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Revive, Astra, Gloom (revisited), Paku Paku · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
• 0:07
  as I step out of the house and deliver an episode to you while I
• 0:10
  walk to the library. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. It's in the mid to
• 0:25
  late high forties, but there's almost no breeze, so it feels pretty comfortable
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  taking a walk up to the library to or retire a couple of movies before
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  I sit down and go heads down into my desk for work for the day.
• 0:37
  I'm so glad to be out stretching my legs a little bit, so
• 0:40
  I thought I'd take a moment to talk about a couple of games I've played
• 0:42
  recently. This is an episode of Board Game Expresso Triple Shot Glod Glug Glug
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  today. For those of you knew the podcast, Board Game Expresso is a
• 0:53
  episode where I quickly hence the espresso Expresso, hence I quickly grew talk about
• 1:00
  three games that I've played recently and one I dusted off, giving you sort
• 1:04
  of first impressions or renewed impressions of those games. These are not reviews,
• 1:08
  per se. I generally haven't played the game enough to feel like it's a
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  review. Occasionally I'll do something called message from the Deep, which is a
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  more thorough review type discussion of a game that I've played many times, as
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  opposed to most of these games are once or twice played. So let's just
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  jump right in. The first game I want to talk about is is Revive.
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  Now. This is a game you've heard about a lot on the podcast
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  because I've talked about it a lot, and I think that I have told
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  you the story of my challenging journey to try to get Revive played. If
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  I hadn't, I'm going to now. Revive is a game I've wanted for
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  a while. It's by one of my more recent rising favorite designers, Christian
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  Ahmand, Osibi and Elisvenson. I think there are other designers on that as
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  well. You always have Helg Meisner and on A Wermblund, so it's four
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  of them. But Kristin Ahmand Ostby and I Live Spence and are the two
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  that whose work I know better. So this is a game I wanted to
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  play for a while. It is published by Aporta Games, came out at
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  Essen last year and was hard to get a hold of. I was able
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  to get it in September, I think, and I've been wanting to play
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  it or no I got out of gen Con. I've been wanting to play
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  it since then, and the first time I tried to play it I overscheduled.
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  I told one friend, Hey, you want to play this with me?
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  And he said, yeah, can I bring a friend? I said,
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  sounds great, and then later I forgot that he said he was bringing
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  a friend. So I had another friend who said he wanted to play and
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  asked he could bring a friend, and I said sure, So we got
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  there. In the four player game, there were five of us waiting to
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  play, and as the host and the person who screwed up the numbers,
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  I said, why don't you four I'll teach you for to play and you
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  have a good time and I'll try it later. I tried it a couple
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  weeks later and forgot an essential rule, so the first time I played,
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  we played with one of the rules completely wrong, so our scores didn't count.
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  We still had a good time and got most of the mechanisms right,
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  but it still didn't feel like a real play. Finally, I did get
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  a chance to play it so I can revive. Revive is a really interesting
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  game. You have a number of different actions you could take that involve system
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  management, where you have a hand of cards that you're spending. You get
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  resources, and you can augment those resources with other cards that you can get
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  that will make that resource gathering process better. There's also different kinds of upgrades
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  you can get moving along a variety of different tech trees that are hidden as
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  different kinds of tracks or different kinds of displays, and basically as you make
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  progress, you amplify your ability to do well in the different things. It's
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  really fun. I like the arc of the different pieces very hard. I
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  did really poorly, like a third of the points of the person who won,
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  but I had a great time playing. So that's Revive definitely worth checking
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  out. I think I'm going to pick up the expansion when I have a
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  chance. That it won't be for a while, I imagine, but I'm
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  looking forward to that. Really really nice components. It comes with a three
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  layer or two or three layer for each of the players. You have a
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  whole bunch of different little wooden discs and cubes and stuff that are just a
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  delight and make for a really fun time moving bits around. It is pretty
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  complicated. It is the kind of game that is fun because it's complicated.
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  So that's revive. Next up is a game I've only played on board game
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  Arena, but I played it a couple times and I feel like I got
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  the gist of it and it makes me glad for my instinct. This is
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  a game called Astra. Astra is a roll and right game. I think
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  it's a roll and right when you're playing it in real person. I guess
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  it could use like little colored gems, but whatever. It's a card game
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  from mind Clash Games that's about observing constellations, and the idea is that you
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  are taking turns trying to add observations to the stars by drawing these constellations out.
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  And if when a constellation is finished, the person who finishes it collects
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  it into their display and everybody else who contributed to it gets a bonus from
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  the card. So you have this pattern of wanting to help some constellations,
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  but you don't want to get them all because one, you can't carry it,
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  you can't store them all, but two you need the bonuses that they
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  give you to power your engine to do more observations and more things. There's
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  points scoring involved as well. It is a sort of a set collection resource
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  management game built around this idea of stars. Narratively, it doesn't make a
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  whole lot of sense to me. I don't really understand how you and I
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  would discover a constellation together by me pointing out two stars and you pointing out
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  two stars. It's a weird. It's a weird notion that I don't think
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  works in terms of the theme. I like the system of if you contribute
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  you get a bonus, If you took it, you get the points for
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  it. That's a neat thing that I might steal at some point because I
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  haven't seen it done a lot, although you could kind of argue that Furnace
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  does that with its auctions, where if you win the auction you get the
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  card, and if you lose the auction you get resources. So it's not
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  like this is unheard of, but it's certainly different enough from most everything else
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  that I've played that I feel like I couldn't directly say, oh, yeah,
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  this is just like that other thing I've played. The presentation on Board
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  Game Arena is really nice, It works really well. It's smooth, it's
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  fun to play asynchronously, and yeah, it's just pretty enjoyable. The game
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  is designed by Patrick Porco, lab Frigius Scolberg, and Esther Christina SaaS.
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  It was published by mind Clash Games last year. It's Astra available on Board
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  game Arena if you want to give it a try. I did have a
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  revisited game that I want to talk to now, a dust it off game.
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  As a reminder, a game gets dusty if it's been unplayed for a
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  year or more so, if you have a game you played more than a
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  year ago, it is metaphorically dusty, and so you can dust it off
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  to play it. My one of the oldest games that I've ever dusted off
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  where I knew this specific date that I played it last is Gloom. Gloom
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  is a classic game from Atlass Games that's published on these clear cards and in
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  the game are a you're telling a story of a doomed family, sort of
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  Adam's Family rip off, and the idea is that you are trying to tell
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  the horrible story of what happened to this family, with the idea that you
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  will guide them through this misery into their final resting space and they'll die.
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  Is dark, but it's pretty fun. It's played on clear cards, which
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  if you've played more recent games like Mystic Veil or Canvas, these use clear
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  cards in much the same way, where there are elements on the cards,
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  and when you overlap them onto other cards, then those elements get covered up,
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  and when the character dies, the things that are showing uncovered in the
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  card is what you're trying to see. All in all, Gloom is a
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  good time. It is really cutthroat. I'd forgotten how mean it was,
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  I guess because probably when we were playing it before, we didn't have non
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  mean games. I didn't have cooperative games, I didn't have so many euros.
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  I was not used to games that weren't just direct competition and like screwing
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  each other over. Gloom is very much that, and I found I don't
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  have a real strong taste for that anymore. I mean, it's kind of
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  fun if you know going in that's what it is. That's fine, but
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  ultimately it wasn't my favorite aspect of the gameplay. I do like the storytelling
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  that comes out of the different hilariously named cards and the characters as you see
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  them dying. It's pretty funny, and from that perspective, I really enjoyed
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  it. If you've never played Gloom before, it's probably worth checking out.
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  I do also own Cuthulhu Gloom with I think is just another edition of Gloom
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  with different families on the art and different names on the trauma cards. I
• 8:52
  haven't investigated enough to check how closely they overlap. In terms of Gloom,
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  it has been a very long time since I played it, over eight years.
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  If you listen to the top of the Sack episode from October, I'll
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  tell you exactly how many how long it's been, but it was over eight
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  years. But I did remember the exact last time I played it, which
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  is a kind of fun twist to be able to say, like, heyre's
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  here's a game I played eight years ago when I returned to it also still
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  in my collection, so that's kind of fun. It's moved. It's moved
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  with me multiple times, so I definitely owned it when I lived in Florida.
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  Oh no, I couldn't have it since it came out in two thousand
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  and five, so I got it some time after we moved to Illinois,
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  but then it definitely moved with me to the new house. And moved again
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  to the house we're in now. So that's Gloom, designed by Keith Baker
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  from Atlas Games. Finally, the last game of point two is a little
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  puff of a game. This is a game designed by Antoine Bouza of Seven
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  Wonders, Fame and Ghost Stories and many other games. I came across this
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  because it was recommended on the So Very Wrong About Games podcast, which is
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  one of my favorite favorites these days. The hosts are irascible and earnest and
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  funny, and when they recommend there's certain kinds of games that when they recommend
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  them with enthusiasm, I'm happy to pick them up, and Pacu Pacu is
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  one such game. Pacupacu is themed around the idea of being. It's a
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  feast of panda bears trying to eat the most food. And the way it
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  works is everybody there's five dice and you start with them sort of spread out
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  evenly among the players. It's a real time frantic dice rolling games. So
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  you roll the die. If you roll one of the sides that has numbers,
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  which there's I think three sides that have numbers, then you reroll it.
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  If you roll one of the sides that has a has the red food
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  or red plate icon, then you're going to put a plate in the middle
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  of the table. They have these tiny little plastic plates, and then if
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  you roll the green panda icon, then you pass the die to the first
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  time you're left. The round ends when someone knocks over the stack of plates
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  or when somebody has a certain number of dice in front of them, depending
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  how many players are playing. If you're in a small group, once you
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  have five dice in front of you, then game's over. If you're in
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  a bigger group, it's three dice. So it's frantic and silly and entirely
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  luck based, but boy, it's a good time. It's not real deep,
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  but it's been a pretty good success with most of the groups I've shown
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  it to. I did show it to my friends at my Columbia College Board
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  Game Society meeting and it was thoroughly enjoyed there. Everybody had a good time.
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  So that's Pacu Paku from Antoine Booza and published by Robinsberger. Well that's
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  about it for my games that I wanted to talk about. I'm really happy
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  to tell you about Revive and have gotten that played and the other games as
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  well. So what have you been playing lately? What have you tried out?
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  What new games have drifted across your transom. Head over to board game
• 12:05
  Geek Guild three two sixty nine and share your experiences there, join the conversation
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  as they say. You can reach out to me Brendan at rattleboxgames dot com
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  or or send me a direct message on board game geek Wombat nine two nine.
• 12:18
  It's my user name there. I also maintain gameplayers on board game Arena
• 12:22
  and Yukata dot You can reach me there at Wombat nine two nine is my
• 12:26
  username in both those spaces. I'm happy to play a game with you if
• 12:30
  you like, send me an invite. Well that's about it for me today.
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  I hope your next walk is this Plesant's mind was old bye, brought
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  to you by rats all year in a year a