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Small Games Deep Dive · 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 off the train and deliver an episode do you while I walk
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  home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a
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  cloudy day here in suburban Chicago, a little bit brisk, but relatively comfortable.
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  I've got an umbrella in case it rains, and I've got my walk
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  and shoes on. Here we go. While I was looking through older episodes
• 0:35
  trying to decide what I wanted to talk to you about today, and I
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  realized I had not done a Message from the Deep episode for a while.
• 0:42
  For those of you who are relatively new to the podcast, a Message from
• 0:45
  the Deep is the sort of opposite of the board game espresso. It is
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  meant to be a longer sort of review segment about a game that I know
• 0:53
  really well. And so I was looking through the games that I've played a
• 0:56
  lot, trying to see, like, is there a game I should do
• 0:59
  a Message from the Deep about, or a duel. Sometimes for the duel,
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  I will take two games that I know really well and compare them to
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  one another to see which one I want to recommend. For example, and
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  I didn't see any that struck me right now that I should do that,
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  But I did find myself really interested in talking about a couple small games.
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  So I decided to do a kind of message from the Deep about five relatively
• 1:27
  simple, easy to play games that deserve a Message from the Deep episode.
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  But I'm not really sure I have fifteen minutes worth to say about any one
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  of these, so I'm going to talk about five of them in shorter bursts,
• 1:40
  and you'll hear about these. So I will say all five of these
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  are top recommendations for me. These are all relatively small games. None of
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  them none of them make seeds a half an hour. Most of them are
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  even shorter than that. That are top notch, really good games, definitely
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  worth playing. You should just play all five of these as soon as you
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  can. But I want to talk about them a little bit and talk about
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  why they're so good. None of these. This is not in any particular
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  order, just kind of the order I decided on the men. Actually it's
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  going to be reverse order on the game that I've played the least to the
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  game that I've played the most of these ones. So what I want to
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  talk about is what the game is and why I enjoy it so much.
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  Okay, I'm also going to talk about who designed it and all of that,
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  but that means I have to do a little bit of work, all
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  right. So the first game I'm going to talk about is the one I
• 2:32
  have played the least. That is Anomia. I've recorded nineteen plays of that,
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  which sounds about right. Anomia was designed by Andrew Innes and published by
• 2:43
  Anomia Press Asthma Day, Broadway Toys Limited, and a bunch of other games.
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  I feel like right now it might be being published by the OP.
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  I can't say for certain, but I feel like that might be the case.
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  So anomia is the word for feeling like you want to say something but
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  being unable to come up with a word for it. So a meaning not
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  anomia meaning I don't know ability to say a word, ability to think of
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  a word, anmia, that's what it means. It means not being able
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  to say a word. And this is a real time party game. You
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  can play with up to six people or I have played with more, although
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  honestly it's really good with six or few er. If you go above six,
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  it gets a little tedious or it can because your turn. You could
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  have a turn at any time, but your turn is really most likely when
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  you're drawing a card, and you only draw a card, you know,
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  once per once in time. That goes around, so but you have to
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  be alert the whole time because at any given time you might have a turn
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  to take. So the way the game works it has a deck of cards.
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  I think the smallest version you can buy has two different decks, a
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  red deck and a blue deck. I have the Anomia Party Edition, which
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  has six different decks. There's also a Nomia X which has ten different decks.
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  And the idea is you're going to take one of these decks, shuffle
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  them up, put it in the middle of the table. On your turn,
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  you draw a card off the top of the deck and you put it
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  in front of you. Now the rules safe to draw it and reveal it
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  away from you so you can't see it while it is being flipped onto the
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  table, because this is a real time game and speed matters. So when
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  you flip the card onto the table, it's got a word on it,
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  and that word is a category of some sort. It could be everything from
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  a city in a city in North America, to a magazine, to a
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  disease, to a movie character who knows anything, you can think of it.
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  It's like a category that would have a bunch of answers, and you
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  put that in front of you, and next or above that category there's a
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  symbol. The game has like something like eight different symbols or ten different symbols,
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  and they are very easy to recognize. Graphical icons that are things like
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  a hashtag, some wavy lines, think about like the kind of stuff that's
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  in set, only there's no overlapping qualities among the different symbols, so they're
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  very easy to distinguish between one another. So the way the game works,
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  you draw card put in front of you, and then you look at all
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  the other cards around the table in front of other people. And if the
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  card in front of you has the same symbol as a card in front of
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  somebody else, you have to name something from their category before they name something
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  from your category. It's a very simple race to do that. Whoever names
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  something from the other person's category first wins the duel and gets to take the
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  card that they just name the from the category. And here's where the game
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  gets spicy, like I said, on your turn, you're gonna draw card
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  you're gonna put in front of you. Well, it's very common to have
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  your turn go around, you draw card put in front of you. There's
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  no matching symbols, and then the turns go around the table and you never
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  get a matching symbol. So you get back to yourself and you still have
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  this card in front of you and you never match the symbol. Well,
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  now you draw a new card and you put it on top of the card
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  that you had before. So now you have two cards in front of you,
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  one on top of the other. Well, so over time you can
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  get a stack of cards in front of you, two three, four cards.
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  Well, if you get into a duel and you lose the duel,
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  so someone takes the card off your stack, the next card down in the
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  stack now becomes active. And if now the table has changed and there's someone
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  else who has that symbol of the new card that was just revealed, you're
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  now in a duel with them. And so what often happens is you lose
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  a duel, you're like ah, someone takes your card, and then immediately
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  someone else shouts out something and you realize you've just lost another duel you didn't
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  even realize you were having, and the game goes like that. It is
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  really fun, but can be very frustrating. The feeling of not being able
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  to come up with a word is shockingly surprising and often really debilitating, Like
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  it'll be something where you obviously know answer, but as soon as you're under
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  pressure to come up with an answer and you can't come up with them,
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  it's great. Anomia is fantastic. That's a game that you should be playing
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  if you have never tried it. Anomia. So the next small game that
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  I wanted to mention is so Clover. So Clover is from Repost Productions.
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  It is a party game kind of in the neighborhood of Just One and code
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  Names. So Clover was designed by Francois Romain and is published by Repost Productions
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  the way Silver Close. So Clover works. It is a cooperative party game
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  where each person has a little green clover in front of them and they're going
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  to make a word puzzle out of it. In order to solve the word
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  puzzle, everybody has to pick four words that allow them to arrange these square
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  cards that have four words on each card. So there's four cards with four
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  words on each card, and you have to arrange them in the right order
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  based on the clues that are written on this clover. As an additional complication,
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  there is a fifth card shuffled in, so one card will not be
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  will not go on the clover, and so you have to figure out which
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  card does not belong and try to figure out which which cards go were.
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  It's really good, very fun, easy to play, hilarious, definitely worth
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  checking out if you get a chance. So Clover plays one to six,
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  takes about a half an hour. It's great. I love so Clover all
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  right. Next up is a solo game. This solo game is designed by
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  Freedoman Freese and published by Rio Grand in the United States. I Believe and
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  That is called Friday Friday is a solo game built around the idea of Robinson
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  Crusoe, and the idea is that you are Robinson Crusoe's best friend and helper
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  on the island Friday. Cruso at the beginning of the game is relatively weak,
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  inexperienced, and incompetent, and the way the game works is that he
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  has a certain amount of health and you are helping him to defeat the challenges
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  in the game. The game has this really simple mechanism where there are there's
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  one deck of cards, and the deck of cards has a green, a
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  yellow, and a red icon on it, and the way the game works,
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  on the first play through you face cards. You face cards, and
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  you have to deal with the green icon. On your second play through you
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  have to deal with the yellow icon, and on your third play through you
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  have to deal with the red icon. Once you get through the deck the
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  third time, then you face one of the final challenges, which is a
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  boatload of pirates who come to the island and try to kill you. So
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  the thing you have to do is when you face the challenges, you have
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  to defeat them, either by playing cards that change the score on those cards
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  or by giving up health. When you defeat the card, you then get
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  to take it and it goes into your deck and it allows you to get
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  better at defeating the other cards. I don't feel like I'm doing a great
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  job of explaining it, except to say, I mean, there is some
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  luck to it, you know. The randomness of cards coming out is a
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  big part of it, But the huge element of it is deciding when to
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  invest your resources to try to defeat a card and when to give up and
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  defeating the card and just take the day image. As the game goes along,
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  you're kind of mediating your damage, trying to get reduce some of it
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  or recover some health, and over time you get stronger and stronger by defeating
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  the difficult cards. When you get to the end, depend you know there
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  are a number of different things you can do to make the game easier or
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  harder, and then you have to try to defeat the pirate ship at the
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  end play. I tend to play Friday in waves, like I'll play it
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  a lot for a couple of months, and then I'll put it away for
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  a while. In my experience, when you've played it a few times,
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  you tend to get pretty good at it, and I can start to beat
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  it on like not only can I beat it on easy, but I'll start
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  to beat it on normal. I think once or twice I've won on hard.
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  I don't think I've ever won on very hard. But it is not
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  an easy game, like the first couple times you play, even on easy,
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  you won't get close to winning, Like it's not uncommon to die before
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  you get even through the yellow cards much less the red cards, at least
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  that's my experience of it. But it's incredibly self contained. It's not that
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  difficult to manage, and it's really so if you've never had a chance to
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  try Friday, I recommend giving it a go. It's a really good airplane
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  game. I like to play it on the on the travel on the travel
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  trays on an airplane. It fits pretty nicely. You know. Another example
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  of a game like that is owner Rim or an Irim. I would probably
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  put it in the same category, but I like Friday a little bit better.
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  So that's Friday by Freedom and Freeze, all right. The next game
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  that I want to introduce, a smaller game that just knocks it out of
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  the park on a game that I've played many many times, is dead Man's
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  Draw. Dead Man's Straw is a card based push your luck game. Now,
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  the version of it that I have is old. It's sort of the
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  original version, the original game of dead Man's Straw. They have published a
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  slightly newer version now, which is the only version you'd be able to find.
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  In fact, when I look at board game Geek, the version the
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  car the cover that's in there, it says Captain Carcass dead Man's Straw.
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  So I don't know if they're planned on making another one or not, but
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  this is the one I've played. Dead Man's Draw was published by or was
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  designed, but it is not credited as a designer. No wonder it's published.
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  It's got a lot of different publishers, but the current publisher is Bombix,
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  I believe, and like I said, uncredited, which is wild to
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  me. In dead Man's Draw, oh, because I think it's based on
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  an app. Actually, maybe that's why it's uncredited. Demand's Draw. There's
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  a decorde cards. It's full of cards of different suits. I think there's
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  eight or ten different suits. There's ten, and each suit does something different
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  when one of the cards comes out. So if you get a sword,
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  you then get to steal a card from another player. If you get a
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  cannon, you blow up a card from another player, meaning you take it
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  out of the game, but you don't get to steal it. And so
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  on. Each different icon lets you do a different thing. Your goal in
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  the game is just score as many points as you can, and you score
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  for each card. For each suit, you score as many points as the
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  highest value card you have of that suit. The way you get to keep
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  the cards is you on your turn, you draw card from the deck,
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  You put it in a line, You do the thing that the card lets
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  you do the action. Then you can either stop or continue. If you
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  stop, you take the card and all the other cards that are in the
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  line and add them to your display. Any cards that you have that are
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  the same suit as another card, they go above or below the card of
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  that suit, such that the highest card in the suit is on the top
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  of the deck. So if you have the three of cannons and the six
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  of cannons, you put the three down and then the six on top of
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  it. At the end of the game, you'll score the six cannon and
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  six points, unless the six cannon is removed in some way, in which
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  case then you score the three canon and three points. If you choose to
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  press your luck to keep going. Each time a new card comes out,
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  you get to do the action associate with that card. But if you ever
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  draw a second card of the same suit that you of one of the suits
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  you already have out in the line, you bust and you get to take
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  nothing. That's a pretty simple mechanism. There's a lot of nuance in the
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  cards. And the game also comes with some character cards and some like random
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  power cards, and we use both of those as well because it adds a
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  lot of variety to the game makes it really fun. It's a simple game
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  that you can play while you're chit chatting with people. Really only the person
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  whose turn it is has to do very much. You're taking cards, you're
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  announcing what you're doing. It's pretty simple, but it's really fun. Like
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  it's just the right amount of push your luck, the right amount of randomness,
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  and you get several bites of the apple because each time you go around
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  you get to try again. I really really like dead Man Straw and if
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  you get a chance to play it, you definitely should. So my number
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  four small game that you should try is dead Man Straw. The last game
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  I want to mention is also a push your luck game, and this is
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  one of my favorite push your luck games of all time. I put in
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  the category of amazing games that everyone should play at some point. This is
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  Incan Gold. Incan Gold was designed by Bruno fi Duty and Alan R.
• 14:52
  Moon. It was originally published as Diamont, but most recently has been published
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  by Ego Griffin Games and the name is Incan Gold. It's a very simple
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  premise. Everybody is on a You're on a journey into an income temple to
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  find artifacts and gold. The way that you each player starts off in the
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  journey together and we reveal cards that reveal different amounts of gold, and you
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  get to take your share of that gold and put it in your pile if
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  you decide to leave, but if there's any left over, it stays on
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  the trail. So let's say you have four people and you reveal five gold.
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  Each person gets one gold and the remaining one gold stays on the trail,
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  and that then everybody chooses do they want to stay or go. If
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  on the next round, three of the four people stay, the person who
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  decides to go gets to pick up that gold on their way out, and
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  if they're by themselves, they pick up all the gold. Now, if
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  there are two people leaving at once, they divide the gold evenly. Any
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  that's left gets left on the trail. So there's an interesting mechanism where there's
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  push you luck, but there's also reading the other players and trying to leave
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  at the time that optimizes how much gold you get and then the other piece
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  of the puzzle is that there's these treasures, and when a treasure comes out,
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  it's worth a lot of gold, but not divisible, so you only
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  get it if you're the one who leaves by yourself. Then you get to
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  grab the treasure on the way out. And finally, there are a number
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  of different threats in the deck each at the beginning of the game, each
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  threat has three copies of the card in the deck, and on your turn,
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  you're gonna reveal a card. If it's a threat, no problem,
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  we keep going. You can keep going, or you can turn around,
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  because if we ever get a second of the same threat, then the round
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  is over and anyone who's still in the temple loses all the gold if collected.
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  That's the whole thing. You play five rounds. You're trying to collect
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  as much gold as you can and get out before the temple before the threat
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  gets here each round. At the end of the game, a person who
• 16:36
  has the most cold wins. Inking Gold is like the perfect push your luck
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  game. It is really fun, it's easy to play, it's dramatic and
• 16:44
  exciting. It plays eight so it works really well with larger groups, and
• 16:48
  I played every chance, like yet, you should definitely play Incing Gold if
• 16:52
  you get a chance. It is excellent. Well, that ends my list
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  of five small games that are all fantastic. I'd love to hear your list
• 17:00
  of small games that are fantastic. Which ones would you add to those list?
• 17:03
  Which games do you think I should add next time I do one?
• 17:06
  So I do a second round of these and five more I want to hear
• 17:08
  from you. Head over to board game Get Guild three D six nine.
• 17:11
  I'm share your thoughts there, or send me a message onebat ninety nine at
• 17:15
  on board game Geek or Brenda Na rattlebox games dot com. Thanks for joining
• 17:18
  me on my walk today. I hope your next walk is as posing as
• 17:22
  mind was. Oh bye, Brought to you by rattle Box