Umbra Via | Check It Out! (Episode #22)

all of the games we played were really close there's not a game where anybody gets ahead and the reason for that hello everybody my name is ilya and my name is tyler together we make up cauvery a couple that loves to play board games that we do if you're new here hit that subscribe button stick around for more fun videos like this one this is our weekly check it out video where we introduce various board games to you this week this week this week this week what do we have umbra beer check it out umbravia is published by pandasaurus games it's designed by connor wake and illustrated by eddie shiloh and steve taurus in this game you'll be collecting your soul by finding the soul flowers it has mechanisms of blind bidding route building and area control now will you be the first to recover your soul let's give you a quick overview of how to play like always you'll begin by setting up each player will get a colored bag along with a player bidding mat and a secret board so that they can hide their bids in the center you'll set up the main board the altar board and soul tiles these soul tiles will correspond to the colors of each of the players and you'll also place 11 soul flowers onto those tiles now the goal of umbravia is to be the first player to collect all your soul flowers and your soul tile the soul tile is worth two soulflowers and that'll be important later on so once you've finished all your setup you can start playing the game amber via is divided into three different phases the setup the bidding and then the placement in the round setup you'll begin by flipping over the tiles and placing them in random orientations onto the alter board make sure not to rotate them though because it's very important for how this game plays then you'll move on to the bidding phase in this phase you'll start by drawing three flowers from your bag you'll put them down onto your altar based on which tiles you'd like to win soul flowers are worth two points and energy flowers are only worth one once everybody has completed their bidding you'll simultaneously reveal your personal altar boards and place your bidding tokens onto the main altar board where the tiles are once that's all completed you'll do that one more time repeat through the bidding process and then once that's completed we get to move on to the final phase now the last phase is the placement phase you'll take a look at how many flowers are on each tile and the one with the least will get to go first and then they'll go in ascending order and the person with the highest bid for talgas to place that tile now when you place tiles you have to begin in the center and start placing adjacent and your goal is to create and close off pathways because once they're closed off the summoning can happen now important thing to note here is once you place tiles the sole tiles will actually be discarded from the game so they're only good for bidding but not for claiming that tile in the pathway so be careful now once the top once one of the pathways is complete there's no more tiles that can be placed to continue it you can score that pathway in a summoning you take a look at how many energy flowers per color are on that path and the person with the most wins the path meaning they get the length of the path in soul flowers so right here a path of five so that player gets five the second place person gets half of that rounded down so that would be two and then if there's still one more which there is that person gets half of the half which is just one and those will go into their bags now if there's ever a tie for the tile placement or scoring the paths you'll notice a little section right here which is the tie breaker path the ties are determined by this order now if you ever win the tie through this order your token goes to the very bottom so you won't win the next tie so kind of keep cycling through who wins the ties once all three phases have been completed you'll discard any of the unused tiles and you'll start this whole process again however the game comes to an end when somebody's able to remove their soul tile the soul tile has a few rules that need to be completed in order to be able to take them first of all you'll have to have taken all the soul flowers that were placed onto the soul tile off second you'll need to have one a path that round and the last thing that needs to happen in order to claim that soul tile is you need to have made a path that was at least two in length and that's because the soul tile needs two soul flowers to come off once your soul token has been taken you will be declared the winner so what do you think well i really enjoyed this game i'm typically not a big fan of bidding games so for me it's this one i was a little bit nervous coming into but i love the blind bidding aspect i also like that you get to see the bit like the bits halfway through yeah so like the two-step bidding because you'll see instantly once you like you reveal that first bit to see oh tyler's going for that third tile and if he gets it he can complete a path so i need to also go for that tile to stop him from getting it and that can become really interesting on the other hand too you can play um you can play the mind games by bidding on tiles that you may not necessarily want but you pretend that you want them the first phase to potentially win the other ones next days it all depends on who you're playing with there's also a lot of variability because you're not because you can't rotate tiles when you play them so however they come out that's how they have to stay on the board which creates some really unique moments because you really want that top but it just doesn't work in the instance on the board right now so you're trying to think of how can you create that opportunity yeah and it's one of those build up games too where like it feels pretty slow at the start because nothing particularly is happening in the summoning area but once a few tiles start to go on to the main board it gets really really really intense and the couple times that we were there was a couple times when we played it that the game um felt like it was easily going to be won by one player and then all of a sudden it just snowballed and then the other player ended up taking the win and it was a lot of fun yeah we played this game a few times now online and in person and i think that's the really big selling feature for me for it is all of the games we played were really close there's not a game where anybody gets ahead and the reason for that is because if you do win a big path early on in the game your bag all of a sudden has a lot of soul flowers in it yeah so you're able to win and bid on tiles but they won't have any energy flowers so once you actually put them on the path they don't really help you yeah so i really really like that tucking pull because even if you do really well in the beginning you're kind of setting yourself up where you need to get lucky or play something right to win so you have to kind of gradually build it up almost yeah it's like this small little detail just like change the color of the tile kind of thing and it can make a pretty big impact on how the game plays out so why should you check it out good question [Music] no this game is a lot of fun it's very suspenseful it's got like these spooky vibes but also like gorgeous feel to it because the flowers in this game are stunning um and it's very it feels very vibrant when you're playing it and it's really pretty and your bags are all the matching colors too so i really like the combination of the really vibrant colors and then the black and the grays yeah uh beyond that the mechanics are fantastic uh like tyler said there's a lot of suspense there's a lot of kind of oh i can't believe you did that there's so many big moments in this game where you'll have this path of eight and everyone's like one or two flowers often they're just trying to complete it and it's it's very fun yes yeah and like like ilya said the mechanics there's bidding there's area control and there's like root building so it is it takes three different mechanics and just clumps them together very well and if you're not a big fan of bidding games this is still worthwhile to check it out because i'm typically not a big fan of bidding games but this one completely sold me so now i'm reconsidering my life choices and saying maybe we need more bidding games maybe i was wrong who knows so why shouldn't you check it out well it is more of an abstract game so if you're looking for a game that has more of a theme and you want to be drawn more into the story at the end of the day you are trying to put your soul back together but it's more in the words and there's not really much connecting that to the actual gameplay yeah i i think i i think i mostly agree i think they lay it out in the book that yes they lay the story out really well in the book which is super nice and then you can get more attached to the theme if you're if you're if you're a reader yep um the one thing i'll say is that there's definitely even though it's secret bidding you can definitely tell when people are getting ahead that there are obvious interactions that need to happen between the other players to say mitigate um the winner at that point from winning the game which adds to the the like experience of the game but at the same time if you're not invested in trying to like i wouldn't say gang up gang up's the wrong way to say that but like uh knowing like focusing on trying to make it so that another person doesn't succeed then that this game might cross a line i guess yeah there's definitely been times where all of us look at each other and say tyler's gonna win if we don't all do something together yeah so if you're not a fan of that experience then this may not be the game for you yeah so overall we absolutely adore this game it's beautiful it's suspenseful it's engaging it's dynamic uh it's a little package that's just filled with love and souls yeah both spooky and delightful yeah if you enjoy bidding games if you enjoy sitting at the edge of your seat if you want to you know find your soul finally this may be the game for you also if you already have your soul it's still a good game you can lose it get lost in umbravia now that i've realized i may be wrong about bidding games uh i would love to know what other bidding games we should check out and take a look at so if you have any in the comments answer a question and let us know what bidding games you enjoy the first game i always think of when it comes to bidding games is whitson wagers i love banking maybe i do love fitting names after all it's like a fun little trivia game that has bidding to it so it's probably my favorite out of the genre it's very fun yeah i can't think of many more so yes leave a comment telling us your favorite bidding game and we'll hopefully be able to check them out soon well thank you so much for watching if you enjoy what you saw subscribe give us a thumbs up hit the little bell notification to know when our next videos are being posted we typically post once or twice a week and if you have any ideas of what games we should cover what challenges we should do or what we should talk about drop in the comments down below we love talking to each and every one of you and really appreciate all the support exactly but that's all the time we have for today until next time this is us checking out bye [Music] you