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Transcript

Hansa Teutonica; Kanban EV; Hot Streak; Via Nebula (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorders, I step off the train
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Brendan Riley, Greeting's listener. It's a lovely day here
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in suburban Chicago. The temperature is in the mid fifties,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and I am strolling home from work. It's a Friday,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: so the weekend is appearing. Though I do have a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: fair amount of work to do over the weekend, as
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: one would expect. All in all, it looks like it's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: going to be a lovely time to be alive. Well,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: it's been a little while since the last time we
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: got together, and so I thought that I would chat
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit about what games I've been playing. That's
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: why it's time for a board game Espresso Triple Shot.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Order up. The board game Espresso Triple Shot is a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: episode segment in which I talk about three games that
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  Speaker 1: I've played recently for the first time, and one game
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I dusted off or played an expansion for. Let's jump
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: into it. First game I want to talk about is
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: from Whoops. First game I want to talk about is
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  Speaker 1: from designer Andrea Steading with art from Dennis Loehausen and
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  Speaker 1: has been published by a variety of different publishers. The
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: copy I have is from Zeman Games. This is Hansa Teutonica.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Hansa Tutanica is a two thousand and nine classic old
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  Speaker 1: school euro in which you play as You'll be surprised
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to learn German medieval merchants trying to make the best
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: network of German merchant stations in Germany. I guess that's
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: better than colonizing another place and making the German the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: merchant stations there. Hans Tonica is a pretty interesting game.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: It's got a delightful decision tree, which at first seems
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  Speaker 1: pretty complicated, but upon play gets relatively narrow relatively quickly.
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  Speaker 1: We only played the once. I think if this became
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: a regular on the table, it would become pretty great.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: The way the game works, you have a board in
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  Speaker 1: front of you that gives you a array of skills
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: that you can use. Most of the skills are relatively simple,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: but as you interact with them they get more complex
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  Speaker 1: or more powerful. On your turn, you can do I
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  Speaker 1: think two actions and each of those actions is a skill,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: or maybe you just do one action. Opes I've already
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  Speaker 1: forgotten now I think you just do one action, but
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  Speaker 1: the action is the skill, and the skill gets stronger
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  Speaker 1: as you go along. Maybe. So the way the game
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  Speaker 1: works is there are the cities throughout the board and
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  Speaker 1: your goal is to build trading stations around them, to
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  Speaker 1: build connections between them, or to build connections between them
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: in order to build trading stations on them. The cleverness,
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  Speaker 1: the clever bit of the game has to do with
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the conflict between building trading stations, which is the primary
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: way that you get points at the end of the game,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and increasing the power of your actions, which lets you
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: build more trading stations. In order to increase the power
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  Speaker 1: of your actions, you have to build a network of
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  Speaker 1: trading spots between two cities, one of which is one
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: of the special cities. There's five special cities on the board.
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  Speaker 1: In order to increase your action either your building action,
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  Speaker 1: your income action, your point scoring action, and there's a
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  Speaker 1: couple others. In order to increase one of those actions,
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  Speaker 1: you have to build to the city where that special
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  Speaker 1: power is invested. Then, instead of building a trade station,
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  Speaker 1: you increase the ability. So as the game was long,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: you could focus for a significant portion of the game
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  Speaker 1: on just increasing the ability of one or more of
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: these five different things at the same time. Other players
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  Speaker 1: could build a station at those special cities, and then
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  Speaker 1: when you increase your power at that action, you also
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  Speaker 1: give them points. This game has a relatively low point threshold.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Once someone has twenty points, the game is over, and
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  Speaker 1: so there is an element of watching what other players
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  Speaker 1: are doing as well. For instance, when we were playing,
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  Speaker 1: I built stations in two of the places where there
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: were those special cities, and as a result, several players
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  Speaker 1: ended up giving me points. I got up to something
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  Speaker 1: like sixteen points without doing much work. Now, had I
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  Speaker 1: been smart and more cutthroat, I should have just done
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  Speaker 1: a little work to get those last points and ended
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  Speaker 1: the game early. But I like to explore a game
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  Speaker 1: a little bit, and so I did that and then
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  Speaker 1: lost dramatically because other players caught up with me and
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  Speaker 1: vastly surpassed me. But I could see the bones of
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  Speaker 1: this game, or see the architecture of this game, and
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  Speaker 1: I really admire it, like I think Hansa Teutonica is
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  Speaker 1: very interesting. There's a reason it has dramatic value on
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  Speaker 1: the board game Geek rankings. It is a very highly
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  Speaker 1: rated game. In fact, it's number one hundred and forty
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  Speaker 1: seven overall, and with good reason. Hansa Teutonica from Andrea
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  Speaker 1: Stetting really interesting game. I love the choices. I love
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  Speaker 1: the way that you have to decide between building your
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  Speaker 1: things that are going to score your points and building
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: your engines that will let you build more things that
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  Speaker 1: score your points. It's a great balance. It's sort of
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: like in Dominion, trying to figure out whether you're getting
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: more cards for your engine or whether you're switching into
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  Speaker 1: earning points. Similar thing in Hanse Tutonica. So that is
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Hansa Teutonica. I got a chance to play kanban Ev.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: This is another heavy game. This is designed by Vatala Serta,
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  Speaker 1: with Ian o'tool doing the art, and published in a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: deluxe format by Eagle Griffin Games. My friend Paul collects
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: all of these een o'tool games, which is great because
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: then I get to play them and I don't have
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: to buy them myself. I generally like these games a lot.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I don't have a ton of them, in like in
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: my top fifty, I maybe have one, but I do
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: generally like them all, even the ones that are less
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: well received, like Weather Machine or get Away or Escape Plan.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Those two are both sort of less well received by
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: most players, but I still think they're pretty interesting. Conbin
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Ev is often appointing to as one of the better ones,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and boy do I agree. I definitely put in the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: top half of the e O tool games that I've
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: played as far as I know. The only one I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: haven't played is or of the Batala sort of games.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I think the only one I haven't played is Vinos.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: It might even be in the top three. It's really good.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Conbin Ev is a work replacement game, or I guess
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: action selection game. Really, you just have the one worker,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and the way the game works is that you place
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: your worker on one of the action spaces on the board,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and then you do the action that's there, and then
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the other players all do that too, so it's a
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: relatively short cycle. And then and then the round resets
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and you go again. The complex or interesting gimmick there
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: is that there's a factory manager, so you are all
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: trainee managers at an automotive factory. What you're trying to
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: do is get better at a variety of different things
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the factory wants you to do. As part of the game,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: there is the factory manager. Her name is it's not Susan, oh, shoot,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: something like Susan future Brendan here, her name is Sandra,
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  Speaker 1: not Susan Sandra, and she is walking around the factory,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and she goes from area to area in the factory
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  Speaker 1: checking what's going on, and the person who has learned
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  Speaker 1: the least about that area gets inspected and loses points
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: if they aren't doing a good job. Now, when we
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: played the first couple rounds, my opponent and I each
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: lost a few points because we got inspected badly. And
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: after that we started really trying to be above the threshold,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: so if we got inspected, we wouldn't lose points. In
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: the game, you are manufacturing electric vehicles, you're road testing them,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: you're upgrading the components for them. You are learning about
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: the different systems, and like many an O tool games,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: this involves a variety of different mechanisms and sets of
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: tokens and interconnected systems that is more accessible than many
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: of the games. It's less complicated than something like Whether
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Machine or Age of Invention. It is also I mean, yeah,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: it's really good. It's hard to explain why it's really good.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: The tension of trying to figure out where you're gonna go.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: The complexity of you can't go to the same location
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  Speaker 1: you were in before is interesting. There is an office
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: area where you can go that lets you do two
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  Speaker 1: different actions instead of two actions at the same location,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: or two or three, I guess, which makes a huge difference.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: But going there makes it really hard to advance on
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the education track of those different locations. All in all,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: it's a really interesting, intricate system that is perfect for
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: the kind of game I like. Conbound ev definitely worth
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: checking out if you get a chance. I'm really happy
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: to have played it. Next up, I got a chance
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: to dust Off via Nebula. This is a twenty sixteen
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: game from Martin Wallace with art from Vincent Jewbat or
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Vincent Juwbet, published by Space Cowboys. Via Nebula could reasonably
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: be described as brass Light if you were to articulate
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the idea of brass as laying down networks between supply
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: sites and building sites and then delivering those resources and
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: scoring points for a variety of things. But more importantly,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: when you add resources to the board, opponents can use
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: those resources. That's Vietnabula does all those things it's just
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: much simpler. You there are sites for exploration, you get
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: points for opening up routes, you get points for adding
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: resources to the board, but then you're locked into those
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: resources until they're all used up. You lose points at
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the end of the game if you haven't used them
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: all up. It's good. I mean, it's very light for
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: this kind of game. It's a good half hour forty
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: five minute game. I played two rounds of it and
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: we tied both games, which was really interesting, definitely worth
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  Speaker 1: worth revisiting. I don't think it's amazing, but I think
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: it's pretty good. That's the a Nebula. The art is
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the sort of fantastical city scape with kind of cartoonish characters,
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  Speaker 1: and the tiles are it's this like hidden landscape that's
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: covered in mist, and what you're doing as a player
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: is you're un or you're recovering, uncovering the board, removing
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the mist from the board so that you can see
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: what's underneath the mist and understand what's going on there. Overall,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I like the flow of the game, and it's not
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: crunchy or thinking the way that Brass is. But it's
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: pretty dang fun. So via Nebula, I'd say it's okay,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: it's pretty good, pretty pretty okay. Finally I got to
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: play Hot Streak. Hot Streak is a twenty twenty five
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: game designed by John Perry with art from Cecil Garypier
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: and published by C Myk. Hot Streak was all the
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: rage last year as a betting racing game. When I
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: heard about it, I thought, oh, this is just replacing
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Ready Set Bet, and from one perspective that it's true.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: It is very similar to ready Set Bet, and if
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you enjoy what's going on in Ready Set Bet, you
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: probably will like Hot Streak as well. That said, there
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: are some significant differences, the first one being Ready set
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Bet is real time racing. Hot Streak is or real
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: time betting. Hot Streak is betting before the race. Alternately,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: in ready set Bet, everything is about how the dice roll.
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  Speaker 1: You don't have any control over the race at all.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: In Hot Streak, there's a deck of cards that everybody
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: gets to see at the beginning of the game that
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: influences how the race is going to go. You then
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: get to secretly add one card to that deck, and
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: over the course of the game, which is three races,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you're slowly changing the deck as well, So I would
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: say that's a point in Hot Streak's favor. You have
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: more control over the race. But where the fun of
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Hot Streak comes from is the absolute chaos of the
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: way that the characters interact the way the race runs,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: because I haven't said the best part of the game yet,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: which is the race instead of being boring horses is
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: for fully color large scale mascots, people in mascot costumes.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: There is a person dressed as the Queen of England,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: there is a person dressed as a big hot dog,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: there's a person dressed as a fish, and there's a
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: person dressed as a big bear, big orange bear. So
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: you're betting on these different characters to be either to
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: win the race or you know, to do well in
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the race. Or there's also a yes no question that
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: you're betting on the answer to, and usually they ask
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: no question is something like will two of the characters
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: be at the finish line right before one of them
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: finishes something like that, and you bet yes or no,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: and there's points on that. Although all it is a
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: betting game where you are gaining money from the different bets,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: but it's pretty low stakes. I do like the escalation
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: of the bets as the game goes on, so you
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: still have a chance to win even if you did
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: badly in the first two rounds. It does result in
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of hooting and hollering as you play, just
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: like bet does. I will say I like Ready Set
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Bet better. I think the real time betting on the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: race is more fun than the pregame betting. But Hot
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Streak is a good time and I'm happy to play
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: it occasionally or play it when people get it out.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: We played three games of it last night and I
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: had a good time all three times. So that is
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Hot Streak. Well that's about it for me today. I'd
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: love to hear what you've been playing. If you want
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: to let me know, head over to board game Geek
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Guild three two sixty nine and post your thoughts on
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: gameplay there. I'd love to hear them. Until next time,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I'm Brendan, and I'll say thanks for joining me. I
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: hope your next one because this post is mine one
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: bye bye, brought to you by that experience mean young