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

for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I stroll around.

I'm Brendan Riley.

Well, good afternoon listeners.

It's a beautiful day here in suburban Chicago.

The weather is a little on the crisp side. I put it in the high 40s with a chilly breeze

blowing, but the sun is out and it is a lovely day to go for a walk, which is what I am

doing right now.

I'm excited to take a little time to chat with you about some games I've played recently

in a segment I like to call a board game espresso.

Now, often what I like to do is do a triple shot of board game espresso where I talk about

three games I've tried recently for the first time, but every now and again I have some

games I've played that just don't have quite as much meat on the bone,
.

or I don't have quite as much to say about them.

And so then I will do something a little different.

Today is one of those days: we're going to do a coffee flight.

Yeah, actually, can you hear the plane flying over?

That's not what "flight" means, but whatever.

Yeah, so today instead of talking about three games I tried for the first time and one

I dusted off, I'm going to talk about four because the first two that I have to talk

about are pretty inconsequential.

So I'm just kind of documenting them here.

The first one is Tribond.

Tribond is a trivia game from the 80s, 1989 to be precise designed by Ed Mochini, Tim

Walsh and Dave Yerick.

I was published by Alga, Big Fun, Agogo, Everest Toys, Kids International and seven other publishing

companies.

This is a game that has had a significant run of popularity.

I think it is still in print.

And it is sort of an older style trivia game in the neighborhood of something like

Trivial Pursuit.

The way that it works is that you have cards that have three things that are related and

the question is, you get those things and then you're trying to name how they're connected.

If you're able to identify the thing that three phrases have in common, then you get the

point.

You're trying to move, you have three different pieces and you're trying to move all three

different pieces around the board.

So there's an element of managing where your piece goes and then there is also a thing

where you can bump other people or there are these challenges where you're trying to outdo

somebody else.

It's a fine trivia game if you like trivia and as far as trivia goes, it's better than

say, trivial pursuit because it encourages kind of categorical thinking more than trivia,

which I think is a little bit more fun.

There's more figuring out stuff rather than just you know it or you don't.

But ultimately we thought it was fine.

I didn't see like a game that we were probably going to play again, so it's a one and done

for me.

Although if I'm at a game club or something and somebody says, hey, let's play Tribond,

I'd probably play it.

I don't actively dislike it.

I just, it wasn't a whole lot to it.

That's Tribond.

The other game about which that I had fun with, but I didn't have a lot to say is

Buildzi.

Now often if the construction of the name Buildzi rings any familiarity bells in your head,

it's probably because there's another game out called Tenzi.

Tenzi is a game where you have Ten Dice and you're rolling your dice.

The goal or the idea of Tenzi is that you are trying to roll your dice quickly so that

all ten of them have the same face.

It is a very simple game.

If you buy the game of Tenzi, the Deluxe version I think comes with a book of like a hundred

other games you can play with Ten Dice each.

It's pretty, it's a pretty simple, but the company that publishes it took the design aesthetic

and they published another game called Buildzi which actually was significantly better

than Tenzi as far as I'm concerned.

The way Buildzi works is that you have a series of what it calls poly cubes which are sort

of 3D tetromino shapes in different forms and each player has the same set of them and

a card will come out and you have to put the shapes in a stack so that they match the card.

Often these involve very careful balancing of the pieces.

They're all arranged in a specific kind of order and balancing them in the right order

is what you're trying to do.

Like I said, it's pretty simple.

There's not a whole lot to it.

It's not a game.

I would recommend going out to try to find.

But if you needed, if you had a few minutes and you're looking for something simple or

playing with a group of people that wants to be very accessible, it is a nice little dexterity

game.

That's Buildzi from 2020.

Or uncredited designer, the publisher is Karma Games and that's Karma with a C, not Karma

with a K.

Alright, so those are two games that I thought deserved a little commentary, but not much.

You've gotten the little commentary.

Okay.

The next game that I played, I think deserves a bit more consideration.

This is Rolemodels from 2013.

Actually the full title is Rolemodels: The Battle for Vyk' Tornaahl.

The designer is Chris Hanjy, who is a regular listener, Hi Chris.

And somebody I know a bit.

He hosts the Shuffle Buddies podcast, which comes on every now and again and is delightful

when it does.

And I'd call him a friend, Hi Chris.

Good to talk to you.

Rolemodels is a game that Chris released as a... it was designed by Chris and published

by Light Gray Art Lab, which was, I believe, an art studio that Chris was involved with.

It starts very primarily as an artistic endeavor.

All of the, each of the cards is an illustration done by a different artist and they're all

just amazing.

The art in this game is stratosphericly good.

The game itself is a relatively simple poker variant.

It's sort of like a poker variant mixed with battle line or something where you, so you

have the players are setting up hands that are sort of loosely poker hands that they can

then use to battle for influence and the first player to amass a certain amount of influence

wins.

Like I said, the game seems to be primarily about the art.

The game play is relatively simple but very accessible.

We had a good time playing it.

I did exchange a couple of texts with Chris about the game.

He said he, if he got to do it over again, he would like to put more work into the design

to make the game a little bit more robust.

I think he should be proud of what it is.

It's a fun little game and definitely accessible.

I suspect if the goal is to have this be something that patrons of the art community can

buy for the art and have a game they can play, I think this probably meets that goal as

opposed to being a game early game, which, you know, the potential there, I think, but it

would take some work.

Well done, Chris.

I enjoyed it and I'm happy to have the Rolemodels: The Battle for Vyk' Tornaahl in my collection.

So check that out if you get a chance.

I don't know.

I don't know if it's possible to get copies.

I'll see if there's anything online that a link to that or if you had over to board game

geek guild 3269 and post in the forums there, I bet Chris could answer any questions that

you have.

All right.

I did dust off a game this month.

One of our friends at Game Club was there and it's somebody I haven't played games with

in a while, so I thought I would give it a go.

This is Thunderbirds.

I went and looked and I had played Thunderbirds before with the same person several years ago.

Something like five years ago.

Thunderbirds is a cooperative game in which you play some of the titular British TV puppets

trying to save the world from an evil TV puppet by going on adventures in little cars and

stuff.

It's a marionette show from the '60s, which is full of theme and cool aesthetics and is

kind of weird.

It was designed by Matt Leacock, king of the cooperative game, the designer of pandemic and several

other really interesting cooperative games.

Most recently, Matt Leacock was one as a co-designer of daybreak, which is a really interesting

cooperative game in which you are working together to try to put build technologies and do

work to help fight climate change.

And that's a really cool theme and it's tied to real world effects.

Thunderbirds is not that, it's saving the world in the older saw-away where you are fighting

doomsday machines by driving around in your cool vehicles.

It comes with these funny little minis and really a cool-looking aesthetic board and

neat cards.

And it's a relatively complicated co-op that I had trouble grasping last time we played.

And in our review, it had been long enough that I really needed a full refresh.

And I got it better this time.

But like, I don't know if I just have bad luck or I'm bad at the game, but from the perspective

of the person who was teaching it to me who has a lot of experience with this game, he agreed

that we just got a really bad draw because we lost in like six turns.

It was stunning how quickly things devolved and the bad guys took over the world.

So if I were on the Thunderbirds team, you would all be in trouble.

It's all I can say.

All in all, I mean, it was a very silly experience.

We had a lot of fun chatting with our friend, but the gameplay went really quick and it wasn't

super keen on a re-rack.

So I imagine I'll play Thunderbirds again at some point, probably with this friend when

he sets it up and wants to play and probably not for another couple of years.

So that is Thunderbirds designed by Matt Leacock, art from several people including Graham

Blieuthman, Michael Cross, Shigerro, Komat Zuzaki and Andrew Law, published by A Synchron

Games and Modifius Entertainment.

So I did get to try one new game, one more new game that has gotten a lot of buzz around

the internet or around the podcastosphere.

And so I was fun to try it actually.

Got to try it twice.

I tried it once with a family friend in the game Day There and another time with a friend

at our game club.

This is The Gang designed by John Cooper and Corey Heath with art from Fior Gambu and

published by Cosmos.

So The Gang is, the easiest description is Cooperative Poker.

The way it works is you have a, you are playing Texas Holdum, which is the poker game where

you have two cards that are yours, they are your pocket cards and then there is a river of

three cards in the middle and two more cards that come out that are called the flop.

Or else the flop are the three cards that come out and I think it's the three cards are

the river and the two more cards are the flop.

And basically the way the game works is the two cards that you have in your hand are two

of your potential cards for making a poker hand.

And the five cards that are in the middle are available for everybody.

And what you're doing is you're in a normal game poker you would be betting on who has

the best hand where they can use the two cards they have in their hand that are secret

plus three of the five public cards to make the best poker hand they can.

The Gang works the same way.

Everybody's got their pocket cards and then the cards come out only instead of betting

each round.

And instead of what you do is you negotiate to try to figure out who's got the best hand.

And the way that you do that is there are these poker chips that have little stars on them.

One to three or four or five hoverman players you have.

I think it plays up to six.

And the goal is to try to figure out who's got the best hand based on sort of social deduction

and conversational cues but you're not allowed to say what cards you have in your hand.

The way that I played with groups a lot of it depends on how you interpret the way the rules are written.

Some groups might use the chips alone.

Other groups and the both groups that I played with kind of assumed this is how it worked.

Use verbal negotiation to kind of talk through where they think their hands are.

And you can talk about other people's hands based on what they say.

But at no point are you allowed to say anything that tells somebody what your cards are.

It's a weird limitation on conversations.

Obviously you could tell people what your cards are.

It would be a dumb game.

But there are things you can say.

So like let's say that three cards are out and you don't have anything poker wise.

But then a force card comes out and suddenly you have a pair.

You might say something like, oh my hand just got better.

So I mean if your hand got better because one card came out then people know that you probably got a pair.

Whereas if you say like my hand got a lot better then you probably suddenly you have a flush or a

straight where you didn't have anything before.

So that's the kind of thing that the negotiation is doing.

Like I said it's kind of slippery because ultimately some of those games where as a group you have to

decide how much you're allowed to say and the shared idea about what is okay to say and what is not

shaped the fun of the game. Ultimately I thought the game is an interesting game.

It probably goes in the category of I'm not going to buy it but anytime someone suggests that they

want to play it I will happily play it because I like co-ops and it's weird and interesting.

And it'll probably make me better at next time I play poker by talking through how to understand

what poker ideas people have about poker from the things they say.

So that's the gang.

Well I would love to hear what games you have been playing lately.

Head over to board game geek guild 3269 and let me know over there.

If you want to contact me you can send me an email,

brendan@rattleboxgames.com.

You could also send me a board game geek message.

Wombat929 is my username there.

The board game geek message is probably more reliable not as attentive to my rattlebox emails I should

be but I would love to hear from you to know what games you've been playing lately and what you

think of the games I mentioned. I because I've been keeping up on posting episodes I'm pretty caught

up on my what I've been playing lately so as a result I'm making more episodes that are not

just board game espresso and I'm always looking for new ideas.

So if you have any ideas for something you'd like me to hear me talk about more or something you

think would be a good episode share that over on board game geek as well. I'd love to hear your ideas

and who else maybe your idea will become one of my walks.

Well that's about it for me today. I want to say thanks for joining me and I hope your next

walk is as pleasant as mine was. Bye bye.

[Music]

[beep] It's a relatively complicated co-op that oh hi hi it's a relatively complicated co-op that I had

trouble grasping last time we played like we kind of all right okay that I had trouble grasping

last time we played.