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Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step

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out the door and deliver an episode to you while I stroll around.

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I'm Brendan Riley.

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[music]

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Oh, good afternoon listeners.

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It's a deceptively cool day here in suburban Chicago.

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Now, I don't know whether this deceptively cool means it's hot.

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It's cooler than it appears to be because that's what I mean to say.

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It is.

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The last couple days have been very warm.

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When you look outside, it looks like it should be very warm.

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Then when you get outside, it's deceptively cool.

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Not cold.

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Just, you know, light hoodie weather because it's April.

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Anyway, welcome to Pick Up and Deliver.

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Glad to have you here.

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Well, I'm on my way to pick up my car.

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My daughter was running late today so she had to drive herself to school and we don't have

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a parking permit for her to park at school so she parks on one of the streets nearby.

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But those streets have parking that's limited for a couple hours so if you park there all

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day, you can get a ticket.

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So we've done this a couple times now where she's got, I have some time in my day to take

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a little walk and she's running behind so she takes the car, parks at school, texts me

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a picture of where it is on Google Maps and then I walk and pick it up and drive it home.

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Gets me a little exercise in the middle of the day gives me a chance to record my podcast

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with my favorite friends and works out just fine for everybody.

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So there we are.

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Well, I've fallen away from or I've moved a little bit away from doing a review episode every

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other episode because I have caught up so that's good.

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But it has been a couple episodes and since I talked about some new games I played so that

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means it's time for a board game espresso triple shot.

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Ready for some tasty board game lattes and actually this is a highly caffeinated addition

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because it's a quadruple shot.

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That's right, I'm not doing three board game espresso reviews I'm doing four in part

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because three of the games that I'm going to be talking about today are all pretty light

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party games and so they're reviewable a little faster.

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It's not quite the five game party, five party games survey that I did while back but it's

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in the same ballpark.

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I also have one dusty game that I thought I would talk about because it's been a little

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while since I've discussed that one and I thought I'd bring it up to you again.

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So to start with the first game which is neither a dusty nor one of the three party games

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is the big busy boy of the current and that's Wyrmspan.

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Wyrmspan is a sort of sequel or remix of the game Wingspan but it is different in a

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couple of key ways. One thematically it's about giant dragons instead of birds.

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It's called W Y R M, Wyrmspan and then it is sort of the more gamerly version of the

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Wingspan model so instead of building a habitat for birds you are building a habitat for

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dragons.

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More importantly the habitat for dragons that you're building is more complicated and perhaps

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more strategic.

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So if you haven't gotten a chance this is this mini review assumes that you have played

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Wingspan.

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If you've never played Wingspan it's hard to tell you what the differences are with Wyrmspan

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but I'll give you a I'll give it a go.

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So in Wyrmspan you are digging out caves and building habitats for dragons.

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There are hatchling dragons and there are adult dragons.

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There are dragons of different types that do different things.

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If you've played Wingspan you're going to recognize a lot of stuff about this game.

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You have a board with three horizontal tracks where you're placing different flying beasts

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that you have acquired for your menezery.

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You have a couple different resources to manage and there's little eggs.

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There's also a huge deck of colorful individual cards with art on each one and different design

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sensibility for each one.

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The gameplay is roughly similar in that you take turns and you have a limited number

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of turns per round and on those turns you're doing something in one of the three different

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rows.

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Those three different rows let you do different things.

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You can also acquire new dragons.

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So that's kind of where the similarities end.

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Wyrmspan has a number of additional wrinkles before you can put a dragon in a cave for instance

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you have to dig out that cave and when you use a cave you do it by going for a walk in

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the cave and often the things that you can do are a bit more complicated in that regard.

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The game has a variable number of action markers.

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In Wingspan you always start with I think eight and then you lose one each round as you score

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the scoring round so that in the last round you'll have five actions which makes sense

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because the game is getting longer because you're building these big chains of actions

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that you do when you take your action.

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By contrast in Wyrmspan you have a set number of actions you can do which are represented

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by coins and then you actually can do things to get more coins.

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So when we played we had some people were taking a whole bunch of extra actions each round

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because they had more coins.

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However you can also end up spending multiple coins on one action if you keep taking the

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same action.

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So the game has a compounding expense feature where you can take the same action more

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than once but you have to pay extra action coins to do so.

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So that difference is interesting.

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There's also these guilds that can score you points and there's a bunch of different

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stuff that scores points in different ways but the long and short bit is I think the

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best summary is just it's like Wingspan but charged up a couple matches to appeal to more

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the gamers who like a bit more elaborate work.

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The game is designed by Connie Vogelman who I think is also came out with Apiary this

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year from Stonemeier Games and Elizabeth Hargrave consulted on it I believe I don't think

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she has a co-design credit.

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So I'm playing Wyrmspan the one time and I played it with a couple of people who played

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a bunch of times before and one person who had not played it all before.

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In that context I thought it was fun I can see why people like it.

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I probably wouldn't turn down a game of it again but ultimately for me it wasn't different

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enough from Wingspan to make me want to have both and I already really like Wingspan.

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I like the theme better.

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I honestly I like the simpler play the extra wrinkles did add a bit more planning to do

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but I have plenty of games where you do complicated planning.

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So the question is is this a better one than those because it isn't a better game than

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Wingspan for me in terms of the kind of things Wingspan is doing.

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So ultimately the answer was no.

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Like I think there's interesting stuff in Wyrmspan if I didn't have Wingspan at all and

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I weren't interested in birds Wyrmspan would probably be the better game for me and I

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certainly will enjoy playing it without people get it but barring some other thing like

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my wife saying you know what I really like to that dragon game let's go try that again

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or can you pick that one up.

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I don't see myself getting Wyrmspan as part of my collection but I still thought it was

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pretty enjoyable and I encourage you to try it if you get a chance especially if you

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are like a lot of people you like Wingspan but you thought it was a little too random or

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you thought it was not game really enough because this game solves both of those problems

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for sure that's Wyrmspan.

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Alright next up I have three light party games that I played recently now all three of them

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I played once one of them I only played for about 10 minutes and then we wanted something

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else I got just the latest taste of it but you'll hear from my discussion and it is what

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it is.

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So let's talk about that first that's Charty Party this is a game I picked up mostly on the

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strength of its name and the fact that it was two dollars at Goodwill so even if it turns

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out to be terrible I can use the cards as backing for sleeving or something but the way

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Charty Party works is you have a bunch of decks of tarot size cards the whole bunch of

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tarot size cards which are unit which are charts when you look at them they are they have

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a horizontal axis and a vertical axis the horizontal axis is labeled with some unit and you

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have a line going up and down and measurements and then the vertical axis is not labeled or

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vice versa the vertical axis might be labeled the horizontal one might not and the players

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all have a hand of cards that provide the label for the other axis and the idea is that

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the judge presents the chart to the group and everybody chooses and turns in one of their

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answers for what is this a chart of and everybody looks at the results and then the judge picks

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the one they think is funniest so it's a Apples to Apples style judge game which is generally

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not my favorite it's a little bit cute because the charts are different but ultimately this

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is pretty forgettable in terms of this kind of party game not a whole lot to it and we

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played it for ten minutes and I don't know that I ever need to play it again I kept it

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around but it's fine that's Charty Party.

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The second game is another one I played at my board game club this one was a student brought

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it and it's called Herd Mentality Herd Mentality comes from the same design space as games like

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say anything or blank slate or green team wins in which these are games where there is

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a relatively generic prompt and as players you're trying to find similarities or avoid

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similarities or differences with other players I mean all this goes back actually to the game

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Scattergories which does the same thing in a sort of different rhythm but a similar mode

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in Herd Mentality your goal is to say the same thing as the most people who said it so like

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if the question is super here you'd least likely to get on the wrong least likely want

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to be on the wrong side of then people write down whatever they're going to write down and

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all reveal and if more people say one answer than any other answer they'll get a point

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if there's multiple groups that say the thing but they're all tied nobody gets a point

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if you went out by yourself and you're the only person who said an answer and you're the

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only person who's the only person who said an answer then you get a point but you don't

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get a point if two people said so low answers you know it's the it is a very similar mechanism

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to Green Team Wins where the answer the team that answers the most of a series of choices

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is the green team and everybody's on the green team gets a point again these are fine party

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games I don't find them particularly compelling it's an amusing way to spend the half an hour

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but I don't generally think that it's not a generally I think I would advocate to spend

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a lot of time playing but you know let's find that's Herd Mentality and then finally

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we played a trivia game called SMARTish and the way SMARTish works is that you have you

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draw a series of tiles that give you categories and then you put those tiles into categories

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and rate them one to five you get points based on what category you put the question in

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you know so answer a question of difficulty based on the category I think so like the

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higher point value the harder the question no that's not how it works it's just you get more

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points so you put the question you think you're more likely to get in a higher value if

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you get it wrong your opponents steal and then they get the points that you assigned it

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instead yeah it's okay it's a trivia game and I'm sort of spoiled now because I played

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Wits and Wagers and Wits and Wagers is an amazing trivia game because you don't actually

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have to know the answers to the trivia and it's just more fun I mean I really like a

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trivia game where I'm doing my best to get the get the right answer and say the answer

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first but compared to Wits and Wagers where there's a whole element of trying to bet I just

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find that much more I'm using so SMARTish is a fine trivia game better than Trivial

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Pursuit or something but not good I don't like I don't think I like to as much as a

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Bezzerwizzer either although it's be frank I don't really remember Bezzerwizzer

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except that I thought it was pretty good so that's SMARTish and then finally I did dust

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off one game this month or last month that I want to talk about and this is Century now

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Century was the game that came out quite a while ago I want to say 2016 and it made a huge

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splash at GenCon everybody wanted this game everybody was fighting over it there were

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playmats and everything but the game also had a little bit of notoriety because there was

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a rumor that they were going to release addition an addition of it with fantasy art instead

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of boring trading in the Sahara trading in the Sahara art and sure enough they did they

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released this thing called Century Golem Edition and they said that they even though the other

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games are going to be released eventually they were not going to do that for Century but I

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only want to play Century if it's golems so I got Century Golem Edition has the crystals

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it was great and then I emailed the company and I said hey I would buy these other sequels

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to spice road if you release them in the Golem Edition but I'm not going to go buy

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the dumb spice trading Edition and they did and I followed through in that I actually have

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all three of the Century games in the Golem Edition I do like the other two the neither of them

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is as good as Century spice or Century Golem Edition the original century is just so

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good it is a engine building game that has a series of cards that are conversion engines

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they convert crystals from one color to another and then there's a series of golems that

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you can recruit that you pay the crystals to get the idea is that each golem cost gets

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you a certain number of points and so by playing the crystals you can get the golems that

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are in the list and get the points that are for them as the game goes along a river of golems

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comes up the first person to take five of them ends the game and then you add up your points

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it's a pretty simple resource conversion game it is very similar in feel and look to

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something like Splendor in fact when this game out when this game came out people often

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talked about it as a Splendor killer I mean I think that's probably not true because Splendor

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is still there and selling more than Century does in fact Splendor is new dual version

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might be the Splendor killer that everyone keeps talking about but nonetheless it's a really

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interesting game and I think really fulfilling like I like it better than Splendor even

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though both of them involve there's a certain amount of input randomness a certain amount

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of luck in terms of what comes out when you're the person who gets to buy stuff next but

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there is a rhythm to Century that I find immensely satisfying and the race that you can

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get into and I really love the rhythm where one person could be going flat out just trying

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to get five cards as quickly as they can and they could win against somebody who is going

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a little bit fat a little bit slower but trying to really get an engine going where they're

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going to be a little rack up those big cards the last game we played I ended up with I

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think three cards claimed and the person who won had claimed claim to their fifth card

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I was one round away from claiming my fourth card and had I gotten my fourth card I would

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have won they won because they closed the game one round before I could claim it which

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is great that was a very tight game because even though they had five and I had three I

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had taken three high point ones and they took five the first five they could get really

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cheap ones and like I said they edged me out by one round it was really intense so I love

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the way that it works it's relatively simple to explain fun to play takes like 20 minutes

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to half an hour I think the other two Century games are good but not as good as Century

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Spice Road so our Century Golem Edition it's weird because in the original one Century

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Spice Road is the name of the game so there is no analog for the spice road part it's

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called Century Golem Edition but then the next one is like century colon something something

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something golem edition so there's no something something equivalent to spice road so I keep

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something over that but it's great if you haven't played it definitely we're trying it's

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probably fun in the spice mode too but look who cares about that theme not me so that's

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a game dusted off and I'm happy to play that's by Emerson Matsuchi originally published

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by plan b games I think still so but I'm not sure who is who is the publisher there well

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thank you for joining me on my walk today I hope that you enjoyed it let me know what

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you've been playing over on boardgamegeek and post a message in our guild with

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just number 3269 or just google "pick up and deliver guild boardgamegeek"

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that'll get you there you could also send a message to me wombat929 is my

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username there brendan@rattleboxgames.com is my email that you can use to contact me I don't

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know or look me up on board game arena wombat929 is my username there I'd love to play a game

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with you invite me I'll play so thanks for joining me on the walk today I hope your next

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walk is pleasant to mine was bye bye

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[Music]

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brought to you by Rattlebox Games

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[MUSIC]