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Clue: The Office; Resafa; Galactic Renaissance; Cryptid (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
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  out for a walk and deliver an episode you will I stroll around.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  [Music]
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  Good morning, Listener.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  It's the same day as the Fantasy Flight Catalog episode.
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  The sun is peeking behind some clouds right now but we've got partly cloudy...
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  we've got lovely temperatures in the mid fifties.
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  Got plenty of birds of chirping and I'm walking home.
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  So I'm excited to talk to you again and it feels like it's been a little while so maybe
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  it's time for another board game espresso triple shot.
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  [Coffee making noises]
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  Order up!
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  The board game espresso triple shot is a mini review segment in which I talk about three
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  games I played for the first time recently as well as one game I dusted off or one new
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  expansion I tried.
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  These are not full reviews but rather first impressions meant to give you a sense of what
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  I thought of the game and how I envision it sitting in my game playing future.
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  So let's just jump right in.
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  First game I want to talk about is Clue: the office.
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  Clue the office is obviously a branded version of the classic game Clue or as it was published
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  in Britain Cluedo which was designed by Anthony E Pratt in the forties I believe.
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  I believe it was designed either during the blitz or shortly after the blitz in response
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  to not having much to do that Pratt made this game to entertain his family, and his friends
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  really liked it and so he got it published (with Waddington's I believe was the first company
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  that published it) and then it got picked up in America.
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  For summary I don't know why it was called Cluedo in Britain but it's called Clue here in
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  the United States.
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  The office edition of Clue is themed around the very popular sitcom from the first half
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  of the 2000 or from the 2000s I think it ran from like I don't know mid 2000s to early
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  2010s probably I think it did eight seasons and it's themed around a relatively early iteration
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  of the game.
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  And it seemed to run the show as set at least season three or so because one of the characters
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  is Andy Bernard who is from the day from one of the remote offices that ends up coming
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  and working at the Dunder Mifflin office so it's not first season or second season.
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  In the game you play as one of several members of the office. Michael has staged a faux murder
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  of Toby because Toby is gone for the day and he would like to see Toby gone forever.
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  Each player is working to try to figure out who committed this fake murder and if you win
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  you get a week's vacation.
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  Michael is not in the game he is supervising it and all the players represent characters
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  from The Office.
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  That theme aside the game works exactly like regular Clue.
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  The layout is the same although of course the rooms have different names.
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  The format is the same there are location cards there are people cards and there are
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  item cards and you mix them together to try and figure out what is missing because that's
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  how you win.
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  There's an envelope with Clues in it.
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  That's how Clue works.
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  The one nod to this being or there's two nods to this being the office that I think actually
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  work well for the game.
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  One of them is each character has a special power.
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  They are written on their character card it's a one use power and as usually you get to
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  do something a little bit more than everybody else.
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  I think I was playing as Andy and I maybe had the ability to use my power to just go to
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  one room whichever room I wanted without rolling.
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  So one time I could teleport.
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  Other players had the ability to make two guesses instead of one or two I don't know there's
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  a bunch of different things you could do.
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  Basically think about each different mechanism somebody had a way to break that rule one time.
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  Otherwise this game like I said functions just like Clue.
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  Clue is not the worst mystery game it's not the best.
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  I think that the dice rolling movement thing is bad for the game because it arbitrarily
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  gives some players benefit in the game over others.
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  Now there are ways to mitigate the nature of the dice rolling.
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  If you spend a lot of time guessing the corner locations you can basically not have to worry
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  about rolling because as soon as you move into another room then you stop and take a guess.
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  You can just go through the secret passage in order to take a guess no matter how well
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  or poorly you've rolled.
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  But sometimes you will need to guess at one of the middle spaces and that's annoying
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  to have to do.
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  Now you can wait until someone moves you there to guess there that's one option but generally
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  you can't guess where you've started so that parts not ideal.
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  The other innovation in the game that I really liked are these conflict cards or question
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  cards I remember they're called.
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  It's another deck of cards and in the deck of cards you have a series of things they're
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  like two or three minor bonuses like reroll your die or peek at the card that just got
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  shared as a clue and there's maybe one more benefit and there's a bunch of those, a bunch
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  of each one in the deck.
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  And then there are like eight clue power clue cards and what these do is they are a timer.
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  As these cards come up they go in a line on the deck I can't remember what the name of
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  the card is but once all eight of them are out the person who drew the eighth one is out
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  of the game and then you take the eighth one and shuffle it back into the remaining deck.
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  So the deck becomes a time bomb later in the game and this is a nice way to solve if your
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  group is not doing a very good job of solving the game quickly this will force the end of
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  the game eventually which worked out fine.
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  We had maybe six of those cards out when someone won the game.
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  So all in all Clue is a not great but fine mystery solving game middle of the pack I would
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  say I've played plenty that are worse but it is it is decent and Clue: The Office is a
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  little bit better than regular Clue so there you go.
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  That's Clue: The Office from 2009 published by the op.
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  Next up we have Resafa.
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  Resafa is the newest game from Vladimir Suchy published in 2024 by Delicious Games, published
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  in the United States by Rio Grande Games.
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  Suchy is of course one of my favorite, if not my favorite designers. Definitely you know
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  in the running with Martin Wallace to be my favorite designer.
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  He has a particular kind of game he tends to make I would say this is his one negative when
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  compared to Martin Wallace is that Vladimir Suchy has a narrower scope of kinds of games that
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  he makes but most of them tend to be games where you are collecting a series of different
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  things and those things then give you some of those things give you benefits and they
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  are at their heart usually efficiency puzzles.
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  He's very good at tuning the efficiency to this question of like do I have just enough
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  which as I've mentioned several times on the podcast is one of my favorite feelings
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  in board games the fight of wrestling to just have enough to get what you need done
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  done.
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  Suchy is a master at that.
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  Resafa is a really solid middle of the road title.
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  I don't think it's his best but it's way from the bottom to a couple things I like about
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  it.
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  The action selection mechanism is nice and sufficiently tight essentially you have a deck
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  of six cards.
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  Everybody has the same six cards.
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  Each card has two possible actions on it.
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  This reminds me of the little action tiles from Praga Caput Regni.
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  On your turn you're going to pick one of those actions to perform and next to those action
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  is a sort of colored like it's either white or blue or pink or yellow bar and when you
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  play the card you flick you pick which side is up.
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  So not only are you picking the action you're going to do you're also picking the color
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  that you activate and the color you activate lets you do one of the things related to colors.
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  You could always just get a generic bonus card these they're called sacks.
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  It's got a picture of a sack on it and that gives you some sort of bonus that you can
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  use now or save for later or you can take a bonus card related to the color that you just
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  played.
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  So if you pay a card with a blue border then you could take one of the blue bonus cards
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  and the blue bonus cards there there are one time benefits that you can either play immediately
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  to get a benefit or you have to save them and play them alongside a main action or a player
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  action and card action that's the word card.
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  If you play it alongside the card action it gives you some sort of bonus or efficiency
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  maximizer.
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  So that's what the color things do.
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  Oh the third thing is there are these there's one track for each color and as you move
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  up the track you get special cards they're called and the special cards either go into
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  your tableau where they give you a one time benefit or they give you an ongoing benefit
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  or they in one case in the yellow the case of the yellow cards they replace the card
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  in your hand with the yellow card that's a better version of that card and the first level
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  you replace one of your cards with a better version of that same card.
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  When you get to the second level the yellow cards you get a card that has two question marks
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  on it meaning you can pick any action when you play that card and the third level is you
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  get to do two actions with one play of the card which is really good.
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  The other special cards give you other kinds of bonuses and the pink ones give you end game
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  scoring.
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  Now I haven't I've just explained the action selection mechanism and I'm not going to explain
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  a lot more here except that the theme is you are merchant in the third century AD in the
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  city of Resafa and you are working to make money and solve problems and blah blah blah.
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  This is the place where I think the game suffers.
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  The theme is as dry as it comes this is oh you're a merchant trading goods in pre modern
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  times I guess it's not ancient Rome so that's nice but all in all the theme is very unmemorable.
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  I will say I like Praga Caput Regni there are a bunch of different places where you can
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  score points and you get more points for doing those more than you would for doing less
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  so the game does not really reward even handed play of all the pieces but rather rewards
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  picking a couple and really going for it with those which makes for an interesting balancing
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  act.
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  There is a trading component that I think is pretty interesting where you are buying and
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  selling goods and the different markets will give you different rewards so you're trying
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  to maximize how and when you get your rewards at those different places so that part is
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  really interesting and fun and I think worth your time.
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  All in all I think Resafa is really interesting I'm looking forward to playing it some more like
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  I said I think it's mid tier for Vladimir Suchy but there aren't very many of games in his
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  games I don't like.
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  Even some of the older stuff League of Six I thought was pretty interesting 20th Century
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  I thought was pretty interesting I mean they feel old by today's standards and Resafa
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  feels pretty contemporary as a game the theme like I said feels musty dusty for sure and
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  the cover art it's not great.
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  I wonder looking at it I wonder if it's the same cover artist who did Messina 1347 the way
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  that the people are drawn has a pretty good style that I think not great.
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  I will say I think the iconography in Resafa is pretty solid it's a little confusing at
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  first but I think you can learn to read it pretty well and then by like halfway through
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  the game we were able to understand most of it.
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  The rule book does come with explanations of most or all of the cards although some of
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  the explanations are a little hard to access it would have been nice to include two more
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  pages so they had more room to explain all the different cards and I think a player aid
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  would have been worthwhile to include.
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  But overall I think Resafa is really great and I'm looking forward to playing it some more.
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  That's Resafa from Vladimir Suchy published by Delicious Games and Rio Grande with art from
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  Michal Pichel.
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  I did get a chance to dust off a game recently this is Cryptid. Cryptid is a sort of abstract
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  deduction game from Hal Duncan and Ruth Veevers with art by Quanchi Moria published in
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  2018 by Osprey Games.
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  Cryptid is a abstract game.
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  When you get it on the board and you look at it it is very much a matter of trying to
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  figure out where a thing belongs based on this abstract set of icons.
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  Thematically you're supposed to be looking for the spot where the cryptid lives and you've
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  heard different clues from different people who've spotted it and you and the different
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  people are competing to figure out where the cryptid lives but you only know for sure your
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  clue and you have to deduce the clues of the other people based on how they place their
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  pieces on the board.
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  It's a really fun mind puzzle that I do not think fits the overall scheme of the theme
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  does not fit the mind puzzle.
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  It's deceptive if you really like cryptids and you wanted to play a game with cool cryptids
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  in it and you looked at the cover of this and there's like a weird sea monster with Quanchi
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  Moria style art which is awesome and then you bought this game and you opened it up and
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  it's just cubes and discs and you know tool style hex board I would be disappointed if
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  it were me.
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  I really like the game.
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  I played it a few times but it didn't hit with any of my game groups so it went the
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  way of the trader but it was fun to play when somebody brought it to my game club.
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  So that's Cryptid from 2018.
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  Definitely worth a look if you like abstract games but not worth a look if what you want
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  is a game about cryptids.
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  Finally, I got a chance to play Galactic Renaissance.
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  This is a 2024 game from designer Christian Martinez and artist Tano Bonfonte published
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  by Matagot.
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  Galactic Renaissance is a flashy medium to large box game where you play a faction of
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  interstellar beings doing negotiation and ambassadorship politics with the other intergalactic
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  beings discovering the galaxy.
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  In the course of the game you are playing a series of cards.
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  This is a, this part is really interesting.
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  The game you have a deck of cards.
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  Everybody's got the same seven cards to start with and then everybody gets a specialist
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  card that is much more powerful than one of the base cards or at least breaks the
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  rule in some way does something interesting.
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  And over the course of the game you spread out your influence, you play cards to do that
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  work.
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  You acquire more specialists which are kind of the rule breakers, the interesting exciting
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  cards and you build up a kind of engine to situate yourself in our score points.
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  The game comes with a number of scoring cards that reflect different needs or different
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  qualities that the galaxy admires and over the course of the game you have a card that you
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  can play that lets you score on the current scoring cards.
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  At the beginning of the game there's only two scoring cards.
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  Once someone has gotten a certain number of points, a third scoring card will open up.
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  Then once someone gets the next barrier, the first scoring card goes away and a new
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  better one opens up and then same thing with the second one.
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  The old second card goes away and a new better one appears in the end game phase.
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  The end of the game is really weird.
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  Basically the way the game works, the first person to 30 points wins but if you end your
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  turn above 20 points, your score marker goes back down to 20.
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  So in order to win you have to get to 30 but you have to score at least 10 points in one
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  turn because if you're below like it's say you're at 18 and you score 10 you'd be at 28
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  if that's all you get at the end of your turn your score goes back down to 20 and then
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  you're next turning you have to get 10 more.
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  Now in the beginning of our game this seemed dubious because we were scoring 1, 2, 3 points
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  at a time but as the game went on it became evident that you could with some manipulation
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  do really well.
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  I ended up pulling a fast one and sort of winning by getting myself in the position where
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  I got to 18 points and then I could score 6 points on one of the scoring cards and I
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  had a specialist who let me score that scoring card a second time so I played the specialist
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  and the senator at the same time scored it twice got 12 points in one.
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  Overall I thought it was an interesting game.
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  The rulebook really needed a lot of work.
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  We kept having questions that the rulebook did not resolve to our satisfaction.
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  There's almost no conversation about the rules on board game geek or at least not enough
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  to help us out when we had those troubles.
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  So we found ourselves kind of wallowing in trying to find out the answers to some of
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  these rules when we would have preferred to be playing the game.
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  That said I thought it was pretty interesting and I looked forward to playing it again.
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  I like the mix of specialist cards having to figure out tactically how to get more points
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  and do well based on the specialists you get when you don't really have a lot of control
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  over which ones you get.
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  Although if you make an effort to get this one kind of building into your play then it's
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  easier to get the results that you want because you get to draw.
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  When you get a specialist card if you have a certain number of these buildings for every
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  one of these buildings that you are on a planet with you get to draw an extra specialist
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  card.
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  You still only get to keep one but you get more to pick from.
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  So that kind of nuance is interesting.
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  Like I said it's a pretty fun game.
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  It took us like two and a half hours but it was all a first play for all of us.
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  I think if you were playing this with people who'd all played before 90 minutes easy it
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  seems like it would be a really streamlined game once everyone understands how it works.
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  But definitely a much faster second play for everybody involved.
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  Well that brings me to the end of my board game espresso episode.
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  Have you played Clue the Office, Rassafa, Galactic Renaissance or Dust It Off Crypted?
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  If so I'd love to hear your experience with those.
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  Head over to boardgamegeek guild 3269 and let me know what you think.
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  Otherwise I'm looking forward to talking to you in the future.
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  Thanks so much.
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  Take care and here's hoping your next walk is as pleasant as mine was.
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  Bye bye.
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  [Music]
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  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
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  (upbeat music)