Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / 6 Game Flight
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I
- 0:05Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I step out for
- 0:07Speaker 1: a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
- 0:10Speaker 1: stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, greetings, listeners. It is
- 0:23Speaker 1: near the end of the hollywoods of the holiday season,
- 0:26Speaker 1: the Hollywood season, near the end of the holiday season,
- 0:29Speaker 1: and I'm out taking a walk in between Christmas and
- 0:31Speaker 1: New Year's It's December thirtieth right now. I'm looking forward
- 0:35Speaker 1: to talking to you about some games. Okay, my plan
- 0:40Speaker 1: today is to talk with you a little bit about
- 0:42Speaker 1: games that I have played and my current approach for today.
- 0:47Speaker 1: This is going to be a board game espresso coffee flight.
- 0:52Speaker 1: Normally on board game espress, so I talk about three
- 0:54Speaker 1: games I've tried for the first time recently. But I've
- 0:56Speaker 1: noticed that in the current backlog there are several games
- 1:00Speaker 1: about which I don't have a ton to say, even
- 1:03Speaker 1: in the normally short format of fifteen minutes to talk
- 1:06Speaker 1: about three games. I have some games here that I
- 1:09Speaker 1: don't know don't warrant the five minutes, or I don't
- 1:12Speaker 1: think they do anyway, or I don't know that I
- 1:14Speaker 1: have a lot to say about them. So I'm going
- 1:16Speaker 1: to blast through a few games in what I call
- 1:18Speaker 1: the coffee Flight. These are just going to be quick
- 1:22Speaker 1: takes on games that I tried recently for the first
- 1:24Speaker 1: time that I don't have a lot to say about.
- 1:27Speaker 1: So we'll jump in and we'll see how it goes.
- 1:29Speaker 1: First off is Sero of the Seas. Now. Cerro is
- 1:32Speaker 1: a game I've played a number of times. If you
- 1:34Speaker 1: haven't played it, it is a pretty standard entry level game.
- 1:38Speaker 1: It's very accessible. You could definitely play it with people
- 1:41Speaker 1: who don't generally play a lot of board games. Very
- 1:44Speaker 1: friendly to the non gamer if you want to use
- 1:47Speaker 1: qualifications like that. I s of the Seas as kind
- 1:51Speaker 1: of sequel or build up. It was designed by Tom
- 1:53Speaker 1: McMurchy and Jordan Weissman, with art by Inoka Sousik Don Weissman,
- 2:00Speaker 1: and published by Calliope Games in twenty twelve. So Sorow
- 2:05Speaker 1: of the Seas. In the original Sourow, you play this
- 2:08Speaker 1: sort of dragon flying around and it is a network
- 2:11Speaker 1: building game. You have a network of spaces and your
- 2:14Speaker 1: goal is to not get run into by other people.
- 2:17Speaker 1: Your goal is to survive as long as possible while
- 2:20Speaker 1: other people are crashing into each other, are getting shoved
- 2:22Speaker 1: off the board. You lay it on these tiles and
- 2:24Speaker 1: you move your piece along the path that you have added. Now,
- 2:27Speaker 1: if you want to play a game like that, I
- 2:28Speaker 1: far prefer the reiner Kinisia title Indigo, which is similarly abstract,
- 2:34Speaker 1: but I think a much better game, and I think
- 2:37Speaker 1: equally accessible. But Souro is a nice comfort, ten minute,
- 2:42Speaker 1: little I've got a little extra time. It's amusing kind
- 2:44Speaker 1: of deal. So we played Throw of the Seas. In
- 2:47Speaker 1: Throw of the Seas instead of playing dragons, you play
- 2:49Speaker 1: as people in ships, and the dragons are flying around
- 2:53Speaker 1: on the board interfering with things. Now, we read the rules,
- 2:56Speaker 1: and we followed the rules as we could understand them.
- 2:58Speaker 1: But I don't understand how anyone could find Sero of
- 3:01Speaker 1: the Seas fun. The dragons if they touch your tile,
- 3:05Speaker 1: you're out, is the way we understood it. And they
- 3:09Speaker 1: were just moving all over the place, touching everybody's tile
- 3:11Speaker 1: and putting everybody at like it didn't. It was zero fun,
- 3:15Speaker 1: not fun at all. Now, it's possible that we misread something,
- 3:18Speaker 1: I suppose, but three experienced gamers sitting around taking turns
- 3:22Speaker 1: looking at the rules because we can't believe this is
- 3:24Speaker 1: how the game works, and we figured this is how
- 3:25Speaker 1: the game works. Either the rules are terrible, or we
- 3:29Speaker 1: don't understand how to play, or it's not a fun game.
- 3:32Speaker 1: We had a good time by getting rid of the
- 3:34Speaker 1: dragons and just playing regular Serro using the Sero of
- 3:36Speaker 1: the Seas set, so we did end up playing a
- 3:38Speaker 1: fun game of Sooro, but Soo of the Seas was
- 3:40Speaker 1: a stinker for us, so not recommended. I just try
- 3:44Speaker 1: regular Soo, I would say. Next up is Word War.
- 3:49Speaker 1: Word War was published in nineteen seventy eight uncredited designer,
- 3:54Speaker 1: published from Mattel Incorporated. I found this game at a
- 3:58Speaker 1: goodwill and I got it because it lookily it had
- 4:01Speaker 1: a funny mechanism as part of it, and it did.
- 4:04Speaker 1: This is a spelling game where you're supposed to spell
- 4:07Speaker 1: out words and the person who spells the words fastest wins.
- 4:11Speaker 1: There are a couple secondary scoring mechanisms in it that
- 4:15Speaker 1: we tried, but the basic idea is you get seven tiles.
- 4:18Speaker 1: You're supposed to spell outwards with them as quickly as
- 4:21Speaker 1: you can. The gizmo or the gimmick is that it
- 4:25Speaker 1: comes with this plastic tower and all of your letters
- 4:28Speaker 1: come on these little discs, and you put the discs
- 4:31Speaker 1: in the tower. So when we say go, you hit
- 4:34Speaker 1: the little lever on the tower seven times and it
- 4:39Speaker 1: shoots the discs out with great force, so you have
- 4:41Speaker 1: to catch them or they'll go flying onto the floor.
- 4:44Speaker 1: It's really silly and completely unnecessary, Like it worked just
- 4:48Speaker 1: as well to have a bag and you reach in
- 4:50Speaker 1: and draw seven tiles and you both reveal them at
- 4:53Speaker 1: the same time. I guess the part of the gimmick
- 4:55Speaker 1: is you're both flinging the discs out at the same time,
- 4:58Speaker 1: so there is a speed up element to it. That's
- 5:01Speaker 1: pretty dumb. But it was fun just to fling the
- 5:05Speaker 1: letters around, so it was fun for five minutes. I'm
- 5:07Speaker 1: not sure I'm going to hold on to it. The
- 5:09Speaker 1: gizmo is pretty neat, but the box is huge. Takes
- 5:12Speaker 1: up a lot of space, so if you have a
- 5:14Speaker 1: tight game collection, you're not going to want to spend
- 5:16Speaker 1: a lot of time on or a lot of space
- 5:18Speaker 1: on Word War. So that's Word War from nineteen seventy eight.
- 5:21Speaker 1: Next up we have Klue Junior Marvel Adventures Avengers. We
- 5:26Speaker 1: played this when we visited Home over Thanksgiving, we hung
- 5:30Speaker 1: out with some family and played some games with them,
- 5:32Speaker 1: and one of my family members has a young daughter
- 5:35Speaker 1: who has Clue Junior as a game that she enjoys playing.
- 5:39Speaker 1: Now she's still a little young for the deduction part
- 5:42Speaker 1: of the game, but she understands the role and move
- 5:45Speaker 1: aspect and understands what to do then. So she's on
- 5:47Speaker 1: a team with her mom and they played and they
- 5:50Speaker 1: kicked our butts. It has the same basic mechanism of Clue.
- 5:53Speaker 1: You're moving around, you're collecting clues. In this game, you're
- 5:58Speaker 1: collecting clues from the board rather than from other players.
- 6:02Speaker 1: You're not fighting to trick people by figuring out answers
- 6:05Speaker 1: by asking people questions. All the clues come from looking
- 6:08Speaker 1: at stuff on the board. So it is much more
- 6:10Speaker 1: driven by roll and move rather than deduction, because you
- 6:15Speaker 1: can kind of guess at a certain point and hope
- 6:17Speaker 1: you're within a couple of answers of the right thing.
- 6:20Speaker 1: But it's much more just the dependent on did your
- 6:23Speaker 1: role enough to move to the right space and if
- 6:26Speaker 1: you did, hazzah. So that part's not great, but it's fine. Generally.
- 6:31Speaker 1: We had a good time with it. It's a nice
- 6:34Speaker 1: It was a nice filler to start the evening while
- 6:37Speaker 1: the young in was still up and able to participate.
- 6:39Speaker 1: They got to play a game with all the grown
- 6:41Speaker 1: ups and we had a good time. Honestly, the most
- 6:43Speaker 1: fun part about it was that when I went to
- 6:45Speaker 1: log it, it was not registered in Board Game Geek
- 6:48Speaker 1: and I thought, well, maybe Clue variants don't get their
- 6:51Speaker 1: own entry, but they do. I looked, there's Clue. I
- 6:54Speaker 1: think there was Clue star Wars or something. There were
- 6:56Speaker 1: a bunch of other Clue variants that did have pages,
- 6:59Speaker 1: but there was no or Clue Junior variants, but there
- 7:01Speaker 1: was no entry forward Clue Junior, Marvel Avengers. So that
- 7:05Speaker 1: means I got to do a thing that I don't
- 7:07Speaker 1: get to do that often, which was enter a new
- 7:09Speaker 1: game in the Board Game Geek database, which is always
- 7:12Speaker 1: a little bit amusing. You go and you go into
- 7:15Speaker 1: the you can look it up how to do it,
- 7:17Speaker 1: but it's sort of amusing. It takes a couple of days.
- 7:19Speaker 1: You have to enter it and then wait for it
- 7:20Speaker 1: to get approved, then go back in and upload pictures.
- 7:23Speaker 1: It's really interesting because the way Board Game Geeks permissions work.
- 7:26Speaker 1: In order to upload a picture, you have to assert
- 7:28Speaker 1: that you have permission to upload it. But generally it's
- 7:33Speaker 1: assumed in the marketplace that you can circulate covers of
- 7:37Speaker 1: games as a way to talk about the game, and
- 7:40Speaker 1: it's sort of understood that that's not protected if you're
- 7:43Speaker 1: not selling it, that you can copy the image of
- 7:46Speaker 1: the game. So it's interesting because you get to a
- 7:47Speaker 1: point where you like, well, if I want to cover
- 7:49Speaker 1: the game to be there, I have to submit it,
- 7:51Speaker 1: and as part of doing that, I have to assert
- 7:54Speaker 1: I have the right to do this, which I technically
- 7:55Speaker 1: don't but marketing material. So anyway, Yeah, maybe to board
- 8:00Speaker 1: game Geek a little bit there and said I have
- 8:02Speaker 1: permission to upload this because that's the only way it
- 8:04Speaker 1: gets uploaded. And frankly, the entry is not any good
- 8:07Speaker 1: without the picture. So that was clue Junior Marvel Avengers.
- 8:12Speaker 1: Oh let's see who designed that one? Just credited to
- 8:16Speaker 1: has Bro. Just says an aside for being out walking,
- 8:19Speaker 1: one of my favorite things to do is approach a
- 8:23Speaker 1: uncontrolled area on a very busy street and wait for
- 8:27Speaker 1: a chance to cross, because I've discovered if you wait
- 8:29Speaker 1: a moment or two, you can cross, usually without running
- 8:32Speaker 1: or anything. And so it's really fun to walk across
- 8:34Speaker 1: a very busy street not having to run, not having
- 8:37Speaker 1: to worry about getting run over, and I don't know,
- 8:40Speaker 1: it's very satisfying to me. You're welcome, all right, continuing on,
- 8:45Speaker 1: So that is all of the inconsequential games from November.
- 8:48Speaker 1: I do have another one I want to talk about,
- 8:50Speaker 1: which I will hit in the next episode. I'm going
- 8:52Speaker 1: to try to spam a couple more episodes out here
- 8:54Speaker 1: before the end of the year. I think i'll get
- 8:56Speaker 1: two recorded today. Whether I get them both out before
- 8:59Speaker 1: New Year's I don't know, but there it is, all right.
- 9:02Speaker 1: The next one I want to talk about it is
- 9:04Speaker 1: Uno Seinfeld Uno Seinfeld again credits just Mattel. They don't
- 9:09Speaker 1: tell us who at Uno decided to who actually designed
- 9:13Speaker 1: the Seinfeld variant. I played this at my board game
- 9:17Speaker 1: club for college. One of the students had brought it,
- 9:19Speaker 1: and unlike me, all the other students want to play
- 9:21Speaker 1: Uno sometimes, so I'm like, what the hell, I haven't
- 9:24Speaker 1: played Duno in a while. Yeah. I did not enjoy it,
- 9:27Speaker 1: particularly because the special cards they didn't really explain. And
- 9:32Speaker 1: this is the only part of Uno I don't know,
- 9:33Speaker 1: because it's new and they didn't really explain how they work,
- 9:35Speaker 1: so I didn't understand how they work. So it's weird
- 9:38Speaker 1: to play a game that has rules everyone assumes and
- 9:40Speaker 1: then be the one who doesn't understand the rules. But whatever,
- 9:43Speaker 1: it's Uno. The Uno Seinfeld game is interesting. It comes
- 9:47Speaker 1: with these Seinfeld cards that go into the deck and
- 9:50Speaker 1: basically the idea is when you play them, they do
- 9:53Speaker 1: one of several things. So at the beginning of the game,
- 9:57Speaker 1: you read off I think four or five different possibility
- 10:00Speaker 1: these for what the Seinfeld cards do, and then you
- 10:04Speaker 1: play them with then you pick as a group, you
- 10:07Speaker 1: pick one. We picked the putty variant where you had
- 10:09Speaker 1: to talk about yourself and the third person once the
- 10:12Speaker 1: Seinfeld card came up. If you didn't, if you got
- 10:14Speaker 1: caught not doing it, you had to draw a card
- 10:16Speaker 1: or two cards or something. And then if someone played
- 10:18Speaker 1: a second Signfeld card, then the putty variant went away
- 10:21Speaker 1: until the next Seinfeld card. And the Seinnfeld card was
- 10:23Speaker 1: also just like a generic wild as well, so that
- 10:27Speaker 1: was amusing. I mean, like I said, I haven't played
- 10:29Speaker 1: Uno in a while, and the part that got me
- 10:32Speaker 1: confused that I didn't know was the stacking of the
- 10:37Speaker 1: draw too, So this is a house rule, but it
- 10:40Speaker 1: is in the rules as an official variant. Normally, if
- 10:43Speaker 1: you do a draw too, then the next player has
- 10:45Speaker 1: to draw two cards at the beginning of their turn,
- 10:48Speaker 1: and then I believe they don't get to go. They
- 10:50Speaker 1: draw two cards and then skip their turn. But they
- 10:52Speaker 1: have this stacking variant where if you play a draw
- 10:54Speaker 1: to and the next player has a draw too, they
- 10:56Speaker 1: can play it, and then the next player has to
- 10:58Speaker 1: draw four. What the group did not playing to me
- 11:00Speaker 1: is that the person who plays that stacking card doesn't
- 11:03Speaker 1: have to draw the two. I thought it was draw two.
- 11:05Speaker 1: But if they play another draw too, then the next
- 11:08Speaker 1: player has to draw four, and if they play a
- 11:10Speaker 1: draw to, the next player plays six, and so on.
- 11:12Speaker 1: But no no one draws any until the stack runs out,
- 11:15Speaker 1: which is a minor rule. But I didn't understand it,
- 11:19Speaker 1: and I might have played differently had I understood it,
- 11:22Speaker 1: So a minor quibble. So uno, I can understand why
- 11:27Speaker 1: people like it, but I don't know. To me, it
- 11:29Speaker 1: doesn't feel like a game that involves much choice, and
- 11:32Speaker 1: I generally tell my students and you my listeners, the
- 11:35Speaker 1: choice is what makes games interesting or one of the
- 11:38Speaker 1: main things that makes games interesting. So that is Uno Seinfeld.
- 11:43Speaker 1: All right, I've got two more games I want to
- 11:46Speaker 1: talk about quickly here. The first one the Office Downsizing Game.
- 11:50Speaker 1: This is a game I found at Goodwill. It's rated
- 11:53Speaker 1: three point seven on Board game Geek, and I can't
- 11:56Speaker 1: say that I think it should be much higher than that.
- 11:58Speaker 1: It's credited to spin Mass Limited and Cardinal Publisher. It
- 12:01Speaker 1: doesn't even have a designer credited. Essentially, the Office Downsizing
- 12:05Speaker 1: Game is a less good version of the Resistance. It
- 12:10Speaker 1: is a sensibly a social deduction game where you're trying
- 12:13Speaker 1: to figure out who in the group got a promotion,
- 12:16Speaker 1: and if you could figure out who got a promotion
- 12:18Speaker 1: and fire them, then the rest of the office is saved.
- 12:21Speaker 1: It's a weird quirk, but it's full of office trivia.
- 12:25Speaker 1: So it's sort of funny because it brings up stuff
- 12:28Speaker 1: from the show, and if you watch the show, you enjoy.
- 12:31Speaker 1: Like I could tell the people who played it. There
- 12:33Speaker 1: were six of us who played it, my two kids
- 12:35Speaker 1: and myself and my wife and two other grown ups
- 12:38Speaker 1: and three of us. One of the adults I don't
- 12:41Speaker 1: think had seen Seinfeld much but the other three of
- 12:43Speaker 1: us had, and so when stuff would come up, we
- 12:46Speaker 1: clearly enjoyed it more because it was a reference to
- 12:48Speaker 1: things that happened in the show, whereas the people who
- 12:51Speaker 1: didn't know the references. It wasn't fun at all. It
- 12:54Speaker 1: is a very light social deduction game, much closer to
- 12:57Speaker 1: something like One Night Ultimate Werewolf than Two The Resistance.
- 13:00Speaker 1: In terms of how much information you have, you don't
- 13:04Speaker 1: have very much, and I probably I can't see myself
- 13:06Speaker 1: playing it again. I might hold onto it because I
- 13:09Speaker 1: like the Office, and I have a bunch of stuff
- 13:11Speaker 1: about the Office games and things that I might do
- 13:13Speaker 1: something with at some point, so I'll hold on to it.
- 13:15Speaker 1: But ultimately it was not very fun, and if you
- 13:18Speaker 1: wanted to play a social deduction game, I could recommend
- 13:20Speaker 1: ten that are better than this one. So not exciting,
- 13:24Speaker 1: but it did count as a novelty game, so I'm
- 13:26Speaker 1: making progress on that ten for ten. I'll talk about
- 13:28Speaker 1: that on January first, probably, So that was the Office
- 13:32Speaker 1: Downsizing game. When did that one come out? That one
- 13:36Speaker 1: came out in twenty nineteen. Jeez, at least twenty nineteen.
- 13:39Speaker 1: It feels really late for that to come out. All right. Finally,
- 13:42Speaker 1: the last game I want to talk about here is Senate.
- 13:46Speaker 1: Senate is a like a literally classic game. It was
- 13:51Speaker 1: we founded in Egyptian tombs. According to the game we had,
- 13:55Speaker 1: which was a copy that was released in the late seventies,
- 13:58Speaker 1: there are copies of it found in Toot and Commons Tomb,
- 14:01Speaker 1: and over time a couple people have found references to
- 14:06Speaker 1: the rules to it in different hieroglyphs and so have
- 14:09Speaker 1: released the rules to it. Essentially, it's a roll and
- 14:13Speaker 1: move game in the neighborhood of backgammon. It's not nearly
- 14:17Speaker 1: as good as backgammon, but it's kind of in that
- 14:20Speaker 1: in that sphere you have pieces that you're trying to move.
- 14:23Speaker 1: You roll and you move them. You can divide the role,
- 14:25Speaker 1: divide your move up between the pieces. The big gimmick
- 14:28Speaker 1: is that there are several spaces on the board that
- 14:31Speaker 1: do things that move you forward or back or give
- 14:34Speaker 1: you an extra roll. And the game comes with the
- 14:36Speaker 1: traditional Egyptian throwing sticks, which are these sticks. I've seen
- 14:40Speaker 1: them in hut Norri, which is a Korean game. I've
- 14:46Speaker 1: seen them in nor is It Korean Tie. I've seen
- 14:51Speaker 1: them in hut Norri, which is a Korean game. Basically,
- 14:54Speaker 1: there are circular sticks that are cut in half length wise,
- 14:57Speaker 1: so they're flat on one side and rounded on the other,
- 14:59Speaker 1: and when you throw them, if the flat side is up,
- 15:01Speaker 1: that counts as in the incentate anyway, when you throw it,
- 15:05Speaker 1: if the flat side is up, that counts as one.
- 15:07Speaker 1: If it's down, so the rounded side is up, that
- 15:09Speaker 1: counts as zero, and you just add them up. But
- 15:12Speaker 1: if all four of the sticks are face down, you
- 15:15Speaker 1: get a five instead of a zero. So your results
- 15:17Speaker 1: can be one, two, three, four or five. And basically
- 15:20Speaker 1: you're rolling or throwing the sticks to get your result,
- 15:23Speaker 1: and then you're moving your piece. The luck focused part
- 15:27Speaker 1: of it is that you only can introduce a piece
- 15:30Speaker 1: onto the board if it is a one, and to
- 15:32Speaker 1: leave the board you have to leave with the correct
- 15:35Speaker 1: role without splitting the movement all the other things, it's
- 15:40Speaker 1: about moving your pieces and trying to land on those
- 15:42Speaker 1: special spaces. The first half of the game was super boring.
- 15:45Speaker 1: We decided to play the whole game out just to
- 15:47Speaker 1: try it. The second half of the game got moderately
- 15:50Speaker 1: more fun. There was a moment of thrill when I
- 15:52Speaker 1: landed my last piece on the fourth to the last space,
- 15:56Speaker 1: which is lose your piece and start over with it.
- 15:59Speaker 1: And it was my last piece, so I couldn't divide
- 16:02Speaker 1: up the move to get it off of it keep
- 16:05Speaker 1: it from landing there, and I ended up losing the
- 16:07Speaker 1: game because I couldn't even get my piece back on
- 16:09Speaker 1: before my wife finished moving her pieces off. It was fine.
- 16:13Speaker 1: I don't really see how it could be, you know,
- 16:16Speaker 1: how it could last three thousand years, But then again,
- 16:18Speaker 1: we might say that about Monopoly later. The end of
- 16:21Speaker 1: it was better, and I could definitely see later games
- 16:24Speaker 1: sort of emerging from it. Like I said, Backcammon feels
- 16:27Speaker 1: like it's a child of it, and Backcammon's a much
- 16:29Speaker 1: better game. So that Senate the Ancient Guard, Ancient Game
- 16:33Speaker 1: of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Well, there is your board game,
- 16:38Speaker 1: your board game, Espresso Flight. I think I covered five
- 16:41Speaker 1: or six games, none of which I really recommend that
- 16:45Speaker 1: you seek out, although Senate is probably worth trying if
- 16:48Speaker 1: you're interested in historical board games, probably the other ones
- 16:52Speaker 1: you can all leave aside. I think, well, thanks for
- 16:55Speaker 1: joining me on my walk today.
- 16:56Speaker 2: I hope your next walk is disposed as mine wasn't
- 16:59Speaker 2: brought
- 17:21Speaker 1: To you by rattle Box