Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Magic Rabbit, Dawn of Peacemakers, Evacuation, Weather Machine (revisited)

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Magic Rabbit, Dawn of Peacemakers, Evacuation, Weather Machine (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio
• 0:07
  recorders, I step out of the library and deliver an episode. Do you
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  while I walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, greetings, listener.
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  It's a still a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. I swung by the
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  library and looked through the Lucky Day shelf, and I picked up The Blackening
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  and some sort of teenage revenge movie called like Becky Gets Becky Causes Trouble or
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  something like that. I don't I already forgot the title, but it looked
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  it looked amusing, so I grabbed that. Well, I'm on my home
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  and I thought I would take a couple of months here to talk about some
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  games I played recently. That's right, it's time for Board Game Espresso triple
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  shot. If you order a board Game Espresso, they make it a latte
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  here on pick Up and Deliver. So for those who give me the podcast,
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  Board Game Espresso is a I do regularly where I talk about three games
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  I've played for the first time recently and what I thought of them. It's
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  pretty simple, pretty fun, quick reviews. So as a reminder, these
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  are quick reviews. They are meant to be snapshots of my thinking about a
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  game after having only played it once. That's the key part, after having
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  only played it once. So these aren't in depth reviews by any means,
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  because I haven't played the game enough to have an in depth opinion. So
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  the first game I want to talk about is a game called Magic Rabbit.
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  Now. I've seen a couple other people talk about this game since then,
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  particularly board games of Brandy on TikTok I think she's on Instagram as well,
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  has played it. I played it because my friend Paul picked it up in
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  England. He was over there and brought it back for us to play.
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  It's a simple game. It's a little co op takes like five minutes to
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  play around, and you can play a couple rounds. You can make it
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  harder or easier if you want. It's a cute little game. The idea
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  is that there it's magician themed, so you have a row of magicians hats,
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  and then you have tiles underneath the hats that are either empty or no.
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  They have rabbits with different numbers. There's also doves that sit on the
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  hat, and that's kind of the whole setup. You have a line of
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  nine hats with numbers on them. Underneath are rabbits with numbers on them,
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  and there are a number of doves that sit on top of the hats,
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  and the goal of the game is for the players to work together to arrange
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  all of the rabbits underneath the correct hats. So the way it works is
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  on your turn, I think you can either you do two things. I
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  don't remember exactly, but it's something like you can peek under a hat and
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  you can switch a hat from one position to another, or you can maybe
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  you can move a rabbit from one position to another, or like swap the
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  two rabbits something. There's a bit of that's that sort of thing. You're
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  rearranging the hats and the rabbits, and then you can move the dove,
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  which the dove kind of blocks anyone from interfering with the hat. On their
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  turn, you play in a group, and you're not allowed to share information
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  with anybody about what is what's there. Everybody just takes their turns, so
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  you have to kind of infer from what people are doing that you're all kind
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  of working together toward getting all the hats and rabbits in the right spot,
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  and so there can be times where you're like trying to figure out, I
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  know that the number three rabbit needs to go here, and I know it's
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  under this one, so I'm just gonna swap this one on that one.
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  And it turns out the other person had the rabbit under the other one in
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  the right correct spot. So you've now in order to get the number three
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  in the right spot, you've disassociated, You've removed the one that needed to
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  be in another spot or something. I don't know. That's an example works.
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  It's pretty good. It's a light, fun cooperative game. The silence,
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  the no speaking part is interesting and be easy to play. Overall,
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  a really solid experience. I'd recommend it if you get a chance. That's
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  Magic Rabbit, designed by Julie d'utois, Romanick Geronlieu and Ludo Ludovic Simone and
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  Cecile Ziegler. Apologies for pronunciation on that one. Next game I want to
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  talk about is Dawn of the Peacemakers. This is a game and I was
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  happy to get off of my shelf of opportunity. It's been on there a
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  long time. It is a game from I believe Sammy Alasco of Snowdale Design.
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  Simon Asco seems to be a one person design house does the art and
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  the design of the games. I first encountered them when they made a Valley
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  of Merchants, which is an interesting duck building, duck deconstruction game that I
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  liked very much. He's made three of them, Dale of Merchants, Dale
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  of Merchants. That's it. He's made three of them. I only have
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  one, but it's the kind of game that is really pretty great. Dona
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  the Peacemakers. The premise is really interesting. There's a kingdom. There's a
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  bunch of factions in the kingdom. The king does not want the factions to
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  go to war with each other, but they're all on the verge of going
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  to war with each other. You play one of the King's advisors and he
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  sends you into the field to try and prevent the war. And so the
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  premise of the game is that you have these two sides. They're going into
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  battle, and they're somewhat automated, and each each of the players has a
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  character, and your goal is to intervene in the battle in such a way
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  that neither side wins the battle. You want them to come to a draw.
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  The faster you can get them to a draw, the quicker they'll withdraw,
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  and the less damage they'll do. But sometimes you have to just sort
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  of balance out the damage so neither side feels like it won the battle,
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  because the stalemate will lead toward peace. It's a weird premise, but really
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  interesting and it makes for a mechanically fun game. We played one round,
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  I enjoyed it. Everybody said yeah, let's play again, and we haven't
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  touched it again since, but it definitely is something we're going to come back
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  to and I'm really excited to try it some more, just because it's such
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  a neat premise. The arts cool. It comes with these little plastic meetings
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  which I probably need to paint, and the puzzle solving is interesting. It
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  reminds me a bit of Spirit Island or that type of game. It's not
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  as complex, but interesting and there's a lot of communication. I think it
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  also if I Recall doesn't have turn order, you can take your turns in
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  whatever order you need, which I like as a mechanism and a co op
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  so you can really maximize the response that your team is giving. I love
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  it, so I mean I can't say I love Donald the Peacemakers yet.
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  We've only played it once, but I do really enjoy it. I'm looking
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  forward to playing it more. That's from Samy Alasco at Snowdale Design. All
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  right. Next up, I wanted to do a game that I've returned to
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  dusted off, so to speak, and this is weather Machine. Now.
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  Weirdly, weather Machine is a game that I don't own, and when it
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  came out, I played it once with my friend Eric. Hi Eric.
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  I don't know if Eric listens or not. I think he does at Eric's
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  place. And then I didn't play it again for a while, and then
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  just a couple months ago in February, actually Eric invited me to over to
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  play again and I played it, and then in March I played again with
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  my son and Paul. That's two out of the four games here we played
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  with Paul and all three my son was playing. Wow, nice work,
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  son, or three of the four anyway. So weather Machine, like I
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  said of a tal asserta game, it's very heavy, very crunchy, I
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  would I think. When I played it, I thought it was too heavy
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  almost, But having played it a couple more times now I don't feel like
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  it's dramatically heavier then. But if you haven't played Weather Machine, it is
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  a very intense, very complex, heavy economic eurogame, but it's not themed
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  around economics. It's seemed around this like elaborate weather Machine. There's this scientist
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  who has built this machine that's trying to control the weather, but every time
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  he runs an experiment and actually makes things worse. So the government is also
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  trying to build their own machine, and you're working to solve the problems of
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  the broken weather that the weather Machine keeps making. You're also trying to help
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  fix things. I don't know. It's a weird theme, but works fine
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  for explaining what you're doing in the game. You're assembling a variety of different
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  resource types and managing them, and you have to sort of manage the flow
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  of them through your inventory and onto the board and triggering them at the right
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  time. It's not entirely dissimilar from On Mars, although the mechanism that you're
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  choosing stuff reminds me a bit more. It feels a bit more like Liz
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  Boa to me than On Mars. Although neither game is the same, they're
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  all pretty different. I like Weather Machine a lot really fun, very heavy.
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  I like it better now than I think I did after my first play.
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  I think after my first play I was sort of mid on it and
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  I'm coming around to it or I like it more this time. So definitely
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  worth checking out. If that's the kind of game you enjoy, probably your
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  first play is going to be pretty myssifying for half the play, and then
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  you'll start start to click into place and it's easy to forget stuff, so
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  you got to really pay attention to the way that extra costs trigger and the
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  way bonuses trigger and so on. So that's Weather Machine by Vitalaserta, designed
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  by Graphic designed by Ian O'Toole, published by Ego Griffin Games. The last
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  game I want to talk about today is Evacuation. Evacuation is the newest big
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  box game from Vladimir Succi, one of my favorite designers, in fact,
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  the only designer that I'm sort of like all in on buying all of his
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  games, although I do know for a fact there are too that I don't
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  have. I don't have Eldeborn Duel, which is some sort of space dueling
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  game. I haven't picked that up, and there's a children's game about Dragons
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  that I haven't picked up either. As far as I know, those are
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  the only two I don't have. This is another game very much in the
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  line of the kinds of games Suci makes. I would say in terms of
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  immediate reaction, I like it about the same or a little better than Messina
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  thirteen forty seven. And I liked Messina better than Woodcraft. I thought Woodcraft
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  was good, and I'm excited to play it again, but of the last
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  couple of years, it's the one I like least of like Messina and Woodcraft,
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  and then this new Evacuation. I think Evacuation I like best, although
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  I need to play it again or maybe a couple more times before I can
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  really tell. I've sort of got Messina down now, I understand how it
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  works, and I do really like that Evacuation. I've only got the one
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  play. If you haven't played it before or are not familiar with it,
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  the idea is that we are a civilization on a planet that is dying,
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  and we need to move to another planet. We've started colonizing the other planet
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  and we have the ability to move there, but each of us represents one
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  country and we're trying to move our people from the old planet to the new
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  planet, and you do that by building up resources, building up ships,
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  and then moving people over. The part that works really well or is really
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  innovative is the idea that you have a bunch of resources on the old planet
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  and almost nothing on the new planet. As the game goes along, you
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  get more and more stuff on the new planet, you have less and less
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  stuff on the old planet, and you have to pay for things you're doing
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  on each planet on that planet. So there's a really clever double economy mechanism
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  that I just think is really neat. The graphic design works pretty well,
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  as with a lot of Latimir Future games. There's a couple missteps in the
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  sort of rule book and play aids and that sort of thing. It's a
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  little bit confusing, but it's not bad. I think it's pretty good and
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  I think it's pretty fun. Quite as good as Underwater Cities or Shipyard,
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  but still very good. Oh I also did not pick up the new Shipyard,
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  which looks really nice, but you know, I don't. I have
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  too many games to go buying second copies of games I already have. So
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  that said, Yeah, I really like Evacuation. It's definitely a keeper,
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  Definitely a game I'm gonna play again as we go on. Well, that's
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  the end of my list of games I played recently. What games have you
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  played recently? I'd love to know. Head over to board game geek Field
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  three two sixty nine and share your thoughts there. I would love to hear
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  what you've been playing. Maybe I've played it too. If you want to
• 11:35
  send me a message, you can email me at Brendan at Routbox Games,
• 11:37
  or send me a link on board game geek, or send me a geek
• 11:41
  mail message on board game geek Wombat nine two nine is gonna use their name
• 11:43
  there. Well, thanks for joining me today. I hope your next walk
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  is as pleasant as mine was. Well by Brought to you by rattle Box