Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Shadows: Amsterdam; Patrician; Dealing with Murder; revisiting Gravwell

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Shadows: Amsterdam; Patrician; Dealing with Murder; revisiting Gravwell · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and delivered the podcast where I pick up my audio recorders,
• 0:07
  I've out for a walk and deliver an episode two while I stroll around.
• 0:10
  I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners. It's a lovely
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  day here in suburban Chicago. The sun is out, the birds are chirping,
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  and school is done. Well, it's not done because I always am
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  teaching summer classes and meetings. Also its other stuff going on, so it's
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  never really done. But I'm done with my regular fall class. I've shifted
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  into summer classes, which are online asynchronous, so it's a whole different kind
• 0:42
  of class and I'm in this summer schedule. However, that means I don't
• 0:47
  yet have a regular pattern for recording the podcast, which is why I've been
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  a bit if he's the last couple of weeks in terms of getting podcast episodes
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  out to you. With that said, I think this is a reasonable way
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  to do it as one or twice a week. I'll take a walk today,
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  like I'm heading up to the library to drop a couple of things off,
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  see if I have anything waiting for me, and then coming back and
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  I'll record two podcasts while I do that that'll be two of the three for
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  the week. I'm a little bit behind schedule, but I suspect once I
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  get into this rhythm that will be plenty. So let's just jump into it.
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  It's been a while since I've seen you, so it feels like it's
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  time for another feels like it's time for another board game. Espresso Espresso,
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  that's right. This is the quick review episode, in which I review three
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  different games that I've played for the first time recently. That makes it a
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  triple shot, and I talk about them quickly, hence the espresso Espresso.
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  The espresso is the triple shot part. I also like to revisit one game
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  that I've played recently, that is that I dusted off. Dusting off a
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  game means that I've played it for the first time in more than a year,
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  and I'm sort of returning to it and giving my new renewed impressions of
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  it. So with that in mind, let's just jump right in. The
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  first game I want to talk about is one that I picked up at that
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  board game No. I got this at a discount shop Tuesday morning. It's
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  called the particular branch of Tuesday Morning. I got it at was going out
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  of business. I don't know if they have more of them and this is
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  just the one that went out of business, or if the whole chain has
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  gone out of business, but this one is no more. Nonetheless, the
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  last time I went there, I was able to pick up a couple of
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  games. One of them was Bastion, the little known tower defense game,
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  which I never really played yet but I will, and Shadows Amsterdam, which
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  is a game I'd heard about a number of times, and that's what I'm
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  talking about now. Shadows Amsterdam is a simple team based game that takes like
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  fifteen to twenty minutes to play, maybe not even that long, and the
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  overall theme of the game is sort of like real time team Mysterium. Mysterium
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  is, of course, the ghost themed psychic game from maybe twenty eighteen or
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  so, in which players have cards with bizarre and strange art on them,
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  like the art from Dixit, and the ghost is trying to give clues to
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  the rest of the people at the table to help them solve a mystery.
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  In Shadows Amsterdam, you have a series of hex spaces on the board that
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  have the sort of strange art on them, and like code names as a
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  player, you have a series of hexes that your team wants to get to.
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  Your opponent has a series of hexes that they want to get to as
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  well. Some of the hexes are shared. Some of them are what's sort
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  I'm looking for unique, and then there are some hexes that are marked with
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  police presence and if you go there, you get in trouble. And then
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  you have a final goal. So you're everybody start the same spot and the
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  goal of the game is to get your team or your partner to move your
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  group's pawn around the board in such a way that they get to three of
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  your team's goal taxes, and then they get to the final x before the
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  other team has gotten to three of their goal hexes and the final hacks.
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  Like I said, some of the goal hexes are shared, so if you
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  were to move your pond to there and put your flag on that one,
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  then the other team can't take that one. And the game is real time,
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  meaning that you give the clues as quickly as you want, people move
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  their ponds as quickly as you want, and the first team to get all
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  the way through wins. Now, the part that makes it tricky is that
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  each team also gets a or that the game also has a series of hexes
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  that are marked as police, part of the police presence the idea. Narratively,
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  you are a group of amateur detectives trying to solve a crime, and
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  of course the police don't want you meddling in their business. So if you
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  go to a space where the police are, they get they ding you and
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  you lose points. Yeah. So you're using mysterium style art to get people
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  to move their hexes from or move the ponds from hacks to hacks. And
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  I don't even have words on it, so it's a matter of kind of
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  trying to help them find Like. It's an interesting game, pretty fun,
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  easy to play, easy to teach, quick to play. I had a
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  good time with it. Will definitely stay in the collection, although I can't
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  imagine it being a game will play a ton It's a nice filler though,
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  something you can play quickly learn easily. That's Shadows Amsterdam. The next gamer
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  we're going to talk about is a game I played at Tago Gaming with my
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  pal Rob and one other person. This game is called Patrician. I believe
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  the designer is Michael Shacked, although I've left my phone at home for this
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  walk if you can believe it. And so I don't know the answer to
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  this question of what I don't know that for sure, but I think Michael
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  Shacked is the designer, and in this game you are design You are one
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  of the lead luminaries of an Italian city, maybe Venice, maybe Rome.
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  And the idea is that you are trying to build up your part of the
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  city or get control of your part of the city by building tall buildings.
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  There a series of hours that you're building each Each zone can have two towers,
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  and at the end of the round or at the end of the when
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  the zone has the maximum build up in it, the person who has control
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  of the towers. So, for example, each zone has a specific number
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  of tower pieces that can be played there. I think the highest is nine.
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  So once someone plays the ninth tower piece to a zone, that zone
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  is immediately scored, and the person who has the who has control of the
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  highest tower, meaning you're the one who put the last piece on there or
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  no, is it you have the most pieces in that tower? You have
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  the most pieces in that tower, yes, and the tiebreaker is the one
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  on top, and then you get the more expensive or the more valuable point
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  total token, and then if you have if you have control of this the
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  other tower, you get the less valuable one. The game goes until all
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  the zones have been resolved. And the tricky part of or the clever part
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  of it, is that where you play depends on which card you have,
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  and how many tokens you put out depends on which card you have. So
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  you start with a series of cards, but then whenever you play in a
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  zone, you get to pick up the card that's in that zone, and
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  then a new random card gets assigned to that zone until it's empty. So
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  you have this great mechanism by which you sometimes will play to a zone you
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  don't really want to play to in order to get the card that lets you
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  play to the zone you really want to. It is a really good classic
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  old school euro pretty tight in terms of mechanisms and design, pretty easy to
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  learn once we understood it. Kind Of explain it to another person would be
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  pretty easy, I think, and relatively straightforward in terms of seeing what you
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  have to do to win, but still takes a relatively strong amount of tactical
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  and somewhat strategic thought. So all those things together Patrician. I mean,
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  that's pretty good. Now. I will say it is the justiest of themes.
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  As they might have said on the Brawling Brothers podcast, it is Europe.
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  You are a wealthy person in Europe trying to become the most prominent person
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  in your town. That is about the most euro theme a euro could have.
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  The pieces are nice, the little towers that you're making are cool.
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  There's these little wooden stackable wooden bits. But the art is otherwise feels very
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  much like a early two thousands to mid two thousand zero game, which is
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  precisely what it was published by Mayfair Games, I believe, And if you've
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  seen Mayfair games of that era, it looks just like all the other Mayfair
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  games of that era. All in all, I thought Patrician was pretty fun.
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  I'd happily played again. If I were to find it at a thrift
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  store, I probably would buy it because it is interesting and pretty playable,
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  and it really fits nicely in the thinky twenty to forty minute range. But
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  I certainly would not go buy it new, at least without playing it.
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  I don't think you can buy it new. I'm just saying it's not like
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  I'm calling for a print. Anyway, It's it's a fine tactical euro probably
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  in the six range in terms of for me, the rating on you know,
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  in the board game geek scale, So that's patrician. Next, I'm
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  going to talk about a dusted off game. This during the last couple of
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  weeks I dusted off the game grave Well. Grave Well is a how do
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  you describe it? It is a tactical movement game where you have a ship
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  that you are trying to get out of a gravity well, and you do
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  that by slingshotting off the other ships in the gravity well. And so there's
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  a really interesting push pull mechanic where you're trying to figure out the best time
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  to play your card. And the way it works as there's twenty six cards
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  and you're going to draft a bunch of them and then play them. And
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  each movement phase, everybody plays one card and the cards resolve in alphabetical order,
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  so you can sometimes kind of guess which order you'll resolve in, and
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  a lot of times the difference between a major success in a movement phase and
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  a major failure is just did you go before or after the last person?
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  Because you're always moving toward the next person in line, and so if they're
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  in front of you and you move toward them, then you can move toward
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  them and pass them, maybe slingshot past them. Whereas if they're behind you
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  and they're really close and then it's your turn to move, you're gonna move
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  towards them, and you're moving backwards on the timeline. Gravel is great.
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  It's again really fits nicely into that twenty to forty five minute zone in which
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  we are trying to do one particular thing. This game does take a little
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  bit of practice, I think, to understand the rhythm of it, but
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  it's pretty easy. And if I think if you were to play like two
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  games in a row, most people would get it towards the end of the
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  first round and would be reason reasonable threat in the second round. Some people
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  would still be better at than others, and that would be most everyone other
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  than me. But a good time was had by all. They have made
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  a newer edition of this game. The one we played was the first edition
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  we have in the collection at Toggle Gaming, so I can't say whether this
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  version is better or worse than the second edition, but as far as I
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  know, it's not changed very much so I would be able to recommend it.
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  That's Gravlaw. Check it out if you can a right. Finally,
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  the third new game is one in a series of what I believe are two
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  games that were published in the early two thousands by an independent publishing company.
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  This is called Dealing with Murder Fatal Error. Dealing with Murder Fatal Error is
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  a one play mystery game along the lines of something like Chronicles of Crime,
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  except it was made in the early two thousands, so it's done entirely in
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  cards and paper and pretty flimsy materials at that. The basic idea of the
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  game is that there is a murder to be solved. You get the basic
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  premise of the murder, and you get a few details about how the murder
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  went, and then you get and then there's a deck of cards that has
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  a bunch of clues in it. The idea is that you on your turn,
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  you draw a card and then you play a card sort of Rummy style
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  or Gin style, to the discard pile, and everyone's allowed to look at
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  all the cards in the discard pile, so you're giving everyone else information whenever
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  you discard something. So you want to hoard the good stuff. There are
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  a couple of cards that allow you to peek at other people's hands, so
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  you can get a glimpse of what they have, or you can raise your
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  hand size by one. I trade raising my hand size by one. The
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  other two players used it to peek at other people's hands, and it turned
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  out that was the much better choice, so oops on my part, and
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  then on your turn, you also can try to solve the mystery. You
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  solve the mystery by looking in the secret Solution envelope, which about this game
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  from Goodwill, And it turned out didn't have the secret solution envelope. So
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  what we did is we had each person when they were ready to solve it,
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  they wrote down their solution, and then we kept playing, and once
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  everyone was ready to make a solution, we could. I went online and
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  found the answer, and it turned out both my wife and my daughter solved
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  the mystery in the same round, because they're awesome. I myself was not
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  able to solve it in part. I never got the cards that gave the
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  crucial clues that they used to solve it. But that's okay. It was
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  fine. The mystery was reasonably well made, the clues were interesting, and
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  varying, and there were a couple red herrings that you could end up getting
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  sucked into. That made for an interesting time. The graphic design looks very
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  early two thousands, and the plot is very early two thousands. It's about
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  a computer genius who's murdered. When it's a locker room mystery where six of
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  them are in a kind of bunker doing computer programming, and the computer genius
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  is murdered. So when the bunker opens up, there's five people all insisting
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  they didn't do anything and a dead guy, and you have to try to
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  figure out what happened. It's moderately fun. I wouldn't go out of my
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  way searching for it, but if somebody got it out and said, hey,
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  iver going to try this mystery, I wouldn't turn it down if I
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  were you not nearly as good as today's contemporary one play mystery murder games,
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  So that's dealing with murder fatal error. And in case you think that idea
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  of a deck of cards with the murder clues on it sounds fun, there
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  is a second game I looked when I was looking up for this one.
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  I did find the listing for that game. Although I do not have that
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  game, and it looks like if I want to buy it would be very
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  expensive, so no, thank you. I have been trying to find a
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  copy of the actual solution form so I can put it in my copy of
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  Dealing with Murder and then return it to Goodwill. I don't feel good putting
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  it in there without the official solution form. I also don't feel great about
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  the ones I have found because they seem to summarize the solution, but it's
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  not actually an image of the actual solutions. So I'm going to try and
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  see if I can find anybody who has it and could send me a copy
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  of the solution thing. So that was fatal error. Dealing with Murder fatal
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  error. Thanks for joining me on my walk today. What have you been
• 14:56
  playing lately? Head over to board game geek gil three two six nine and
• 14:58
  share your thoughts. I hope that I can hear from them soon. Hear
• 15:01
  from you soon about those games. Uh. In the meantime, I hope
• 15:05
  that your next one, because it's pleasant to find one. Gold Bye brought
• 15:30
  to you by Rattlebox Game