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.
Good afternoon.
Good morning listeners.
It's a lovely warm day here in suburban Chicago and boy oh boy is it full of cicadas.
I'm walking carefully to avoid stepping on them but oh man there are so so so many.
It's going to be a gross day.
The birds are sure enjoying it though.
Very tasty.
Well it's been a little bit since I talked to you.
I had a week of finals and graduation and I officiated a wedding.
Now I'm back.
I'm going to get as many episodes...
I'm going to try to do five episodes this week one every day and the goal of that is
to get to the point where I've stacked myself up to be able to broadcast through next week.
Next week is going to be very busy for my family as well.
My daughter is graduating high school and we have a whole slew of family activities planned.
They're going to mean I don't get a lot of work done and I do get a lot of fun done
but I don't get a lot of podcasting time.
So we'll see if I can come up with five topics to record over the next five days so that
the episodes can be racked and stacked and ready for broadcast.
Well I'm taking the easy way out today.
Today our first episode of the week is going to be a board game espresso episode.
That's right it's a board game espresso triple shot.
So in the board game espresso episode I pick out three games that I played recently for
the first time and one game that I've dusted off and I talk about them a little bit here
on the show.
I'll give you a little bit of insight to what the games are like and I'll share with you
what I think of them.
Once again these are a quick review segment so I generally don't have deep thoughts on
the games but I can give you an idea of what they are and whether they're worth playing.
As always I'd love to hear from you your thoughts about these games or any other games you've
been playing recently.
You can always share those thoughts with me over on boardgamegeek guild 3269.
So why don't we jump right in?
Our first game of the podcast is a simple party game from the exploding kittens
group and that is REALLY LOUD LIBRARIANS.
I picked this up at a goodwill.
It is the kind of game that's pretty fun once in a while.
I wouldn't want to play it a lot and I could see why if you had it as your main game in
your collection you probably wouldn't play it all that often either.
It was designed by Ian Claimen, Ken Grool and Quentin Weir and published by
Exploding Kittens.
It has the signature Oatmeal style artwork so when you look at the game you really know
oh yeah that's an Exploding Kittens game.
So how's it work?
The game comes with some pretty nice components, a dual layered board with a sort of track that
runs around in a circle and on that track are a series of letters.
They're not random and it's not every letter in the alphabet or they are random in order
and it's not every letter on the alphabet but more the common letters.
There's also a couple spots where it's like more than one letter and you can pick
one to use.
And then you have this cutout piece which shows a sort of hilarious librarian and you have
this weird set of two plastic rings on a swivel and so the way the game work are three
plastic rings on a swivel.
So you put the librarian into the plastic rings into the first of the plastic rings and
then you set the whole contraption into the track and now it happens is when you slide the
contraption along the track the rings, the two rings the librarian isn't in are covering
maybe three rings are covering letters on the track circling them and then that tells
you which letters are active for this round.
And then it is essentially a brainstorming or listing style game in the spirit of something
like TAPPLE except it's a team game where you're trying to get as many answers as
you can.
So I guess it's more like Mr. Lister's Quiz Shootout is probably the closest game I can
think of in terms of play time or play style.
Anyway so what you do in the game is you draw a category and then your team oh my gosh
there's so many cicadas.
So you draw a category and then your team is trying to name as many things that fit into
that category as they can as quickly as they can.
So and then the things they have to name have to start with the letter that is circled
by the librarian and then you move the librarian apparatus up to the letter you used.
So for example if you have the library the librarian sitting in the track and the letters
that are available are N, D, and, A and it says name a city somebody says Albuquerque then
you move the librarian up so it's covering the A and now the circles are surrounding three
different letters.
You continue that way until the time runs out and then you see how far around the track
did you get.
Actually the game comes with a once around the track or twice around the track meter so
that because if you're going really well you could get pretty far around the track even
more than once.
You mark where you got to and that's the other team's turn.
Generally I think you take two turns and whichever team got farther wins.
It's a pretty simple game.
Takes about 10 minutes to play.
It's the kind of game you would want to play a bunch of times I think.
And it's a fun silly thing.
It doesn't feel that much different than any other kind of speed listing game.
The team element is neat and the components are amusing.
The theme, yeah take it or leave it who cares what they're really loud librarians I don't
even understand that.
I guess it's a memorable title so that's really loud librarians published by
the exploding kittens company.
Next up we have the party game of the moment.
I've heard numerous podcasts and other luminaries bring this game up and with good reason
it's pretty fun.
This is the very simple deck of cards party game THAT'S NOT A HAT.
That's not a hat.
Like I said it's a simple deck of cards with little sort of iconographic shapes on them.
The drawings are pretty simple.
They look like they're kind of done by hand.
They're not super elaborate.
And the idea is that you are, everybody can count it's how what they are.
This game is designed by the way by Casper Lap and published in the US by Ravensberger.
In the game everybody gets a card and that card is face up in front of them showing the
object that they have in front of them.
Then one person draws another card shows everybody what it is, flips it face down and gives
it away to somebody else.
That person says thank you for the card the thing they just got and then gives away the
other, flips the other card that they had which was previously face up, face down and
gives that away to somebody else.
Now who you give it to it's one of your neighbors.
You'll have an arrow on the card that tells you that and when you give the card away you
say what it is.
So if you show everyone a toaster then you flip the card over and you say this is a toaster
and you give it to somebody they say thank you.
The trick of the game is as it goes along it gets harder and harder to remember what each
card is.
Sometimes you forget what the card in front of you is.
Sometimes you forget what cards other people have and so what happens is over time you're
saying you know this is a toaster, this is a hammer, this is a tool belt, this is a sandwich.
And at some point you'll forget what the card is or you might forget what the card is.
At which point then you say at which point then you tell the person what the thing is and
they might not believe you either they know that you're wrong or they think maybe you're
wrong.
Either way now they have a decision to make.
Do they accept the thing that you've offered or do they refuse it?
If they accept it then they just say thank you and now they're stuck with this thing and
they're not 100% sure what it is.
They might remember from before you got it what it was so even though you told them one thing
they were wrong and they know they're wrong but you would take it anyway.
You shouldn't do that but you could or more likely you don't know what it is either but
you're not willing to challenge and challenge them on it so you take it too.
Then you give away your thing and the game keeps going.
Eventually someone will think that the card they're getting is not what's on the card
and they'll say that's not a hat or that's not a hot dog or whatever the person just says
it was then you flip it over whoever was wrong takes the card as a penalty and it goes
into their display.
Then after that the person who got took the penalty draws a new card and starts the next
round.
That's how it goes the game goes until somebody has three penalties in front of them and
then the person with the fewest person or persons with the fewest penalty cards in front
of them wins the game.
Like I said it takes about 10 minutes maybe 15 if you have a big group and it's pretty
fun.
It's a dumb goofy memory game but it's amusing and easy to play really easy to teach.
It's a good starter or under for the night.
The one caveat I have and I discovered this in one of my plays recently is that if you
have a group of people especially in a line who are not inclined to challenge the card
at all then you get this weird thing where they just pass the cards back and forth then
nobody ever takes the penalty or challenges anything and that's not fun.
And part because you win by the person who has the fewest penalties wins and there's no
way to gain points by doing nothing you can stay tied for first or almost nothing.
Especially some one person in between two people who are not inclined to take action that
person in the middle can get a long way.
That part is very frustrating but that part is frustrating because of that bad experience.
So that's not a hat.
Is that game?
Pretty fun.
I recommend trying it if you get a chance.
Well worth your time.
I want to talk about a game I've revisited recently.
This is Strike.
Strike is a fun little dice rolling game.
Some people call it a...
In the theme of the game is it's a battle between...
It's a battle.
The dice are gladiators battling in an arena.
The reality is you're rolling dice into a bowl and you're trying to have the dice come
up as pairs.
Whenever you roll a die into a bowl or dice into the bowl.
You get a pair.
The way the game works is you roll a die into the bowl.
If it comes up as the same result as one of the other dice in the bowl then you get to
take both of those dice out and you score them.
Then your turn is over.
If you don't make a match you can then take another die and roll that into the bowl too.
Try to make a match with one or more of the dice that are in there.
If that doesn't work then you do it again.
You keep doing it until either you choose to stop,
you take some dice out of the bowl because you made a match, or you run out of dice.
If you run out of dice you're out of the game.
If you take some dice out of the bowl your turn is over.
Next person's turn.
If you have it to clear all the dice out of the bowl like you roll in there and you get
a pair and you're only the two dice in there then you take all the dice out and the next
player has to roll all their dice in.
If they don't get any pairs when they roll all their dice in they lose.
The game goes until there's only one winner left.
Strike is a silly game.
Oh, the last thing is the dice you're rolling have sides 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and X.
No matter what if you roll an X that die is lost.
I think we take that die out of that die leaves the game if you roll an X which is not
fun when it's your die.
That's strike.
It's a silly game not very complicated, pretty easy to play, pretty fast to play if you play
with a group of like 5 or 6 maybe it takes 15 minutes.
But of course it does have the downside of people getting eliminated but that's okay.
It's really short.
15 is actually probably an exaggeration.
Maybe with 6 people it would take that long but chance that it would take less.
So that's strike.
I did not look up the designer on that one.
It's been published a number of times.
I have an older copy with the dark purple color.
They do make a new edition.
They actually was just reprinted sometime in the last few months in the last year and so
you certainly could get a more recent copy if you were so inclined.
The designer is Dieter Nubli and it's published by Ravensberger.
Finally the last game I have to talk about today is Wild: Serengeti.
You know what I said?
I didn't just say Wild Serengeti.
I said Wild: Serengeti.
I guess it's because without saying 'colon' I don't know how to pronounce a colon but that's
what it is.
Wild: Serengeti has a colon which I presume suggests there might be other games later that
follow a similar pattern.
As far as I know there weren't any published but that's okay.
The game is published by the designer is Gung Ho Kim with artists Han Yihong and Sophia
Kang published by Bad Comment and I believe it was a Kickstarter game.
I picked it up at Goodwill.
And you know it's a winner for my family.
It was long but really had a good time and we're definitely going to keep it and try it again.
So in Wild: Serengeti you are a nature photographer.
You're trying to develop a documentary about the Serengeti by filming lots of cool animals
in the Serengeti and figuring out where they are and what they look like.
You can take actions and those actions what you spend resources to put creatures out onto
the board.
Different animals.
There are maybe 12 different animals in the game and each of those animal types comes
with a different meatball or a little wooden cutout of the animal type.
And you're arranging them on this habitat board that has four different types of habitat.
There's meadow, there's forest, there's rocks, there's water.
And the animals can all go on any of the parts.
What we're trying to do is get them into an arrangement where you can complete a shot.
So you have these cards or a scene.
You have these cards.
They represent scenes from your documentary that you're trying to get.
And so when you find animals in a particular arrangement you can complete the scene and that
will help you score points at the end.
But the scenes also provide you bonuses and those bonuses become the engine of the game.
So as you solve scenes you can need these bonuses and some of the bonuses are end game scoring.
So completing those scenes doesn't help your in-game engine but it does help keep the points
high.
Other cards will give you more resources and there are a number of different resources that
you can use.
Or they'll let you draw more cards or sort of speed up other things in the game.
So there's an element of doing things gives you the efficiency to do more things.
And as such your momentum builds over the course of the game.
The game ran a little bit long for us.
It has to do with the number of times that you go through a particular thing as I recall.
In a four player game you go through it twice.
I think in a two player game you would go through it once or three times I mean.
And the idea is that you are getting more and more of these scenes completed and thus
gaining points.
The art in Wild: Serengeti is pretty good.
It's not amazing but it looks nice and makes you want to play the game more.
The components, the wooden pieces for the animals look really nice.
The rest of the components are fine.
Nothing amazing but nothing that stands out as bad either.
I think this game definitely feels like a kickstarter in that it probably needed a little
more development.
It's not as smooth as it could be.
And that shows.
But at the same time it's pretty well made.
It's entertaining.
The rulebook is pretty clear.
I was able to understand the game from reading the rulebook and teach the game from reading
the rulebook.
And I only had to look up a few things online although I do recall that some of the things
felt pretty significant in terms of gaps.
All in all though, Wildsare and Getty is a pretty great experience as a game play.
We had a fun time of it.
In the long run I don't see us.
It's not going to be a favorite game but it certainly will be one way to hang on for
on to for a while and play occasionally because it's amazing and cute.
And a fun game about animals in the wild without involving actually like killing the animals
in the wild, which is nice.
So that's Wild: Serengeti.
Well those are three games I played recently and one game I dusted off.
I'm keen to hear from you.
What are some games you've played recently?
Head over to Boardgamegeek Guild 3269 and let me know your thoughts about games that
you've played.
What games might you like to play in the future?
Which of these games have you played?
What are your opinions about these games that you've played?
It gets very complicated very quick.
But I'd love to hear from you.
If you want to send me a message, the easiest way to do that is send a message to Wombat929
on Board Game Geek.
You can also send me an email, Brendan at Rattlebox Games, or you can post in our forum.
Board Game Geek Guild 3269.
Any of those things should get to me and I would love to hear from you your thoughts about
the show and particularly about what effect we'll have on today.
Well thanks for joining me in my walk today.
I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine will.
Bye bye.
Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
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