Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Tribond; Buildzi; Rolemodels; The Gang; Thunderbirds (revisited)

Transcript

Tribond; Buildzi; Rolemodels; The Gang; Thunderbirds (revisited) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step out
• 0:07
  for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I stroll around.
• 0:10
  I'm Brendan Riley.
• 0:12
  Well, good afternoon listeners.
• 0:22
  It's a beautiful day here in suburban Chicago.
• 0:24
  The weather is a little on the crisp side. I put it in the high 40s with a chilly breeze
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  blowing, but the sun is out and it is a lovely day to go for a walk, which is what I am
• 0:36
  doing right now.
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  I'm excited to take a little time to chat with you about some games I've played recently
• 0:41
  in a segment I like to call a board game espresso.
• 0:44
  Now, often what I like to do is do a triple shot of board game espresso where I talk about
• 0:48
  three games I've tried recently for the first time, but every now and again I have some
• 0:52
  games I've played that just don't have quite as much meat on the bone, .
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  or I don't have quite as much to say about them.
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  And so then I will do something a little different.
• 1:01
  Today is one of those days: we're going to do a coffee flight.
• 1:04
  Yeah, actually, can you hear the plane flying over?
• 1:08
  That's not what "flight" means, but whatever.
• 1:10
  Yeah, so today instead of talking about three games I tried for the first time and one
• 1:14
  I dusted off, I'm going to talk about four because the first two that I have to talk
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  about are pretty inconsequential.
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  So I'm just kind of documenting them here.
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  The first one is Tribond.
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  Tribond is a trivia game from the 80s, 1989 to be precise designed by Ed Mochini, Tim
• 1:31
  Walsh and Dave Yerick.
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  I was published by Alga, Big Fun, Agogo, Everest Toys, Kids International and seven other publishing
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  companies.
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  This is a game that has had a significant run of popularity.
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  I think it is still in print.
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  And it is sort of an older style trivia game in the neighborhood of something like
• 1:53
  Trivial Pursuit.
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  The way that it works is that you have cards that have three things that are related and
• 2:00
  the question is, you get those things and then you're trying to name how they're connected.
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  If you're able to identify the thing that three phrases have in common, then you get the
• 2:09
  point.
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  You're trying to move, you have three different pieces and you're trying to move all three
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  different pieces around the board.
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  So there's an element of managing where your piece goes and then there is also a thing
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  where you can bump other people or there are these challenges where you're trying to outdo
• 2:26
  somebody else.
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  It's a fine trivia game if you like trivia and as far as trivia goes, it's better than
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  say, trivial pursuit because it encourages kind of categorical thinking more than trivia,
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  which I think is a little bit more fun.
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  There's more figuring out stuff rather than just you know it or you don't.
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  But ultimately we thought it was fine.
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  I didn't see like a game that we were probably going to play again, so it's a one and done
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  for me.
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  Although if I'm at a game club or something and somebody says, hey, let's play Tribond,
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  I'd probably play it.
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  I don't actively dislike it.
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  I just, it wasn't a whole lot to it.
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  That's Tribond.
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  The other game about which that I had fun with, but I didn't have a lot to say is
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  Buildzi.
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  Now often if the construction of the name Buildzi rings any familiarity bells in your head,
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  it's probably because there's another game out called Tenzi.
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  Tenzi is a game where you have Ten Dice and you're rolling your dice.
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  The goal or the idea of Tenzi is that you are trying to roll your dice quickly so that
• 3:27
  all ten of them have the same face.
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  It is a very simple game.
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  If you buy the game of Tenzi, the Deluxe version I think comes with a book of like a hundred
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  other games you can play with Ten Dice each.
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  It's pretty, it's a pretty simple, but the company that publishes it took the design aesthetic
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  and they published another game called Buildzi which actually was significantly better
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  than Tenzi as far as I'm concerned.
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  The way Buildzi works is that you have a series of what it calls poly cubes which are sort
• 4:01
  of 3D tetromino shapes in different forms and each player has the same set of them and
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  a card will come out and you have to put the shapes in a stack so that they match the card.
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  Often these involve very careful balancing of the pieces.
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  They're all arranged in a specific kind of order and balancing them in the right order
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  is what you're trying to do.
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  Like I said, it's pretty simple.
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  There's not a whole lot to it.
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  It's not a game.
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  I would recommend going out to try to find.
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  But if you needed, if you had a few minutes and you're looking for something simple or
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  playing with a group of people that wants to be very accessible, it is a nice little dexterity
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  game.
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  That's Buildzi from 2020.
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  Or uncredited designer, the publisher is Karma Games and that's Karma with a C, not Karma
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  with a K.
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  Alright, so those are two games that I thought deserved a little commentary, but not much.
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  You've gotten the little commentary.
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  Okay.
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  The next game that I played, I think deserves a bit more consideration.
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  This is Rolemodels from 2013.
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  Actually the full title is Rolemodels: The Battle for Vyk' Tornaahl.
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  The designer is Chris Hanjy, who is a regular listener, Hi Chris.
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  And somebody I know a bit.
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  He hosts the Shuffle Buddies podcast, which comes on every now and again and is delightful
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  when it does.
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  And I'd call him a friend, Hi Chris.
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  Good to talk to you.
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  Rolemodels is a game that Chris released as a... it was designed by Chris and published
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  by Light Gray Art Lab, which was, I believe, an art studio that Chris was involved with.
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  It starts very primarily as an artistic endeavor.
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  All of the, each of the cards is an illustration done by a different artist and they're all
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  just amazing.
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  The art in this game is stratosphericly good.
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  The game itself is a relatively simple poker variant.
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  It's sort of like a poker variant mixed with battle line or something where you, so you
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  have the players are setting up hands that are sort of loosely poker hands that they can
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  then use to battle for influence and the first player to amass a certain amount of influence
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  wins.
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  Like I said, the game seems to be primarily about the art.
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  The game play is relatively simple but very accessible.
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  We had a good time playing it.
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  I did exchange a couple of texts with Chris about the game.
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  He said he, if he got to do it over again, he would like to put more work into the design
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  to make the game a little bit more robust.
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  I think he should be proud of what it is.
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  It's a fun little game and definitely accessible.
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  I suspect if the goal is to have this be something that patrons of the art community can
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  buy for the art and have a game they can play, I think this probably meets that goal as
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  opposed to being a game early game, which, you know, the potential there, I think, but it
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  would take some work.
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  Well done, Chris.
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  I enjoyed it and I'm happy to have the Rolemodels: The Battle for Vyk' Tornaahl in my collection.
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  So check that out if you get a chance.
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  I don't know.
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  I don't know if it's possible to get copies.
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  I'll see if there's anything online that a link to that or if you had over to board game
• 7:21
  geek guild 3269 and post in the forums there, I bet Chris could answer any questions that
• 7:26
  you have.
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  All right.
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  I did dust off a game this month.
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  One of our friends at Game Club was there and it's somebody I haven't played games with
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  in a while, so I thought I would give it a go.
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  This is Thunderbirds.
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  I went and looked and I had played Thunderbirds before with the same person several years ago.
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  Something like five years ago.
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  Thunderbirds is a cooperative game in which you play some of the titular British TV puppets
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  trying to save the world from an evil TV puppet by going on adventures in little cars and
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  stuff.
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  It's a marionette show from the '60s, which is full of theme and cool aesthetics and is
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  kind of weird.
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  It was designed by Matt Leacock, king of the cooperative game, the designer of pandemic and several
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  other really interesting cooperative games.
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  Most recently, Matt Leacock was one as a co-designer of daybreak, which is a really interesting
• 8:28
  cooperative game in which you are working together to try to put build technologies and do
• 8:34
  work to help fight climate change.
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  And that's a really cool theme and it's tied to real world effects.
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  Thunderbirds is not that, it's saving the world in the older saw-away where you are fighting
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  doomsday machines by driving around in your cool vehicles.
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  It comes with these funny little minis and really a cool-looking aesthetic board and
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  neat cards.
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  And it's a relatively complicated co-op that I had trouble grasping last time we played.
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  And in our review, it had been long enough that I really needed a full refresh.
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  And I got it better this time.
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  But like, I don't know if I just have bad luck or I'm bad at the game, but from the perspective
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  of the person who was teaching it to me who has a lot of experience with this game, he agreed
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  that we just got a really bad draw because we lost in like six turns.
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  It was stunning how quickly things devolved and the bad guys took over the world.
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  So if I were on the Thunderbirds team, you would all be in trouble.
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  It's all I can say.
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  All in all, I mean, it was a very silly experience.
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  We had a lot of fun chatting with our friend, but the gameplay went really quick and it wasn't
• 9:45
  super keen on a re-rack.
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  So I imagine I'll play Thunderbirds again at some point, probably with this friend when
• 9:51
  he sets it up and wants to play and probably not for another couple of years.
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  So that is Thunderbirds designed by Matt Leacock, art from several people including Graham
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  Blieuthman, Michael Cross, Shigerro, Komat Zuzaki and Andrew Law, published by A Synchron
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  Games and Modifius Entertainment.
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  So I did get to try one new game, one more new game that has gotten a lot of buzz around
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  the internet or around the podcastosphere.
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  And so I was fun to try it actually.
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  Got to try it twice.
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  I tried it once with a family friend in the game Day There and another time with a friend
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  at our game club.
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  This is The Gang designed by John Cooper and Corey Heath with art from Fior Gambu and
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  published by Cosmos.
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  So The Gang is, the easiest description is Cooperative Poker.
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  The way it works is you have a, you are playing Texas Holdum, which is the poker game where
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  you have two cards that are yours, they are your pocket cards and then there is a river of
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  three cards in the middle and two more cards that come out that are called the flop.
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  Or else the flop are the three cards that come out and I think it's the three cards are
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  the river and the two more cards are the flop.
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  And basically the way the game works is the two cards that you have in your hand are two
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  of your potential cards for making a poker hand.
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  And the five cards that are in the middle are available for everybody.
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  And what you're doing is you're in a normal game poker you would be betting on who has
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  the best hand where they can use the two cards they have in their hand that are secret
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  plus three of the five public cards to make the best poker hand they can.
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  The Gang works the same way.
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  Everybody's got their pocket cards and then the cards come out only instead of betting
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  each round.
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  And instead of what you do is you negotiate to try to figure out who's got the best hand.
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  And the way that you do that is there are these poker chips that have little stars on them.
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  One to three or four or five hoverman players you have.
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  I think it plays up to six.
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  And the goal is to try to figure out who's got the best hand based on sort of social deduction
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  and conversational cues but you're not allowed to say what cards you have in your hand.
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  The way that I played with groups a lot of it depends on how you interpret the way the rules are written.
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  Some groups might use the chips alone.
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  Other groups and the both groups that I played with kind of assumed this is how it worked.
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  Use verbal negotiation to kind of talk through where they think their hands are.
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  And you can talk about other people's hands based on what they say.
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  But at no point are you allowed to say anything that tells somebody what your cards are.
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  It's a weird limitation on conversations.
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  Obviously you could tell people what your cards are.
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  It would be a dumb game.
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  But there are things you can say.
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  So like let's say that three cards are out and you don't have anything poker wise.
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  But then a force card comes out and suddenly you have a pair.
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  You might say something like, oh my hand just got better.
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  So I mean if your hand got better because one card came out then people know that you probably got a pair.
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  Whereas if you say like my hand got a lot better then you probably suddenly you have a flush or a
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  straight where you didn't have anything before.
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  So that's the kind of thing that the negotiation is doing.
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  Like I said it's kind of slippery because ultimately some of those games where as a group you have to
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  decide how much you're allowed to say and the shared idea about what is okay to say and what is not
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  shaped the fun of the game. Ultimately I thought the game is an interesting game.
• 13:47
  It probably goes in the category of I'm not going to buy it but anytime someone suggests that they
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  want to play it I will happily play it because I like co-ops and it's weird and interesting.
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  And it'll probably make me better at next time I play poker by talking through how to understand
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  what poker ideas people have about poker from the things they say.
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  So that's the gang.
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  Well I would love to hear what games you have been playing lately.
• 14:22
  Head over to board game geek guild 3269 and let me know over there.
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  If you want to contact me you can send me an email,
• 14:29
  brendan@rattleboxgames.com.
• 14:31
  You could also send me a board game geek message.
• 14:34
  Wombat929 is my username there.
• 14:36
  The board game geek message is probably more reliable not as attentive to my rattlebox emails I should
• 14:43
  be but I would love to hear from you to know what games you've been playing lately and what you
• 14:49
  think of the games I mentioned. I because I've been keeping up on posting episodes I'm pretty caught
• 14:55
  up on my what I've been playing lately so as a result I'm making more episodes that are not
• 15:00
  just board game espresso and I'm always looking for new ideas.
• 15:04
  So if you have any ideas for something you'd like me to hear me talk about more or something you
• 15:08
  think would be a good episode share that over on board game geek as well. I'd love to hear your ideas
• 15:13
  and who else maybe your idea will become one of my walks.
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  Well that's about it for me today. I want to say thanks for joining me and I hope your next
• 15:21
  walk is as pleasant as mine was. Bye bye.
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  [Music]
• 15:41
  [beep] It's a relatively complicated co-op that oh hi hi it's a relatively complicated co-op that I had
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  trouble grasping last time we played like we kind of all right okay that I had trouble grasping
• 16:02
  last time we played.