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- Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the Podcast

where I pick up my audio recorder as I leave the library

and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.

I'm Brendan Riley.

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Good afternoon listeners, it's a lovely blustery day

here in suburban Chicago.

It's still late February, although if my math is correct,

this episode's coming out in early March,

so you're traveling back in time like a week.

Yep, you know it.

So I was looking back over episodes I'd done recently,

trying to think about, like, what should I do?

And I found a segment that I did like episode 680 or so

that was meant to be kind of a new format,

a new way to approach talking about board games

and generally what I do with a new segment

is if I enjoy doing it and I didn't hear from anyone

that it was stupid, then I put it in the category of,

'yeah, I can do that again.'

This one of course is set up to be able to do 12 different

episodes using this format.

And so I figure if I do three or four a year

in the next three seasons, I'll do all of them.

Or am I doing more often?

Who knows?

We'll see.

But this is board game astrology.

I can't remember what I called it.

The idea is that I look up a description of one of the

astrological star signs and then I talk about games

that people with that star sign might like.

I do want to caveat, this isn't really a very important

or significant or, to be frank, thing I think is real,

but I find it interesting and reading the description

did give me some keywords that I can use

to come up with some game suggestions.

So if you are a Pisces, meaning that your birthday

was in late February through late March,

you might be somebody who enjoys these games.

So according to the webpage that I found,

link in the show notes, the first keyword for Pisces

is "intuitive."

So what are some games... and I planed the keywords out,

but I did not plan what games I'm gonna recommend.

So this is off the top of the old dome.

So what games are intuitive?

Seems like the first game that comes to mind is The Mind.

Now The Mind is a game that was really popular

a couple several years ago.

The premise is pretty simple.

Everybody's got some cards in their hand

and you're kind of working together to play them in order

from lowest to highest.

When your group is in sync, there's a really interesting

element in which you play them in the right order

and it's fascinating to kind of see how quickly people

are able to get on the same wavelength and match up.

Now you have to get through five rounds of the game.

The fifth round is really hard because each round

you get one more card.

So the first round everybody gets one card.

The fifth round everyone gets five cards,

meaning if you're playing like three players,

there are 15 cards that you need to play in order.

And I think the game gives you like three lives.

If you play in the wrong order, you lose a life

and if you lose all three lives, the game's over.

I think you can get an extra life at some point.

And now that I think about it,

maybe you play more than five rounds.

I feel like you play more than five rounds.

Maybe it's eight rounds?

Oh, it depends on how many players you have.

The more players you have, the fewer players,

the more rounds.

So a two player game, you have to play eight rounds.

I guess so that the top one you're getting

to 15 or 16 cards, which is the hardest mode.

So the first and most intuitive game that I would think of,

I would say is The Mind.

Another game that I would put in this category is

Mysterium or its slightly simpler

sibling Mysterium Park.

Both of these are games in which you are trying to communicate

with one another using sort of abstract or dreamy pictures

and trying to have the other person kind of get what you're

saying based on those pictures.

And so the elements that feel intuitive here

are can I intuit what you were trying to say?

Will we be able to connect on that level?

And you can understand what I'm trying to say.

There's an interesting element where the way that this works

is the players collaboratively need to intuit what the ghost

is trying to say solitarily.

So there is an element of teamwork in trying

to interpret the ghost's visions that feels a little bit

different than intuition.

But at the heart of it, if you are highly intuitive,

I suspect Mysterium would be another game you'd enjoy it.

And finally, it feels like a whole genre of games

that run on intuition are social deduction games.

So just for the sake of simplicity, let's say,

The Resistance is a game that you would be very good at

if you are somebody who is highly intuitive.

So if you're a Pisces and the highly intuitive part

fits your brand, perhaps you should try The Resistance

in which you're trying to gauge, are these people lying to me

or not?

The next keyword that the profile offered was sympathetic

or sensitive or empathetic.

This one feels more like it's a whole category of games.

If you're somebody who feels really sensitive when

you have to do something that affects another player

or maybe you get really affected by other players,

one, maybe you want to go for cooperative games where you're

not affecting another player negatively.

You're not doing something to them.

Although many cooperative games still do have an element

in which I can make a mistake and screw our team up.

There's an element also of games that allow us to play

side by side and sure there's a winner,

but it doesn't really feel like it's about winning.

It feels like it's about doing a thing.

Often these are games that involve building stuff,

Agricola.

Can feel really vicious if someone else takes the thing you want.

But in my experience, most of the time,

I'm fighting with you a little bit,

but mostly I'm just fighting with the system,

trying to find the best combination of things to do

with the cards.

And if I win, great, but what feels better is just

if I feel like I did a good job.

If I captured the system in a way that accelerated my score

and resulted in a really interesting outcome,

that's what makes Agricola feel interesting to me.

So I guess I would say for the sensitive category,

I would say, "Carebear games are probably the way to go."

That you could do cooperative games or you do games that

are heavily care-bear,

or also sort of side-by-side non-interactive Euro games.

You know, one of my favorite games that's like that

is Bärenpark.

Now Bärenpark definitely has some race elements to it.

If I can see that you're going for a thing

and I could get there a little faster,

I can block you from getting the top reward

or I can block you from getting that first statue.

But for the most part, in Bärenpark,

what I'm doing is wrestling with the tiles that are available

and wrestling with the cards that I have

or wrestling with the situation I'm in

to try to just do the best I can.

And sometimes that means I win, some people I don't,

but it's a puzzle for myself more than a puzzle with you

or a puzzle against you.

And then of course, the most sensitive of sensitive games

would be a C.

This is a game from Kevin Wilson,

who's, or Richard Launius, Kevin Wilson,

who's a fairly prominent game designer of often

Euro trash or a merit trash style games,

American style games that have a significant amount

of player conflict and luck.

But Wilson also talked about having created this game

just to relax and he showed it to some friends

and they're like, yeah, you should publish this.

It's a great little relaxation device.

And so it's fun to have that available.

So I would say if you're looking for a sensitive

or empathetic games, you want to co-op something like Hanabi

or you could have Care Bear games like Bärenpark

or a game that's just about self soothing

and self and that would be Gentle Rain.

All right, next up it describes the symbol of the Pisces

as two fish swimming in opposite directions.

So kind of going the opposite direction from sympathetic,

I'm thinking about like great two player games

where you are swimming in opposite directions.

It is a tug of war style two player game.

My favorite of these is the sort of Reiner Knizia

line of things that we have to challenge.

Battle line is the sort of high version of that.

I've never played Battle Line.

I've always played Shotten Totten,

but it's the same deal.

Let me have Lost Cities, which is kind of the highest achievement

in that category where you have a series of things

that you're fighting over and you try to win them

and you're doing that in competition with somebody else.

More recently I played Drones versus Seagulls,

which has a similar kind of pulling in opposite directions

approach.

So I could point to that as well if you're thinking

about like two similar fish pulling in opposite directions.

And then I would say as a third version of that,

thinking about Seven Wonders duel.

Seven Wonders duel is a really interesting version

of that kind of game because we are just,

we're going head to head and we have opposite approaches

to things.

I am trying to get some stuff you're trying to get another.

And there are a couple places where we are competing

to get there first like science tokens.

If one of us gets enough science tokens,

we automatically win.

But there is a direct tug of war on the military track,

where if I pull the military track toward me,

it moves away from you.

And if you let it get too far toward me, I win.

So there is this really interesting back and forth

going on in Seven Wonders duel that I think fits the approach

really well and makes for an interesting game.

So when we think about two fish swimming in opposite directions,

I think of two player tug of war games.

And those are three examples.

Finally, the last element of Pisces,

I like to just look at the icon itself.

And that would be fish.

I talked about two fish swimming in opposite directions,

but I focused on the opposite directions part.

Now let's think about the fish.

What are some of my favorite games that involve fish?

One that came to mind first was Oceans,

which is the kind of newer version of evolution

takes place in the ocean.

That one I thought was fine, but it didn't really wow me.

Another game that came to mind as a fish game is Finspan.

I haven't tried that one yet.

It seems to be a sort of lighter version of Wingspan

less complicated in its fish themed apparently.

Haven't played that one yet.

I certainly would play it if someone put it in front of me,

but Jenny and I really like Wingspan,

so there's no reason for me to get one of the other spans.

I thought Wyrmspan was fine,

but I didn't like the extra complexity over Wingspan.

And I suspect Finspan will be fine,

but I won't like the under complexity.

So what are some fish related games that I do like?

Well, that's funny, as I was walking to the library

in the previous episode, one of my neighbors

came out and got in his car,

and now that I am arriving home from the library,

he is arriving home in his car as well, so that's funny.

All right, so three more games that actually are about fish

that I like.

The first one I'll say is Fleet: the dice game.

Now, I haven't played Fleet the card game a couple times.

I thought it was fine, but Fleet: the dice game,

is really interesting.

It is sort of the first of the Matt Riddle, Ben Pinchback.

What do they call them?

Deluxe, not Deluxe, like loaded roll and writes,

where you have just this huge array of things

you can check off based on what you roll,

and you get points based on these sort of cascading bonuses

that you pick.

So it's an element of kind of a little bit of playing your luck,

but a lot of just sort of trying to mix those things together

and get a nice cascaded bonuses.

The second thing I'll point to as fish related

would be Ark Nova.

The Ark Nova Marine Worlds expansion particularly

adds a significant number of fish to the board.

It adds aquariums as a thing you can build,

and it has this whole reef mechanism

that I think is really interesting and fun.

The fish are really expensive,

but every time you add another one with a reef,

it triggers again a whole bunch of times.

So I really like the combination of things that happen

when you have the reef creatures in your zoo.

I also just like the fish that they've picked.

They're fun to look at and it makes for a nice zoo

if you get the chance.

So the Ark Nova Marine World's expansion is a nice fit.

And finally, the last game I want to point to

as being a fun fish related game would be Nusfjord.

Nusfjord is of course about a town full of fishing people.

Players run fishing companies.

You're trying to get lots of fish,

and there's a big element in which your town has elders,

and you wanna make sure that the elders are fed,

but then they also help you with your company.

And so like the wisdom of the elders helps with the company.

And of course the resource that you're trading in,

a lot of the time is fish.

You're spending fish to do everything.

So Nusfjord is perhaps the most fish focused game

that I have even though it's really about a business.

Now that I'm thinking about paying for things with fish,

I will offer a honorable mention to Isle of Cats,

which also uses fish as the main currency.

You pay fish to catch the cats and to buy the cards.

So.

Well that's about it for Pisces related games for me.

If you are a Pisces head over to Boardgamegeek Guild 3269

and let me know what games you enjoy

and whether or not you feel like being a Pisces

has influenced the games that you like.

You can reach out to me directly.

And Wombat929 is my username on board GameGeek

or my email address is Brendan at Rattleboxgames.com

I appreciate you joining me today

and I hope that the weather is pleasant for you

so that your next walk will be as pleasant as my ones.

Bye bye.

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