Green Gold - Board Game Review
Transcript
Hello everyone. This is Johannis
and this is Sen
and you are watching Board Gaming Ramblings
and today we are taking a look at Green Gold.
We are This is a board game. It's coming out at Spiel in just a few weeks. We cannot wait to be there because we are going even though we have played many of the games that we are excited for. We are even more excited to be there to see all the people to see all the other games that we haven't played yet and just have fun. If you are going to Spiel, we do hope to see you there. And if we do see you, you can show us the secret sign, which looks like, oh, you already showed it like this. And you can also say hi to us, which looks like this.
And you don't need to wait for us to spot you
because that would be hard.
Also hard because if you don't do the secret sign, we will not spot you. Or we might, but we don't know who you are.
We will do the secret sign to everyone just in case.
Yes, it will be very weird. And we cannot wait. If you want to make sure to find us, we will be at the Allian booth Saturday 2 to 7 and Sunday to 10 to 2.
10 to 2.
10 to 2. But today it's time for some green gold. And what is this green gold cinema?
It's tea.
Yes.
Yes.
It's not like gold bars that are green.
No,
it is about tea. Trading tea, getting points or actually coins because money is the way to win. And this is a brief overview of the game. The game is an action selection game. You will be selecting actions over on this little it's not a run, but it's like it's it's round a roundabout a roundabout of actions. Every time it's your turn, if I'm the red player, I have to choose another action that I want to do. If there is somebody there, I'm just didn't choose that now because it would be hard because we put them down so it's easier for you to see when you are looking up there. So when I place it there, if somebody else said I have to pay some money and then I choose one of these workers that is over here, let's say I choose this gray one. I will place it over here in the first free row or if there was other gray workers I would play with with that. Then I get to choose to do I get to choose I get to do the action that is here. We're not going to go into detail of all the actions but basically you can buy shares. You can buy tea from different cities to fulfill contracts. You can invest to or basically build more tea factories and trading ports out in the cities. You can deliver tea to the royals. You can go to the city to negotiate to get some new contracts and bonuses. And those are the five actions. Yeah. Which I just said I wasn't supposed I'm not going to go into detail how they works, but those are the things you are doing in the game. And the color of the color of the worker that you chose is the company that you interact with. So let's say I chose the invest action which is to get some a new share and I chose a pink worker. I could only buy a pink share. So this is a game
where there is six different companies or five if you're playing a true player game and you are basically all investing on in those different companies and trying to of course have stocks and invest in companies that you think will be more worth at the end of the game. There are many ways to go ahead. You will be getting special powers that are all pretty powerful. You will can get final scoring cards. You can go here for contracts. A lot of different things that you can do. I don't think I'm going to go into any more detail anything that's important that I didn't say basically. And it's one of those games where you invest your points because the coins that you use to do anything is your victory points. With that, let's talk about the game.
Yeah, let's start talking about the action selection mechanism. Uh it's it's pretty simple. Uh and I like
I like that it feels like the action selection in Nepon, just like not.
Okay. because in that game also you you want to see what colored workers are connected to that action. In this game, it's a little looser. If I don't like the two colors right beside that action, I can always pay to take one that's like further ahead.
Um, and I like that sometimes you want to do an action, but it's not the color you want to interact with. uh or or you want to do it at action with that color but you have a share in that company so I will make your share worth more more so you have a lot of like things to think about while while the mechanism in itself is super simple
timing in this game is very important for many different things basically everything it's a very timing based game like not in the one where it's like oh if I do the action later it's bad but because the eb and flow those caller For example, I might be like in a position where I really want to interact with a red for example. Right now red has or I mean is the color have like two factories which means I can buy tea from more oh I can buy tea from more cities when I do the import tea actions. You have the the timing of pushing the price up because there is a dividend that you get to pay out. So let's say you have two shares in the company as you just said I don't want to go ahead and push that up maybe at the time where I will get nothing of it even if that's action is important maybe I will choose to do something else because of that and as you just said basically the fact about you the colors you want to do a color action that helps the other player in a way other than you because as you might already understand this game has a lot of what I would call meaningful interaction. I agree. It has interaction with the other players in a way that isn't like mean, which I do enjoy. It can be mean. It can be a little mean, but like you're doing stuff mostly because it's good for you, I feel like.
And not like solely to mess up the other player. That's one of the main things you do in this game to be mean to other players less because when there is empty one space empty at the end of the round you will refill with this which is I don't understand why that refills but it's in the middle. That's one of my biggest complaints about this game because then because these are standing up. So when I need to move this I will do this.
Yeah.
I won't do I won't do exactly that. But it's kind of a hassle to move it there and then you have to move from over there into the middle. So that's kind of a weird thing. I understand it graphically looks nice with the thing in the middle, but what I was going to say is I would have liked to be otherwise, but you have some powers, for example, where you can be able to pick or just the action, some action symbol, which I don't see anywhere right now. This one, for example, just lets you grab a worker from outside of the board, not to do an action, but to fill in here because this is how you get those special powers. Whenever you fill in a row with a color, you put them back in the box or in the the bag, and you get a special power. So one of the meanest thing you will do in the game is let's say we are in a position where it's like oh people are waiting for gold for example. I'm not going to go into all the reasons why and then a one gold comes out and or two gold comes out and maybe oh I don't really need that action but I want to take that action so I can take the gold and I will use that bonus action I get from somewhere to to take the other gold. So now it's going to be a while until gold is in the game again. So of course it's a bit luck basedish like when it comes but that interaction is meaningful and there are other meaningful interactions as well.
Absolutely. And it has also a a mechanism that I usually don't enjoy that much in games. It's it's the stocks or shares. And I wouldn't say like we talked about this this is not like a stock game
but it is a game with stocks. And here you can absolutely buy stocks and be like that's a meaning like it's an important part of my strategy to boost those shares so I get final scoring but you can also go for strategies to get points elsewhere. It is quite a lot of points up here. Oh yeah. So I think like ignoring stocks completely might not be the way to go, but I don't think you you are like instantly losing if you have fewer shares than another player.
Oh no. And it's also not in the games we have play. It's not the game where you get like 10 stocks. No,
like maybe you get four maybe throughout the game. And there is like as a everything here connects because the actions you do moves this up and down which then at the end of the game will make those stocks go up higher. So everything is like a give and take because you can't invest in all the colors but you might be in a position where I really want to get a card over there but the only good way to do it is to go to to pink and pink is over here which you have two pink shares. So if I do that it pushes you over that and also helps pink move up on this track. So all of those things is like interconnected and interactive in a way that I really enjoy. We have played a game at two
and four.
Yes.
What did you like? uh four player was like a lot better I thought um way way better
like way better and sometimes we are like unsure if a game is like good enough with four players that it's worth the extra time it takes or that it's add something other than time to the game in itself in this case I would absolutely say that playing it with more than two I think it will be great at tree also it works with two but it doesn't shine at that player count. I I would say that adding the third and fourth player, that's when the game is like at at its best. And also, it didn't add too much time either.
No, in our place, it actually took shorter amount of time playing with four than with two, but it was also like the first player was our first play of the game, the two player game. The box has 40 to 80 minutes, which I think is short. And it also might make people think that the game is even lighter than it is
because I I don't see it being very viable playing this with two players in 40 minutes. Like 20 minutes per player is very little. I don't see myself like if you maybe you know the game outside in and you will just be like, "Oh, it's my turn. I do these things." Maybe you can get it done. But the 40 to 80 minutes isn't like a big stretch. It's not like we played the four player games in two and a half hours. No, it was about
1 hour I think our game was 1 hour 45 minutes with four,
which means you could probably get it down to like a 90 to 95 minutes with four.
Yes.
And it is like a more compact game. Like the game will end if three of these stocks are empty. And for that to happen, you have to have a more heavy stock strategy than any players we have played it with. Or when the dividend marker goes up to 10 or less on a two-player game, but I wouldn't recommend it for a two-player game, which goes up every time a stock goes over the dividend and pays out two for every player, but I didn't feel like it was long. Like with two player, four players, I felt like it was a great length for what you got from the game.
I agree.
Anything you want to add before we do some final thoughts?
Mhm. I just think it's like a fun game. But I can say that in my final post as well.
Yes, that's kind of what you do in the final thoughts. But but you might not know, but this is the first review SA is doing on the channel. So she's like, "When can I say that it's fun? Wish me luck." Yes. Are you ready for final thoughts first time from Cinema? So you have to say that it's fun and just just follow the script basically.
Okay, cool.
Go. Uh, well, I like this game and I was I was pleased to like that I liked it more when we added more players. I was I was like I was not too keen on this game after our first play with two players. And I'm glad I liked it more with four rhyme. Uh, and it has an a type of interaction that I can like in games. It has this, oh, where where do I think I I can I can like push and like make a move to to like make this make the share go up, for example. But then I should probably invest in that company before I do that. And oh, maybe I shouldn't be the only one investing in that company because then other people will maybe like try to avoid that color. But that might be like then I have that color kind of all to myself and and and like the things that you do in this game is like very fun because you will get these or you might you can also do other stuff. But I thought it was cool to get a lot of these final scorings to go for and they can be very like easy to get
which I thought was rewarding. And also I thought it was fun when you get um to fill out your player board with those colors. you get these uh special abilities and those felt like for me that added to the replay value of the game because it really like some of those especially felt like oh that that's something that I can utilize a lot. What I do think is cool about this game is that you have to pick a different action every turn. You can't just like spam one action. Sometimes I'm really keen on just buying
more shares. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. buying shares or buying tea and just fulfilling my contracts. But I have to like okay the next action I do can't be that. What do I want to do? And also I'm seeing hm the game will be over soon and I have these eight actions planned that I need to do. Okay, I need to cut that in half or I will not do what I'm supposed to do. So I need to prioritize what is really important. Yes, you can tell I have thoughts about this game. I think it's a really good game. I'm going to give it an eight. I think it's great.
Green is a game where the more I think about it, the more I like it. Also because uh and I love a good multiplayer solar game. We play a lot of games where you mostly do your own thing. Like there is a little bit of interaction, but mostly the game is like probably best at two, maybe three, but you shouldn't add at fourth player. So it's it's a bit far between. you find a game where it's like this is really good at the maximum player count and this is that game. So if you are watching all the reviews that we do and you think oh just another multiplayer solitaire game and that isn't for you I think this might be one that you should really check out at spiel or when it came comes up retail if you're not going to spiel because this has a lot of great meaningful Euro interaction in a very fun way. I really like it's a simple design in like in in a positive way in its core like the actions are not complicated. There is like stuff going on like you have you can buy the tea, you can do the contract, you can have finally scoring which you get by delivering a queue which gives you a bonus that moves up here and it gives you some coins.
There's like a lot of things but it it's a medium game that feels very rewarding and it doesn't feel too long and I think you can get it even more done if you play the same group again and again. I feel like the replay value is here both because of the scoring, but even more because of the the player powers that you get. And those are really cool and and some of them are really powerful in a positive way. And I I just think this game is a lot of fun. I'm going to land on 8.5 for this one. If you are, as I already said, more into interactive euros, but doesn't mean doesn't need that take that or backstabbing stuff, this is absolutely one to check out. And that is going to be the end. We hope that you will like the video and that you subscribe because if you didn't, do it now. It's free. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Johannes and you've been watching Board Gaming Ramblings. And bye-bye.