Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Dutch Blitz, Earth, Lisboa, and revisiting Hellboy

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Dutch Blitz, Earth, Lisboa, and revisiting Hellboy · Pick Up and Deliver

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Welcome to pick up and Deliver at the podcast, where I pick up my
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audio recorder as it out for a walk and delivering up so due while I
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stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning listeners. It's a
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lovely day here in suburban Chicago's. I wouldn't call it crisp, but it
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is cool. Like I'm wearing jeans and longsleeve shirt and I feel like I'm
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not going to be uncomfortable during the walk, so it's really nice. It's
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about eight in the morning, it's June twelfth today, and I'm happy to
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be talking to you. Welcome to the podcast. So it's been a little
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whison. I've talked about new games I've been playing, in part because it's
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slowed down a little bit, in part because I'm trying to decide how many
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new games I want to talk about that I've only played digitally. You know,
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I hesitate a little bit to talk about those, but those are for
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a later day. Today we're going to do a board game espresso triple shot
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goog glug glug. So, for those of you new to the podcast,
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a board game Espresso triple shot is where I talk about three new games that
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I've played recently for the first time and give my first impressions of them.
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The idea is it's not a review segment necessarily, but a quick conversation just
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as a reminder. I am myself a board game designer and I'm part owner
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of a board game company, so I do have a fiscal reason to compete
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with these games. If, on whatever level you want to attribute that as
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part of potential bias on my part, I just want to make sure that
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it's clear where I am, but I'm I'm intending anyway to review these as
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a passionate consumer of board games more than as a competitor to them. So
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the first game I'm talking about it is a classic game called Dutch Blitz.
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Dutch Bliss is a card game that apparently emerged out of the either the Mennonite
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or Amish communities, then was published as a full, full on commercial game
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and is widely available. You can buy it in either the Green pack or
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the Blue pack, and the idea is that if you get both, then
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you can play twice as many people in one game. I believe is the
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idea there. The game design is credited to Werner Ernst and George Mueller,
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but I'm not sure that they actually designed it versus it being a folk game
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that they've copied down. It was published in nineteen sixty. So the way
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you play the game is a speed game in which you have a bunch of
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cards that have different numbers on them, and then people are playing cards on
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the table with other numbers on them. And the idea is you want to
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get rid of all your cards by contributing your cards to stacks of cards of
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numbers. So, for example, and you go through the cards in roughly
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solitaire klondike solitaire form, where you draw three and look at them and you
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can play them. You play them, otherwise you discard and go on in
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condact solidarre. At least as I've always played it, you have to play
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the cards in order. You can't just grab the middle card and play it,
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or maybe you can. It's been a long time since i've played that.
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In this game, you can play any of the cards that you draw,
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and then if once you've played or not played those cards, he put
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them faith you put them in your discard pile and pick up three new ones
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and go again. But the game is about speed, and also because you're
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all contributing the same pile. So if I put a one down, more
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than one person might have a two in their hand and they both are trying
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to add to that to pile. And we continue on from there, and
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you go until somebody runs out of cards, and then you get points for
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every card that you got onto the table, and I think you lose points
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for a recard still in your deck. When I started playing this, I'm
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like, oh, this is familiar. That's because the game Rainbow Rabbits is
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Dutch Blitz, both colors. I don't know whether the designer of Rainbow Rabbits
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has played Dutch Blitz, and it's slightly different, and you know, Blitz
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is old enough that I think using colors is a novel modification and worth exploring.
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Also put a little bit of amusing art on there that's kind of missing
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from the Dutch Blitz one. But yeah, mostly it's a speed game,
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really fast. I would say slightly more accessible than Rainbow Rabbits, which is
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the one I'm talking about as a newer iteration, because Rainbow Rabbits has colors
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and you have to remember the color order versus Dutch Blitz using numbers and I
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think for most people, number order is instinctive. Color order is mostly instinctive,
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or for some people not at all. I think I remembered I mentioned
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when I reviewed Rainbow Rabbits that my mother in law did not know the color
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order. That apparently, whenever Roy G. Bib became universal, it did
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not make it sway into my mother in law's school when she was a child,
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so she did not know that color order. So anyway, highly recommended
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if you get a chance to play it or pick it up somewhere. Dutch
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Blitz certainly a winner in my book. Definitely a game I will pick up
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at some point if I find it for a reasonable amount. I'm hoping it'll
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be the sort of thing i'll run into at a goodwill. So that's Dutch
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Blitz, all right. The next game I'm going to talk about is called
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Earth. Now, this is one that I was going to not probably review
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anytime soon because it is part of my online play. I played it a
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bunch of times on Board Game Arena. However, it is also something I've
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now played on the table. When I was at my Toggle Gaming club a
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couple of weeks ago, somebody brought a copy of Earth and set it up,
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and I'm like, yeah, I have played this in person, or
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I played this online and I would like to play it in person. The
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designer is Maxim Tardiff and it's published by Inside Up Games. So I will
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say that the things I thought were true about Earth from having played it online
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are in fact true about it, which is that A I thought it would
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be easier to play in person than online, at least to kind of understand
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it. B I thought it would be more fun in person than online.
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Those are both true, and it turns out to be one hundred percent sure.
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I enjoyed it more in person than I have enjoyed it online, and
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it is in fact easier to understand in person than it was online. I
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would say the tactility of the grid and the process of playing cards is significantly
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easier online. The necessity or ability to remember the different scoring conditions I find
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easier in person. Now, if I go back and play it online,
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I may find that it's in fact not that hard, and that the problem
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I was experiencing was that I wasn't really I didn't really understand it, and
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now that I understand it, I should do better. But it does take
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a slightly different amount of attention. That said, I it's still just okay
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for me. I didn't think it was amazing. Okay, So a couple
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of things about it that just didn't work as well. So it's often compared
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I've seen it compared to Terraforming Mars. I've seen it compared to arc Nova.
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Those seem to be the two main places. Compared to part ark Nova
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because it's also a nature game with a ton of cards, Terraforming Mars.
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Because it's also a game where you're building in a sort of tableau with a
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ton of cards. I'm acting like you all know this game. You might
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not know the game. So Earth is a tableau building card selection game in
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which you are developing a island in I don't know proto Earth before humans.
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There are some animals around, but the animals represent scoring conditions. Most of
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what you're doing is growing plant life. Your goal is to accumulate a number
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of different resources, mostly earth or loam or soil or whatever it's called,
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and then to spend that to grow plants of different types in order to engage
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with scoring bonus scoring conditions as well as individual scoring conditions that appear on your
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cards. The novel mechanisms in the game. The big one is that over
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the course the game, you're building out a tableau of sixteen cards in a
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four by four grid, and when someone finishes their grid, that ends the
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game. In that tableau, you resolve it from left to right, top
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row to bottom row and all of the card and the game uses a follow
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mechanism. So there are four base actions that like Race or the Galaxy or
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Puerto Rico. I think I haven't played Puerto Rico, but like Race for
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the Galaxy, if you take the main action, then you get to the
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other people get to copy it with a lesser payout. But then every time
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someone takes an action of a particular color, all of your cards in your
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tableau of that color activate. And then on top of that, when those
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cards activate, the bonus that's built into those cards. Oh, you have
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to do them in order. That's the tricky part. So if it's a
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grid of sixteen cards, you have to go left to right, top row
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of bottom row, so as you're putting cards, and you can't move your
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cards once you put them in the grid, so you're constantly having to think
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about where in the order you want a particular card to go, because a
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lot of cards will add things or subtrack things, so you can have a
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sort of machine that gives you three soil and then spends three soil to do
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a thing, and as you draw a card and then discard a card,
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and you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff like that. And of
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course all of these things are optional, so you're choosing the whole time whether
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to run them or not. There are a number of lots of different ways
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to score. Too many to go over here except to say I will say
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that there are a number of different plant growth cards where you get to build
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these little tree plant trees on your board, which are these little towers with
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discs and then a little tree tap top thing on the top. It looks
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like a mushroom top, but it just means the top of the tree,
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because I think trees do it as well as mushrooms and other things. You're
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not just growing mushrooms with that kind of card. Like I said, I
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enjoyed this game. I would play it again if somebody asked me to.
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I'm probably not going to ask people to bring it out, and I'm definitely
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not going to buy it. I find the theme Hearth far less compelling than
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the more interesting themes of like Arc No Nova where you're doing animals, or
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even Terraforming Mars, which has some narrative arc to it. This game has
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no characters at all, so it is sort of undirected and it's unclear what
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or who we're supposed to be, and I find that kind of game difficult
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to imagine. Is what is my agency here? What am I supposed to
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be? Who am I supposed to be? That's kind of a problem I
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had with Evolution as well, if you remember that game. And I also
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find the graphic design in this game pedestrian. That's a very snooty word,
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just not compelling. So it was a miss for me. I know a
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lot of people like it, and it's certainly climbing the ranks. It's an
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interesting game, but I think it's not as interesting as other games in that
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market thus far. Your Terraforming Mars is your Ark Novas sort of the too
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closest, and I think both of those games are better than this one.
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So that's Earth. The third game I played is a vital aserta game that
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my buddy Paul brought over. This is a game that I've wanted to play
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for a long time, and in fact, I had a funny story about
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it. A friend of mine had it and wanted to play it, and
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he brought it to Toggle Gaming, my local game club, and we had
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agreed we would play it. So he read the rules and watched the video,
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and I read the rules and watched the video, and we got all
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ready to play. We got to game nine and he's setting it up and
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I said, Buddy, I got I admit I do not know how to
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play this game. It was it's too hard. I couldn't understand it.
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So if you didn't teach me how, happily learned. But I couldn't get
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it on my own. And he said, you know what, I had
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the same experience. So we played something else that was several years ago,
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and I hadn't played it since until my friend brought it over last night.
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And this is liz Boa from vital Aserta. Liz Boa is a game about
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the reconstruction of Lisbon after a big earthquake destroyed it. You play, I
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don't know members of noble houses, as is often the case in any game
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about European city, and you're trying to gain the favor of various nobles as
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you are building the city now. Like many Vitalla Asserta games, including ones
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I've covered on the podcast before, like on Mars or weather Machine, and
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this game has a series of interlocking systems and different ways that you interact with
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those systems, and successful play of the game involves finding efficiencies and shortcuts,
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managing your rule breakers that allow you to do slightly better at things than your
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compatriots, managing the timing of things that you get the best result of an
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action before someone else does, and so on. It's a very complicated game
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and probably one that if I don't play it again within a couple of weeks,
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I'm going to lose most of the rules for it and I'll have to
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relearn it. That said, I really enjoyed Lisboa. I'll try to give
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you. Okay, so a couple of highlights from the game. Main things.
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The big thing is you have cards, and each it's a multi multi
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use cards. You can use them to either do one of two kinds of
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actions that allow you to interact with okay, so you can play them in
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one or two ways that give you bonuses, either a rule breaker bonus or
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some sort of resource usually, and then you get to do two of six
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actions, but you can only do those actions if you can spend the resource
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you need to do those actions. Alternately, you can play the board to
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the visit the noble section, which allows you a different kind of access to
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those actions, as well as doing these sort of superactions, which being able
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to do those allows you to build buildings and send merchant ships out to sea,
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and those are the things that earn you a lot of points. Like
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I said, it's a very complicated game, and I wouldn't it wouldn't be
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worthwhile trying to go into it much more in depth than I have right here,
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except to say that I found it more understandable early in the cycle than
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many Leserta games I've played. Now, this might just be I'm a nerd
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to his mania, and so when I'm playing his games, I understand them
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more easily than I used to. Or it might be that I've grown as
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a gamer and so I can understand these complex systems more easily, or and
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this is where I land on the opinion scale, that this game is slightly
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more comprehensible and the systems make a little bit more sense. Than some of
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the other games. Regardless of which one is the answer. I did really
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enjoy Lisboa and it definitely worked its way toward the top of my heap.
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I would say, thinking of the of the Lacerta games that I've played,
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which include The Gallerist, The Getaway, it's not the Getaway, Getaway Plan,
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weather Machine, Lisboa, and On Mars, I would say it's up
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in the top echelon near on Mars, and I think weather Machine on You
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know, my instinct is those other two games are less are lower, but
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with the exception of the Gallerist, I have really enjoyed all the Lacerata games
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I've played enough that I would probably play them again. And frankly, even
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if someone said, hey, you want to play the Gallerist again, I'm
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setting it up, I would probably play because even though that one wasn't my
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favorite, there was still interesting stuff going on, and I would it is
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worth playing again. I think the graphic design is lovely, although it's just
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do you like muted blues and greens is the question. If so, you're
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probably set for a good time with Lisboa. That's los Boa from Vitalaserta.
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Graphic design by Eton o Tool published by Eagle Griffin Games, and then finally
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for my dusted off game this month, I'm talking about Hellboy the board game.
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Now. This is the game I haven't played in a long time.
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I gave it a pretty positive review when I first got it. I played
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three rounds of Hellboy early on, and then I kind of put it away.
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I started getting out again this year when I started doing painting because I
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realized I wanted to play it again. And part of it is I haven't
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painted it, and I thought it would be fun to paint. There's a
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lot of mini so I can kind of practice on a lot of different things,
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and they're all kind of low stakes because you know, there are six
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rampaging frogmen and six venomous frogmen, and there's a lot of room to make
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mistakes and not have anyone notice or care. And so I was looking for
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a game to play someone on the regular with my son this summer, and
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he said that he would be willing to give Hellboy a try, and we
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played a round of it and he really enjoyed it. So we've now played
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it several times and I think it's going to be part of the regular visit
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the summer, so I'm going to try to get more of it painted because
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it is way more fun when the minis are painted. If you're not familiar
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with How Boys, based on the Mike Magnola comic of the same name,
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it is about a supernatural being who was accidentally summoned to Earth by Nazis in
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the forties. Actually he was summoned on purpose by Nazis in the forties,
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but then American paranormal investigation soldiers killed all the Nazis and kidnapped the demon baby
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and raised it good. It's a classic nature versus nurture story in which nurture
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wins out and the red faced demon with a tail and goat feet and a
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giant stone hand turns out to be a good guy for fighting monsters on behalf
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of humanity. It's a interesting a music story, mostly funny, with a
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little bit of drama in there. I really like it. So when they
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announced the game a while back, I kind of went all in. I
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didn't get every single thing, because they had all this residence stuff that,
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like way was really expensive for stuff you would only use occasionally. Instead,
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I went in for all of the gameplay stuff, which is scenarios you'd only
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use occasionally, which speak to the fact that I got the big, the
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Big Kickstarter edition of the game three four years ago, now three three and
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a half years ago, and I am only just now getting past the stuff
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I played originally that three years ago, and I still have two more boxes
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of stuff, the Big Box of Doom and the Box of Evil that I
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haven't even opened. So plenty of Kickstarter goodness, plenty of Hellboy to go
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around for my son and I to play in the next few years, which
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is great because it's a fun game. It is americ trashy dungeon crawl game.
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It involves a lot of dice rolling. It's got a really neat testing
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system. So you have fight, you have defense, you have investigate,
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and whenever you're in shooting and whenever you're doing those things, you roll dice
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of a certain color. So there are three different colors available. Are there
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four different colors available of dice? There's yellow, orange, and red.
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Getting successfully stronger, there's also black dice, but you never get to roll
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those automatically. You have to upgrade to those, and then you roll the
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dice and then you adjust your skill level or your chances in a particular battle
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with upgrades and down grades. So let's say you get two upgrades because of
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weapons you have, and then there's one down grade because of environmental conditions.
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Then you get a total of one upgrade, so you can pick one of
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your dice and upgrade at once. In the end, you can do up
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to three upgrades or three down grades as a way to alter your odds of
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doing well in the battle. It's a really fun system, very thematic,
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full of dice chalking, full of random luck that could totally swing the game
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one way or another, but ultimately very fun. We've been having a good
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time with it. I don't know. I don't know if I could say
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I recommend it. I think it's really fun, but really you have to
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know yourself. If this sounds like the kind of game that you think you'd
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have a good time with, I think you got to check out some gameplay
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videos. I haven't seen a ton of people saying how much they like the
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game, though, so I bet that you can find, at least on
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some level, some of the stuff available on the secondhand market as people are
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clearing their shelves and realizing, oh, I guess I don't like that game,
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or I'm not going to play it maybe anyway. So that's hellboy the
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board game. What games have you been playing recently? Head over to board
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game Guild three two six nine and share your experiences with us. I'd love
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to hear what games have made their way under your shelf, what you're thinking
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of new games, and how your June is going. It's already June twelfth.
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Oh my goodness, we are flying through the month with no end in
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sight or actually and end in twenty six days, twenty eight days, So
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yeah, I guess an end is very much insight. So in that regard,
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head over to board game gee guildre six nine and let me go.
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You can also reach out directly Brendanett rattlebox games dot com, or send me
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a message over on board game geek wand bat name ninety nine is my user
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name there. Thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope to
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your next walk because it's pleasant to his mind was bye bye. Brought to
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you by rattle Box by