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Then they can accumulate money, which you can collect when
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: you flip them over. Perhaps there is an element and
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a memory element to the game. I don't remember if
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: you're allowed to look at your face down cards or not.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: I think we played that you were because memory elements
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: generally don't get a lot of love.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: But the whole gimmick of the game is the careful
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: interaction of the different cards based on where you put.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Them in the number line.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: And then your goal is to score points based on
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: which cards you have showing and where and when. So
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: it's a mix of those things together that will get
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: you points overall. Or a Flame is a really interesting game.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: It's not a game I want to play a bunch
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: of times, but I think it would be pretty fun
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: to play a couple more.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: The game. It reminds me.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Most of is a game I mentioned once every three
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: months or still here on the pod, but I've never
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: heard anyone else mention, and that is Strife, Legacy of
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the Eternals. Strife is a two player dueling card game
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: where you have the same deck of nine cards, and
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: you choose simultaneously and play one and you face off
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: against another player, and the game is all about the
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: order that you play the cards in and the way
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: they interact with the cards played by the other player.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting, really solid two player game that I've
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: kept in my collection even though I haven't played it
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: in a really long time.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: But it's great.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Or a Flame is in a similar boat in terms
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of everyone has the same cards, you're trying to anticipate
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: when other people play them and lie out the order.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: I will say it was not as immediately engaging.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: To me as Strife or Libertalia, another game where you
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: all have the same thing and you're picking which card
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: to play. But despite that, it's pretty great and I'm
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: happy to have played it. That is or a Flame
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: or or a Flame it spelled oh R I F
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: L A M M all right, a game that I
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: dusted off Donner Dinner Party. Donner Dinner Party is a
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: social deduction game that it has been a long time
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: since I played five years.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: In fact, it.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Didn't feel like that long and I that's one of
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: those things where are LIKEDJ Did I forget to log
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it at some point. I'm generally very attention focused on that.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: But that's a long time. It is maybe poor taste.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: The premise is you are members of the Donner Party,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: trapped in what's now called Donner Pass, snowed in and
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: stuck hunting for food over the winter. Each round, players
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: get to go out and draw cards which indicate food
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: that they're hunting for. There are cards you can use
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: that will get you more food, like the gun, but
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: if you use the gun to get more food, then
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: you don't have it to defend yourself, and there's number
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: of other cards as well. The gimmick of the game
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: is that a couple players in the group are cannibals,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: and unlike the real the real Donner Party, where people
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: were forced to it by desperation, in Donner Dinner Party,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: some of the players around the table are actively working
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: against the group, and their goal, like in Werewolf, is
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: to overwhelm the group, like in Avalon people put.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Things in or Battle Star Galactica people.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Put things into a pot and then that pot is revealed.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: When people put things into the pot, sometimes they poison
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: the food. If they do that, then nobody gets to
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: eat the food. There are also medicine cards you can
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: put in that counteract poison, so there's a sort of
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: give and take there. Part of the goal of the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: group is to try to figure out who are the traders.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Then there's a voting element where members of the group
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: can decide to chase someone out of the group by
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: killing them, at which point that person reveals if they
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: were a regular citizen or if they were a cannibal.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Either way, regular citizen or cannibal, they become a ghost
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and they can participate in the conversation and they get
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: one vote that they can use one time by playing it,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and then when they play it, the player that they
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: played it upon does not get to vote, so they
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: scare that person out of the voting circle.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Of course, the goal of.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: The players is to find and kill the cannibals. The
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: goal of the cannibals is get to the point where
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: they have even numbers with the players.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Then the Cannibals Win.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Donor Dinner Party is a cute little social deduction game.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: If you don't like Werewolf and you want something a
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: little bit less complicated than The Resistance, Donner Dinner Party
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: is a nice balance in between.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: This is a game that did not get a lot
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: of love.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I suspect the theme turned people off a little bit,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: although given all the themes that we have in games,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure why this particular one would be so reviled.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: But it's a fun little game, pretty silly. The art
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: is cute on it, and it should be relatively widely
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: discounted if you're able to find it because it's not
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: super popular. That's Donner Dinner Party, my dusted off game. Finally,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the last game I want to mention that I played
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: this time around is Set cubed now. Set is a
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: venerable card game sort of in the mass market sphere,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: or at least a game that you would get if
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: you were to go to like a science museum they're
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: selling Set. It's a classic mainstream game. They probably sell
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: it at most targets, and you might occasionally find it
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: at something like a Walgreens.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: So it's a widely known game.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: In set, you lay out a grid of cards, usually
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: nine or twelve, and then everybody look and on the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: cards there are shapes, and those shapes have a number
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of different characteristics. They have a color, they have a pattern,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: so like if they're green, they might be green striped
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: or green bordered or green solid. Then there are shapes.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: There are like three different shapes that they could be.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: And then finally there's numbers. They could have one, two,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: or three of that shape. Now it's always the same
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: shape on the card, it's never a mix of the two.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: But that's the fourth characteristic. So the characteristics are number, color, shade,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and shape. So what you're doing when you're playing the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: game is you want to find a set of three
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: cards where the characteristics in the cards. Each of those
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: four characteristics is either entirely the same or entirely different. So,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: for example, number in a set, you could have three
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: cards that are number one, three cards that have three
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: cards have one shape, three cards that have two shapes,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: three cards that have three shapes, or a set where
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: you have one shape, two shape, three shape. Now you
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: could do that for every pattern or every of those
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: four elements, so it could be three cards that are
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: exactly identical in all four sets, all four pieces of
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the set are the same shape or same element, but
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: often there's a mix and that's where the game gets stricky.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So that set the card game classic game really fun.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I find it very difficult, but it's a good time.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Definitely a game I would play again. If I found
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a copy of Goodwill, I would purchase it. I haven't
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: gone out and bought it on my own, but I
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: just have too many games too by games that aren't
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: a high priority, but it's a good one that's set set.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Cubed is a game in a similar vein. It uses
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: the same mechanism, but instead of using cards, you roll dice,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: and the dice give you the patterns from which you
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: have to make the sets. Then you take the dice
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: that you've rolled with the side showing that makes a set,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: and you put it on a game board which looks
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: a lot like a scrabble board, and you connect it
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: to other sets. That part works fine, but then they
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: have this weird rule that only three dice count for
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a set. So if there's a line of three dice,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: you can add a fourth die to the end of
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: that line, and as long as the fourth die makes
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: a set with the two that are closest to it,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: that counts. It doesn't matter if all three dice fit
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: or not, it's just the two that are closest, which,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, yeah.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: That probably is necessary.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, it makes the rules real clunky.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: The fact that you can go sideways rather than have
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: to go perpendicular makes it difficult. You also, when you're
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: only rolling five dice, or even when you're rolling, it's
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: not uncommon to not be able to make a set
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and you only get like five dice, maybe six. But
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: you remember in the game set there's nine or there's
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: twelve cards out, and even then sometimes when you have
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: extra cards out, you put out If everyone's stuck, you
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: put out another row of cards just to allow the
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: sets to happen.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of room for people making.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Sets to succeed, whereas in set Cube there is not,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: and that's a bummer. So Set Cube not my favorite,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: not a game I would probably play again. I don't
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: know that it's bad enough to put it on my
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: non im good list, but I certainly wouldn't be asking to.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Play it again. And if someone wanted to play it.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: I would try it, but my guess is it wouldn't.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: It wouldn't survive more than a couple plays before I
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: before I relegate it to that other place. So those
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: are the games that I played recently and hopefully have
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: not already talked about on the podcast. I hope that
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: you enjoyed my conversation about them, and that I look
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: forward to talking to you about other games in the future.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to share what you've been playing, you
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: can do so on board game Geek and Guild three
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: two sixty nine.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Head on over there. I'd love to hear from you.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to reach out to me directly, Board
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: game Geek is the easiest way to do that Mombat
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: nineteen nine, or you can email me Brendan at radobosgames
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: dot com.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for joining me on my walk today.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: I hope that your next walk business pleasance is mind
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Walk Goobye
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Two by rattle Box