Let's Talk Board Games #24 - 5 Board Game Reviews

hi everyone my name is Monique and I'm naine from before you play and welcome to another episode of let's talk board games where we pretty much just talk about some of the games that we've been playing and since this is our first episode of the year we figured we'll talk about some of the games that we played over the holidays yes we had a family staying with us for a couple weeks we also visited my brother out of town and we played some of these games with them so we are going to be talking about five different games that we played over the past couple weeks uh these all came to us as review copies so just be aware of that ahead of time and I'm ready to get into it if you are yes go for it okay the very first game that we're going to talk about came to us from Randolph games and it is designed by Vincent Berger and it's called cdsk yes now cdsk is a trivia based game so it's a little hoot for the family uh and essentially what you have here is you have a board with a bunch of different uh kind of categories where you're going to have your Pawn piece starting at the starting line and you're going to have to try to answer various different questions to try to make it to the end game yes this is a trivia game through and through and it is called cdsk because the different letters represent different categories of questions now one thing though uh the game does not come with pawns so that's sort of part of the uh the cookie thing about it you can choose whatever Pawn you would like to represent you but yes it is a board where the main goal is to try to get to the very end of the line and uh the way that the game works is on your turn you're going to answer a question based off of the spot that your Pawn is on at the start of your turn so if you are on a c-s space then I believe the category is curious and if you're curious the rest of them are D delightful s for seasoned and K for knowledge and those categories are supposed to represent different things yeah so like d Discovery or sorry D delightful is movies music and sports that's kind of the category uh knowledge would be science nature history and geography those kind of questions so you kind of know what you're getting yourself into when you land on a particular spot yes but each card uh has 10 questions on it because you're always going to start whoever's reading the question is always going to start by asking uh naen on a scale of 1 to 10 how well do you know blank where blank is the the subject of all these questions you're going to provide a number based off of how strong your expertise is in that subject and then the questions are uh rated by difficulty depending on the number that you choose so if you choose 10 you're going to be given the most difficult question the most randomly difficult question that somebody could probably think of for this subject and if you choose one it's going to be something really easy you're definitely going to get that answer right how well do you know dogs well I'm gonna say one dogs have a tendency to meow bark or you know or squeak yeah exactly and you be like oh okay I got that one now if your answer was correct then you get to move up the number of spaces equal to that number and so it's high risk High reward so if you guessed on a 10 and you were correct then you get to move up a lot of spaces but if you're incorrect you don't lose anything you just stay on the same space and you'll have to try again with the same category of question question uh on your next turn yeah and so as you uh see the whole board is laid out for you so if you're like well I know a lot about dogs but I don't want to take a risk and go seven because Seven's going to land me on music and movies and I don't know too much about movies so maybe I'll say a six instead so I can land on a category uh that I know a little bit more more comfortable about so that I can advance most likely quicker on my very next turn and the other way is true too if you're stuck on a category that you're just really terrible at then you can always just choose one you're going to get the answer correct chances are prob uh and you'll progress at least one space so that is the game in a nutshell now there are other spaces also that I forgot what they're called now but there are these ticketed spaces that work a little bit differently uh typically you're given a prompt and you have to provide several answers and for every answer that you get correct you progress one space on the track and if you reach the very uh last space By the way then you have to answer one final question which is its own category of cards like the boss question yes it's a boss question it's usually really difficult but if you can answer that then you win and so the game actually has uh two lengths of play you can do the full game which is the entire board or you can start on the express start which is about halfway through and you can also play it in teams but that is essentially cdsk in a nutshell navine what are your thoughts I like it um I like trivia I like um triv games you know like when I when you know when you were a kid and they had that little like thing in in the little screen in like restaurants and stuff and they had a little trivia on there did you ever have that I don't think no is that a something called some people may know this but like at pizza places and stuff like that we still love playing that on that like while you're just kind of waiting for your pizza anyway this is a trivia game and I do enjoy trivia games now the question uh obviously is going to be replayability but uh what is pretty nice is because of the way the game is set up there is that 1 through 10 so each question or each category there's technically 10 different questions so yes you might see the same ones over and over but if you say three on it the first time you get it and then maybe you go for a five or six the next time then you know it's going to be a completely different prompt so um you know we've played it several times and each time we've played it uh I haven't really like found myself catching the exact same questions which is kind of nice um and you know it seemed like your family was having a good time with it my brother had a good time with it this was a hit with our families and um I will say I don't I don't tend to I enjoy trivia games but I am awful at them so I always kind of try to like you know trying them and then I always Crash and Burn uh this one was no exception but I enjoyed this one quite a bit I like this one so much because it is so funny like you're given a topic and you have no idea what what's going to be uh coming at you until they read the question or they read the the card and it's like naven on a scale of 1 to 10 how well do you know Barbie Barbie I was like random random stuff and you're always thinking like well maybe this is my chance to get ahead and then you're given the prompt and you have to admit that you have no idea sometimes you know a category and it's like oh I'm going to go for an eight or N I didn't know that about that category yeah so yeah it's it's it's fun we had a good time with it um I will say the long game the couple times that we played it we did get a little bit uh tripped up by being a little too confident and sometimes you can be held back and you're not getting off that starting block so if you want to just have a nice quick fun In-N-Out experience the express game gives you basically everything that you're looking for in the game if you wanted to play it quickly and then move on to something else so that's also going to be very dependent we we played this game at lower player counts and in higher player counts you can play in teams so I don't know how that will impact how quickly you progress up this board but it's really going to be dependent on how people answer because if people are choosing a 10 or 7 through 10 and they're getting those questions correct then they're going the game is going to be much faster now I also don't know how this is going to impact your experience depending on where you are uh just because of some of the cultural based things in popular culture that'll arise but uh a strong majority of the questions I feel like are more General also there there are some questions that will be I think uh relevant in a particular time era like so the one of the the prompts is uh and it's not really a spoiler but it's uh the salaries of current NBA players like the top salaries so it's like I don't know if you pull this off your shelf 10 years from now if that's still going to be you know like yeah it's going to be so that that might be something so but for the most part we found that that the the questions are going to be fairly self-contained yeah they're very fair and I will Echo what naine said uh we played this game at four the full game and it did feel kind of long but the express start uh for for smaller player accounts is great so anyway that is cdsk it was a big hit uh in both of our families it was all right next up we have a small card game and this is actually part of a series of games it is called simolo so this was published by horrible Guild and there are a bunch of different themes for this specific game this one happens to be myths so think like Greek gods myology Greek mythology stuff like that um and if you've never played this game before it is very simple and very fast so you have a deck of cards that all have different faces typically of different characters depending on the theme it's a fully Cooperative game where one person is trying to guide the rest of the group to try to figure out the one character that they chose at the beginning of the game during setup yep out of the entire deck and so you're going to have a grid of cards that includes that one character that uh the rest of the group is trying to narrow it down to and so each round the clue Giver will play a card from their hand to try to lead them to that card depending on the orientation that they play the clue in so if they position it vertically then they're saying that the the card has a similarity similar characteristics of the card you just played to what you're trying to guide the group towards yes and if they position it horizontally then then it's something is different right and that is entirely subjective that's the entire point of the game the whole game is subjective yeah yeah the thing is these characters are all adorned in different things depending on their character they also have a background color so there's a lot of different aspects that you can be taking into consideration if you're the clue Giver yeah it might be something like okay similar it's like okay well these characters are wearing hats this character has a hat so is she saying that all people with Hats I want to guess towards so maybe I'll eliminate all the the people not wearing a hat or something because each round the rest of the group has to eliminate a certain number of cards that they think think the character is not and that's going to be equal to whatever round you're in so in the first round it's pretty low stakes you just remove one card the second round you remove two and you pretty much keep going until it's a 50/50 in the final round where you'll have to guess which one it is between the two yeah the good thing is as if as you get as long as you don't eliminate the wrong card the one you know kind of death card uh then you know the the clue Giver is kind of giving you a story cuz you can still look back on the similarities and differences from the previous rounds so you can see like well okay okay there's a hat there and okay she she said it's she diagonal or or horizontal on a female so maybe it's a male character and so you're kind of just like slowly just trying to pick away at the cards for good or for bad because a clue Giver is only has a few options in their hand it's just like any other game where there's a clue giver and they're limited by their hand you have to choose between one of those rightly yeah sometimes you're going to find yourself like the background color hopefully they they understand that the background color is what I'm trying to say one thing on their hat Fe there's a feather yeah or a little Jew or whatever reason you make so if ever the group removes the card obviously then they they lose the game immediately so that is pretty much how all of the simolo games play it's really quick and I actually really really like this system now I will say we did struggle a little bit with this deck in particular because of its theme uh so I would probably suggest choosing a deck that you resonate with because it'll make the game easier to play but otherwise the game is really quick it plays in like 10 minutes and you can pretty much play it with all ages is I think I mean the box says seven and up but it's just similarities and differences yeah you point out the differences point out the similarities right simow uh so this game what you can do uh which is interesting is you can mix and match the decks so you can have one theme that's laid out as the display and a completely different theme deck as the uh cards that the clue Giver is going to be using so it can kind of create different combinations and mechanics so that is Simo mits uh there you go all right next up we have a game from allplay this is a two-player only trick- taking game so we played this game together we did not play this one with our families we're family it is called sale that's true uh in this game we are working together it's fully cooperative and we're working together to try to sail our boat to a certain destination on a map but it is a trick taking game so you're doing this with cards from your hand the way that the game works is it is a standard trick taking game in the way that you play your cards uh each round one player is going to lead a trick by playing a card from their hand and then the other player has to follow suit if they have it um and whoever plays the higher valued card wins the trick but the point in this game is not really to win tricks like in other standard trick taking games the point is the cards all have symbols on them and you're trying to match them together because there is a uh there's a handy dandy guide that tells you what combinations of symbols will allow you to do what and so for example if the two cards that you played had steering wheels on them then that combination will allow you to move your boat towards the player who won the trick so they're going to have to move the boat's going to have to move in a diagonal fashion now there are roadblocks on the map uh there just areas that you can't go through or areas that will force you to take damage and there are also some symbol combinations that will require you to take damage by the Kraken yeah the ultimate goal of the game is for every scenario your sailboat that you're sailing hence the name sail starts at uh very one end of kind of this map and you're trying to sail it and navigate around various Krakens um mountainous regions and it's kind of like in a checkerboard Argyle like style so uh the reason why you would maybe want to throw a trick is because it's like hey we can't move I can't win this trick and and use the move action because that means the boat's going to gravitate towards me which is right next to the Kraken which is going to cause damage to us so I need to throw it and then you have to win this trick so that we can kind of move it in the diagonal towards you and all the while we're trying to kind of weave around these different things to get to the Final End destination yes now there is a time limit so some of the scenarios have these storm clouds that you have to at least reach by a certain round and there's also a certain time limit for the entire game so it's quite difficult I think it was a really really interesting spin on trick-taking because you are thinking in a trick-taking fashion but the point of the game is not the actual trick taking card game it's so that you can sail this boat and try to match those symbols yeah this game also has that element of at the beginning of every round you're allowed to pass one card to your teammate and that one card if you know you're trick taking that pass is very crucial in communicating so many things if I'm passing you maybe a nine with a certain symbol then you should probably be aware of what that means when you look at the menu of the different uh um combinations of the different symbols that you can kind of put together you're saying wait does does that mean you have no more and you want me to take control of the suit or oh maybe you want us to match these two pairs and play it at the right time but because it's a trick-taking game sometimes it doesn't all uh come together because you have to follow a suit so that's where things can fall apart for you so that is why the combination of these two uh large pieces of the game fit in really interestingly the fact that you're just trying to combine symbols and move the boat but also you're playing this trick taking game so it requires you to count suits to make sure that you know because there's a guide that tells you all the numbers and what the symbols are on the numbers and all the cards are unique so you can sort of card count and play your tricks so that you you are giving the other player the opportunity to play the card that you really want to combine with if that makes sense and then there's also a mechanism where there's a kraken that has their own deck and um if you bleed that deck out and you have to reshuffle it and there's no more cards to be reshuffled then the Kraken has basically got you and sunk your ship yeah so um it's very very interesting uh there are I believe six scenarios in the so there's an intro scenario and five uh regular base scenarios in the base game and so that can be expanded with the seaf fars expansion I think it's that adds an additional six scenarios yeah that initial uh starting scenario is very useful I know sometimes when we ever when we get a game we're like let's just jump right into the first one it was actually very helpful to to play the uh the intro scenario to really understand like the oh so if we put these two cards together yes we move the boat but we also take a damage and like those are like those little intricacies that you should be aware of when you go into it so it's tough It's A Hard game it really forces you to work together it feels good when you win though it does when you get to the end you're like and you really do feel like you're sailing this it's going to sound ridiculous CU this is a trick T game but but halfway through the first time we were playing I was thinking this really feels like we're navigating this boat because you're card counting and you're trying to figure out uh which cards to play so that your opponent or your teammate has the opportunity to play the ideal card as well one last big caveat that we didn't mention is everybody has an asymmetric power at the beginning yes that's right and so there was times in our in our plays where it's like I don't know if I'm ever going to use this asymmetric power but then you get to like the final three and you see like three cards in each person's hand and I'm like wait if we play the right combination of cards I can play my asymmetric power finally and that is very very satisfying when you get to do that yes because just right off the gate I guess uh the the powers are not super useful but if you can time them at the right time they can really save you so anyway I loved it I thought that this was a really really interesting take on trick taking uh very very refreshing really unique design and the artwork is fantastic so that is sales the fourth game we want to talk about comes from Ravensburger and it is a push your luck Style game called push now push is comprised of a deck of cards that are valued from one through six and have various colors on them I believe it's one of five different colors uh and so basically on your turn you're going to be drawing a card and playing that card to one of three different Stacks yes uh the deck is going to be faced down and uh no matter what the player count is it's always going to be up to three stacks that you're making on your turn and the rules are you can only add a card to a stack if the same number or the same color doesn't already exist in that stack and so the whole purpose of this is at some point you'll decide to stop adding cards and at that point everybody around the table can take turns taking an entire stack so if you're playing with more than three players then people are not going to be able to take a stack during that turn yeah cuz you get first dibs if you're the one that's drawing and placing it out you get to say I'm the I'm going to take this particular stack yes but if you ever a draw a card because you keep pushing your luck by drawing more cards that you cannot place in any of the Three Stacks then you bust and uh you do not get to claim any of these Stacks but everybody else around the table still does now there are a couple of other cards that do certain things like there I believe there's a card that that reverses the order of taking Stacks never the order of play but it's just the order of that you get to actually take the stack and another one that allows you to roll the diey now the thing is when you claim your stack you're going to put it in Fr front of you in sort of like your score pile and you're going to categorize each number by their color but these Stacks are not safe and so if you ever take a stack that has the Dy uh card on it you're going to be required to roll the Dy and whatever color you roll you have to discard all cards of that color that are in front of you it's not good it's not good because that is your score pile essentially now if ever you want to uh save if you have a really valuable stack of cards and you want to save it so that it there's no risk of it getting removed then on your turn instead of taking a turn where you draw a cards from the deck you can choose to choose one color and put it in your safe pile and so you'll never be Force to discard cards from that pile yeah so if you have if like let's say your red pile has a six a bunch of fives and and a four you're going to be like I don't want to take any more chances I think I'm just going to waste my entire not not waste your turn but waste your turn and save those Reds from any potential negative down in the future which makes for interesting decisions because as the person whose turn it is you are trying to sort of uh balance between pushing continue to push your luck and continuing to play cards but also creating Stacks that are really really good for you because you'll get to choose a stack first but also really not that great for the other players who will get to pick a stack yeah so like if you draw that die you want to put it on the two stacks that you know you're not really gunning for the ones that you don't really want because you want to leave that for your opponents so that they have to roll the die when they take it it is pure push your luck this is one of those straight mechanisms kind of games no real bells or whistles or anything like that yeah down to the die roll even the die roll is technically you're push your luck you're like I just need this to not roll a purple sure enough it rolls a purple you know so um you know it's fine it's it's a fine game uh push your luck is not really one that uh that I enjoy too much we don't gravitate towards push your luck games um we've covered a few of them on our channel in the past uh but we we've always sort of just that that specific you know mechanism of pushing pushing your luck has never really you know seal the deal for us yeah it's it's not one that uh that I felt after we played it it was like ooh I love to play that again sometimes but we always try we'll always try and you push your luck games because there's always exceptions to these things you know and so I I felt like I played this we played this with my sister and I felt like around the table I was the one who enjoyed it the most um your sister was having very bad luck with the diet she was like it would be like doesn't have three of the colors just needs yellow not to roll yellow rolls rolls builds up green needs green nut to roll green rolls and it was like she was pretty much just accumulating cards to discard them to just discard them it happened like multiple times not a good position for her but I think I think it would probably play better at more than three players just because the reverse card uh would probably be more beneficial if there are players who are at risk of not being able to take a stack that's true yeah so for in a three- player game we're pretty much just rotating in a triangle or who is going to get to take the next if you see a d one of those die cards on there that forces you to roll the die you're like man I really hope this reverses cuz I do not want to take that I don't want to take the chance all my cards that want to save are valuable to me so yeah it's okay uh that is push yes Bare Bones push your luck and finally the last game that we're going to be talking about today is a card game for two to five players and it is called Forest Shuffle this is brought To Us by a lookout games and this game came highly recommended by a lot of different people so over the holidays we decided you know let's just play it it's a card game we've had it and we're like it's time to finally play this thing now if you've never played this game before in this game players are competing to grow out uh their own forest that is complete with trees and animals and fungi and all sorts of different things birds and bats yes and it's one of those games where the cards are they're not multi-use they're multi-option cards that sort of synergize with each other it's one of those games where you basically playing cards into your Forest that have scoring conditions and then trying to meet those scoring conditions over and over again so the way the game works is each player has a hand of cards and on your turn you either draw two cards or you play a card into your Forest now the first card that you play into your Forest has to be a tree card because these animals and all the other types of cards can only exist if you have at least one tree in your forest all other cards basically gravitate around the tree MH now when playing any kinds of Cards into your Forest each card has a cost that you have to pay via cards that are in your hand so you're trying to manage your hand in terms of what you actually want to play and keep and what you are okay with discarding yeah all cards are technically valuable in that sense that because they become your currency to play the cards that you truly want to put into play yes and when you discard cards they get discarded face up into a clearing so when somebody else around the table takes an action takes a turn that allows them to draw two cards they can draw from that clearing so you also have to be cautious about what you're discarding because you're giving it to other players now as for the non- tree cards all other cards have uh several options they're either going to be split horizontally or vertically along the card and so if a card is split horizontally that means you can only play it above or below your tree and so basically each tree has the uh the capacity to hold up to four cards one on each of its sides and you can also have multiple trees in your Forest so you don't have to completely build out uh definitely have multiple trees in your Forest yes because they all score different ways but you do not have to build out all of the four sides of a tree before placing a new one before moving on right now some cards have immediate effects that you can take when played into your Forest some cards also provide a bonus if you are able to pay for its cost using only one specific color of card and it'll State on the card uh what that color is but that is a game in a nutshell you're pretty much just building out your Forest um and trying to meet all of the scoring criteria because each card will typically tell you the way that it scores some will just give you a certain number of points and some will give you points depending on what other cards are in your Forest some might be like if you have a bat in the upper portion of this tree then this card will score you 15 points right so you're like okay so Mo'Nique knows I have that card in my tree so she's not discarding bats that can go in the top side of a tree so I got to go find that I got to go dig through the deck and look for that and it's like you know what I'm just going to Pivot because it's never coming yes this is actually exactly that type of game I don't know if there is a specific category that would describe this type of game now where it's basically like you know Arc Nova is similar it's it's a it's a card Digger you're trying to dig for specific types of cards in order to meet your scoring criteria Earth is kind of like that a little like that I think terraforming Mars is also kind of like that so that is that is the main mechanism in this game you digging through the deck and the thing that's interesting is there are a ton of different species of trees and birds and animals and all sorts of just um beings that are in this deck but depending on the player count you remove a certain number of cards so you cannot card count and you you just don't know if what you're looking for is even going to be in the deck there's a large uh deck they're like really really thick stack so there's a ton of different cards in there and um a lot of them just basically have good synergies with other ones and it's just about finding those combinations in making that you don't discard the ones that your opponent really really needs to kind of seal their Victory so it's it this one was tough for me uh games like this where you have to set your your own endgame win conditions and you know you think you're doing pretty well because the math you know gets a little bit wonky mid game you're like I don't know I think scoring nine points on this card seems pretty good and then when you go to endgame scoring and you're like okay I get nine for this card and then your opponent's like yeah this card gets me 21 and you're just like you do you have fantasy Realms trauma yeah super trauma yeah totally it's like oh you oh man you have cards that are giving you like really big points I thought nine was good you know something like that so for context naven is also uh the person who got really angry the first time you played wingspan I did because he just did not have a a session where you were able to find the cards that you needed it was just I was constantly chasing my tail like okay I have this card uh this and I don't have the food for it okay well go to the bird feeder wait there's none of that food in the bird feeder and I can't reset the bird feeder yeah okay so I'll just go get something else and then somebody else resets it it's like there's the food I need but then it's like I have to survive two other turns day and the food's gone so it's like this is not like that obviously because you know it's just the card part you're just the card part it's just the cards so if you played Arc Nova before it's just the card part that's what this game is all about but the thing that's interesting is the way that you build out your Forest because of the whole part where you have to build a tree first and then now you're choosing between the different orientations of the different cards yeah there's also like endgame scoring for if you have the most of this type of tree so I'm like well I have three of them Monique only has two so I really need to keep the leg up here because I really want to score that because in a two-player game especially well if I score that many if I score three for if I have the most then that's a huge differential between the two of us so there's a bunch of different ways you can score here um there's a lot more uh in terms of like the details of each individual card that we can kind of talk about well there are a ton of different scoring yeah there the game comes with like a stack of reference cards that was the first time I'd ever seen that before and I think I had a good laugh when we first were setting it up it's like do I get a reference card it's like no no this is just the reference yeah those are the reference cards every single animal and every single type of being that's in this game so if you see them don't get overwhelmed by them just put them off to the side and basically if you have any questions about any ways that any of these animals score yeah look at the reference cards but I would recommend uh before you get into it if if you've never played it maybe just hand hand like a tiny little stack of the actual cards to every player and let them just kind of just read through once they kind of understand because if you just go straight into it and you're just like I'm just going to see cards and assume that I'm going to find it you know see how it goes or just wing it right wing it for your first game it uh the first time you play it's going to be longer than the the times after that but uh also this game requires a lot of table space because of how you're building out your your Forest potentially three or four players for sure it's because I the first time we played this game I went with a tree strategy cuz I had a few cards that were like one point for every tree or one point for every bird that's on top of a tree so I just had a huge I think you had the one that's like three points for every tree of this variety if you have the most of that variety so it's like get that tree but otherwise this is a game for me that's kind of in that neutral to good uh it's not one that like blew me away or anything like that because I do struggle with these types of games um so you know it's it's a fine game how do you feel oh I liked it um I like I tend to like games like this though where it's basically the card play I raved about fantasy Realms which is not like this by the way not a good comparison but in that sense that like find this to get to this and then if you put them two together it's just a card game it's just a deck of cards this entire game was built off of this deck of cards and I really enjoy games like that so I think I enjoyed this one a lot more than you did but uh we have not played it with more than two players just so you know so I don't know how that would impact the length of the game or the analysis paralysis so anyway that was for shuffle a pleasant surprise for me there you go well there you go those are five of the games that we have been playing recently if you have any opinions about any of the games that we just talked about please let us know in the comments down below we'd love to read those um please also let us know what games you have been playing and anything that we should kind of be looking forward to playing coming up in 2024 thank you all so much for watching the video we hope you enjoyed it if you like to see more videos like this in the future please consider subscribing thank you thanks bye [Music]