Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Kemet; Hunted: Wode Ridge; Apothecary: Plague Doctors; Elder Sign (revisited)

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Kemet; Hunted: Wode Ridge; Apothecary: Plague Doctors; Elder Sign (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

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  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as
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  I step off the train, and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  Well, good afternoon listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  It's still a little chilly, but unlike this morning when it was downright cold, it's now
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  just a little chilly.
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  The sun is out, the sky is blue, there are tiny whips of cloud drifting across the
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  firmament and I'm ready to talk about some games with you.
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  I can't remember what I recorded last, but I am a little bit ahead, so I'm putting
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  games into the hopper that come out a little later.
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  So I lose track a little bit of what I've talked about or not, but I do have some games
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  to talk about.
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  So it's time for a board game espresso triple shot.
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  Pshhhhhh.
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  Order up.
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  For those of you new to the podcast, board game espresso triple shot is a short review
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  segment in which I talk about three games I've tried recently for the first time and then
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  one game I've revisited or that I've played an expansion for or something like that.
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  So we are going to jump right in with three games I tried for the first time.
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  The first one is Kemet.
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  Kemet is an area-control people-on-a-map game with an intense amount of player versus player
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  combat.
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  So not really my usual wheelhouse, but a game, a kind of game I can enjoy if I know what it
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  is going in.
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  I played this with two of my neighbors, the neighbor to the north of me and the neighbor
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  to my south of me.
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  We both, we all had an evening and we got together and played this war game.
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  None of us had played before.
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  I think I did a pretty good job explaining the rules.
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  I missed one rule for a couple rounds, but it didn't really affect the game much and I
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  forgot one rule at the end, which changed the score a little, but not enough to affect
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  the outcome of the game.
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  So Kemet.
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  Also we played with the 1.5 rules.
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  If you know the history of Kemet, it was published in 2012 from designers Jacques Bariot
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  Guillaume Montiage with art from Dimitri Bielak, Émile Denis,
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  and Nicolas Fructus, published by Matagot.
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  They did a Kickstarter for a new edition in like 2022 or 2023 called Kemet: Blood and Sand.
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  But in between, around about 2019, Matagot released the official 1.5 variant rules.
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  So basically it took the base game of Kemet along with the expansions and they released
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  new rules for that game.
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  No new components, just a new rule set, which is apparently easier to understand, but also
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  balanced out some things.
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  Having never played the game before, part of me was inclined to just use the rules that came
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  in the box, but everything I read said the 1.5 rules were much better, so I printed those
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  out and we did everything with the 1.5 rules.
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  It was a relatively easy game to understand once we got our hands around it.
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  Basically, the idea is you are one of several factions of soldiers in a Egyptian sort of
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  faux-Egyptian place and you are battling for control of the board.
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  You can win victory points in a couple different ways and there are victory points that you
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  get for holding things and victory points that you get for achieving things.
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  The achievement victory points are permanent.
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  The holding victory points you have as long as you meet the condition that rewards them,
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  but then if you lose that condition you lose the reward.
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  The way the game works is if during somebody's turn in the main phase of the game they have
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  9 points, then the end of the game is triggered, you finish the day you play the night and then
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  the game ends.
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  So there is a lot of maneuvering that can be done after the end-game has been triggered and
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  in our game for instance, I got some points during the night that pushed me over the
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  night but because I was going third the other two players had chances to take points away
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  from me before we got to the game and triggering thing if they wanted another round to try to
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  catch up.
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  So that is an example.
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  Oh no, I thought it was pretty fun.
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  It is a fairly complicated game but once you get the rhythm of it it makes sense.
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  I think if we played two or three games of it we would all be really smooth and we would
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  understand what is going on in terms of the different pieces.
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  A big portion of the game is the upgrade tree.
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  There are a number of different tiles that you can buy that upgrade your forces and there
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  is a limited number of them for many of them.
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  It is just one for some of them.
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  There is two copies and so once you have that upgrade nobody else can get that one.
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  So it is a manner of kind of racing to get the upgrades.
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  Meanwhile you are also trying to accumulate points and manage your troops and anticipate
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  what your opponents are going to do and think about how the battles are going to play out.
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  Yeah, it is pretty great.
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  I can see why it is well received.
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  I really did like it.
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  It is certainly going to stay in my collection for a while.
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  I don't know how often I will play it but I certainly would play it again if people wanted.
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  I am interested in trying Kemet Blood and Sand because it is apparently very similar
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  but there is a few differences.
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  I am a little worried that if I played it then I would want the new version rather than
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  the old version but I got the old version that a good discount used.
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  And so I am happy with it as is.
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  So that was Kemet from Matagot.
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  Pretty fun.
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  Worth a try if you get chance.
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  Except I got to play two games of Hunted Wode Ridge.
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  This is published in 2023 by Gabe Barrett from Barrett Publishing with Art by Jorge M.
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  Velez.
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  Hunted is a series of solo or two player games created by Gabe Barrett that are designed
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  to explore different interactions using a variety of symbols and the ideas you accumulate
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  the symbols by accomplishing things and then you spend the symbols to accomplish more things.
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  You have some sort of goal that you are trying to achieve.
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  All 300 games that I have played, Hunted Kobayashi Tower, Hunted Mining Colony 421 and Hunted
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  Wode Ridge are all sort of serial numbers filed off versions of popular cinema or television
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  franchises and particular Kobayashi Tower is die hard.
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  Mining Colony 421 is Aliens and Wode Ridge is Stranger Things.
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  In the Stranger Things version or the Wode Ridge game that we played, you play a group of
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  teens exploring the town, trying to figure out you have discovered a friendly alien and
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  you are trying to find out what is causing the bad stuff to happen around town.
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  You are trying to accumulate clues and the clues will lead you toward fighting the big bad
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  at the end.
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  This is a resource management game.
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  You are trying to manage the cards that are coming out such that you get in as little
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  trouble as possible while accumulating the symbols that you need in order to find the clues
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  which lead you like I said to the big bad.
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  Now there is a significant amount of luck to this game.
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  The main game you play about revealing cards out of the deck and so you can just have a string
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  of bad luck where you reveal a trouble card and then you reveal some cards that cause
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  the trouble to hard to trigger and then the trouble card happens and something bad happens
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  to you and you can kind of get screwed that way.
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  It is definitely one of the mechanisms the game operates on is this idea of random outcomes
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  that may or may not give you significant challenge.
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  That said these are the game is pretty well developed I think and pretty good.
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  We played two rounds of it the first round we got pretty far and then we ran out of health
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  on the second round we were doing better I think we were really doing a good job we had
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  made me half the clues achieved and then basically just one of our players we were playing
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  a two player game.
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  One of our players got two bad trouble cards right in a row, right in a row both of which
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  did two health damage.
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  We didn't have any way to ameliorate them and before you know what we were done.
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  I do like I said I do like it I'm going to hold on to it for a while see if I can give it
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  a few more plays and try to get it played.
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  I will say the rule book is pretty rough there are parts of it that work well but there
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  are parts of it that are a little confusing.
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  There are some inconsistencies like the game comes with 12 dice but it tells you to use
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  10 it's unclear what the other two are for.
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  There's a number of things sort of like that or things where some particular rule is
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  a little confusing about where it is or how it functions.
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  There's a few times I had to kind of guess at how something works.
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  But overall I'm pleased with the gameplay of the game and I am looking forward to trying
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  it more.
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  I did read somebody was saying that they put the other hunted games inside their
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  copy of hunted wode ridge which does seem to have a little extra room.
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  I think I'm going to try that although I have the version that has the solid board rather
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  than the play mat and I'm not sure that I have room for the games.
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  So we'll see how that goes.
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  But overall it's a pretty fun game and worth trying if you get a chance.
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  That's hunted wode ridge from Gabe Barrett.
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  I did have a chance to bust out an older game.
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  We played Elder Sign.
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  Elder Sign is a game from 2011 that I have played many many times.
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  I played a few times digitally.
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  I have the app for my phone and that's a pretty fun way to play.
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  But I've played many times on the table.
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  Now this is one of those games where if I got in the right mood I could absolutely go
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  by the couple expansions that I don't have in order to fill out the game and have everything
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  for it.
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  Right now I have a lot of stuff for it.
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  I have the gates of Arkham expansion.
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  I have the grave consequences expansion.
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  I have the unseen forces expansion and I have the omens of ice expansion.
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  I do not have the water one.
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  There's one about in depth or something that's a water focused adventure and I do not
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  have the desert one.
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  So there are two more kind of scenario ones that I don't have.
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  And part of me is interested in picking those up because I would have the full collection
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  then and this turns out to be a game that I can play every now and again and I really do
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  enjoy.
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  So it's fun to have more content available.
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  It said even though I have the gates of Arkham expansion and I have the omens of ice expansion
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  almost every time we play we just play the museum again.
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  We always use the unseen forces addons which change the museum based interactions on the
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  museum for the better but generally I'm happy with those additional cards.
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  So if you haven't played the Elder sign it is a dice game in which you are sort of pushing
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  your luck to try to match a set of requirements on cards.
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  So you'll have dice and they have symbols on them and you're trying to match a certain set
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  of symbols on cards.
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  There is a heavy amount of luck because you could just roll badly which we did have happen
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  several times but if you are managing your resources properly and you have a little bit of luck
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  often what you'll do is you'll get an acceleration of luck.
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  So you'll get you'll complete a card which gives you bonuses and you use those bonuses
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  to then leverage yourself toward completing another card and so on and so on and with a little
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  bit of luck and judicious use of those resources you can develop toward a win condition.
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  The way the game ends, each game you set up you are one of the Arkham files investigators
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  investigating one the possible emergence of one of the Elder Gods and you have to accumulate
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  a certain number of Elder signs before the Elder Goddess accumulates a certain number of
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  doom tokens.
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  If the Doom tokens reach their maximum at any point the Elder God awakens and then all
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  heck breaks loose you have to try to fight the Elder God which is generally a losing proposition.
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  I don't think we've ever won once we activated the Elder God.
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  That said it is possible depending on the God and so there is a kind of last minute, last
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  ditch effort thing.
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  On the other hand the better way to do it is to get enough Elder signs to banish the
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  God or block it from entering the game to begin with.
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  But we were doing it was interesting we were doing pretty poorly we were up against Nyarlathotep
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  and we had a run of bad results such that we were at five Elder signs out of the
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  eleven we needed and we were at seven of the nine doom tokens we needed or that the Elder
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  God needed.
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  And then over the course of four turns we managed to get the other six Elder signs we needed
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  and only accumulate one more doom token.
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  So we got we had a string of good luck and good choices that ended up allowing us to
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  win the game.
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  It was really fun.
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  What a delight and it just reminded me that even though the dice can feel cruel Elder
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  sign is a pretty fun game.
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  We'll say the one downside we played with five players that's kind of too many I think
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  the game works best with three.
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  It's fine with two it's fine with four I think five is too many.
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  The game box does say up to eight although that sounds like really a nightmare to me.
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  But you know everybody's got their own thing they enjoy.
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  So Elder Sign is worth playing if you get chance. 2011 that's from Richard Launius and
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  Kevin Wilson art by Dallas Meloff or Melhoff published by Fantasy Flight Games.
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  That was a dusty game I hadn't played that since October 2023 so I haven't done the math
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  exactly but it's roughly sixteen months or so.
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  I mean seventeen months give or take a few days since last time I played that.
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  Alright so the last game I got to try this is called Apothecary Plague Doctors.
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  This is published in 2023 from one first games designed by Nicholas Sparkman with art
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  by Priscilla Benitez.
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  Apothecary Plague Doctors is a set collection and order fulfillment game with a fair amount
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  of take that and a fair amount of randomness in the event cards.
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  Now this is a fun little game.
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  We had a good time with it.
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  On your turn you are collecting resources and you're spending those resources to complete
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  orders.
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  You're in Apothecary building things for people during the black plague.
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  There's a neat mechanism where you can take a little risk and build poisoned things but
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  then you have to have a distraction card on hand so that if the guards show up you can
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  stop them from finding you or resting you for building poison or for making poison formulas.
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  The part of the game that didn't work so well for us was there is a fair amount of take
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  that in the game which isn't really our style but the game is balanced for you to be doing
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  that so if you're not doing that it makes it harder to win the way the game is and then
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  there was a trade trade your cards give your cards to the neighbor and get your cards
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  from another neighbor card that came out at a really bad time for me.
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  I was just about to complete a very large order so I had a big handful of cards and then
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  I had to give all the cards to my neighbor and my other neighbor gave me two cards in exchange.
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  So that kind of wild randomness didn't really fit for us with the rest of what that game
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  was doing the game allowed for you to take things and plan and then it also included these
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  big swinging cards which felt antithetical to the careful planning part so that kind of
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  thing in that kind of game is generally not my favorite and did not get down a bit in
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  our estimation.
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  There are also a few other things that you know reflected a relatively new publishing house
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  in the in the offing for example the cards were divided up by the color on their back which
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  if you have trouble distinguishing the color makes the hard to tell and they could also
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  just be labeled there's no reason the item cards couldn't say item on the back there's
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  no secret to be decided there but it's much easier to sort there were a few things like
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  that and the rule book was a little unclear at places but all of these things were to be
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  expected for a new publisher and could generally be forgiven all in all of how the carry plagued
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  doctors was fine we had a good time with it the the art was amusing I like the little plagued
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  doctors imagery on the front with the bird beak nose mask and the ingredients were delightfully
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  medieval so a fun little game probably not one I'm gonna play a bunch more I don't know
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  how long it'll stay in my collection but amusing definitely worth trying if you get a chance
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  or if the theme really intrigues you definitely worth giving a look so that's apothecary
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  plagued doctors from one first games well that's about it for me today I have arrived home
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  so I'm gonna call it a day I hope that you have played some of these games or if you haven't
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  tell me what games you have been playing over on board game you can kill three two six
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  nine I would love to know well thanks for joining me on the walk today I hope you're next
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  walk is as pleasant as mine was bye bye
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  bye
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  bye
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  bye
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  (gentle music)