Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Emptying the Dust Bin, Mar-May 2026

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Emptying the Dust Bin, Mar-May 2026 · Pick Up and Deliver

0:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast where I
0:06
Speaker 1: pick up my audio recorder as I step out for
0:08
Speaker 1: a walk and deliver an episode to you while I
0:10
Speaker 1: stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, greetings, listeners. It's a
0:22
Speaker 1: lovely day here in suburban Chicago. It's a little bit
0:25
Speaker 1: warmer than the last episode I recorded, but not significantly so.
0:28
Speaker 1: Because I'm still on a morning walk, I was thinking
0:33
Speaker 1: about what kinds of episodes I haven't done in a while,
0:36
Speaker 1: or what kinds of episodes need doing, And I was
0:39
Speaker 1: looking back and I realized, Hey, I have a bunch
0:42
Speaker 1: of games that I got out of the dust that
0:44
Speaker 1: I never talked about in the podcast. And there's a
0:47
Speaker 1: point where if it's been long enough since you did that,
0:49
Speaker 1: they start to go to the place starts to go stale.
0:52
Speaker 1: So there's a segment I do, or I should say
0:55
Speaker 1: I used to do, called emptying the dustbin, where I
0:58
Speaker 1: look back over the last few months and I say,
1:00
Speaker 1: what are the games that I haven't talked about on
1:03
Speaker 1: the dust empty the out of the dust list that
1:07
Speaker 1: we're getting far enough away from that it's hard to
1:09
Speaker 1: keep track of the play And I look back and
1:12
Speaker 1: I'm like, Oh, how how far back do I need
1:14
Speaker 1: to go? I realized I haven't done one of these
1:17
Speaker 1: episodes since September of last year, and that episode was
1:21
Speaker 1: covering May and June or March and April, May and
1:24
Speaker 1: June of twenty twenty five, So it's been almost a
1:26
Speaker 1: year since I did in Emptying the dust Bin episode,
1:32
Speaker 1: So if I went back to that, honestly, I would
1:34
Speaker 1: just be describing games I vaguely remember, Like I'm not
1:38
Speaker 1: remembering the plays at all that far back, So I'm
1:41
Speaker 1: not gonna probably go back that way. If you want
1:43
Speaker 1: me to try to figure out something to do with
1:45
Speaker 1: the uncovered dust dust bin games, let me know. I
1:50
Speaker 1: don't know. Dustbin's not dust. I don't want to call
1:52
Speaker 1: them dustbin games. That's not nice and it doesn't fit
1:55
Speaker 1: what I think of them. These aren't games that are
1:57
Speaker 1: in the dust bin. These are games I got out
1:59
Speaker 1: of the dust, and the dust I swept off them
2:02
Speaker 1: is in the bin and I got empty yet and
2:03
Speaker 1: that reminds me of the plays I did. There's your logic.
2:07
Speaker 1: So what I'm doing is I'm just going back the
2:10
Speaker 1: two months before the last month. So last month was June,
2:18
Speaker 1: so The out of the Dust plays in June will
2:21
Speaker 1: be featured in Board Game Espresso episodes in July. The
2:26
Speaker 1: out of the Dust games from previous months sometimes I
2:29
Speaker 1: haven't covered them yet, those are the ones I am
2:31
Speaker 1: going to be covering now. So today, in this episode,
2:34
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about games that I played in
2:36
Speaker 1: April and May of this year of twenty twenty six,
2:41
Speaker 1: that I was dusting off, but I never talked about
2:44
Speaker 1: on the pot my reassessment of them. So this is
2:46
Speaker 1: what have I been playing lately lately, with quotes around
2:50
Speaker 1: it episode. I think my plan is going forward, try
2:54
Speaker 1: to do one of these episodes every other month. So
2:58
Speaker 1: every other month I will do one of these episodes
3:01
Speaker 1: and hopefully that will allow me to stay caught up. Okay,
3:09
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna jump right in. I'm gonna tell you
3:11
Speaker 1: the games that I played in the month I played
3:12
Speaker 1: them and what my thinking about them was now versus
3:16
Speaker 1: how I remembered them earlier. To start with, I played
3:19
Speaker 1: Access and Allies Guadalcanal two years it was. I played
3:23
Speaker 1: this in March. It was two years, five months and
3:25
Speaker 1: twenty five days Dusty at that time. Now, Access and
3:29
Speaker 1: Allies is a game I played occasionally when I was young,
3:32
Speaker 1: but I played it almost exclusively now with my neighbor.
3:35
Speaker 1: One of my neighbors likes the game. I mentioned him
3:37
Speaker 1: occasionally and sometimes we play a game I bring over.
3:41
Speaker 1: Sometimes we play one of his games. Usually when we
3:43
Speaker 1: play one of his games, it's Access and Allies or
3:45
Speaker 1: Accesses and Allies Guadalcanal. He likes those games, and I'm
3:50
Speaker 1: the only person who really has time to play them
3:52
Speaker 1: with him, So that's kind of where we are there.
3:56
Speaker 1: I will say, I like this game. Fine, it's fun,
4:00
Speaker 1: it's interesting, it's hard. I'm bad at it. So I
4:03
Speaker 1: like playing a game i'm bad at because you can
4:05
Speaker 1: get better at it. The game I'm super good at
4:07
Speaker 1: is fun too, but it's a different kind of fun
4:12
Speaker 1: if you haven't played it. Access and an Allies is
4:14
Speaker 1: a classic mass market war game. Pretty simple mechanisms. You
4:19
Speaker 1: have a bunch of war ships and warplanes and there's
4:26
Speaker 1: a command phase where you move them all take turns
4:30
Speaker 1: moving them. Then there is a battle phase where all
4:32
Speaker 1: the ships that all the ships and soldiers and planes
4:36
Speaker 1: that are near each other take turns shooting at each other,
4:40
Speaker 1: and then you resolve the battle. The game is set
4:45
Speaker 1: up to use the randomness of dice, and it relies
4:50
Speaker 1: on the ubiquity of dice rolls to even out the
4:53
Speaker 1: balance the luck in the game. In other words, you
4:57
Speaker 1: roll a lot of dice in this game, and then
5:00
Speaker 1: some of your troops will survive, some will fail. But
5:02
Speaker 1: because you're rolling a lot of dice, the apt law
5:04
Speaker 1: of averages should balance out for you. Now, sometimes on
5:08
Speaker 1: an individual roll, it'll feel real bad. Like there are
5:12
Speaker 1: some things, like a bomber is only getting destroyed like
5:16
Speaker 1: by a one on a fighter or a six, and
5:20
Speaker 1: so if you have a couple of bombers or no,
5:22
Speaker 1: it's the other way around, Like bombers are very vulnerable
5:26
Speaker 1: to fighters. But there are some things where there's a
5:31
Speaker 1: thing where you're only going to destroy something with a one,
5:34
Speaker 1: and if you have a couple of those and your
5:35
Speaker 1: opponent rolls a couple ones and destroys them, that really stinks.
5:39
Speaker 1: Or like with a bomber, you only miss with a
5:41
Speaker 1: one or whatever, and so when you miss with this
5:44
Speaker 1: very expensive thing, that that part doesn't feel great. That said,
5:50
Speaker 1: that's part of I think that's part of shaping the
5:54
Speaker 1: idea of the fog of war, shapping the idea that
5:57
Speaker 1: an unlikely victory can turn the tie, but generally good
6:01
Speaker 1: strategy and skill will win out, which is usually the case.
6:06
Speaker 1: Usually Chelsea wins, Kelsey wins. Usually my neighbor wins, and
6:10
Speaker 1: he did so. That was Access and No Allies. Guadalcanal. Nextcept,
6:14
Speaker 1: I played Quest for El Dorado. This is one year,
6:17
Speaker 1: nine months, and eleven days Dusty. I played this with
6:19
Speaker 1: my board game club at my college. I like this
6:22
Speaker 1: game a lot. It is fun, it is easy to learn.
6:27
Speaker 1: It is Ryner Kinizia, and he knows how to design
6:30
Speaker 1: a game. Essentially, if you haven't played it, it is
6:34
Speaker 1: a race where you are trying to get your worker,
6:37
Speaker 1: your adventurer, through the forest to the lost City of Gold,
6:42
Speaker 1: and it is a deck builder. You are drawing cards,
6:44
Speaker 1: you're spending them to buy more cards, and you're spending
6:48
Speaker 1: them to move your adventurer. There's a variety of different
6:52
Speaker 1: terrain types and different cards will move your adventure in
6:54
Speaker 1: different ways. You can spend some of your resources buying
6:58
Speaker 1: other cards that let you do other things instead of
7:01
Speaker 1: moving your adventurer, but of course that can slow you down.
7:06
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if you don't do that stuff,
7:08
Speaker 1: then your Adventurer doesn't move fast enough in the late game.
7:11
Speaker 1: It's tenth, it's tight, it's fun. Every time you should
7:15
Speaker 1: play Quest for El Dorado if you can. Now, I
7:17
Speaker 1: hear the expansion, the thing about the Golden Cities levels
7:21
Speaker 1: the game up of it. I haven't played that one.
7:22
Speaker 1: I don't have it, and for some reason, very annoying reason,
7:27
Speaker 1: they changed the game, so like the if I wanted
7:31
Speaker 1: to get that expansion now it's not in the same
7:33
Speaker 1: format as the one I had, and so I don't
7:36
Speaker 1: think they're compatible. So I'm sort of stuck on an
7:39
Speaker 1: island with the version I have, which is okay. I
7:41
Speaker 1: don't play it that often. Obviously it was dusty, but
7:44
Speaker 1: it's it's really good. So that's Quest for Eldorado. Next
7:47
Speaker 1: up we have Hughes and Q's this one year, one month,
7:50
Speaker 1: and nineteen days. Dusty. I would have to look at
7:53
Speaker 1: don't remember off the top of my head, and this
7:54
Speaker 1: may even this may be on my no I'm good list,
7:58
Speaker 1: which usually would preclude me from playing a game. However,
8:04
Speaker 1: I played this at my college board game club. It
8:06
Speaker 1: was early in the night. There were a couple of
8:07
Speaker 1: people there. They wanted to play Hughes and ces. I
8:10
Speaker 1: think the game works better with more people, so I
8:13
Speaker 1: played to be a bot to participate, try to do
8:16
Speaker 1: my best play in the spirit of the game. But
8:19
Speaker 1: the idea was to give them a better experience by
8:21
Speaker 1: having someone else in there who's trying and having fun
8:24
Speaker 1: or trying anyway. I still don't like Hughes and Q's
8:28
Speaker 1: didn't find it particularly fun. Happy to not play it.
8:32
Speaker 1: If it's not on my now I'm Good list, I
8:34
Speaker 1: think I should add it to that. Next up was
8:37
Speaker 1: Point Salad one year, six months, nineteen days Dusty on
8:41
Speaker 1: that one, This again was played in March. I like
8:43
Speaker 1: Point Salad a lot. I think it's great. I love
8:46
Speaker 1: the simplicity of the mechanism, the collecting of the building
8:50
Speaker 1: of your scoring, the scoring tableau, and the collecting of resources,
8:55
Speaker 1: the way that you can turn a resource into a
8:56
Speaker 1: scoring tableau, the balance you have to try to work.
8:59
Speaker 1: It's great. That's Point Salid. Next up we have Woodcraft.
9:03
Speaker 1: Woodcraft is two years, seven months, and sixteen days, Dusty.
9:06
Speaker 1: I really wanted to play this as part of my
9:08
Speaker 1: Vladimir Succi plays. I also thought theme wise that my
9:12
Speaker 1: wife would like it a lot, and she did like
9:13
Speaker 1: the theme, but she found that game was exactly the
9:17
Speaker 1: kind of thing I was talking about when she talked
9:18
Speaker 1: that when she and I were talking about what kind
9:20
Speaker 1: of games she likes, and she was saying that games
9:23
Speaker 1: that have like too many different things to keep track of,
9:27
Speaker 1: she doesn't really like. And it's interesting to think about
9:30
Speaker 1: Obsession and Wingspan and ark Nova are not too many
9:33
Speaker 1: things to keep track of for her, although I think
9:36
Speaker 1: ark Nova probably would be in that category if it
9:39
Speaker 1: were not a game about a zoo, but being a
9:42
Speaker 1: game about zoo theme is really important for her, so
9:45
Speaker 1: I thought that's why. I guess I thought Woodcraft would work,
9:47
Speaker 1: and she did really like the theme, but then we
9:48
Speaker 1: got into playing it and it was not She didn't
9:51
Speaker 1: have a good time, which I enjoyed the play of it,
9:53
Speaker 1: but I didn't have a great time because it's not fun.
9:56
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not as fun playing a two player
9:57
Speaker 1: game when you can tell the other person isn't having
9:59
Speaker 1: a good time. I haven't really built my ratings of
10:03
Speaker 1: games that way. If you listen to the podcaster Richard
10:07
Speaker 1: ham Rado or the YouTube video guy Rato, his ratings
10:13
Speaker 1: include how much his wife enjoys the game that if
10:18
Speaker 1: his wife really dislikes the game, it lowers his rating
10:21
Speaker 1: of that game, I think because or it changes his
10:24
Speaker 1: likelihood of keeping the game, which when games that are rated,
10:28
Speaker 1: he only rates games that are in his collection, actually
10:31
Speaker 1: goes back and deletes his ratings for games that he
10:33
Speaker 1: gets rid of, which I think is fascinating. I don't
10:37
Speaker 1: do that, which results in me having a top fifty
10:40
Speaker 1: that's full of games my wife doesn't like. But whatever.
10:45
Speaker 1: So that is Woodcraft. Next up we have Rhino Hero.
10:49
Speaker 1: Rhino Hero. It had been five years, five months since
10:52
Speaker 1: I played that game. We played it with my cousin
10:55
Speaker 1: and her daughter, my cousin's daughter. We actually had given
10:59
Speaker 1: them the cop a Rhino Hero that we had so
11:02
Speaker 1: that they could play it because yes, of course Rhino
11:05
Speaker 1: Hero rules. We had a good time building on a stack,
11:08
Speaker 1: and I think I'm the one who knocked it down,
11:10
Speaker 1: which is a bummer, But I think that game is
11:13
Speaker 1: always fun. It's a nice little thing. Then we have
11:17
Speaker 1: Can't Stop. This was five years. Oh no, we played
11:20
Speaker 1: Rhino Hero with some folks at church. H Then we
11:24
Speaker 1: have Can't Stop. This is five years, eight months and
11:27
Speaker 1: nine days. Dusty on that one can't stop as a
11:29
Speaker 1: push your luck game from legendary game designer, said Saxon,
11:33
Speaker 1: in which you are trying to move your marker up
11:36
Speaker 1: these columns, and the columns represent you're trying to move
11:42
Speaker 1: your marker up these columns, and if you complete three columns,
11:46
Speaker 1: then you win the game. You move your marker up
11:49
Speaker 1: by rolling dice, and you can either move your marker
11:56
Speaker 1: up the die that is the total of the dice,
12:00
Speaker 1: or up the column that is either of the individual dice.
12:05
Speaker 1: You can move one marker per Oh no, you could
12:07
Speaker 1: move two markers if you have two different categories fulfilled.
12:14
Speaker 1: I think, ooh, it's been a minute. But the thing is,
12:17
Speaker 1: you roll dice, move your marker up a column. Then
12:21
Speaker 1: you can stop, or you can keep going. If you stop,
12:25
Speaker 1: then you score the current position of those markers. If
12:29
Speaker 1: you choose to keep going, then you roll again and
12:35
Speaker 1: you move another column up. Now the trick is, you
12:41
Speaker 1: can only move two columns in any given turn, maybe three.
12:45
Speaker 1: You can't move all your columns. You can only move
12:48
Speaker 1: I think two columns in any given turn. So once
12:50
Speaker 1: you've moved a second column, then when you're rolling, you're
12:54
Speaker 1: hoping you move one of the two that you rolled.
12:57
Speaker 1: If you fail to do that, then you bust and
13:02
Speaker 1: you lose all the progress you made that turn. I
13:05
Speaker 1: think you're rolling two pairs of dice and looking at
13:08
Speaker 1: the totals that they give you. I'm going to have
13:11
Speaker 1: to go back and look, it's not that complicated. I
13:12
Speaker 1: just don't remember the details. So I just can't stop.
13:16
Speaker 1: I did not dust off any games in April that
13:18
Speaker 1: I haven't talked about on the podcast. It was relatively
13:21
Speaker 1: low undusting month. It was a low dusting month. I
13:24
Speaker 1: think I dusted off four or five games. More importantly,
13:26
Speaker 1: I talked about every single one of them on the
13:28
Speaker 1: podcast already. So skipping April, going on to May of
13:32
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, I dusted off five games in May
13:36
Speaker 1: that I haven't talked about yet here on the pod,
13:38
Speaker 1: and so let's do that. To start with heat Pedal
13:42
Speaker 1: to the Metal, this was one year, two months, and
13:44
Speaker 1: twenty two days Dusty. The first time I played heat
13:48
Speaker 1: Pedal to the Metal, I played it at a convention,
13:52
Speaker 1: a little in town and convention, and I thought it
13:55
Speaker 1: was fine. I enjoyed it, but I thought it was fine.
13:59
Speaker 1: No scratch that. The first time I played it, was
14:02
Speaker 1: on board game arena thought was fine. I didn't really
14:05
Speaker 1: get it as well as I could have. Playing on
14:08
Speaker 1: the table a year two months ago, I thought was
14:11
Speaker 1: pretty good. If I recall you can go back and listen.
14:14
Speaker 1: And then this time around, I had a lot of fun.
14:17
Speaker 1: I feel like each time I play it, I get
14:18
Speaker 1: a little bit more. It's a good time. Now. I'm
14:21
Speaker 1: not gonna buy it because this will not get played
14:23
Speaker 1: at my house. My wife just not like racing games,
14:27
Speaker 1: and while I like them, there are often at other
14:28
Speaker 1: games I'd rather pull out instead. There is a fair
14:33
Speaker 1: amount of yomi in this game. You are trying to
14:37
Speaker 1: anticipate what your opponents are going to do so that
14:40
Speaker 1: you can maximize the value you can get from them,
14:43
Speaker 1: because like flam Rouge before it, this game depends on
14:48
Speaker 1: things like drafting behind your opponents who are close to you.
14:52
Speaker 1: So I haven't played any of the alternate maps yet.
14:54
Speaker 1: We just played the base game with the base maps,
14:56
Speaker 1: and we weren't even using the special powers of the
14:59
Speaker 1: drivers as we were. It was a first play for
15:02
Speaker 1: a couple of people at the table that said. I
15:05
Speaker 1: had a good time with Heat and I would happily
15:07
Speaker 1: play it again. If I get the opportunity. So that
15:09
Speaker 1: was heat pedalton the metal. Next up, I did dust
15:13
Speaker 1: off Last Will. It had been one year, one month,
15:15
Speaker 1: and eleven days since I dusted that off, so barely dusty.
15:19
Speaker 1: Last Will is, of course, Vladimir Suci's board game version
15:21
Speaker 1: of Brewsters Millions. In Last Will, you have a very
15:25
Speaker 1: wealthy uncle who spent all his life accumulating wealth and
15:29
Speaker 1: never spent it. On his deathbed, he laments that he
15:32
Speaker 1: never spent it and declares that his heir will not
15:37
Speaker 1: make this mistake. So he does. He says, yes, the
15:42
Speaker 1: players are all the potential heirs. He gives you each
15:44
Speaker 1: a stake of I think thirty pounds or fifty pounds.
15:49
Speaker 1: This is in the early the mid Victorian age, I think,
15:52
Speaker 1: or perhaps late Edwardian. And your job is to spend
15:57
Speaker 1: your money or late Regency. I mean, your job is
16:01
Speaker 1: to spend your money, and the player who spends their
16:03
Speaker 1: money first inherits the rest of the money. The game
16:06
Speaker 1: has played over seven rounds. At the end of the
16:07
Speaker 1: seventh round, if no one has spent all their money,
16:09
Speaker 1: the person who has the least money left wins. If
16:13
Speaker 1: two people run out of money in the same round.
16:16
Speaker 1: The person who goes furthest into debt wins. So this
16:20
Speaker 1: really is kind of I mean, it's not a money
16:24
Speaker 1: making game because obviously you're spending money, but the whole
16:26
Speaker 1: idea is you're building up combos and you figure out
16:28
Speaker 1: how to be efficient in spending the most money. So
16:33
Speaker 1: it's the theme that makes it interesting because otherwise it's
16:35
Speaker 1: just a game about economics. But it's really fun. There's
16:40
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that's sort of on the level
16:42
Speaker 1: of ridiculous. You can go to dinner. If you bring
16:45
Speaker 1: your horse to dinner, it costs more because you have
16:47
Speaker 1: to pay to stable it, I guess, or part of
16:49
Speaker 1: the joke is maybe it comes in the restaurant and
16:51
Speaker 1: eats with you, haha. You can also, like if you're
16:54
Speaker 1: having a dinner, you can hire a product a private chef,
16:57
Speaker 1: and you can have to bring a date to the
16:59
Speaker 1: dinner and bring your horse, and that I'll cost extra money.
17:03
Speaker 1: There's a real estate speculation function where you are you
17:08
Speaker 1: buy houses and then you sell them. And if you
17:12
Speaker 1: buy a house and neglect it for a couple turns
17:14
Speaker 1: and then sell it, and you manipulate the stock market
17:16
Speaker 1: while you're doing that you can end up with a
17:18
Speaker 1: very dramatic loss. One of the big things though, are
17:23
Speaker 1: the property market, I mean, not in the stock market.
17:26
Speaker 1: One of the things about that dramatic loss that's interesting
17:28
Speaker 1: to me is that you can't end the game with
17:31
Speaker 1: any property, So if you buy a house, you'll later
17:34
Speaker 1: have to take a step to sell the house, so
17:38
Speaker 1: that part is interesting as well. So that's last will
17:42
Speaker 1: one of Vladimir's you Choo's most enduring games in terms
17:44
Speaker 1: of I think popularity and sales, and still in print
17:48
Speaker 1: from CGE, I believe, So yeah, try it out if
17:52
Speaker 1: you can. That's last Will. Next up be a Forest Shuffle.
17:56
Speaker 1: This is one year, eleven day is dusty. Nope, sorry,
17:58
Speaker 1: one year, nine months, six days Dusty for Shuffle is
18:02
Speaker 1: a delight. It is a engine building game, or no,
18:07
Speaker 1: it's not engine building. It is a point scoring game
18:10
Speaker 1: tableau building where you are acquiring different cards that give
18:14
Speaker 1: you points, and your goal is to use those cards
18:18
Speaker 1: to build out your forest in ways that have synergy
18:21
Speaker 1: with one another. So if you find a card that
18:24
Speaker 1: gives you points for having cards in your cave, then
18:27
Speaker 1: you want to find cards that let you put cards
18:29
Speaker 1: in your cave. If you want to if you find
18:31
Speaker 1: a card if you're going for butterflies, which are a
18:34
Speaker 1: set collecting element, the more butterflies you have, the more
18:37
Speaker 1: different kinds of butterflies you have, the more points that
18:40
Speaker 1: set is worth. And then you find a card that
18:43
Speaker 1: gives you points for each butterfly you have, all the better.
18:46
Speaker 1: That's kind of the rhythm. It's pretty simple as far
18:49
Speaker 1: as those things go. One of the players who played
18:52
Speaker 1: it last night described it as kind of like a
18:54
Speaker 1: lighter Race for the Galaxy, which I can see that,
18:57
Speaker 1: but it's very different from Race for the Galaxy. The
18:59
Speaker 1: main thing that makes it the similar is that whenever
19:03
Speaker 1: you buy a card, most time you have to pay
19:06
Speaker 1: for it by discarding cards and using the trick from
19:09
Speaker 1: London that I like so much. When you discard cards,
19:11
Speaker 1: you put them into the open market, which you have
19:14
Speaker 1: the chance of getting them back next turn, but more
19:16
Speaker 1: likely someone else will take them from you this turn
19:19
Speaker 1: and you will curse their name. So that part's great.
19:24
Speaker 1: Forest Shuffle is a beautiful game to look at. It's
19:26
Speaker 1: a fun game to try to accumulate points with, and overall,
19:33
Speaker 1: I would say you should play it if you can.
19:34
Speaker 1: That's Forest Shuffle. Next up, we have Lost Ruins of Arnac.
19:38
Speaker 1: This is one year, eleven days dusty. Lost Ruins of
19:41
Speaker 1: Arnac is a It's one of those hybrid games that
19:45
Speaker 1: came out a couple of years ago several years ago
19:47
Speaker 1: now that have a bunch of different mechanisms I'll kind
19:51
Speaker 1: of jam together and mixed into a delightful sauce. It
19:56
Speaker 1: came out in the same year as Endless Winter and
20:01
Speaker 1: as Dune Imperium. In both of those games as well
20:05
Speaker 1: as this one, use a combination of worker placement and
20:09
Speaker 1: deck building. In Lost Rooms Varnak, there are a bunch
20:13
Speaker 1: of different worker spaces that you can go to. Sometimes
20:17
Speaker 1: you have to pay cards to or spend cards to
20:19
Speaker 1: activate travel icons that let you go to those spaces.
20:23
Speaker 1: But most of the cards are multi use cards, so
20:26
Speaker 1: if you spend them to travel then you can't use
20:28
Speaker 1: them for their power, and generally their power is pretty good.
20:32
Speaker 1: This is the game of inches, giving you acceleration into
20:35
Speaker 1: miles where you have bonuses, and as you collect the bonuses,
20:40
Speaker 1: you then get to work your way up these bonus tracks,
20:45
Speaker 1: and the bonuses sort of accelerate each other. I really
20:48
Speaker 1: like Lost Rooms Varnak The theme is it is beautiful.
20:52
Speaker 1: It is fun to play. It is interesting to look
20:55
Speaker 1: at the mechanisms between deck building. You're buying cards that
21:00
Speaker 1: then do a bunch of different things. You have a
21:03
Speaker 1: little bit of work replacement, you have this track climbing
21:05
Speaker 1: thing that has bonuses, and you're building cards that play
21:09
Speaker 1: off each other in ways that let you scale all
21:11
Speaker 1: of those. It works really well, it's really tight. It's
21:15
Speaker 1: fun to play. I had a good time with it
21:17
Speaker 1: and was glad to return to it. The one thing
21:19
Speaker 1: that wasn't ideal about it, and I think that, I
21:22
Speaker 1: mean probably is my own fault. So I really dislike
21:26
Speaker 1: the aspect of the game where the first person up
21:28
Speaker 1: the achievement track gets a bonus that other people don't get.
21:35
Speaker 1: I don't like that. However, the way we played was
21:39
Speaker 1: the bonuses were visible, and when you get to them,
21:42
Speaker 1: you get the bonus, and then it's visible for everybody else.
21:46
Speaker 1: The problem with that is you can spend more time
21:48
Speaker 1: dillydallying at the beginning, not moving up that track, building
21:51
Speaker 1: up an engine that gets you more resources and points
21:56
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and then you can shoot up that track
21:58
Speaker 1: and if you still get the bonuses, then and you
22:00
Speaker 1: still get the acceleration, whereas if the bonuses are going
22:03
Speaker 1: away for the first reason to get them, the game
22:05
Speaker 1: provides motivation to go up that track early, but going
22:08
Speaker 1: out of the track usually means spending resources on moving
22:12
Speaker 1: yourself rather than building a better engine, and so there's
22:16
Speaker 1: a trade off to be had for getting up the
22:19
Speaker 1: track first. That is not the case if the bonuses
22:24
Speaker 1: don't go away. And I only played one game of it,
22:27
Speaker 1: so I don't know how, but one player did kind
22:29
Speaker 1: of blast up from the end in the last two
22:31
Speaker 1: rounds in a way that I feel it felt really
22:35
Speaker 1: aggressive and wild in terms of how much they were
22:37
Speaker 1: able to do, in part because as they moved up
22:40
Speaker 1: the track, they still got the bonuses, even though they
22:42
Speaker 1: were very late going up the track compared to the
22:44
Speaker 1: other two players. So that might just be sour grapes
22:47
Speaker 1: because I lost, but generally lost runs, Varnak still really
22:52
Speaker 1: holds up. Still a game I very much enjoy and
22:55
Speaker 1: encourage you to play. And Last Lost City is the
22:58
Speaker 1: board game One year, three four days, Dusty I said
23:02
Speaker 1: it before, I think I mentioned it off handedly. This
23:05
Speaker 1: is a game where I feel like it is better
23:09
Speaker 1: than the original. I think Lost Cities the board game
23:12
Speaker 1: is the better game over Lost Cities the card game
23:16
Speaker 1: in part because with four players it's easier to spread
23:18
Speaker 1: around the misery and you don't directly attack the other player.
23:21
Speaker 1: So that is a Brendan it's better for Brendan rather
23:24
Speaker 1: than better mechanically or whatever. But I think also there
23:28
Speaker 1: is the management of your worker and the bonuses you
23:32
Speaker 1: get if you are ahead. It's the exact opposite of
23:34
Speaker 1: what I was saying about Lost Rooms of Arnak, chasing
23:38
Speaker 1: someone getting ahead. That part is really interesting and works
23:42
Speaker 1: very well. The difference is in Lost Cities the board game,
23:45
Speaker 1: you are racing up those tracks and trying to get
23:47
Speaker 1: the bonuses because you get the bonus that other people
23:50
Speaker 1: know they still get the bonus. The only thing you
23:52
Speaker 1: get are the little statues. But the statues are really
23:54
Speaker 1: important at the end of the So the way Lost
23:58
Speaker 1: Cities the Board game works is you have there are
24:00
Speaker 1: five potential tracks where you could put your workers. You
24:03
Speaker 1: have five workers, four of them are small regular workers,
24:05
Speaker 1: and one of them is your explorer. It's like your
24:08
Speaker 1: jumbo worker and it's twice the size. And whenever you
24:14
Speaker 1: put a character on a track, there is negative twenty points,
24:16
Speaker 1: and each spot you move it up on the track,
24:19
Speaker 1: the points change and you go up on the track
24:21
Speaker 1: by playing cards that are of that color higher than
24:24
Speaker 1: you played over that Karli previously. So it's the same gimmick,
24:28
Speaker 1: but there's this track to sort of show how far
24:30
Speaker 1: you are and does the math for you and the points.
24:33
Speaker 1: But it also creates a way for people for four
24:35
Speaker 1: people to compete rather than just two. That parts are
24:38
Speaker 1: really interesting. And there's a couple other things, like these
24:43
Speaker 1: little statues that you get, and when you get them,
24:46
Speaker 1: you just collect them and at the end the round
24:48
Speaker 1: you turn them in for these like these other statue tokens.
24:51
Speaker 1: Then you put the statues back on the board. At
24:53
Speaker 1: the end of the game. Whoever has the most of
24:56
Speaker 1: those statues or you get points based on how many
24:58
Speaker 1: of those statues you have. You need to have more
25:00
Speaker 1: than like I don't know, six or something or else
25:05
Speaker 1: you lose points, and if you don't have any, you
25:07
Speaker 1: lose a lot of points, so it's a really interesting bargain.
25:10
Speaker 1: Or if you get a bunch of them like I did,
25:12
Speaker 1: then you get a lot of points. You also keep
25:14
Speaker 1: those points from other people. It has all the bite
25:16
Speaker 1: of a renter Kinisia without the stuff I don't like about.
25:22
Speaker 1: Lost City is the card game, so Last City is
25:24
Speaker 1: the board game real winner in my mind. Well that
25:28
Speaker 1: gets me to the end of this Emptying the dust
25:30
Speaker 1: Spin episode. Those are all the games that I dust
25:33
Speaker 1: it off in March and May that I haven't yet
25:36
Speaker 1: talked about here on the podcast. So the question is,
25:40
Speaker 1: did you enjoy this sort of essentially what I have.
25:43
Speaker 1: I've been playing episode enough that you want me to
25:46
Speaker 1: try to go back and catch up. No, I don't
25:49
Speaker 1: really want to catch up. Never mind, I'm taking that back.
25:52
Speaker 1: I guess if you really want me to look at
25:55
Speaker 1: the games I dusted off and comment on them, let
25:57
Speaker 1: me know. I'll figure out something. But I'm not gonna
25:59
Speaker 1: do six makeup emptying the bin games where I played
26:04
Speaker 1: them like nine months ago. I'm not gonna remember the
26:06
Speaker 1: play with enough details to make it. So that is
26:09
Speaker 1: where I am with those. What have you been playing,
26:13
Speaker 1: dear listener, what have you been dusting dusting off? What
26:15
Speaker 1: is the oldest game you dusted off recently? Mine would
26:18
Speaker 1: be one of the sixier ones that I mentioned, like
26:22
Speaker 1: gin or Cribbage. Those are pretty dusty of the ones
26:27
Speaker 1: I just talked about here Can't Stop would be the
26:29
Speaker 1: most dusty with five years. So what have you been
26:32
Speaker 1: dusting off? What have you been playing? You can share
26:35
Speaker 1: that and join the conversation over on Board game Geek
26:38
Speaker 1: and Guild three two sixty nine, where we have a
26:40
Speaker 1: few regulars who post often and then a few others
26:43
Speaker 1: who sort of zip by and comment something. Love to
26:46
Speaker 1: have you be either of those. You could also send
26:49
Speaker 1: me a message Brendan at rattleboxgames dot com or join
26:54
Speaker 1: me for an asynchronous game online at Yukata dot dee.
26:58
Speaker 1: My used name is Wamba at nineteen night and at
27:01
Speaker 1: Board Game Arena my user name is swambat nine two nine.
27:05
Speaker 1: Well that's about it for me today. I'm just about home,
27:07
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna say thank you for joining me on
27:09
Speaker 1: my walk and I'll see your next walk ups, mind loss,
27:14
Speaker 1: good bye. Brought to you by rattle Box