Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver: the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
out the door and deliver an episode to you while I walk around.
I'm Brendan Riley.
Well, good morning listeners.
It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
The birds are chirping.
The commuters are on their way to work.
I'm out for a little stroll.
So I'm looking forward to talking to you today about some games and I realize it's been a
while since I've done a Great Designer episode.
In fact, looking back at my podcast notes, I have not done a good job of marking which
episodes are Great Designer episodes.
I'm actually going to go back and tag those as part of my episode cleanup today because
when I need to be able to see like, who did I do an episode about?
And right now the only one tagged is Phil Walker-Harding.
And I know I've done episodes about Vladimir Suchy and Martin Wallace and Richard Garfield.
But I don't think as far as I can tell that I've done one about Wolfgang Kramer or Michael
Kiesling or their combined duo performance as Kiesling & Kramer.
And since I played a game recently designed by the pair, I thought this is a great opportunity
to discuss it.
So what I thought I would do today is just sort of go through a list of Wolfgang Kramer
games from highest rank until I've reached about the halfway point on the walk.
Then I'll switch to Michael Kiesling games and do the same thing.
Basically I'm just going to talk about which of their games I've played, which ones I really
enjoy and why.
So that's what we're doing today.
It's a Wolfgang Kramer, Michael Kiesling thing.
Now the only thing I really know about Wolfgang Kramer is that early on in his design
career he put the score track around the outside of the board.
The game that I'm most familiar with or first familiar with that did that was Ticket to Ride.
But the idea of having a score track that goes around the outside that you move your score
piece along, that was his innovation.
And apparently was such a big deal at the time that people in the industry often call
that a Kramer track.
So good on you, dude.
All right.
So the first game, his highest rank game is El Grande.
It's a rank of 92.
It's from 1995.
Now this is a game everybody still talks about.
The board game brawl or the board game barrage people are particularly enthusiastic about
El Grande.
But when I hear people talk about it, they still talk about what a great game it is.
I haven't had a chance to play yet.
And frankly it doesn't sound like my cup of tea... too fighty.
But I do generally play as an omnigamer.
I think if people were setting up this game to play, I would definitely give it a try.
If nothing else, it's in the top 100.
I feel like if I can play everything that's in the top 100, I'm doing a pretty good
job.
El Grande I have not played.
Next highest ranked is the Princes of Florence, 259.
Now I have the older edition of this or had, did I sell it?
I can't remember if I sold it or not.
No, I think I still have it.
Princes of Florence is... ah! no I did sell it.
I did sell it.
It's a tile lane game where you, an auction game where you are building your Palazzo and
hiring different kinds of experts to build out your area.
I thought it was a pretty interesting game, well made.
I had a good time playing it.
That said, the theme is pretty tired, you know, oh, you're a European noble person.
Okay.
The graphic design on the original edition that I had, I did not like.
And just overall it was a game that I thought was good if somebody brought it and said, hey
we're playing Princes of Florence, you want it?
I'd be like, sure.
But it's not a game I'm going to choose over many of the other games I had.
So it didn't make sense to keep it in my collection.
That's the argument I'm offering for myself.
If it's not in my collection anymore, I guess it still could be in which case, oops.
But let me see, have I logged it as not in my collection anymore in Boardgamegeek?
Oh, it still says in collection, previously owned.
Okay.
So I have, in fact, sold it or said that I was selling it.
Next up Tikal is one of the famous mask games.
I have not played that although our game club does have a copy.
So it's something I should try at some point.
That's Rank 337.
Downforce, Rank 417.
This is a car racing game.
And the interesting part of it is that you own one or two cars and then you're betting on
these cars.
And you help the cars move by playing cards.
And a big part of the game is just sort of moving cars in a way that somebody else can't
move the car that they want to move is kind of the big thing.
So it's a car racing game.
I think it's fine.
There's not a whole lot.
I mean, it's very tactical and I'm sure you can get really good at it versus not being
good at it.
It's a fine time and again, it goes in the category of sure I'd played if somebody's getting it
out, but not a game
I'm all that keen to get.
Though I think if I found a copy I'd goodwill for three bucks.
I would pick it up, mostly for my game club at school, but not a game I'm driven to
own.
Downforce.
Next up Coliseum.
I hear a lot of good things about Coliseum, but I have not had a chance to play it myself.
Rank 618.
Rank 5 I don't know what that is.
Torres ranks 726.
Now this is a game I do have.
I bought it pretty early in my board game buying in my modern board game, buying career
which started in like 2010 maybe.
That's when I really started like starting to buy games occasionally and pay attention to
the hobby.
I don't look back at when tabletop was on.
When that was when that was on the air, I was diving into the hobby again.
I mean I've been in board games my whole life but sort of a modern incarnation.
I think I got it in a math trade because I'd heard it's good.
And it is really good.
It is an action selection game.
It's one of the first games I played that used action points and you had a number of different
things you could do on your turn with your action points.
And you have these little cards that let you do stuff and you're building these towers
and the person who sort of builds the best towers are the most successful ones earns
the points.
Somebody who just recently played Porta Nigra which I'll talk about in a future episode.
I guess I'm giving away something for the top of the stack.
Whoops.
I can you can definitely see it.
Well for one thing you can see the literal inheritance in Porta Nigra because it's got
the little bricks that are a key part of Torres.
But Torres has this really interesting mechanism where you're trying to take control of these
towers and you're moving your little knights around.
It's really good.
I like it a lot.
And definitely played if you get a chance.
It looks like there's the current cover in Boardgamegeek has a new cover so it must have been
republished.
I have the older one.
I don't know if I have the 1999 version but it certainly feels older.
All right.
Continuing on, Mexica, another of the mask games I haven't played.
Coal Baron, Nope.
Palaces of Carrara.
And actually have the Palaces of Carrara.
I picked it up in as a used sale but I haven't played it yet.
So it's on my to play list.
Maharajah.
Actually somebody at my game club just played this the other week.
Linko
I don't know what that is.
Paris.
Not all that well reviewed didn't get to play it.
Hacienda.
Java.
The third of the mask game.
Wandering towers.
That's a game I keep seeing at my Board Game Store.
And it looks pretty cool.
It was a little more expensive than I wanted to pay for a game and no much about it.
But we designed six nimit.
Oh, we just got to Porta Nigra.
Rank 1475 on Boardgamegeek.
It was pretty fun.
We'll talk about it more in another episode.
But well worth a look if you get a chance.
Asara, I don't know what that is.
Re-nature.
That's a game I saw a number of times on the shelf.
I don't think I noticed it was a Kramer game.
It looked interesting but again, you know, there have been a whole bunch of nature themed
games in the last few years.
So it's sort of white noise.
Pueblo, I don't know what that is.
Adventureland.
Adventureland is one of those games I heard about a lot.
I think Richard Ham, Rahdo, really liked Adventureland and talked it up a bunch.
But I didn't hear much about it from anybody else.
So I know what to say about that.
Savannah Park.
This is a game that got just the... a barest hint of buzz when it came out in 2021.
I think it came out at Essen.
I remember there was a little bit of buzz about it.
I think it's Capstone Games if I recall.
And people were just excited about like, "Oh, this looks really neat."
But then I didn't hear anything about it after.
So I don't know if it did get much saturation.
I mean, we are in a land of just... or a time of just so many games that it's harder to
get a get traction.
Sealand, I don't know what that is.
Coal Baron the card game, Cuzco, Heimlich and Company from 1984.
Huh.
That's life.
El Capitan is another game I've heard a lot about.
I wonder, does he like games that start with EL?
He's got El Grandet.
And now El Capitan.
Which looks like it's about sailing, not about a mountain, Nauticus, Take 5, which I think
Take 5 is like six-nimate or related to six-Nimmt.
Tikal 2, apparently they may have a sequel.
Daytona 500, expeditions around the world, top race, merchants of Middle Ages, Kaimum.
1994's Big Boss.
I saw somebody did a video of this.
It looks like it just... I was like, "Isn't this just Aquire but less interesting?"
I mean, I haven't played it so first impressions, first impression from watching a video for a
minute.
But it looked a lot like it wishes it was a choir or sounds a bit like a choir.
I'm just sort of skimming through now looking at other things called Aura Park, I think
was a sequel to Savannah Park.
So you must have done six-Nimmt too, which is a game a lot of people really like.
I have not.
I've only played it once or twice on board game arena.
So, there are a number of games that I just mentioned that I have played from Wolfgang
Kramer.
There might be more, but those are the ones that I'm seeing that are the sort of top ranked
ones.
I'm down and... Oh, we'll stop with this one.
Vampire Queen.
Vampire Queen is a ladder climbing card game that I have a copy of.
It's an interesting one, really easy to play.
It's ranked 6,000, so it's at least ranked.
But we're the try if you get a chance.
So, Vampire Queen will be the one I'll stop on.
All right.
So, now what I'm going to do is I will switch over to talking about Michael Kiesling, or...
That's how I say it anyway, Kiesling.
So Michael Kiesling is a much less prolific designer, at least in terms of how many of his
designs show up on board game geek.
On board game geek, Wolfgang Kramer had something like 600 designs, and Michael Kiesling
has 95.
So, real slacker there.
I first came across Kiesling, I think, in the widespread coverage of Porta Nigra, actually.
I may have encountered his name before, but it seems most likely that that is where I first
encountered him.
Because when Porta Nigra came out, I recall it got... I definitely heard a review of it on
Dice Tower, or they talked about it.
I definitely heard it on the secret cabal, and I definitely heard it on
Blue Peg Pink Peg.
So, those three together, it was definitely in my... on my radar.
And Rahdo probably talked about it as well.
So, that's sort of where Kiesling would have come into my purview, and then any other games
that he made that are... so let's jump into his games and see what I have to say.
So, his top rated game, rate number 74 of all time, is Azul.
Azul is a great game.
This is one I've talked about a number of times here.
I've recommended it.
I've done a duel.
An Azul duel.
It is a great drafting game where you're drawing tiles from a series of discs and placing them
into these... onto these other discs called shops and basically just developing the... trying
to score by collecting certain numbers of tiles in the right order.
It's really fun.
It's a great game that starts off relatively low conflict, but then there's a moment of
shift, especially in a two-player game, where suddenly...
of the choice, like, do you actively determine what you're taking to try to stick somebody
with tiles they can't use, or even worse, do you like... like there are times where there'll
be a sort of brings-person ship where you have a huge pile of tiles that's developing
and whoever gets stuck with this is going to lose a lot of points.
It's great.
That's Azul.
Number 180 is Azul Summer Pavilion.
This is the third in the Azul line.
It's the second sequel.
This is my wife's favorite, although I will confess we do not have Azul Queen's Garden.
Basically when Stained Glass of Cintra came out, the second one, the reviews were mixed and
I played it and I didn't think that much of it.
Then Summer Pavilion got pretty good reviews and that is in fact our favorite.
The Queen's Garden one, it sounds a lot like Calico to me.
Like so much like it.
I don't know if I need another game that does that.
But Calico already does that.
That's sort of where we are with the Azul sequels.
There's Master Chocolatier which just changes the theme of Azul from Mosaic in Portugal
to Chocolate.
Not really a game change, so I didn't buy that either.
But Summer Pavilion is great.
It changes what you're doing just a little bit.
It changes the scoring conditions a little bit.
It's less aggressive.
It's harder to stick somebody with tiles they can't use.
Pretty good.
It's Azul Summer Pavilion.
Then we got Tikal.
I mentioned that one before.
Heaven and Ale is a game that got a lot of buzz when it came out.
It definitely was on the category of things I'd like to try at some point.
But it's just never crossed my transom. When I have a chance to try it.
But I definitely would.
This would definitely be a game I'd pick up used or if I found it at a Goodwill I would
think of it as a jackpot.
Definitely a game that gets a lot of love.
That's Rank 343.
Heaven and Ale.
He's the Azul Stained Glass of Cintra 431.
Vikings at 596.
This is not a game I've played.
Vikings.
I've seen it in a number of places and it looks like it might be fun.
I mean, anything that's got like a Viking long chip on the cover looks cool.
But yeah, so that is a game I would like to try if I got a chance.
About no much about it.
Then we have Azul Queen's Garden.
673.
I already did my Azul spiel.
And we have Torres again.
723.
Now if I was paying attention to designers I might have noticed.
The Kramer and Kiesling design Torres together.
Because I definitely had that before I heard about Porta Nigra.
Before the Nigra is probably the first time where I heard about Kramer and Kiesling.
They were already a famous design duo when Porta and Nigra came out.
In fact, that was the beginning of Stronghold's Great Designer series, which they had a series
for a while that they were doing.
I think that Porta and Nigra was on there.
I think they did a car game, Kraftwagon or something, maybe.
And then they did Auztralia with Martin Wallace.
So they've done a number of games.
I don't know they did more than three or four.
Oh, they did an Uwe Rosenberg game.
I feel like maybe Cottage Garden.
That the Stronghold was doing this thing where they were trying to have one game from each
of these great designers.
Porta Nigra was the one there.
There's Mexica again, Coal Baron, Palaces of Carrara, Maharajah.
Seems like the same list.
Riverboat.
So Riverboat is a Kiesling one.
Now this is one that I definitely would play if I had a chance.
It's very well reviewed.
It's often mentioned.
I think it's hard to get used.
The shut-up and sit-down folks really like it, which makes the game very hard to come
by in the use market.
And it sounds like a neat race game.
I think I would probably like it better than something like Downforce.
But who knows, maybe it's very similar to Downforce.
We have Azul, Azul Chocolatier, linko, Paris, Java, wandering towers.
Here's Porta Nigra again, Asara, Renature, Miyabi.
I don't know what that is.
Pueblo, Adventureland, Sansucci is definitely a game I've heard of.
It's ranked 7.1 on board game geek.
So that's not bad, but I don't know anything about it.
Savannah Park called Coal Baron the Card Game.
Cusco, that's life, Nauticus is not a game I'm familiar with.
Tikal 2, Cavom.
Nope, I don't know that one.
Just skimming through these to see if there's any other games I recognize from Kiesling.
No, I don't think so.
And I've gotten up to rank 7,000.
So about the same place that I stopped with Kramer.
So Kiesling has a slightly narrower window of games he's designed on his own.
Most of the games that he's really well known for.
He designed with Kramer with the exception of Azul and its many spin-offs.
Which, I don't know, when I heard about Azul Master Chocolatier, I was sort of like,
oh, this reminds me of the Hudsucker Proxy now.
If you haven't seen the Hudsucker Proxy, you should.
It's a weird and delightful movie from the Coen Brothers.
This maybe their fourth movie or something.
It's pretty early.
Stars Tim Robbins and Paul Newman as business types.
Tim Robbins plays sort of young hick from the city who has an idea for a new toy and the
idea is a hulu hoop.
And part of the joke of the game, part of the joke of the movie is that his idea when he shows
it to people, it's just a piece of paper with a circle drawn on it.
And he says, "you know, for kids."
And then of course the hulu hoop becomes very popular and he becomes famous.
And then he basically, like every idea he has after that is variations on the hulu hoop.
Like he has one that's weighted with sand.
He's got one that, whatever.
He's got a bunch of different variations on the hulu hoop.
And part of the joke is he doesn't have any other real ideas.
All his ideas are just variations on the hulu hoop.
I don't think that's true with Michael Kiesling.
We've just talked about a number of different games that are well liked and popular.
But I can't help but notice half of his highest ranked games are Azul or variations on Azul.
Now please don't interpret this as a shade throwing.
No shade here.
I certainly would throw lots more stuff at the wall if people were eager for a thing I made.
If I made Azul and they're like, we'd love to see some more Azul.
And then people like that too.
Why wouldn't you keep doing that?
At least in part as a way to keep your name out there.
Keep people interested in the things you're doing.
You could try new stuff.
I mean, Azul Queens Garden is such a different game from Azul.
It's not only the lightest relationship, honestly, from what I've read.
But the design pedigree is a little smaller there.
Nonetheless, Kramer and Kiesling are a renowned duo who have made a lot of different games.
And doing this really does make me want to take a look at the mask trilogy, particularly
because I definitely have Tikal and maybe Java available to me in the board game club library.
So yeah, that would be really fun to do.
Well, that brings me to the end of my walk.
That Kramer and Kiesling game is your favorite, which Kramer game is your favorite? which Kiesling
game is your favorite?
I want to know all three of those.
And you can tell me by going over to boardgamegeek guild 326 and posting in the forums
there.
I'd love to see it.
What other great designers do you think I should spend a little time talking about?
I'd love to hear that too.
You can let me know also on the board game geek of forums or you can send me a direct message.
Wombat929 is my username on board game geek.
Or you can email me Brendan at RoutaboxGames.
Well, thanks for joining me.
on my walk today.
I hope your next walk.
is as pleasant as mine was.
Bye-bye.
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