Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Knarr; Civolution; Blood on the Clocktower; Last Will revisited

Transcript

Knarr; Civolution; Blood on the Clocktower; Last Will revisited · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
• 0:07
  out of the library and deliver an episode to you while I walk around.
• 0:10
  I'm Brendan Riley.
• 0:12
  Well, good afternoon listeners.
• 0:22
  I am walking near a playground, so the sounds of children running around is loud and chaotic.
• 0:29
  That's not to be surprising on a sunny and warm day like this on...oh my goodness.
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  Well I'm pleased to be talking with you today about games.
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  It's fun to take a moment while I'm walking to think about my favorite hobby and talk
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  with you out loud about it.
• 0:48
  I don't know if I've said this recently, but I do really want to thank you for listening.
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  It means a lot to me to know that I'm not just recording this and putting it out in
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  a void, but I see the download numbers and occasionally somebody posts on board game geek
• 1:00
  or sends me a message and I really appreciate hearing from them.
• 1:04
  If you would like to continue that appreciation train, I would love to hear from you about
• 1:09
  the podcast, what you think of it or just let me know that you're listening, or you could
• 1:14
  post a review on the podcast feed of your choice.
• 1:18
  I have pretty minimal numbers, but having more people listen would help expand the reach
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  of my sonorous voice and perhaps the community that we have built around this little experiment
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  that I'm doing.
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  I don't know, does it count as an experiment if I've been doing it for seven years?
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  I like to think so, but maybe not.
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  Well, on today's episode, we are three episodes past the last time I did one of these, so it's
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  time for another board game espresso triple shot.
• 2:00
  Order up.
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  For those of you new to the podcast, the board game espresso is a segment in which I talk
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  about three games I've tried recently for the first time and usually one game that I've
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  tried an expansion for or that I've dusted off.
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  It's meant to be a kind of many review.
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  These are not thorough evaluations of the games because I haven't had a chance to try them
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  instead.
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  These are quick takes on games I've just tried.
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  Well, the first game I want to talk about today is Knarr.
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  This was published in 2023.
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  The designer Thomas DuPont, the artist is Antoine Carriol and it was published by Bombix
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  and Pandasaurus in the United States.
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  NAR is a set collection card game in which you are trying to earn points by building up a
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  crew of Vikings to go sailing around, I don't know, doing Viking things.
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  The way the game works, you have a series of cards that you're drafting into your hand
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  and on your turn you get to play cards.
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  Actually what you do is you play cards into your tableau and you activate all of the cards
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  of the color that you just played.
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  Each card has an effect that it can do and so when it's activated it does the effect.
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  So obviously if you play, if you have more cards of the same color you're going to get a
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  bigger effect for those cards.
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  Some of those cards then, oh and then you take a card from the row that the drafting area
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  connected to the color of the card you played.
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  But it isn't necessarily that color.
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  So let's say you play a blue card, it goes in your blue column and then you take a card
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  from the blue spot in the card row, but the card you take from the blue spot is randomized
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  so it could be any color.
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  And then that card goes in your hand and your next turn you can play that card that you have.
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  So there's this balancing act where you're trying to get cards of a certain color but getting
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  them of a certain color might mean playing cards of a different color.
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  And then on top of that sometimes you're trying to gain points by getting these sort of
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  land cards or goal cards and you get those by spending your crew that you've got in your
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  boat.
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  So there's this rhythm where you're building up your crew and you're getting kind of a
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  bigger and bigger engine but those don't generally get you very many points in order
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  to get points you have to take the land and when you take the land you spend the cards
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  out of your boat and then you don't have as many cards in your boat.
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  It's a really interesting rhythm and frankly a pretty interesting game.
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  Like I thought it was really fun and I think it's definitely the kind of game that you know
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  if you have 45 minutes it's a really good play, thoughtful decisions to be made, really
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  nice art.
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  I don't think it's the Miko is the artist but it's got it's got a slightly more straightforward
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  vibe it might actually be time...no it's not Vincent Dutreit it's Antoine Carillon but it's
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  pretty good.
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  I really like the look and feel of the game and it's definitely worth playing a few times
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  if you can get a hold of it or get a chance.
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  I think it is on board game arena as well that is Knarr spelled K-N-A-R-R [rhymes with �bar�] which is the name of
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  one of the kinds of Viking ships.
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  Next up we have Civolution.
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  Civolution is a massive heavy very complex, civ building game from Stefan Feld the master
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  of games that have lots of different ways to get points the master of the point salad game.
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  Civolution might be his most complex game.
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  I've played Bora Bora which is pretty complicated and this one blows that out of the water.
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  This game rivals for me the most complex games I've played your through the ages which
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  really isn't that there's a lot going on in through the ages but it's not it doesn't have
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  the same complexity.
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  It rivals your Lacerita games your Weather Machines and your on Mars where you have these
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  complex interconnected systems and in order to do something in one system you have to make
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  sure three other systems are lined up properly.
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  It rivals the more complex mind clash games your Trickerion or Cerebria in terms of the stuff
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  you have to keep track of.
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  Now Cerebria the gameplay itself is much simpler than Civolution.
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  I have an interesting reaction to this game.
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  I will say intellectually and frankly nostalgic I love this game.
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  I think the things at play in the game are incredible.
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  There's tons of possibilities.
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  I can see how there are systems upon systems and if you come to understand how they work
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  you could have really compelling cascades of interesting interactions.
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  This game more than any other in a long time has had me considering if I had space for
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  it in my house somewhere.
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  This would be a really interesting solo game to set up and play for half an hour and leave
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  set up and come back and play another day for half an hour.
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  Like it's got really compelling interactions, really strong sets of possibilities.
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  There's interesting competition that's not too cutthroat and it's set up so that any of
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  the direct competition stuff you could just take out although you're always competing
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  for cards and resources and that sort of thing.
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  But like the cards that let me just actively attack you you can take those out.
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  So from one perspective this game is everything I like about very very heavy games.
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  That said as one friend who played it with me reminded me when he heard me talking about
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  how interesting I thought the game is like I thought you spent a lot of the game really
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  unhappy.
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  And the truth is I did.
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  Like this game, a big part of this game is like castles of burgundy rolling dice and
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  using those dice to do things.
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  The game does have a number of different dice mitigation techniques.
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  It does have ways to get extra dice which don't get you extra turns per say.
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  But having extra dice does give you extra flexibility about what you do with your turn.
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  Because like castles of burgundy there's a bunch of different things you can do with any
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  given die.
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  But sometimes if you want to do a specific thing you have to have a die of a specific value.
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  So those interactions I think are important.
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  So all of that said when I was playing it I was grumbling a lot about the way the dice
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  were coming out.
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  If you have ever played a game of castles of burgundy and you really needed a two or a
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  five and when you rolled the dice you got a couple fours.
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  And so now you have to spend a turn getting workers or you have to use up your workers to
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  make the dice do what you want.
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  Or God forbid you needed a one in a six, a one or a six and you got a three and a four.
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  So you have to spend a bunch of workers to get the dice to do what you need in order to
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  move forward on your plan.
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  That can be really frustrating.
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  And I think civilization has more flexibility about what you might do with your dice and more
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  ways to mitigate how those dice might land.
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  But my experience of it was still heavily shaped by I can't seem to do the thing I want
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  to do a lot of the time.
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  I spent a lot of turns setting up dice for other turns rather than actually doing things.
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  So I would like to play it again.
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  I probably need to make that happen in the next couple months while I still basically remember
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  how to play because the longer I wait the longer it's going to be where I'll forget all
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  the little details and this game is dozens and dozens of little details.
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  It is a very finicky, very complex game in ways that are important to keep an eye on it.
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  But so I'm going to say intriguing, interesting, definitely want to play it again but not a
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  home run.
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  So we'll say that.
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  That's Civolution designed by Stefan Feld with Art from Dennis Lohausen who I believe
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  did the Art for Terra Mystica and all of the follow-ups to Terra Mystica published in the
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  US by Pegasus Spiel.
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  I did get a chance to dust off a game.
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  I dusted it off Last Will.
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  It had been a while since I played it and we played it at a friend's house.
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  This game holds up.
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  It's really good.
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  In this game you're trying to spend your money as fast as you can.
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  It's a Vladimir Suchy game so there's a lot of different stuff going on but it's very
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  thematic.
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  Each round you decide how many actions you want to take based on how early you want to
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  get up in the morning.
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  The earlier you get up there's a mix of different actions you can take and it makes for a
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  really compelling play.
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  The idea is you acquire these cards and the cards let you...
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  There's a round where you're acquiring a phaser, you acquire cards and then you use the
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  cards that you have in your hand and the cards that you have in play to do different kinds
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  of actions.
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  That will let you buy and sell property that will let you spend money extravagantly on different
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  goods and services that will let you basically blow through your money in a variety of different
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  ways.
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  The point of the game is to spend all your money as fast as you can.
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  The person who spends all their money fastest wins.
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  That's the basic premise.
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  The art is very...
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  I mean it's very heteronormative Victorian era.
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  In this game you are a rich male heir.
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  The game does not have room for thinking about different gender structures although you
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  could certainly play as a masculine presenting woman or any other sort of setup I guess and
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  just sort of lean into the idea that the art is about presentation more than physique.
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  That would work fine.
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  But yeah, it's a really fun and goofy game about spending money as fast as you can in old
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  timing situation.
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  But I like it a lot.
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  It held up very well for me.
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  Definitely maybe you want to play it again.
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  Really maybe you want to play with people who played before so that I can add the getting
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  sacked expansion and try that because I have had it for a long time and I have not played
• 11:41
  it and I would like to.
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  So that's returning to 2011's Last Will with art from Thomas Kusarowski and designed by
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  Vladimir Sushi, published by Czech Games Edition.
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  And I believe it's still in print because it's a good game.
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  Alright, the last new game that I tried I want to talk about today is
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  Blood on the Clock Tower.
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  Blood on the Clock Tower is essentially fancy werewolf.
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  If you've never played werewolf it is a social deduction game where there are night phases
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  and day faces in each day phase the villagers kill a person in each night phase the werewolves
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  kill a person and there's discussion and dissension and so on.
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  In Ultimate Werewolf the sort of most widely published public publicized version of the
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  game.
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  There are roles that players can have that shape how they interact with the things going
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  on and that works well.
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  Blood on the Clock Tower is like super fancy pants roles in the game.
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  In Blood on the Clock Tower every player has a role they're doing.
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  Each player gets to interact with other players in different ways.
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  There are a variety of factions and most importantly there is a storyteller and the storyteller
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  is kind of like the game master in werewolf but because one of the ideas is that these
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  different roles have a variety of things that can happen that give the storyteller room
• 13:04
  to make the game more interesting.
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  So the storyteller often can decide to take particular maneuvers in ways that will allow
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  for the story to emerge and to be interesting.
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  That's the long short of it is.
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  So sometimes the storyteller might influence things a certain way or not because their goal
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  is to have it come right down to the wire.
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  They don't want the werewolves to get found too early, it's demons, whatever.
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  And they don't want the humans to get too widely suckered.
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  They want there to be an even balance and that's kind of what happens as you play.
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  All in all it's been a really� it was a really fun game.
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  Very interesting I will confess to not really understanding some of the strategy early
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  on and I think I could have played better than I did.
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  But overall I had a fun time and I think that it was well worth the experience.
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  If you get a chance to play Blood on the Clock Tower I think you should.
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  It's an interesting game and well worth trying.
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  Well that's about it for me today.
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  Thanks for joining me on my walk.
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  I hope that your next block is as pleasant as mine was.
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  Bye bye.
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