Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Rats of Wistar; Bullet♥; The Hunger; Race for the Galaxy (revisited)
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I
- 0:06Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I step off the
- 0:08Speaker 1: train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
- 0:11Speaker 2: I'm Brendan Riley.
- 0:21Speaker 1: Well, good evening listener. It's a lovely night here in
- 0:23Speaker 1: suburban Chicago. The temperature is in the mid forties with
- 0:27Speaker 1: a light breeze. It is fully dark around six pm
- 0:32Speaker 1: or five thirty PM, and a few houses have lights
- 0:35Speaker 1: out yet I do not. We aren't gonna put our
- 0:38Speaker 1: lights out in probably until after Thanksgiving, but we're making
- 0:42Speaker 1: good progress anyhow. Well it's been I had a couple
- 0:47Speaker 1: episodes of other things, so it seems like it's time
- 0:50Speaker 1: to come back around to talk a little bit about
- 0:53Speaker 1: some games I've played recently.
- 0:54Speaker 2: That's right, it's time for Board Game Espresso Triple Shot.
- 1:01Speaker 1: So Board Game Espresso Triple Shot is an episode theme
- 1:04Speaker 1: in which I talk about three games I've played recently
- 1:07Speaker 1: for the first time and what I thought of them.
- 1:10Speaker 2: This is not I also usually pick one game that I've.
- 1:13Speaker 1: Dusted off recently and talk about that as well. The
- 1:15Speaker 1: idea is not to do a full review because I've
- 1:18Speaker 1: only played them once or twice, but rather just give
- 1:21Speaker 1: you a little taste of what I thought of the games.
- 1:23Speaker 1: And by the time I'm done talking about three games
- 1:25Speaker 1: and one I dusted.
- 1:26Speaker 2: Off, i'll be home boom. So today.
- 1:36Speaker 1: Today I'm going to talk about three games I tried
- 1:39Speaker 1: in October. That's right, we're into the October games, and
- 1:43Speaker 1: that means we're making good progress. The first one I
- 1:45Speaker 1: want to talk about is Rats of Wistar. Rats of
- 1:48Speaker 1: Wistar was designed by Simon Luciani and Dan Danli Nilo Sabilla,
- 1:55Speaker 1: with artists by Kendita Corsi, Sarah Valentino and Sarah Valentino.
- 2:00Speaker 1: It was produced by Cranio Creations and published by them
- 2:05Speaker 1: as well as their American partners.
- 2:07Speaker 2: It is a twenty twenty three game. The theme is
- 2:11Speaker 2: loosely the Secret of nim.
- 2:13Speaker 1: The idea is that you play as a family of
- 2:16Speaker 1: rats living near a farmhouse. You are super smart rats,
- 2:20Speaker 1: so you're building inventions and digging out a burrow for yourself,
- 2:24Speaker 1: and you're trying to get the most rat points. I
- 2:26Speaker 1: think I don't recall exactly the nature of the points.
- 2:29Speaker 1: The game has a really interesting action selection mechanism where
- 2:33Speaker 1: you have these little heads that represent workers and they
- 2:36Speaker 1: can go into one of several different spaces on this
- 2:40Speaker 1: action wheel, and then those actions allow you to do
- 2:44Speaker 1: different things like burrowing out your.
- 2:49Speaker 2: Burrow, getting new.
- 2:50Speaker 1: Technology, inviting people to come live with you. You can
- 2:54Speaker 1: also explore the house where you get different kinds of
- 2:56Speaker 1: treasure and different things. Is a lot about accumulating resources
- 3:02Speaker 1: in greater and greater quantities with greater and great efficiency,
- 3:06Speaker 1: which you use then to do these other things that
- 3:09Speaker 1: I was talking about, which gives you points in a
- 3:11Speaker 1: variety of ways. There are endgame scoring points, and a
- 3:14Speaker 1: lot of different places for you to get points as
- 3:18Speaker 1: you work on these interconnected mechanisms. Theme Wise, the game
- 3:22Speaker 1: is very cute. I like the art on the cards,
- 3:25Speaker 1: and I like the shapes of the meples, which are
- 3:28Speaker 1: little rats. I wouldn't say the game feels a lot
- 3:31Speaker 1: like being a rat family, but there are Because the
- 3:34Speaker 1: game is very thoughtfully themed, there at least is a
- 3:38Speaker 1: narrative of doing these things. I wouldn't say the emergent
- 3:42Speaker 1: gameplay makes it feel like you're doing those things. The
- 3:44Speaker 1: game doesn't feel particularly ratty. If it had a different theme,
- 3:48Speaker 1: I would suspect it would play much the same. But
- 3:50Speaker 1: that's that I do like the theme, and I do
- 3:52Speaker 1: really like the exploration of the house mechanism, where you're
- 3:56Speaker 1: gaining points by getting.
- 3:57Speaker 2: Into the house where the humans live and swiping the stuff,
- 4:00Speaker 2: so that part I think works pretty well.
- 4:03Speaker 1: Like many Simon Luciani games, this is about performing actions
- 4:07Speaker 1: in different sequence, developing different levels of efficiency, and then
- 4:13Speaker 1: capitalizing on those efficiencies to get even more efficiency and
- 4:17Speaker 1: more points. There is a scoring mechanism with these cards
- 4:20Speaker 1: that you can get. I honestly don't remember the details exactly,
- 4:24Speaker 1: but I thought it was pretty clever.
- 4:26Speaker 2: As far as.
- 4:26Speaker 1: Luciani games goes, this one was further up the order
- 4:31Speaker 1: than some of them would be. I don't generally like
- 4:34Speaker 1: his games that are hardcore tracks on tracks on tracks.
- 4:37Speaker 2: Games, and this one was not that.
- 4:39Speaker 1: There are a couple tracks cleverly hidden among different game mechanisms,
- 4:44Speaker 1: and of course, accumulating bonuses and efficiencies is a big
- 4:47Speaker 1: part of the kinds of games he designs. And apologies
- 4:51Speaker 1: for the other designer whose name I'm not mentioning as
- 4:54Speaker 1: I go along, but just for convenience sake, Luciani is
- 4:57Speaker 1: the one that I think of in the context of
- 4:59Speaker 1: this game. Overall, it's a pretty fun journey down this road.
- 5:04Speaker 1: If I felt about Luciani and his partners the way
- 5:07Speaker 1: I feel about Vladimir Suci, this game would definitely be
- 5:11Speaker 1: on my to acquire list. It's pretty fun, and I
- 5:13Speaker 1: can tell if you played it a bunch of times
- 5:15Speaker 1: it would certainly benefit. That said, for me, it's not
- 5:21Speaker 1: dramatically better than any number of other midweight Euros, and
- 5:26Speaker 1: thus it doesn't cross the line into being something that
- 5:29Speaker 1: I definitely want to get or that I would want
- 5:31Speaker 1: to get and then trade away something else. Now, I
- 5:34Speaker 1: certainly would if I found it on deep discounts somewhere,
- 5:37Speaker 1: or I found it at goodwill, or I got it
- 5:40Speaker 1: in trade, I certainly would take it because I think
- 5:42Speaker 1: it's interesting and it would benefit from a bunch of plays.
- 5:46Speaker 1: I think, you know, if I had it, I'd probably
- 5:49Speaker 1: play it half a dozen times before I got rid
- 5:51Speaker 1: of it. But yeah, ultimately it's sort of middleweight. I
- 5:55Speaker 1: do love the attempt at the theme, though, so that
- 5:57Speaker 1: is rats of Wistar. Next up is Bullet Heart. Bullet
- 6:01Speaker 1: Heart was designed by Joshua Van Langenham and with the
- 6:06Speaker 1: art from Sebastian Kosner and Collateral Damage Studios. It was
- 6:10Speaker 1: published in America, at least by level ninety nine games.
- 6:14Speaker 1: I believe Bullet Heart is a sort of board game
- 6:18Speaker 1: version of distracting triple match games like Bejeweled was the
- 6:24Speaker 1: og of that realm or Candy Crush would be the
- 6:28Speaker 1: more recent version, like many similar games, something like Paradox
- 6:34Speaker 1: or Postion Explosion. What it does that gives you a
- 6:37Speaker 1: grid of icons, and then you're manipulating that grid to
- 6:42Speaker 1: try to score points by removing actually not score points.
- 6:45Speaker 1: There is some of that, but mostly you're trying to
- 6:47Speaker 1: remove tokens, and removing those tokens then puts them into
- 6:51Speaker 1: the queue of the next player. And so the idea
- 6:53Speaker 1: is you want to be the one who survives the
- 6:55Speaker 1: longest handling these. Thematically, you are a character in a
- 7:00Speaker 1: bullet hell game, so you're dodging hundreds of bullets and
- 7:03Speaker 1: you know, shooting them and whatever. The art is sort
- 7:07Speaker 1: of not inappropriate anime figures or manga figures. Sometimes these
- 7:14Speaker 1: games go a little extreme in objectification of women. I
- 7:18Speaker 1: think most of the characters are all the characters are women,
- 7:20Speaker 1: but they aren't outrageously drawn. It wouldn't be embarrassing for
- 7:24Speaker 1: me to play this game with friends who are women
- 7:30Speaker 1: or even with friends who are men that have a
- 7:32Speaker 1: sensitivity or a thoughtfulness about the art in the games
- 7:35Speaker 1: they consume. I would be happy to play this game,
- 7:38Speaker 1: and I was in fact happy to play it. It
- 7:41Speaker 1: also we played Bullet Hearts, but there are four different
- 7:43Speaker 1: versions or something. There's Bullet Square or Bullet Diamond, and
- 7:47Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different versions which give you different characters,
- 7:50Speaker 1: and then of course you can mix and match, so
- 7:53Speaker 1: the game has a lot of variety. The characters themselves
- 7:55Speaker 1: get special powers that change how they deal with the
- 7:59Speaker 1: tokens are coming into their play area, and so part
- 8:03Speaker 1: of the interaction is trying to figure out how the
- 8:07Speaker 1: character that you're using particularly works and how to get
- 8:11Speaker 1: the most out of that character, both in defending yourself
- 8:14Speaker 1: and in sending tokens to other players. Although I thought
- 8:17Speaker 1: this was an amusing game, I certainly did enjoy playing
- 8:21Speaker 1: it again, as with Rats of Wistar, it does not
- 8:27Speaker 1: succeed into the category of I think I need to
- 8:29Speaker 1: buy this, in part because the theme doesn't do much
- 8:32Speaker 1: for me, and the game certainly wouldn't work for a
- 8:34Speaker 1: lot of the other people I play games with that
- 8:36Speaker 1: aren't at my game club. That said, it certainly was
- 8:39Speaker 1: something I'd be happy to try again if somebody brings it.
- 8:42Speaker 1: I probably would pick it up if I found it
- 8:44Speaker 1: on deep discount or at Goodwill, just because it's different
- 8:48Speaker 1: enough and it's weird enough that it's the kind of
- 8:50Speaker 1: game that would be fun.
- 8:51Speaker 2: To play occasionally.
- 8:52Speaker 1: Despite the theme, which doesn't really do much for me.
- 8:55Speaker 1: One of the elements of the gameplay that I think
- 8:57Speaker 1: is particularly interesting are the ways that you remove tokens.
- 9:03Speaker 1: Each player has a series of cards that have patterns
- 9:06Speaker 1: on them, and so part of your goal is to
- 9:09Speaker 1: use the limited amount of energy that you have to
- 9:11Speaker 1: manipulate the bullet tokens into patterns, which then your cards
- 9:15Speaker 1: fulfill and you can remove the tokens. You also can
- 9:19Speaker 1: use energy to draw more tokens, which is useful because
- 9:24Speaker 1: you have to remove you have to handle all the
- 9:26Speaker 1: tokens that come in, and so controlling the rate and
- 9:29Speaker 1: the pacing of where they come in is really important.
- 9:32Speaker 1: You can't control where they land for the most part,
- 9:35Speaker 1: but the other parts of it are a key element,
- 9:37Speaker 1: and so balancing your energy as you're matching your patterns
- 9:40Speaker 1: and spending your cards to get rid of tokens but
- 9:43Speaker 1: also maintain your board as much as you can so
- 9:46Speaker 1: that you can't be surprised by bad tokens coming in
- 9:49Speaker 1: is the crucial part of the game. At the end
- 9:51Speaker 1: of each round, once you're out of actions and energy,
- 9:54Speaker 1: then you just have to draw the rest of the
- 9:55Speaker 1: tokens in your queue and put them.
- 9:57Speaker 2: On your board. That is how I lost.
- 10:00Speaker 1: I just had a couple bad tokens in a row
- 10:01Speaker 1: come up and I was out of energy, so I
- 10:03Speaker 1: had no way to deal with them, and bishbash bosh
- 10:06Speaker 1: I was out of the game. You don't have much
- 10:08Speaker 1: damage that you can take, and as a result, the
- 10:10Speaker 1: game goes relatively quickly. I think when we played it
- 10:12Speaker 1: was a half an hour with a maybe ten or
- 10:14Speaker 1: fifteen minute teach. So bullet heart, go ahead and give
- 10:17Speaker 1: it a try if you a chance. That's from twenty
- 10:21Speaker 1: twenty one, so I got a chance to play Race
- 10:23Speaker 1: for the Galaxy again. This is a game I have
- 10:25Speaker 1: not played all that often recently. In fact, it was
- 10:28Speaker 1: two years and changed since I played it, two years,
- 10:32Speaker 1: six months and seven days to be precise, and that
- 10:36Speaker 1: includes the digital plays. So this is the one that
- 10:38Speaker 1: I played a fair amount and then just drifted out
- 10:41Speaker 1: of my orbit. It is the pre eminent, the most
- 10:45Speaker 1: interesting of the multi use card games that isn't designed
- 10:48Speaker 1: by Carl Chutdick. Now you know me, I'm a chuttickhead,
- 10:51Speaker 1: and I generally like Carl Chuttick games in excess of
- 10:55Speaker 1: what other people think of them. Race for the Galaxy
- 10:58Speaker 1: is of course from Tom Layman, master of engine Building
- 11:02Speaker 1: card Games. Multi use cards is at the core of
- 11:05Speaker 1: Race for the Galaxy, along with a really interesting action
- 11:08Speaker 1: selection mechanism. If you haven't played it, you have a
- 11:11Speaker 1: bunch of different things you can do. They're five or
- 11:14Speaker 1: six of them, and on your turn you're going to
- 11:15Speaker 1: pick one of them to activate or before the round,
- 11:18Speaker 1: and then you all reveal and everybody gets to activate
- 11:21Speaker 1: every power that was chosen. So if several people choose
- 11:24Speaker 1: the same power, not many different powers are going to activate.
- 11:27Speaker 1: If everybody chooses something different, then you could have all
- 11:30Speaker 1: the different things activate.
- 11:31Speaker 2: And of course they have it in a specific.
- 11:33Speaker 1: Order, so timing when you're going to do it, when
- 11:36Speaker 1: you hope someone else does something for you is really crucial.
- 11:38Speaker 1: The other thing that makes Race for the Galaxy interesting
- 11:41Speaker 1: is that it doesn't use many different things in the
- 11:43Speaker 1: way of currency. There are point tokens, but other than that,
- 11:46Speaker 1: there's just cards. Your cards are worth points when you
- 11:49Speaker 1: build them. They can be either planets or technologies, but
- 11:52Speaker 1: you also pay for the cards by spending cards, so
- 11:55Speaker 1: you're constantly fiddling with your card draw trying to get
- 11:58Speaker 1: more cards. You have a limited number of cars as
- 12:00Speaker 1: you can have in your hand, and then you are
- 12:02Speaker 1: spending those to build things.
- 12:04Speaker 2: It works really well.
- 12:05Speaker 1: It's an interesting game, but kind of a tough learn
- 12:08Speaker 1: because there are icons on everything, and the icons are
- 12:11Speaker 1: sort of confusing. So I have played a Role for
- 12:14Speaker 1: the Galaxy a number of times as well, and to
- 12:16Speaker 1: be frank, i'd like that game better, but they are
- 12:18Speaker 1: very similar. Race for the Galaxy is great and I
- 12:21Speaker 1: was happy to play it again. I got second place,
- 12:24Speaker 1: which is nice because the person who got first place
- 12:25Speaker 1: was an absolute shark, so nobody kind of got near him.
- 12:30Speaker 1: So the fact that I got second place felt pretty good.
- 12:32Speaker 1: Meant I knew what I was doing, and several of
- 12:34Speaker 1: the other players at the table were pretty experienced folks,
- 12:37Speaker 1: so I was glad to get the opportunity.
- 12:40Speaker 2: To succeed in that way. That is a classic and
- 12:46Speaker 2: a stone cold must play at some point. That's a
- 12:50Speaker 2: Race for the Galaxy.
- 12:52Speaker 1: I don't own it because I own all of the
- 12:54Speaker 1: Role for the Galaxy stuff, and if given the opportunity,
- 12:57Speaker 1: I would rather play that. But I'm happy to play
- 12:59Speaker 1: Race for the Galaxy see when other people suggest it.
- 13:01Speaker 1: There's also jump Drive, which is a hyper fast, shortened
- 13:06Speaker 1: version of Race for the Galaxy, which I've played a
- 13:08Speaker 1: little bit, but mostly i've played it in its original incarnation,
- 13:11Speaker 1: which is called The City. The City is essentially the
- 13:13Speaker 1: same game as Jump Drive. It's just city themed rather
- 13:16Speaker 1: than space themed, and my wife likes city themed games
- 13:19Speaker 1: and not space games, so that's a good fit for
- 13:21Speaker 1: our family. That is Race for the Galaxy from Tom
- 13:25Speaker 1: Lahyman Rio Grand Games.
- 13:27Speaker 2: I don't have the year on that one, Handy.
- 13:30Speaker 1: Finally, for the last bit of the Drive here, I
- 13:32Speaker 1: want to talk about The Hunger. This is released in
- 13:34Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, designed by Richard Garfield, with Alexei Bogdanov
- 13:39Speaker 1: and Mark marta Ivanova and Joscelyn Millette artists, and Semyon Pokuriyev.
- 13:47Speaker 2: It's from Ori Games, distributed by Renegade Games. The Hunger
- 13:52Speaker 2: is a race game built.
- 13:54Speaker 1: On a deck builder, so you have a market of
- 13:57Speaker 1: cards that you're accumulating, and it's a race game. The
- 14:01Speaker 1: race part is interesting because you are racing out and back.
- 14:05Speaker 1: The game is about vampires.
- 14:06Speaker 2: You are a.
- 14:09Speaker 1: Group heard, I don't know what, a pack of vampires
- 14:12Speaker 1: that live together in a castle, and the game starts
- 14:16Speaker 1: at the beginning of the.
- 14:16Speaker 2: Night and you are running out in the night to
- 14:19Speaker 2: go hunt people.
- 14:21Speaker 1: You have a certain amount of energy that comes from
- 14:23Speaker 1: the cards in your deck, and you can use that
- 14:26Speaker 1: to move along a path, and the path goes far
- 14:30Speaker 1: into the countryside, up into the woods, or you can
- 14:34Speaker 1: use the.
- 14:35Speaker 2: Energy to hunt. When you hunt, you take cards from a.
- 14:40Speaker 1: Market board, where as with many games like this, the
- 14:44Speaker 1: cards get cheaper and cheaper as the game goes along,
- 14:47Speaker 1: so you can get more cards with less energy later
- 14:49Speaker 1: in the game, but of course if you wait too long,
- 14:51Speaker 1: other people will take them. There's also a push your
- 14:54Speaker 1: luck element and a significant burden for buying points because
- 14:59Speaker 1: you get points by buying blood, and the cards that
- 15:02Speaker 1: go into your deck that gave you blood slow you down,
- 15:05Speaker 1: so you literally get weighed down by what you eat.
- 15:07Speaker 1: The hunger is also difficult or challenging because you only
- 15:09Speaker 1: get three cards. Now, a lot of deck builders you
- 15:12Speaker 1: get five cards. That's a huge range of things you
- 15:14Speaker 1: might draw. In The Hunger, you're only drawing three, so
- 15:17Speaker 1: it is a much tighter experience. Basically, in the game,
- 15:20Speaker 1: you are racing out into the countryside to get food,
- 15:23Speaker 1: you're getting burdened down, and then you're trying to make
- 15:25Speaker 1: it back before sundown. If you make it into the cemetery,
- 15:28Speaker 1: you lose five points, but you survive. If you make
- 15:30Speaker 1: it all the way to the castle, you get a
- 15:31Speaker 1: bonus for getting to the castle. If you don't make
- 15:34Speaker 1: it back to the castle, you die, unless you're playing
- 15:36Speaker 1: like the beginner mode, in which case there are point
- 15:39Speaker 1: loss tiles away further out. I played this game when
- 15:43Speaker 1: I visited Rhode Island. Actually it was in Connecticut with Derek.
- 15:46Speaker 1: Hi Derek, which is where I also played Rats of Wistar.
- 15:49Speaker 1: The Hunger was really fun.
- 15:51Speaker 2: I heard it was good and I.
- 15:54Speaker 1: Enjoyed listening to it, but I had it in the
- 15:56Speaker 1: category of ay, I'll play that sometime, and then I
- 15:58Speaker 1: played it with Derek and I really liked it. On
- 16:01Speaker 1: A couple of weeks later, I picked up my own copy.
- 16:03Speaker 1: I couldn't get it on my head, so I do
- 16:05Speaker 1: really like The Hunger. It's a neat game that involves
- 16:09Speaker 1: sort of pushing luck. There's different kinds of humans, so
- 16:12Speaker 1: when you collect a human, you're going to get points
- 16:14Speaker 1: for different categories of humans. How many of them you have,
- 16:18Speaker 1: how many points they're worth. There are all these mission
- 16:20Speaker 1: tiles all over the place, and you pick them up
- 16:22Speaker 1: as you're going along, and the more mission tiles you have,
- 16:25Speaker 1: the more points they'll score, obviously, because at the end
- 16:27Speaker 1: of the game you're going to score all your mission tiles,
- 16:29Speaker 1: assuming you make it back.
- 16:31Speaker 2: The pushy luck elements really neat.
- 16:33Speaker 1: There's a stretch area that if you rush to get there,
- 16:35Speaker 1: you get this rose and that's worth a lot of points,
- 16:38Speaker 1: but you have to really book it to get there,
- 16:40Speaker 1: and that's tough to make it back, so that's a challenge.
- 16:43Speaker 1: All in all, it's a really interesting game and I
- 16:45Speaker 1: enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm happy to play it
- 16:48Speaker 1: again soon. I've played it three times already and I'm
- 16:51Speaker 1: looking forward to playing it more. That's The Hunger from
- 16:54Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. Designer Richard Garfield, who is best known
- 16:57Speaker 1: for Magic Gathering but also designed Robolly and Bunny Kingdom
- 17:01Speaker 1: and King of Tokyo.
- 17:02Speaker 2: So he's a guy who knows how to make a game.
- 17:04Speaker 1: Well, I am now home and I'm done talking about
- 17:07Speaker 1: the three games and my revisitor game in the Board
- 17:10Speaker 1: Game of Espresso episode, which means it's time to call
- 17:12Speaker 1: it a day.
- 17:13Speaker 2: Thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope
- 17:15Speaker 2: that your next walk is a pleasant is finals. Bye bye.
- 17:39Speaker 1: Time for shooting from the hip triple shot. Nope, shooting
- 17:42Speaker 1: from the hip, Board game Espresso, Nope, it's time for
- 17:46Speaker 1: Board game Espresso Triple Shot.
- 17:48Speaker 2: Brought to you by Rattle Box Game