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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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off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.

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I'm Brendan Riley.

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Well good afternoon, listeners.

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It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.

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The sun is out.

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The jets are flying by and I'm walking home from the train.

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It's the last week of classes and I did teach one of my classes today so that means

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I'm halfway toward being done with all my classes for the semester.

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Yee-haw!

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So it's been a little while since I've talked to you about games I've played recently.

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So I feel it's time for a board game espresso triple shot.

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(Coffee noises) Espresso up!

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The board game espresso triple shot is a short review episode where I talk about three games

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I've played recently for the first time and one game I dusted off and tell you

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what I think of them.

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Not strictly a review because I've only played these games one or maybe two times so I don't

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really have enough information about them to give you a reasonable review of them.

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But the idea is that you get a sense of the game and you come to understand what I think

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about it and what makes it tick.

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So let's just jump right in.

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First game I want to talk about today is Habitats.

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Habitats was designed by Corné van Moorsel published in 2016 and it's been republished

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recently by AllPlay.

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Habitats is a tile placement game where you are working to score points by playing down tiles

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Or cards? Tiles or cards. Tiles, with different animals on them and the idea is that you're

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trying to score the different cards by their relationship to other cards around them.

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It's kind of hard to articulate except to say that the bird requires three green next

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to it and two blue.

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Then in the four adjacent spots around the bird you have to have at least one blue and one

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green and then adjacent to those you can have the other one.

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So the thing that makes it interesting is that you might have one blue and one green adjacent

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to the card that's scoring but if there are other greens adjacent to the green that you're

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scoring with that would count toward that number.

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So when I say it has to be adjacent to three blue and two green those don't have to be

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immediately around it and said they can be kind of spread out as long as they're kind

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of in chains of associated area with the cards that are next to it.

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If I didn't explain it well enough for you to conceive it from that there's no hope.

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I can't.

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I can't do any better.

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What makes Habitats interesting is this chained scoring situation and the idea is that

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you're sort of set collecting or you're trying to score these different cards based on that

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chained scoring.

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Now when I started to play this it felt a little familiar and then I remember hearing I think

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from the Salt and Sass podcast that Habitats is a game that Uwe Rosenberg the designer,

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the famous designer of Agricola and other games played just before he designed Nova Luna.

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And Nova Luna is actually a less complex version of Habitats in which you have just these tiles

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you're putting out and very simple scoring conditions around them but they are scoring

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conditions built around this idea of connected spaces all counting in the scoring.

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Apparently, and this is the story they told on Salt and Sass, Rosenberg was so captivated

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by that particular aspect of the tiling scoring that he took it and designed his own game

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just around that mechanism.

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And then he called up Corné van Moorsel and said, "Hey I'm giving you a co-design credit

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on this because your idea was so integral to what's going on, I feel like you co-designed it."

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Which I think is a really nice thing for Uwe Rosenberg to do and it's probably part

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of the reason that Habitats got reprinted by Allplay in this nice new edition.

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Now having played Habitats and Nova Luna, I like Habitats better.

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The simple game of Nova Luna is a nice puzzle but it doesn't have the pleasurable theme

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that I like in Habitats.

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Now you could argue Rosenberg tried that again.

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He took that same mechanism, altered it a bit more and used it in Applejack but I don't,

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really, Applejack was fine.

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It played it a few times on board game arena but it didn't really captivate me either.

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So Habitats worth trying if you get a chance, really interesting game, fun to play.

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Next up we have one of the games that fulfilled a Novelty game role in my 10 for 10 this

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year.

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This is Ted Lasso Party Game.

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I picked this up for three bucks at Goodwill and for three bucks I think it's well worth

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it.

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The Ted Lasso Party Game is a simple timed game in which players are taking turns contributing

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sort of vibes to different problems facing the soccer team, the football team that Ted

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Lasso coaches.

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There are a number of different locations and different characters that get played

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into those locations and those characters have different problems and on your turn

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you're adding sort of solution cards to try to solve those problems.

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If you get the right combination of solutions then that problem is removed.

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And the goal over the course of the game is to remove all the problems and solve the problems

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of all the team.

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It's a relatively simple game, definitely very light, easy to teach.

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This is not a gamer's game, it is very much a party game for regular folks.

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What said is pretty fun and it's cooperative which you would hope a Ted Lasso game would

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not be competitive and I like it.

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I'm definitely keeping it in my collection, probably won't play it very often but every now

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and again the right people might say hey let's put the Ted Lasso Party Game.

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If I say that a few times and I get nose then it might move over to my collection at school

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but we'll see.

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That's designed by Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games.

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Of course Prospero Hall is the design studio that Funko Games purchased and was using to

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do all of their IP based development.

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I have heard in the last few months that apparently Prospero or apparently Funko sold off their

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game licensing and game development assets to another company but they did not sell 

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Prospero Hall with them.

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They just disbanded it.

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It's all the people who were at Prospero Hall where cast adrift.

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I'm told that some of them have collaborated, have joined up into a new design studio and

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are putting their shingle out in the board game space.

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Which is good to hear because Prospero Hall is a force for really clever game design in

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the tabletop market.

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They did a bunch of stuff for Ravensburger, the JAWS game.

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I believe Horrified.

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I don't know if they designed Villainous but they certainly did it quite a bit to really

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bring license games up to the forefront I think.

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So Ted Lasso Party Game is worth checking out.

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I guess if you like Ted Lasso I don't know that it's probably worth playing if you don't

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like Ted Lasso.

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Next up I often like to talk about a game that I've pulled out of the dust in the last

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month and so today I'm going to continue with the small party recognition shouting games

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which I started last month when I talk about dusting off dude.

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I also dusted off Call of the Wild.

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Call of the Wild is a tiny little shouting game that I heard about from the Board Game

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Blitz podcast and I think that I have the copy is one of maybe a hundred copies that the

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designer made off of a very small but successful Kickstarter.

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I think I ordered it from the designer directly off their website and it was mailed to me from

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the designer.

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Very niche game I'm not sure if it's available at all anymore. The way the game works, it uses

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round cards in the size of coasters although they're just cards they're not coasters.

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And each player gets a deck of identical cards and on the card there is a circle of life

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a sort of group of different sort of fictional animals in a circle showing a path of predation

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so you have this one animal and it eats a different animal and that animal eats a different

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animal and so on.

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Each animal has a noise associated with it and the idea of the game is that you are trying

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to either find a mate or find food for your creature.

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The way it works is you have a deck of cards and you draw one and I don't remember the exact

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draw play mechanism because I feel like it's not the same as dude or Happy Salmon but I reverse

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engineer it to be the same same rule as dude and then only later did I realize I had not

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I was teaching it wrong it actually uses some other rule but I don't I don't know it anyway.

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You draw a card and it's got a creature on it, let's say the Chi Chi, and all these creatures

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have names but I don't remember the names because what you need to know is the the noise they

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make so there's noise that goes "Chi Chi" and so then you have the choice do you want to

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say "Chi Chi" make the noise that the creature makes or do you want to make one of the other

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noises you could make the noise that the creature's food makes or you could make the noise that

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the creature's predator makes and the goal that you have is to find another creature making

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a noise and it's got to be a creature making the same noise you're making and then you

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agree to compare cards and if you are in fact the same creature then you mate and you each

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keep the card the other person handed you as a score card or if one of you is the predator

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of the other then the one who played the predated creature forfits their card and so the

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person who played the predator gets both or if you are not adjacent on the predator prey

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circle then both cards are returned to their owners and you continue play so the idea is

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there's a number a couple different things you might say when you have a creature in your

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hand with the goal of getting someone else who's saying the same thing to match you it sounds

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maybe more complicated than it is it's sort of like if dude were competitive instead of

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cooperative or semi-corporative but it's a fun little game. I can't say it's amazing

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but you know I play it maybe once a year, once every 18 months, and at that and mostly with

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new people and at that pace it's really fun it's an excellent little game well worth your

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time if you get a chance. That's the Call of the Wild designed by David Medley and Evan

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Shidegger published by Play All Day Games and Rather Fun Games. So the last game I'm going to

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talk about is one of my top of the stack games from April: this is Alien Artifacts published

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from portal games the designers are Viola Kajoska and Marcin senior Robka like I said published

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by portal games now this game has a really nice aesthetic: crisp graphics, white box, white

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backgrounds. it feels a little bit like an apple product at least on the front of each

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piece. The premise is it's a 4x game you are expanding exploring exploiting and exterminating

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your opponents and planets and the idea is that there are an abandoned set of ancient artifacts

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spread through the galaxy (I know that sounds unfamiliar right) that if the human if that any whatever

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species gets a hold of them they provide a significant amount of power and advanced technology

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such that the race that has the most of these is going to accelerate faster so your goal

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is to build a civilization a space-faring civilization that outcompetes your opponents and

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you have the best engine to trigger the end of the game. Now I will say once we get this

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game going it was really fun. I liked Alien Artifacts quite a bit. looking forward to playing

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it more. That said the once we get it got it going was way more of a burden than that should

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have been or then I would have liked it to be. So the main thing is the rule book was hard

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to read, both small text and difficult to understand the cards, all have very small text so I

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definitely needed my glasses I mean I do all the time anyway but it was really hard to read

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some of the text on the cards and gameplay just wasn't super efficient or smooth it was

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a little rough so it took us a little while to get the feel for it. there were just a few

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things that happened that just aren't intuitive. it was hard to... like you couldn't predict that

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that's how this would work... and so they kind of got in the way so all

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of that goes to suggest that the way that the game is put together is just not smooth

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and not smooth like you would like it to be. that said I really like the engine building component

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of this a big part of it: there's three different kinds of things that you can get and

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kind of like Innovation when you get them they give you a power and kind of like Mottainai you have

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to pick whether you're going to use one power or another and the power you pick determines

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what you get from it but also how much you score from it so if you lean into one type of power then

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you aren't going to score anything if you lean into the other type of power then you don't have

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enough power it's a really compelling mix of mechanisms and I thought it was really fun so if

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you get a chance to play Alien Artifacts especially with someone who's played it before and can do a

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smooth teach it's definitely worth giving a try. so that's alien artifacts from portal games. well that's

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about it for me today I'm just about home so I'll say what games have you been playing recently? head

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over to boardgamegeek guild 3269 and share over there. I'd love to hear what you've been trying.

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until next time I hope that your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. bye bye!

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[Music]

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Brought to you by Rattlebox Games

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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