Rainbow Blvd | How Will You Manage Your Time? | Board Game Kickstarter Preview
Transcript
Hello everybody. My name is Ilia.
My name is Tyler. Together we make up Cave, a couple that loves to play board games.
And today we'll be telling you about Rainbow Boulevard.
Rainbow Boulevard is a one to four player game designed by Adam Wise and published by Steel Wing Games, who helps sponsor this video. Now, what you see in this video is a prototype, and the final version may be subject to change. But with that said, let's go to the table. Let's give you an overview of how this game works. In Rainbow Boulevard, you're competing to earn the most prestige by completing blueprints and contracts as you build rainbows throughout Hopewell Springs. The game takes place over a series of work days. And instead of following a normal turn order, everything you do costs time. Your architect moves along this track as you take actions, and whoever is currently earliest in the track takes the next turn. On your turn, you'll choose one action with the main one being to add a new piece to one of the rainbows on the board. Rainbows are built across three different levels. You'll start with the small pieces at the bottom, then build medium pieces on top of those, followed by large pieces to complete the rainbow.
Each level can be made using either two half arcs or a single full ark. The larger the piece you build, the more time it costs. A small half ark, for example, only takes 1 hour, while a large full arc takes six. After building, you'll move the corresponding color on the market track based on the value of the piece you added. But whenever you cover an existing color, that color also loses its value. So, if I place this medium yellow piece on top of a small blue piece, yellow increases by two because that's the piece I just added, while blue decreases by one because that piece is no longer visible top down. And both of what you build and how you change the market will tie into the two types of cards you'll be trying to complete, blueprints and contracts.
This is how you'll gain prestige points in this game. Blueprints are based on the rainbows themselves. Some might ask you to build two specific colors on the same level of a rainbow, while others care about how pieces are stacked or where certain colors appear around Hopewell Springs. For example, you might need the same color appearing in multiple rainbows along a road, within a river, or across different districts. As soon as the condition of one of your blueprints is met, you'll complete it for one prestige, even if another player was the one who made it happen. You'll start the game with four blueprints, and the beginning of each new workday, you'll choose between one and four new blueprints to add to your hand. Taking more gives you more opportunities to score, but any blueprints you haven't completed by the end of the game are worth negative one prestige each.
Contracts, on the other hand, are all about the market track. You might need a color to reach exactly 10, have two or three colors at the same value, arrange several colors in a specific order, or make one color the absolute highest and another the absolute lowest. Contracts can be worth anywhere from one to four prestige. And each one also has a contract stamp, which can earn you additional prestige at the end of the game. Some contracts can even be completed in either direction. You'll earn more prestige for completing the main condition, but you can flip the card around and take one prestige if you manage to complete the alternate condition instead. On these contracts, each side also has a different stamp, giving you another reason to consider which way you'd like to complete it. And unlike blueprints, there's no penalty for contracts you don't finish. So, you're free to collect as many as you want. You'll start the game with two contracts, but there are a few ways to pick up more throughout the game. One of the actions you can take is draw contracts, where you can either spend 3 hours to draw two cards and discard one, or spend 5 hours to draw three and discard one. And whenever you complete an entire rainbow, you'll also draw a new contract card. Building and drawing contracts will make up most of your actions, but there are a couple of other actions available as well. Once a rainbow has been completed, you can spend three hours to destroy one of its large pieces, returning it to the supply and revealing the pieces underneath. The shifts and market again, lowering the value of the color you removed while
increasing the value of whatever you uncovered. And that's the actions. You'll pay the time cost to move your architect forward on the time track. The player who is furthest back on the time track will take their next turn. You'll continue taking actions like this until your architect reaches or passes 700 p.m. Once that happens, you're finished for the day. You can work overtime by taking an action that carries you beyond 7, but how late you finish determines when you start the following day. Everyone gets 12 hours off. So, if you finish at 10 p.m., you'll start tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. Now, you keep playing like this until the final workday has been completed. You'll add up your prestige and determine the winner. Each completed blueprint is worth one prestige, while every blueprint you didn't complete is worth a negative one. You'll also score for the city council bonus, earning three prestige if you completed the most blueprints, or one prestige if there's a tie. Next, you'll add the prestige from all the contracts you've completed throughout the game. And finally, you'll score your contract stamps, earning additional prestige for your largest set of matching stamps and your largest set of different stamps. You'll use the market track to tally the scores, and whoever has the most prestige wins.
Now, with that overview out of the way, let's talk about the key features of Rainbow Boulevard.
Starting off with player interaction. This is a game where you're not only watching everybody, you're watching the board, you're paying attention to every single move because
what other players do may benefit your blueprints or contracts. And especially when you have a handful of them, you're always looking to see, hm, will Tyler do the thing I really want him to do.
Exactly. the timing in a lot of the contracts and the blueprints are going to be very important for how the other players are doing, especially when you take into consideration the number of players you're playing with and the way that the actions are made because it's not a clockwise order type game and you are spending time to do these actions. The turn order not being clockwise like Tyler just said is really interesting because you may have multiple turns in a row if you take a bunch of little actions. Maybe you're building those half little arcs trying to move up the market tracks so that your contracts can be reached. And this is particularly important in a two-player game because you're really playing headto-head. If someone gets further ahead than maybe they build that big sixhour piece, you have a little bit of time to do them, do some big brain thinking and get those contracts in order.
Yeah, you can get away with taking a lot of small actions all at once, but at the same time, taking that big action can be super beneficial. So, you do, especially in the two-player game, have to weigh the odds of, do I do this now so that the other player can do a bunch of other stuff realistically based on the contracts and the blueprints you have, it's going to be a tight decision. And that's where the player interaction really shines because you are paying attention to both those aspects. What is being built, where you are in a turn order, and maybe hoping or encouraging players to place some pieces in strategic spots that you would like. Are you bluffing? Nudge, nudge.
Are you telling the truth? Is that what you really want? Well, I'm not going to place it there. I'm going to place it somewhere else.
There could be some mind games in this for sure.
Definitely. Now, that's a good segue to our second point. Since you said mind games, let's talk about the mind. Let's talk about the big brain.
Ah, yes.
Because these contracts can make you feel so smart when you're able to figure out the exact piece to place. So other pieces are moved in such a way that everything lines up perfectly and your contract is reached. You just feel like a genius.
Now don't get me wrong, this game looks beautiful on the board. But it will sneak up on you when it comes to thinking about how you can rearrange certain pieces or I shouldn't say rearrange but place certain pieces and then move up on those tracks to really be able to manipulate it in the way that you need. There's a bit of thought that goes into every single move.
And there's a lot of points that can be scored from contracts as well because not only are you scoring points for the contracts themselves, but you're trying to collect different stamps and same stamps to score even more points. So there's layers in thinking of trying to figure out what you can do. And when all the rainbows fall into pieces of how you want them to be, it just feels so good.
So another important thing about what I was talking about is the timing of all of this. because not only are you able to do certain things out of turn, you'll be able to complete some of your blueprints, so other players will be hopefully helping you unintentionally, but it's important for you to be able to time some of your blueprint cards or your contracts at the exact same time because you're never going to get another chance to do them again, or at least you might not. And sometimes you may neglect a couple of them. You can say, "I'm not going to focus on this." Maybe the board state will naturally get to that point where it just works out for me. Or maybe I'll focus on it in the later rounds because putting all my energy and time into this today.
No, [clears throat] I got I got some more important work to do.
Yes, exactly. And I think that brings us to our last point, which is this game really builds itself out. Of course, I mean, you are building these rainbows, but as you see it expand, this board becomes filled with a bunch of different colors, and it's just beautiful to look at. The little architects as well, the little bee, there's a bird, there's a turtle. They're just fun. There's little flares that really make the game stand out. And the tactile experience of it all of just placing the pieces, making sure they all fit into place. It's It's what board games are truly about.
Now, who do you think this game is for? Well, if you enjoy ruleslike games, but a lot of potential for strategy and big brain thinking, this game may just be for you. There are so many layers of trying to outweight your opponents, trying to time everything correctly so everything falls into place and a little bit of luck as well with the card draw cuz if you draw some blueprints that are already done, hey, that's just points. You just get those points and they just build up. It's a fantastic feeling. I even think to Ilia's point is that the timing of this game if you're interested in almost optimizing your time, but then again being able to roll with the punches as other players are going to be modifying the game state on their turns and hopefully you'll be able to utilize all of that. If that's something that appeals to you, Rainbow Boulevard is something you should definitely check out.
Exactly. Well, this game is coming to Kickstarter and you can learn more about it by clicking the link down in the description. Click it, maybe follow it if the game is not live yet, but if it is live, peruse, learn much, much more about it. The campaign will include a couple of modules as well you can check out as well as a solo mode which you can learn much much more about. So, hit that link
and if you found this video helpful, make sure you hit that thumbs up button, hit that subscribe button if you're new here, cuz we love talking board games.
We sure do. Now, for our question of the day today, which color of the rainbow is your favorite?
There's actually a lot of colors in the rainbow. Technically,
red.
Any of the reds.
Do you have a favorite red?
Uh, I'm not too sure about that.
Crimson,
maybe. Maybe. Let us know your answers down in the comments below. But until next time, we'll see you later.
Bye.