Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Habitats, Ted Lasso, Alien Artifacts, Call of the Wild (revisited)

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Habitats, Ted Lasso, Alien Artifacts, Call of the Wild (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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  off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  Well good afternoon, listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
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  The sun is out.
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  The jets are flying by and I'm walking home from the train.
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  It's the last week of classes and I did teach one of my classes today so that means
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  I'm halfway toward being done with all my classes for the semester.
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  Yee-haw!
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  So it's been a little while since I've talked to you about games I've played recently.
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  So I feel it's time for a board game espresso triple shot.
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  (Coffee noises) Espresso up!
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  The board game espresso triple shot is a short review episode where I talk about three games
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  I've played recently for the first time and one game I dusted off and tell you
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  what I think of them.
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  Not strictly a review because I've only played these games one or maybe two times so I don't
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  really have enough information about them to give you a reasonable review of them.
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  But the idea is that you get a sense of the game and you come to understand what I think
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  about it and what makes it tick.
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  So let's just jump right in.
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  First game I want to talk about today is Habitats.
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  Habitats was designed by Corné van Moorsel published in 2016 and it's been republished
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  recently by AllPlay.
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  Habitats is a tile placement game where you are working to score points by playing down tiles
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  Or cards? Tiles or cards. Tiles, with different animals on them and the idea is that you're
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  trying to score the different cards by their relationship to other cards around them.
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  It's kind of hard to articulate except to say that the bird requires three green next
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  to it and two blue.
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  Then in the four adjacent spots around the bird you have to have at least one blue and one
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  green and then adjacent to those you can have the other one.
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  So the thing that makes it interesting is that you might have one blue and one green adjacent
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  to the card that's scoring but if there are other greens adjacent to the green that you're
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  scoring with that would count toward that number.
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  So when I say it has to be adjacent to three blue and two green those don't have to be
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  immediately around it and said they can be kind of spread out as long as they're kind
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  of in chains of associated area with the cards that are next to it.
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  If I didn't explain it well enough for you to conceive it from that there's no hope.
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  I can't.
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  I can't do any better.
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  What makes Habitats interesting is this chained scoring situation and the idea is that
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  you're sort of set collecting or you're trying to score these different cards based on that
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  chained scoring.
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  Now when I started to play this it felt a little familiar and then I remember hearing I think
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  from the Salt and Sass podcast that Habitats is a game that Uwe Rosenberg the designer,
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  the famous designer of Agricola and other games played just before he designed Nova Luna.
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  And Nova Luna is actually a less complex version of Habitats in which you have just these tiles
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  you're putting out and very simple scoring conditions around them but they are scoring
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  conditions built around this idea of connected spaces all counting in the scoring.
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  Apparently, and this is the story they told on Salt and Sass, Rosenberg was so captivated
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  by that particular aspect of the tiling scoring that he took it and designed his own game
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  just around that mechanism.
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  And then he called up Corné van Moorsel and said, "Hey I'm giving you a co-design credit
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  on this because your idea was so integral to what's going on, I feel like you co-designed it."
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  Which I think is a really nice thing for Uwe Rosenberg to do and it's probably part
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  of the reason that Habitats got reprinted by Allplay in this nice new edition.
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  Now having played Habitats and Nova Luna, I like Habitats better.
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  The simple game of Nova Luna is a nice puzzle but it doesn't have the pleasurable theme
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  that I like in Habitats.
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  Now you could argue Rosenberg tried that again.
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  He took that same mechanism, altered it a bit more and used it in Applejack but I don't,
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  really, Applejack was fine.
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  It played it a few times on board game arena but it didn't really captivate me either.
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  So Habitats worth trying if you get a chance, really interesting game, fun to play.
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  Next up we have one of the games that fulfilled a Novelty game role in my 10 for 10 this
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  year.
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  This is Ted Lasso Party Game.
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  I picked this up for three bucks at Goodwill and for three bucks I think it's well worth
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  it.
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  The Ted Lasso Party Game is a simple timed game in which players are taking turns contributing
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  sort of vibes to different problems facing the soccer team, the football team that Ted
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  Lasso coaches.
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  There are a number of different locations and different characters that get played
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  into those locations and those characters have different problems and on your turn
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  you're adding sort of solution cards to try to solve those problems.
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  If you get the right combination of solutions then that problem is removed.
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  And the goal over the course of the game is to remove all the problems and solve the problems
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  of all the team.
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  It's a relatively simple game, definitely very light, easy to teach.
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  This is not a gamer's game, it is very much a party game for regular folks.
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  What said is pretty fun and it's cooperative which you would hope a Ted Lasso game would
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  not be competitive and I like it.
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  I'm definitely keeping it in my collection, probably won't play it very often but every now
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  and again the right people might say hey let's put the Ted Lasso Party Game.
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  If I say that a few times and I get nose then it might move over to my collection at school
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  but we'll see.
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  That's designed by Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games.
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  Of course Prospero Hall is the design studio that Funko Games purchased and was using to
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  do all of their IP based development.
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  I have heard in the last few months that apparently Prospero or apparently Funko sold off their
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  game licensing and game development assets to another company but they did not sell
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  Prospero Hall with them.
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  They just disbanded it.
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  It's all the people who were at Prospero Hall where cast adrift.
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  I'm told that some of them have collaborated, have joined up into a new design studio and
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  are putting their shingle out in the board game space.
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  Which is good to hear because Prospero Hall is a force for really clever game design in
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  the tabletop market.
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  They did a bunch of stuff for Ravensburger, the JAWS game.
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  I believe Horrified.
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  I don't know if they designed Villainous but they certainly did it quite a bit to really
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  bring license games up to the forefront I think.
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  So Ted Lasso Party Game is worth checking out.
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  I guess if you like Ted Lasso I don't know that it's probably worth playing if you don't
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  like Ted Lasso.
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  Next up I often like to talk about a game that I've pulled out of the dust in the last
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  month and so today I'm going to continue with the small party recognition shouting games
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  which I started last month when I talk about dusting off dude.
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  I also dusted off Call of the Wild.
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  Call of the Wild is a tiny little shouting game that I heard about from the Board Game
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  Blitz podcast and I think that I have the copy is one of maybe a hundred copies that the
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  designer made off of a very small but successful Kickstarter.
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  I think I ordered it from the designer directly off their website and it was mailed to me from
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  the designer.
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  Very niche game I'm not sure if it's available at all anymore. The way the game works, it uses
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  round cards in the size of coasters although they're just cards they're not coasters.
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  And each player gets a deck of identical cards and on the card there is a circle of life
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  a sort of group of different sort of fictional animals in a circle showing a path of predation
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  so you have this one animal and it eats a different animal and that animal eats a different
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  animal and so on.
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  Each animal has a noise associated with it and the idea of the game is that you are trying
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  to either find a mate or find food for your creature.
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  The way it works is you have a deck of cards and you draw one and I don't remember the exact
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  draw play mechanism because I feel like it's not the same as dude or Happy Salmon but I reverse
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  engineer it to be the same same rule as dude and then only later did I realize I had not
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  I was teaching it wrong it actually uses some other rule but I don't I don't know it anyway.
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  You draw a card and it's got a creature on it, let's say the Chi Chi, and all these creatures
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  have names but I don't remember the names because what you need to know is the the noise they
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  make so there's noise that goes "Chi Chi" and so then you have the choice do you want to
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  say "Chi Chi" make the noise that the creature makes or do you want to make one of the other
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  noises you could make the noise that the creature's food makes or you could make the noise that
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  the creature's predator makes and the goal that you have is to find another creature making
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  a noise and it's got to be a creature making the same noise you're making and then you
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  agree to compare cards and if you are in fact the same creature then you mate and you each
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  keep the card the other person handed you as a score card or if one of you is the predator
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  of the other then the one who played the predated creature forfits their card and so the
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  person who played the predator gets both or if you are not adjacent on the predator prey
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  circle then both cards are returned to their owners and you continue play so the idea is
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  there's a number a couple different things you might say when you have a creature in your
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  hand with the goal of getting someone else who's saying the same thing to match you it sounds
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  maybe more complicated than it is it's sort of like if dude were competitive instead of
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  cooperative or semi-corporative but it's a fun little game. I can't say it's amazing
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  but you know I play it maybe once a year, once every 18 months, and at that and mostly with
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  new people and at that pace it's really fun it's an excellent little game well worth your
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  time if you get a chance. That's the Call of the Wild designed by David Medley and Evan
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  Shidegger published by Play All Day Games and Rather Fun Games. So the last game I'm going to
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  talk about is one of my top of the stack games from April: this is Alien Artifacts published
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  from portal games the designers are Viola Kajoska and Marcin senior Robka like I said published
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  by portal games now this game has a really nice aesthetic: crisp graphics, white box, white
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  backgrounds. it feels a little bit like an apple product at least on the front of each
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  piece. The premise is it's a 4x game you are expanding exploring exploiting and exterminating
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  your opponents and planets and the idea is that there are an abandoned set of ancient artifacts
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  spread through the galaxy (I know that sounds unfamiliar right) that if the human if that any whatever
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  species gets a hold of them they provide a significant amount of power and advanced technology
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  such that the race that has the most of these is going to accelerate faster so your goal
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  is to build a civilization a space-faring civilization that outcompetes your opponents and
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  you have the best engine to trigger the end of the game. Now I will say once we get this
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  game going it was really fun. I liked Alien Artifacts quite a bit. looking forward to playing
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  it more. That said the once we get it got it going was way more of a burden than that should
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  have been or then I would have liked it to be. So the main thing is the rule book was hard
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  to read, both small text and difficult to understand the cards, all have very small text so I
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  definitely needed my glasses I mean I do all the time anyway but it was really hard to read
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  some of the text on the cards and gameplay just wasn't super efficient or smooth it was
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  a little rough so it took us a little while to get the feel for it. there were just a few
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  things that happened that just aren't intuitive. it was hard to... like you couldn't predict that
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  that's how this would work... and so they kind of got in the way so all
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  of that goes to suggest that the way that the game is put together is just not smooth
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  and not smooth like you would like it to be. that said I really like the engine building component
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  of this a big part of it: there's three different kinds of things that you can get and
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  kind of like Innovation when you get them they give you a power and kind of like Mottainai you have
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  to pick whether you're going to use one power or another and the power you pick determines
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  what you get from it but also how much you score from it so if you lean into one type of power then
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  you aren't going to score anything if you lean into the other type of power then you don't have
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  enough power it's a really compelling mix of mechanisms and I thought it was really fun so if
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  you get a chance to play Alien Artifacts especially with someone who's played it before and can do a
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  smooth teach it's definitely worth giving a try. so that's alien artifacts from portal games. well that's
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  about it for me today I'm just about home so I'll say what games have you been playing recently? head
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  over to boardgamegeek guild 3269 and share over there. I'd love to hear what you've been trying.
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  until next time I hope that your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. bye bye!
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  [Music]
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  Brought to you by Rattlebox Games
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  [MUSIC PLAYING]