Ringyō Preview: A Tree-mendous Experience
Transcript
Hi everyone, I'm Tally. This is Farrell and we're bored of it. And welcome to our preview of Ringo, a simultaneous worker placement game for one to four players by Pavverson Games. Before this, we hadn't had a chance to play any of their previous games, which were wellreceived even though we really wanted to. But thankfully, it seems like they've continued the trend by bringing us Ringo as we both really really enjoyed it. So, in this game, you're going to play as a feudal lord of an area of Japan in the Edo era. And essentially what you're going to be doing is you've been entrusted with this area of dusty old woodland. And you're going to be sorting out basically and making it self-sufficient, making sure that there's food is protected from floods, that the trees are all kind of well managed, and that you have timber for your building needs.
So, you're also going to be competing with the uncertain weather, which can throw a wrench into your plans, as well as the fact that the shogun is going to be asking demands of you. Uh, lastly, you're also going to compete with the other players who would like to brownnose the shogun as much as you do. So before we get into it, please note that uh in exchange for this preview, we received copy of Palson Games other two games. And just know that this was a preview copy and everything you see is a prototype. So with that, uh we can get into it. And just I think finally to say there was no editorial input into this video either from the publisher. So it's our own thoughts.
Ringo is played over five rounds, each with four distinct phases. The first phase is the Edeto Council round where players will bid for turn order and bonuses. Each player has a hand of numbered diplomat cards, and they'll play one face down before everyone reveals. The higher numbered cards have penalties or no bonuses, and the lower numbered ones will give you bonuses. However, based on highest to lowest, players will then rearrange themselves on the turn order track, and then they'll get to pick bonuses from the main board in turn order. The diplomat cards don't return to your hand, though, so there's less options as the game goes on. The second phase is the province phase. Here, players will use their workers to take actions on the provinces of their playerboard by placing a worker on the intersection of three provinces.
The actions include growing, studying, planting, and cutting down trees, using those cut trees to build buildings, turning flood tokens into rice patties, and generating resources from the rice patties and the buildings. Different types of workers can take a different number and type of actions. The third phase is the weather phase where three faced on weather cards are revealed. Each card will indicate a color of province according to the type of tree that grows there. And these provinces will activate by growing trees, providing rice if they have a rice patty there, or flooding if they are empty. If they're already flooded, then the water cascades down, potentially removing anything located in a downstream province. In the last phase, players fulfill the shogun's demands, which will require them to spend resources in exchange for endgame victory points.
There are two on display at the beginning of the game with two more added each round. Importantly, players fill the spots one at a time in turn order with players who later fulfill the same demands getting less points. At the end of the game, players will score for the Shogun's demands that they fulfilled, the Shogun's favor cards, which task players with completing objectives on their province board from built structures, and if they've progressed enough on the study track, they'll also score for trees remaining on their board. The player with the most points wins. As we mentioned in the intro, we both greatly enjoyed Ringo. It just does so much right. Starting in the beginning, the Edeto Council phase and bidding for rewards is really spicy. And it's really interesting that the ramifications of that come back around in the Shogun's demand phase. In particular, what we really enjoyed is the fact that even if you go in and you don't get the rewards that you were aiming for, most of the rewards are pretty great. So, you don't come away feeling too sour. And similarly in the Shogun's demand phase, because a lot of the resources you generate, it feels like their main purpose is to be fed into the Shogun's demands because that gets you a lot of points. You can in fact be blocked off because there are depending on player count, you have a different number of options to contribute. And for example, in a two-player game, only each demand can be done once essentially
one player. So then as soon as Tally does it, it's blocked off forever. And in a lot of games, this would then create maybe a bad feeling because now you've got you've worked towards something and it's been taken away. But what's quite nice here is that all the resources have other uses and you can feed them into other elements of the game to do different things. And then this will give you an edge and you'll get to do things that the other players haven't done because they've obviously just spent all their resources for points. And the hope is that by this roundabout way, you can kind of get some points in another way. And I just really like that element of it that you're not feeling left out. The core of the game, the province phase, is a really neat puzzle. It's a very weird, very misty type of gameplay because when you start, you don't necessarily have so much direction. So you just start doing things because it seems like a good idea or because you want to play with this element of the game and then that changes your board and it has ramifications and then you spend the game dealing with them, following up on them and basically trying to also counteract the effects of the weather or kind of work with them depending on if they're positive or negative for you. So the weather is something that's a terrific addition because it creates some spice. It creates some uncertainty.
It creates Shard and Freuden when your opponents are getting flooded and the stuff's getting washed away. It's great. And without it, this would be one of those games where you have people online saying if you ever want to win, you have to do these seven steps first because it'll be very predictable. But thankfully, it's not. And one thing that Ringo does which I realize is one of the things I really enjoy in games is where it has very simple actions and it has very simple rules but it's engaging and it gives you a lot of decisions as a player because what it does is it keeps a simplicity but it makes things complex you could say by giving you a lot of different spinning plates. So you're running from place to place. You're you're cutting down this tree because now it's so tall it's never going to grow anymore. You're dealing with this flood over here. You're building a building and that's what's really fun about it because you the decisions are interesting but everything's simple. So you don't have this unnecessary complexity to kind of m your way and slow things down and make things more difficult than they have to be. really like how you have the different types of workers that can do different actions as it keeps the decision space interesting, particularly with the spatial element of the worker placement. It's also really nice that even though you do a bit of everything, you can really speck into certain scoring conditions like buildings or fulfilling Shogun's demands and play around with different strategies game to
game.
Now, there are some issues that will pop up for some people. So with the different workers, I actually don't think that's a problem that they do different things and you have different types because of the excellent player rates. However, what I think sometimes people might struggle with is the fact that these workers can do two to three actions or at least some of them and when you place them on the board and you're doing them, some people might end up forgetting if they've taken their actions what action they're on and have trouble with that. So while I will say that we have not had a problem with this and I don't think it's going to be a common problem and in fact most of the actions are very uh very quick to take. So that's in part why it's not a problem to have this system. The study action for example that does you move up a track you get bonuses and then you're doing something over here and then you're coming back and you're going oh is was that my second or or my third action? And it could just be that someone at the table talks to you.
Someone asks you a question. You respond to them and you look down, you go, "Oh, oh no, I don't know what I was doing or or where I was." So, just something to keep in mind because there's no way to track the actions you're doing. Then, uh, this game has simultaneous play as we described and it's actually one of the strengths of the game. It's one of my favorite parts. But the issue comes in that well, it's just the same issues that you'll always have in simultaneous play. You don't know what the other players are doing. So if they're making mistakes, there's no way to know or just if someone's outright cheating, which hopefully shouldn't be too much of a problem, but it can happen. And of course, you could play this game in kind of turn order the first couple of times to make sure everyone understands everything. But then I worry that that will kind of make it go so much slower and maybe double the play time. And part of what is great about Ringo is the fact that it's kind of so so sharp and short and quick and uh immersive because you're always doing something. And I worry that takes all of that out of it and it becomes something that's too long for what it is and that might give people a negative experience. and then they end up not continuing with it to play it simultaneously and missing out on the kind of greatness of the game. So I I think that's just some concerns that I have and that people might want to
consider and that was a worry of mine because when you play simultaneously you do get the best of Ringo. So the decision making and crunch it gives you in the time it takes to play is kind of unparalleled. I can't think of many other games that are doing that. And we're averaging about 40 minutes a game. I think if you add more players, went up to four players and it's not their first game, you could probably it probably wouldn't add too much time as well. So I I think it sits in a really great space and I hope people uh get to experience it in the best way, which is simultaneously. Now, I did have a slight worry that long term is the freshness going to be there because you're doing a lot of the same things every time, but what I just said also alleviates that worry in a sense because it's not got a lot of competition for what it's going to give you in so little time. So, it almost doesn't matter in that sense. And on top of that, which this wasn't in the prototype, but in the full game, there's going to be a backside of the province boards, which is going to be more asymmetrical, and it's going to introduce new gameplay mechanisms. So, I think that's probably going to spice things up as well. Final thoughts, Tally, what didn't you tell me just before we started rolling?
I said, I think it is very great
and then done. So, there you go. Final thoughts. No, it's um I think we both really enjoyed it. For me, it was one of those games. So, I I'm not necessarily surprised that I liked it, but it was certainly one of those games where you read the rules and it's all quite straightforward and you're a bit like, ooh, is this going to be particularly interesting? Like, is there going to be much of a game here and then obviously I was delighted to find out that it all comes together really well. You know, there's all these nice little elements. We like the province phase. We like the Edeto phase. We like the uh Shogun's Demand phase. We like, you know, the weather. It's basically we like all the phases and it's just really interesting. The core is really interesting.
I think basically it's kind of way way better than the sum of all its parts maybe. Um because if you see each of individual element, it's not super unique or anything, but then all together it it's just so smooth and it just works so well with the simultaneous actions and it's snappy and the rules overhead is pretty low, but at the same time you can still try different strategies game to game.
So it's aesthetic. The player guide or the player is super easy to follow. So very low barrier to getting into it. I felt it was very easy to get into. So it's just for me like a really really great allrounder.
Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. Better than the the sum of its parts. So I think we'll leave it there. Please remember that what you see is a prototype. So it's not the final game, although I think it's, you know, 95% of the way there. But just be aware. Now, if you have any questions, of course, you can ask us. If you want to subscribe, then we would really appreciate that. Uh, but thank you for watching and we hope to see you next time. Goodbye. Five.