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2022 Superlative Awards · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick Up and Delivery, the podcast where I pick up my audio
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  recorder as I leave the game store and deliver an episode do while I walk
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  home. I'm Brendon Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a
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  lovely day here in suburban Chicago. I'm on my walk home from the game
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  store, and I am talking to you about games. In the last episode,
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  I talked about my top five games of twenty twenty two and gave you
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  five runners up as well. These are games that I have played that were
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  published in twenty twenty two. And today I'm doing the second of my two
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  Game Award episodes that I like to do each year, and I call this
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  the Superlatives Award. When I started doing Game Awards not that long ago,
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  I found that there were often games that I had played from a year that
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  I wanted to call out for my listeners because I like them in some way.
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  I think they're interesting, but they don't meet the criteria of best game
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  of the year. As I think about which games do I think are best,
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  most of these games would not make that list. In fact, as
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  you're going to see, these games didn't even make the five honorable mention so
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  of the ten games I picked that are the best for me from the year,
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  these games still didn't make it, but I still want to tell you
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  about them, hence the Superlatives episode. So we're going to do is talk
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  about I think six different games, giving them a Superlative award, and then
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  at the end, I'll run through all the other games from twenty twenty two
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  that I played and considered. So if you find at the end of this
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  that there's a game from twenty twenty two that I really should have played and
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  I don't list it as a game I played, then boy, how do
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  you better get over to board game geek Guild three two sixty nine and let
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  me know which game I should be playing that I missed. Alternately, you
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  could also send me a note about why you like the game or why you
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  disagree with me about these or whatever. All right, here we go.
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  So first game getting the award for most Deluxe copied that I'm jealous of,
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  but I'm glad I didn't buy because I like the game, but I don't
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  know if I like the game that much. This goes to Foundations of Rome.
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  So Foundations of Rome is from Arcane Wonders. This is a game that
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  comes in a massive box, like the size of a calax, and inside
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  there are a series of trays with different player pieces on them, and then
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  there's a central board where players are going to place buildings. It is a
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  relatively straightforward game in which you place the buildings by drawing cards and putting the
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  buildings out, and you get points based on where you put the buildings and
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  so on, and it's really neat to look at. It's a beautiful game.
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  It's fun to play because you're putting out these big buildings, you're filling
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  up, you're making, you're building the city of Rome, and the game
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  has a bunch of really interesting scoring conditions that are very accessible. This is
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  definitely only a light to midweight strategy game that you play in about an hour.
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  It's from designer Emerson Matt Succi, and it shows he is really good
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  at these kind of crisp, tightly controlled, efficient games. I like it
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  a lot. Every time I've played it, I enjoyed it, but I'm
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  glad I didn't buy it. It's really expensive and it's the sort of game
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  that I enjoy playing once a year. I think I've played three times maybe,
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  And when people say, hey, do you want to play Foundations a
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  Room? I think he is, yeah, I'll play that. But I
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  think if somebody said, hey, I know we played last week, but
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  you want to play Foundations a Room again, I'd say yeah, okay,
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  But then the third week I'd be like, maybe you can play something else.
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  It's definitely a game that I think is fun occasionally, but I don't
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  think would be a permanent top choice for me. So that's Foundations of Rome.
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  My next superlative is best as Abstract Game of the Year. So this
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  is a game that, again I was a little bit cool on the first
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  time I played it. This is Acropolis. Now, at first glance,
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  for me, Acropolis was very similar to a number of other games that I've
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  played, And the reality is it is this is a tile laying game in
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  which you have tiles that are triangular are hecks. It's like three hexes connected,
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  so it's like a triple hex triangle, and each hex has a color
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  on it, so it is either a space of a particular color or it
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  is a space with a star of that color. And the way the game
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  works is that you whenever you get a tile you pick from this market,
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  you pay these resources if you don't want to take the bottom tile from the
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  market and you add it to your city. When you add it to your
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  city, you are putting it next to other pieces, And what you're trying
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  to do is make contiguous areas of a particular color, and then when you
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  get to scoring, those areas score based on which colors you picked. It's
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  a interesting game with amusing with amusing and varied scoring conditions, a thoughtful strategy
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  where your point it's double if you're able to put a tile onto the second
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  level, and they triple over the base level if you're able to put them
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  on the third level. So there's an element of covering up things to get
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  more scoring from other things, and there's a lot of interesting decisions to make
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  in a tight forty five minutes. I played this once in person at Origins
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  twenty twenty two, and I thought it was good, but I was like,
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  man, I don't know if I need to play it. I have
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  played it a number of times since then on board Game Arena, and I've
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  come to really enjoy it. But again, it sort of falls into that
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  category of an interesting game that I would enjoy playing, but I really don't
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  need to have in my collection, and there are other games that sort of
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  land in a similar way such that I don't necessarily need this one too.
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  But I really like this one, and if I didn't have any other games
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  that felt like they land in a similar place, I would probably be all
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  over picking up Acropolis. I believe Hashet Games is the publisher there. I
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  don't recall the name of the designer. Next up for most interesting combo tastic
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  role and right of the year is Three Sisters. Three Sisters is a as
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  I said, combo tastic rolling right designed by Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle as
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  part of their twenty fifth Century or a part of their Motor City Games imprint.
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  I believe that they are partnering with twenty fifth Century Games to distribute them.
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  Basically, in these games, players are in Three Sisters. In particular,
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  players are building a garden and growing crops and using the dice rolls that
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  they're making to accelerate the crop growing and dice rolling that you're doing. If
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  you've played Flee to the Dice game, this game feels very much like that.
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  I believe that they call it a crammed roll and right or a jam
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  Packed roll and Right something like that. The idea of that game, of
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  those games is that you have these rolling rights full of little checkboxes, and
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  often when you check one box, you then get to check another one.
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  One of the innovations they talk about with regard to Three Sisters is that it's
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  so full that it has a little spot where you can write down things so
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  you don't forget. I often use that to keep track of how many more
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  actions I get, because as you're going along in the later part of the
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  game, you can sometimes get an action that lets you have another action,
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  which lets you have two more actions, and then as you're using the previous
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  actions, you get more actions. So like there's this cascade of combo tastic
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  bonuses that's really fun. Now. I do have Fleet the Dice game also,
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  and I did not back them for Motor City, and I think that
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  they did another one since then. Basically I've discovered I have enough combo tastic
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  dice games. Riverside is also in this field, although it's different enough that
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  doesn't feel the same. But I really like Three Sisters and I thought was
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  an excellent addition to the ouvra of gam packed rolling Rights. I did also
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  play Twilight Inscription this year, which sort of fits in the same thing like
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  Three Sisters much better, a lot of the same payoff, but at the
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  half the playtimer. So that's Three Sisters. Next up is the best mystery
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  game for the family that I played last year, and this is The Animals
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  of Baker Street. So I mentioned in the honorable mentions that there was a
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  game from the designers of Sherlock Holm's Consulting Detective called called The Bureau of Investigation,
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  and also from the designers or that was from the company that produced Sherlock
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  Holm's Consulting Detective. From the designer of the newest chrlock Holm's Consulting Detective box,
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  the Baker Street Regulars. We had Dave Dave Graham, No, I
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  can't remember his last name, Dave somebody. We have the game The Animals
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  of Baker Street. This is with another designer as well. He's not the
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  only one. The design The Animals of Baker Street is a really great kid
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  friendly mystery game in which you're solving mysteries in much the same way that you
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  do in the Sherlock Holmes games, except they are sort of focused. They're
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  accessible for kids and they're focused on the animal Kingdom, the ideas you are
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  as the players. You are four different animals living in two twenty one b
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  Baker Street, helping out Sherlock Holmes's dog solving mysteries. There is no big
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  villa villain Radigan, but we get awful close to that. I really like
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  the feel of it. The mysteries are satisfying enough that playing in our family
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  without any little children, we've still had a good time. Although they were
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  a little easier than the Sherlock Holmes games tend to be, I still really
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  enjoyed them. Dave neel n E A L. E. Is the designer
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  of the game I'm talking about. So if you're looking for a mystery game
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  suitable for family, I would say another runner up that's not from twenty twenty
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  two would be Micro Macro Crime City, particularly the second and third ones.
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  They've done three of them. I believe the second and third ones have marketings
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  to let you know which cases are kid friendly and which ones are not.
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  The original one game did not and had some that were definitely not kid friendly.
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  So that's the Animals of Baker Street. Two more superlatives to go.
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  The next one is Game I most wanted to like. That wasn't as good
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  as I'd hoped. This is Crossing Oceans. Now. I love steamships as
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  a theme. I don't really want to go on cruise ships, but I
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  love steamships. And so I really liked Transatlantic from Matt Gertz. It did
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  not do all that well, but I thought it was interesting. It had
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  some fun aspects of the Concordia hand management mechanism. Overall, I like Transatlantic
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  quite a bit. I thought it was a good game, and I enjoyed
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  it. And then, because I think Transatlantic was not very popular, Mac
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  Gertz, I guess decided to take another run at it, and he did
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  so using a Rondel mechanism instead of the card at hand management card mechanism.
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  I gotta say I like the hand management better. That said, Crossing Oceans
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  is an interesting twist on the game as well. It gives a slightly different
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  feel, but it's sort of like eighty percent the same. It's like a
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  cover of the original game, like a cover of a song kind of.
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  And they did this neat thing where if you had Transatlantic already instead of buying
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  the whole new game for fifty or sixty dollars. You could just buy the
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  upgrade pack and it was like twenty five and then you got a new board
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  and you got a whole bunch of new cards, but you use all the
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  old pieces from the first game, so you really have then two games in
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  one box if you wanted to play Crossing Oceans that way, which I do.
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  I like it so overall, Crossing Oceans fun game. I like it.
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  Not as good as Transatlantic, I don't think, but I've only played
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  Crossing Oceans once, so maybe I need to give another go. It is
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  staying in my collection. I do like it, so that's Crossing Oceans game
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  I wanted to like more than I did. And finally, tiniest game that
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  got a lot of play is the two player cooperative game Smitten. Smitton is
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  a eighteen card micro game created and released by Jamie Stengmeier and stone Meier Games
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  as part of the tenth anniversary of that design studio. When I bought our
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  copy of Wingspan Asia, you could as an add on add on Smitten,
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  and I think it was free because of the tenth anniversary. I don't know
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  if it's still free. I think it was free if you were buying you
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  know, within a couple months of their tenth anniversary. And the way Smitten
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  works, you each have a set of nine cards. That's the same nine
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  cards as the other player, maybe have eighteen cards, and on your turn,
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  you're going to add one card to the grid and play the other card
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  for its power. And the goal is to create two grids. Oh no,
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  you each have the eighteen cards, but you're building two grids of nine.
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  So when you play a card to the grid, then you play a
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  second card. The second card does a power that does something, and basically
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  you have to work together to try to build the grid without running out of
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  cards, or before you run out of cards, or before you get an
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  a point where you can't play any of the cards. It's a relatively approachable
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  game, part of what why I picked it. It's just gotten a lot
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  of play like it's very playable. You can play in like ten minutes.
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  So I've played a number of games with my kids, with my mother in
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  law when we have it on the road. It's a good game to play
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  just while you're waiting for your food at a diner. Really good. So
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  Smitten is the last superlative I want to talk about now. Now less you
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  think I've ignored a game, I'm going to run through. Just list for
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  you quickly. All the other games are twenty twenty two that I played that
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  I have not mentioned yet. Some of these games I've only played on board
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  game Arena, most of them I've played in person. Some of them I
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  own, most of them I do not. All Right, here we go,
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  plan It Unknown, the Thing, the Board Game, flame Craft,
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  Rear Window, Wormholes, Heat, Pedal to the Metal, Wingspan Asia,
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  long Shot, The Dice Game, Turing Machine, Cab in the Box,
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  Creature Comforts, Weather Machine, Twilight, Inscription, Merchants of the Dark Road,
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  Vagrant Song, Perseverance, The Castaway Chronicles, Spots, Get on Board,
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  New York, Boop, Planted, The Isle of Cats, Explore and
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  Draw, Dog Park, Space Station, Phoenix, Kites, Transmissions, My
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  Shelfie, Applejack, Keystone, North America, Astra, The Animals of Baker
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  Street, Don't Go in There, Legacies, Lost Seas, Vivid Memories,
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  Quirky Circuits, Tails from the Loop, The Gardens Sweet and Spicy and stupefy.
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  So what twenty twenty two games would you award special awards and what would
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  those awards be called? Head over to Board game Geek Guild three two six
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  nine and let me know in the forums there. Thanks for joining me on
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  the walk today. I hope your next walk. I hope your next walk
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  is as pleasant as mine. Walk oyebye h Brought to you by rattle Box