Camel Up: Off Season | Camels Must Not Collapse! | Board Game Overview & Review (Episode #57)

0:00 hello everybody my name is ilya and my name is tyler together we make up calvary a couple that loves to play board games and loves camels we do well i don't really like horses they creep me out i like horses but i also like races oh but this isn't a race but this is a check it out where we introduce bass board games to you in hopes that we can find a game that you'll like and this week we're looking at camelot check it out check it out chicken chicken up check it out check it out check it out check it out because it's like riding a horse but we're not in a race but it's a camel i guess the camels are the markets kenmob off-season is designed by stephen kloss and anna apulzer it is published by pretzel games in camelot offseason you'll be doing exactly that with your camels you're no longer off to the races and this time what you'll be doing is making sure all of your camels can carry all the goods and the materials you need to prove that you are the most worthy trader yeah you definitely want to be the wealthiest merchant but how do you do that well what better way to learn than taking a quick look at how to play the game as always you'll begin by setting up each player will get one caravan and a desert tent as well as a set of four different sail overview cards you'll assemble and place the tower by the play

1:31 area with a shuffled deck of goods on top you'll then place the market tile side one face up based on the player count typically player count plus one you'll then draw the corresponding good cards in each of the market the top card icon represents face up goods while the back card icon represents face down goods you'll create a supply of tokens and coins and each player will receive 5 coins to start in camel up off season your goal is to become the wealthiest merchant by be having the most coins by the end of the game the game is played in three phases auction market and sell the first phase is the auction phase each round starts with an auction to see who the first player will be the way your auction will work depends on the top card of the auction deck you'll take a look and this card will indicate the type of auction of the current round the standard auction rules remain however some of these special rules may affect the winning conditions of the auction the way the standard auction works the player will place coins in their hand and reveal them at the same time the highest bid will need to pay their coins and become the starting player now if tied the next highest bid wins and so on it is possible to win with a zero bid now once the first player is determined the second phase comes into play market starting with the first player each player will choose a market card first you'll optionally activate its ability it's ability can sometimes range

3:02 from shifting goods around to peaking at the goods deck as well as obtain various tokens that can help you make an additional sale or peek at various market cards in one of the markets then you'll take all the goods corresponding to that market revealing any of the face down cards and place them in your camels when placing goods in the camels there's a few restrictions there are four different types of goods and a player must assign a different type of good per camel it cannot be reassigned until all goods of that type are sold now you'll notice the limits on each of the camels if you ever place goods exceeding that limit the camel collapses and loses all the goods on its back including the ones you just acquired you'll continue with every player taking a market tile you'll then sell as the third and last phase starting with the first player each player may sell a group of goods you may sell either a part or all of the goods from one of your camels each good is sold in a different way based on an overview card dates are sold in quantities of threes always round down carpets must be sold in a group of at least two different colors with more unique colors yielding more coins pottery must be sold in a group of at least two pottery of the same shape with more of the same shape the more coins now fruit is a little bit different and must be sold in priority meaning all pomegranates must be sold before oranges and so on they also have a value for each sold that's based on their rarity once everyone sells you'll

4:33 place one pound from the supply on the market that wasn't chosen and then flip over all the market tiles that were chosen into a different side you'll then refill the goods and now you're ready to go for the next round once the goods deck runs out you'll reshuffle the discard pile fill the market tiles one more time and that will be the last round during the selfies of the last round players may make one sale from each of their camels if possible you'll tally up your coins and the player with the most wins will you be the wealthiest merchant so what do you think uh i like it um i'm pretty far gone when it comes to bidding games what do you mean by far gone it's actually probably one of my least favorite mechanics that out there now obviously like other people like bidding mechanics so like i'm not one to say much but everyone has different choices exactly you don't have to justify not enjoying that said i do actually um enjoy this one probably more than i enjoy the original camelot so um yeah it was it was it's a fun i i particularly like it and we'll talk about it a little bit more but the varying auction rules and then the mix of set collecting it's very nice one of my favorite mechanics is push your luck and this game certainly has that so i really enjoy that i've really enjoyed this game thoroughly i think the mix of set collection the mix of just for right the different take on the camel up theme is really fun

6:05 what i think particularly really like is that i think it surprised me i wasn't expecting what this game was going to be i think i was expecting a very camel up-esque game and it's really not yeah it's just in the same realm and then obviously it has camels in it it also was like when we first played it it ramped up like the first round of bidding and maybe even the second one it didn't feel like very pusher lucky but then you get into like the maybe even the second but definitely the third where you're like i couldn't almost take collapse yeah but maybe my camels will collapse but now we're gonna add a little segment that we haven't had before is what games do you enjoy that you might enjoy this one as well was that a great way to describe the segment no but i will try i will try okay what are you gonna say we're gonna call this one comparables so basically what we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about a couple of games on our shelf that we would say kind of match in line to this game and maybe if you enjoy these games then you probably might want to check this game out so the three comparables we have today are the original camel up yep because the theme kind of carries through as a way for you to connect the game as ilia just previously mentioned not being very the same yes but the theme compares the story is there they're very because it's off season your camels are racing and now they're off season doing their work in the markets for the merchants yeah exactly

7:35 so the theme is there what about the second one so for me i think mega land compares it quite a bit and i think for that push your luck mechanism it definitely gives me similar feels when playing both of these games oh that's like the adventuring into the video game realm yeah yeah okay that's a good one um i'd actually say 10 like the the new aeg game that came out you're basically pushing your luck in that game probably not as much as in this game but it's a very like tight race where you have to try and like make sure you're collecting the right resources sometimes you don't get the cards you want and you have to be like pretty smart with uh your moves and that's our comparables yeah so why should you check this game out well i think that because it's a sequel to a game that is pretty popular if you are on the camel up train then i think that this one is right down your alley and camel up is a very uh accessible and or and camelot is a very approachable game and i think many of individuals have played i believe it did win this field day jars i'm pretty sure but maybe i'm wrong um and because of that it's really neat to be like hey you've played cantaloupe you're gonna love camelot off season it is a little bit of a different game the theme is still there it's quite a different game not a little bit but i think that's what's really cool because you can introduce various new mechanics to individuals and see like hey no i like camel up more and you can base more games to camel up or hey i really like

9:07 this element of this game is there other games that do set collection and how can we kind of draw people into that so that approachability of it is really cool to me yeah um bidding is one of those mechanics that is just like easily picked up by everybody so camel up and off season do a really good job at introducing other mechanics on top of it and it's really nice to be able to introduce those mechanics slowly and be like if you enjoyed this mechanic you might also like this game so and this is one of the few bidding games where you can bid zero which leads us to our next point exactly yeah there's a we've said it before but there are a lot of varying auction rules uh and yeah one of the cool ones is the ties uh where you can actually win as a zero bid and then there's actually one where the zero bit is predominant if you're the only person that bid zero you win but you have to be the only person and if you're not you'll actually lose coins so that's something that i enjoy because i like the risk factor yeah and then it spins the bidding concept on its head so you don't always have to worry about like having the most money bidding the most it's very nice yeah this is also a game that you can play at a higher player count it's not meant to be played a lower player kind of think this game really does shine at those four little four or five player count so i think if you have a larger group than you're trying to get a game to i think this is definitely one of them yeah it's a three to five player game it takes about 45 minutes to play too so it's uh fairly quick and yeah it's great for a bigger group absolutely

10:38 so let's turn the page over now and talk about why you shouldn't check it out well the one thing i'll say about this game that stood out to me quite a lot is and i'll start with a positive i really like the card dispenser it's very beautiful it pops away very nicer it goes the cards go from this card from like the deck to discard very smooth the one thing i don't love is the way the pyramid and the coin holder comes into play it seems like a lot of plastic and cardboard for no purpose i think i would argue for an inconvenience yeah definitely though even the way like if you put the coins in and they're all like compact it's hard to actually get like a handful of coins too so that piece of it but as well as i think the reason they try to do it is to try to keep with the theme because the pyramid was such a key component of the first game so maybe that's why but it's definitely not a needed thing and i guess that's my reason why you shouldn't check it out is the waste in a weird random pyramid component that stores coins the unnecessary components yes um i actually because it's a bidding game and because it has that special auction rule it can almost be like a bidding mind game like social uh deduction type thing uh where you're you're always like trying to know what people are gonna do so that you can bid like reacting if you end up having to pick third or fourth like

12:09 i think that there's a lot going on um behind your little tent that uh you can yeah you can kind of play tricks on people that's true with the coins i don't think i necessarily agree with like the mind games because i feel like that's a smaller to me at least it felt like a smaller element of the game i think for me like the main focus was it is where the main deterrent mechanics wise would be the push your luck mechanic because i think in reality once the first players pick you just go and turn order and like the first player may have what they want to pick but it depends on who because if if that person is next to me like if you bid i get to go second i'm like huh i didn't have to pay any coins and i still probably get my option so i think it's really a luck element in that especially flipping over some of those cards with the cameras collapsing but i think that's something that like it draws me forward but i know for some people just definitely a mechanic that doesn't vibe because you can have the perfect strategy everything's perfect you have almost all the six carpets of all the colors you're about to get so many points and camo collapses so yeah that's my thought a fumbling camel fumbling collapsing camel flaps and camels are not a joke tyler i wasn't laughing but overall i think we enjoyed this game right yeah i really i the reason i really like it is because of that familiarity and i think like a lot of our friends have played camel up and i think it's so easy to draw them in and then say like which part of this did you like because it has so many of bits

13:40 of mechanics that we can say oh you really like set collection well there's this whole field of games that we can do set collection with you really like bidding we can do all of that even like the various card action and card manipulation like there's a lot of games for that so i think it's like a little spider web that can entangle more people to play games with me yes that's a good point i think i have a um just like a sour taste in my mouth because of the bidding mechanic um which i guess worked in camelot's favor because i came in with low expectations that's true and it it was uh greatly um appreciated when i got to actually play the game so yay so now it's time for a question of the day now this question is going to be very fun if you could transport one material and sell it across the world what would that material be water that's so wow that's so boring i don't know you're tired you're gonna make people pay for water uh we didn't say sell you said trade i said sell oh i thought you said trade still water i would do something fun i think i would like it definitely be a food because if i get hungry i would just eat it but it'd probably be like something that's like less like it'd probably be like very exquisite baked buns that no one else has

15:11 and i'd be like here's this coconut bun and here's this other bun and i would eat them on my time off while traveling so be a wonderful experience do we have unlimited access to all of this that would be cool i hope so well you're the water tyrant who's selling this one terrible well

15:35 i gotta stop laughing well if you like this video please give us a thumbs up hit that subscribe button or even that bell notification because we release videos on the weekly yes twice weekly sometimes all the time well thank you so much for watching and we hope to see you at the next one exactly until next time though this is us checking out bye you