Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Forbidden Jungle; Woodcraft; New York Slice revisited; Letter Jam

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Forbidden Jungle; Woodcraft; New York Slice revisited; Letter Jam · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:05
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorders,
• 0:08
  I leave the game shop and delivering episode to you while I walk home.
• 0:11
  I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a lovely
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  day here in Suburtman, Chicago. It's slightly overcast and we're having a gentle
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  rain right now. So if you're hearing any watery noises, it's because I'm
• 0:32
  getting lightly rained on. It's not so bad that I can't walk home in
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  it, although given the amount of rain I'm getting on my glasses, it
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  may be a weird journey of squinting through rain colored, rain covered glasses.
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  We'll see. So it seems like another opportunity to chat with you about games
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  I've been playing. That's right, it's time for another board Game Espresso Triple
• 0:52
  Shot. For those of you new to the podcast, Board Game Espresso Triple
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  Shot is a first impressions review segment in which I go over three games that
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  I've played recently for the first time and one game that I dusted off,
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  and talk a little bit about the experience of playing them anew, playing them
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  brand new, or playing or re playing a game I haven't played in a
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  while. That was awkward, But you understand what I'm talking about, So
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  let's just jump right in. The first game I want to talk about is
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  came out of Gen Con this year. I did not pick it up.
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  A friend of mine got it right around when it released and brought it over
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  to play. This is Forbidden Jungle. Forbidden Jungle is the fourth game in
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  the Forbidden series from game Right Games and designer Matt Leecock, first one being
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  Forbidden Island, the second one being Forbidden Desert, the third one being Forbidden
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  Sky, and then this new one, Forbidden Jungle. And I will say
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  I really like Forbidden Island as a game to teach people new to the genre
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  about cooperative games. And I really like Forbidden Desert as a good midweight cooperative
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  game with really interesting bits of luck and actually some thoughtful challenges to it.
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  Forbidden Sky I was not as excited about. I found it pretty challenging and
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  I didn't really enjoy the puzzle. I've only played it two or three times,
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  but none of them really did it for me. And then we have
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  Forbidden Jungle. The new one. Forbidden Jungle actually is a continuation of the
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  three parts story that began with Forbidden Desert, and Forbidden Desert you crashed your
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  plane in a desert and you end up building an airship from pieces you find
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  of a lost civilization in the desert. After you do that, you fly
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  up and you land it or crash it on a sky platform flying in the
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  sky. And then after Forbidden Sky you launch into outer space or something in
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  a rocket and then you crash that rocket in the jungle, which is Forbidden
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  Jungle. As far as I know, Forbidden Island is not part of that
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  story. Forbidden Jungle, like the other games, involves each player having a
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  role, and each one of those roles coming with a special power that you
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  can do. Involves using actions to maneuver in a particular way to do simple
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  tasks as well as move, and you have an overall goal of finding an
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  assembling a thing and using that to get out of there. Basically, there's
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  crisis management and action point selection. Forbidden Jungle uses an interesting kind of crisis
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  management. Has a number of different types of enemies, and the enemies grow
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  and advance over the course of the game, and so as you go along,
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  those enemies get more and more troublesome, and you have to use actions
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  to get rid of them. There are cards and technologies that will give you
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  additional advantages to try to get rid of them, and so finding and using
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  those cards and finding using those technologies at the right time and in the right
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  way is the key to success. We played the game twice. In the
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  first game we lost. In the second game we did succeed. We were
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  playing on easy, I think, and it hit a lot of the same
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  buttons that Forbidden Desert did. I think it certainly is on par with that
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  one in terms of the interesting mechanisms, the interesting challenge, in terms of
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  figuring out where the thing you're looking for is, the escalating challenge, and
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  having to figure out how to react to it in a way that doesn't get
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  you killed. Those things are all pretty great. I found it more comprehensible
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  and more fun than Forbidden Sky, so that part of it wasn't was better.
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  And though I've only played at the once, I would say I put
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  Forbidden Jungle at number three in the series or number two in the series after
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  Forbidden Desert. Forbidden Island is still really good. It's just very very light,
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  so not a game I probably would play with other gamers. Over Forbidden
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  Desert or Forbidden Jungle. Worth giving it a try if you have a chance.
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  That's from Matt Leacock and publisher Game Right Games. Next up, we
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  have Woodcraft. Woodcraft is a game I was waiting eagerly for after Essen.
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  It came out last year at Essen and got quite a bit of coverage from
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  the various places that I like getting coverage from. It is another combotastic engine
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  building manage your resources, Scale Up your Turns game from Vladimir Succi. Like
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  the game before it, Missina thirteen forty seven, this one Vladimir Succi designed
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  with another designer I forget their name, My apologies. In this one,
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  you are fairy tale woodworkers in the forest, growing and using wood to make
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  different items and then selling those items as part of contracts to get money and
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  other resources. You develop your workshop by buying different tools and by building out
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  different pieces of your workshop that gain you different elements, and all of those
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  different pieces make you more efficient and more successful as you go along. There's
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  a neat mechanism by which you manage your would you grow it in these pots
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  or you buy it from the lumber yard, and you have to manage the
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  size of the wood lumber pieces, and you can split them and join them
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  and do the such stuff in order to get the lumber in the right size
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  that you need it in order to do the different projects. The central action
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  wheel is a key part of the game. There is an element of a
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  Rondel to it. It's not quite a Rondell, but it's very It's in
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  the same neighborhood as a Rondel, and it works pretty well that way,
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  you know. All in all, this is another great Vladimiosucchi game. I
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  really enjoyed it. I'd have to play it a few more times to figure
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  out where it fits in the pantheon of these games. I think it feels
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  more like something like Shipyard or what would be another one that would feel like
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  a good fit. This one doesn't have the central space that you're building in
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  like you see in Praga or Underwater Cities or Pulsar twenty eight forty nine.
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  It is more self contained. It feels more like a return to Shipyard in
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  terms of the way that you're managing your resources, the way that you're building
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  up your own environment to amplify the use of those resources, and then looking
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  for efficiency combos in the nature of things that come out. The theme is
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  fine. It's got this sort of cute art to it, and it holds
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  together all right, although there's an implication of like a magical fantasy world that
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  isn't reflected really in the story that's being told with any dramatic need. It
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  really is just an efficiency puzzle, but it's a really good one and I
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  enjoy it quite a bit. It probably lies somewhere in the neighborhood between Shipyard
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  and Messina thirteen forty seven, because Messina is one of those ones where you're
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  you have a shared resource board that you're kind of fighting over with moving your
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  p to take things, and there is some of that here where you are
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  trying to get the resources that your opponents might want. The action wheel in
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  the middle feels a bit like Praga in terms of choosing what kind of action
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  you're going to do in a little bit like Shipyard, and then the outcome
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  part feels, yeah, I don't know, like he doesn't really have a
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  contract fulfillment game per se. Maybe a little bit like Last Will, I
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  don't know. You can definitely see that it is in league with the other
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  kinds of games Vladimirsucchi creates, but it does feel different from them in interesting
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  and significant ways. I really like it. I'd be happy to I'm looking
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  forward to playing it again, and it's definitely staying in my collection. So
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  that's Woodcraft from Delicious Games, I think published in the US by Rio Grand
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  if I'm not mistaken, all right. So I recently got a chance to
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  dust off a game that I haven't played since Origins twenty seventeen, and this
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  is New York Slice. New York Slice is by Jeffreys or Allers, and
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  it is a re theme of an older game that was apparently about pie.
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  Instead of slicing sweet dessert pies, you're now slicing savory pizza pies. On.
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  What you're trying to do is you play a number of rounds equal to
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  the number of players, and the player when it's your turn as the active
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  player the divider. You're going to set out this pizza. It's eleven slices
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  and each slice has a variety of different toppings on it. You're going to
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  divide that pizza up into a number of sections equal to the number of players,
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  and then everybody takes one section of the pizza It is possible, through
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  a couple of the different game actions, for some for there to be zero
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  sec zero pieces of pizza left when it comes down around to the original divider,
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  but that's uncommon. When you take the pizza slices, they become part
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  of your collection, and essentially what you're doing is you're trying to have the
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  most of each type of pizza. So if you have the most slices of
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  sausage of anybody at the table at the end of the game, you score
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  for sausage, and they have that for each different kind of pizza. If
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  you can at any time or no when you take a piece of slice,
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  you can choose to eat it instead of putting it in your collection. If
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  you eat it, then you get one point for every pepperoni that was on
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  that pizza slice. At the end of the game, there is one slice
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  that has three anchovies on it. If you have that slice, you lose
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  points, and that's kind of it. It is a I pick you choose
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  mechanism. It is somewhat limiting in that when you put the pizza out,
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  you don't get to divide the sections up however you want. You lay the
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  pizza out and then you have to cut it into slices based on where they
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  came out. Now, this is really important because otherwise the game would be
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  interminably long. People would take forever trying to decide what organization to do,
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  because if you got to rearrange the eleven slices however you want, it would
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  be very common. Instead, you have to use the pieces as they are
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  situated in the pizza itself, meaning that you aren't always going to find a
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  great combination, and sometimes you'll make sections that are clearly better than others.
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  But that's the challenge. I think I don't recall for sure because last time
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  I played this was in twenty seventeen, but I think at the time I
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  probably said something like this game is fine, I'm not all that excited about
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  it. There are other games that I like better that use a push your
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  luck mechanism or an ice split, you choose mechanism. I really like Mammot
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  for that style of game. And so while I'll happily play New York Slice,
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  if someone brings it out, it's not probably a game I'm gonna pursue
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  to own or ask to play myself. And I stand by that now.
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  If that's not what I said before. Well, you can go back and
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  listen. I'll put links to the previous episode in the show notes. So
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  finally, the third game that I tried and you that I want to talk
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  about today is letter Jam. I am not going to try to explain Lane
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  Letter Jam on an audio podcast. It is shockingly complicated to explain. Suffice
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  it to say. It is a group game where you have a word in
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  front of you that you can't see, and everybody else has words in front
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  of them that they can that you can see but they can't. People take
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  turns building words using the letters that are in the market and the letters that
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  people have in front of them on the table. The goal of the group
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  is to have everybody figure out what their individual words are and we get points
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  as a group if everybody figures out their words. Explain it more detail would
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  not be worthwhile because it's difficult to teach even if you have the game in
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  front of you. It's very difficult to teach if you're just listening to an
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  audio podcast and hoping you'll understand it. Let me say though, it is
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  really interesting and it fits the code names just one kind of approach pretty well.
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  It is more complex than both of those. It's probably on par with
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  decrypt if you're thinking about a word game, except to cryptos and teams and
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  then letter Jam. It's cooperative. I really liked it. I'd be happily
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  played again. I notice it's available on Board Game Arena now, so I
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  think I'm gonna see if I can get a couple of games of it going
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  there. Overall, really interesting and I'm glad I got to try it.
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  That said, not for the faint of heart. Really a little on the
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  complicated side too. And if you if you're going to teach it to people,
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  I would strongly recommend practicing explaining it because it feels like it's going to
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  be a bear to teach. So so those are three new games I tried.
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  In one game, I dust set off. What games have you tried
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  lately? Head over to board game Gee killed three two six nine and let
• 13:35
  me know there. You can email me running at rattlebox games dot com or
• 13:39
  send me a direct message to one at nine two nine. Isn't like to
• 13:41
  use your name on board game game. If you want to play a game
• 13:45
  with me, I'm Onboard Game Arena and you Kata dot d also as one
• 13:48
  that at nine two nine, I'd love to play with you in either of
• 13:50
  those plays. Thanks for joining me on Mawauke today. I hope in your
• 13:52
  nice walk this is pleasing to his mind. Walk gold Bye, brought to
• 14:16
  you by Rattlebox year