Culls Review: Veni Vidi Culli

[music] >> Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassal. >> I'm Zee Garcia. And today we're taking a look at a modern classic, which I just pulled through the cupboard. So easy to steal. Don't steal it. >> [laughter] >> It's called >> [clears throat] >> Colls. Yes. Like sea colls. Like sea colls? Why not like a seagull?

But a coll. Never heard of it. The word coll is is I never used coll in my life except when I was talking about Genghis Khan. He coll'd people in Mongolia. And in board gaming we use coll to Yeah, [laughter] we're colling our collection. You're getting rid of things. Uh yeah, this is actually a game that came out in 1999.

And it has gone by a few different names. All of them sort of abstract sounding things, uh including Colls. But this is a new printing from The Op, I believe. It comes with a cloth board and the the wooden discs. Which I'll show you how to play. All you need to do to set up the game is separate the pieces into the red and the blue and randomly pick a starting player.

We'll say the blue player will be first. You begin by placing two of your pieces on the board anywhere you like. And then your opponent will do the same thing. And again, this is just part of setting up. Then you are ready to begin proper. On your turn, you are going to be placing a new piece anywhere on the board that is empty.

And the objective of the game is to get five in a row. As soon as you achieve five in a row, you are going to win. There's one special move to be aware of, and that is the move that gives the game its name. If you are able to get two of your opponent's pieces trapped inside two of your own. So, if the blue player went here for example, somehow not realizing they're about to be culled, and then the red player went there, they have now trapped two of the blue pieces.

They are going to select one of the two and flip them over, and then the blue player on their very next turn will not be introducing a new piece to the table. Instead, they have to take this piece, pick it up, flip it back over, and move it somewhere else. And now it goes back to the red player. This continues back and forth until, like I said, somebody gets five in a row of their own color, and they win the entire thing.

Or, you can play a best of three, and see who the winner is that way. Side note, the designer of this also invented Big League Chew. Dude's a beast, okay? You are operating in every possible sphere. >> with this, I'm going to You can play Big League Chew while playing this game. >> You could do that.

Yeah, that's possible. Uh checkmate. Oh, man. Speaking of checkmate. >> [laughter] >> On the box, and again, this is like a weird bo- packaging. You You get a bag. In here is the cloth, folded up a lot, cuz it doesn't Yeah. >> the cloth. Yeah, and then a bunch of the pieces. >> Hate the pieces. Pieces are very thin.

I don't love that they're so thin. I don't like that they have a big C on it. It just It's unsightly, I think. >> Okay. But then on this thing that you're clearly going to throw away, it says smarter than checkers, more fun than chess. Just as a like a, you know, tag tagline. Um I don't know if I love that tagline.

What it should say >> it's it's like neither of those games. It's closer to Othello and things like that. Well, what it really should say is smarter than checkers, more fun than chess. A rip-off of Pente. That's what it should say. This is basically 95% Pente. And I'll admit it took me a It took me a couple of beats to put that together, because I haven't played Pente in 15 years cuz it came out in 1977.

Does Pente also have the two-piece rule? It does. It's slightly different, but it's basically this is basically a variant of that, okay? In Pente, which you play on a square grid instead, okay? You are going to try to win by getting five in a row or if you sandwich two pieces of your opponents, specifically two, you remove both from the board and you do that five times you win.

So, there's two ways to win. Next you're going to tell me Big League Chew is based on the gum that came in a pack of baseball cards. Breaking news. >> [laughter] >> Um so, unfortunately, I just find this to be very derivative of that and kind of finding that out I was like, "Oh, okay. I haven't played Pente in a while, but that's that's kind of lame.

This is very Pente inspired then." Well, here's the deal. The game itself feels old. Now, you might want something like that. You're like, "I'm looking for a Cracker Barrel-esque game and I want to play something that has an older-style feel to it." It's just that there's so many cool abstract games out there with beautiful pieces that can kind of have a timeless feeling.

They want to call this a classic In fact, they call it a classic in the rules. >> They do. Oh, they call it a classic in the on the back, a modern classic. Game visionaries, I believe is what they call themselves. But, it doesn't feel particularly unique. Even I don't know if Pente off top of my head, but it's five in a row.

Yeah. The main thing is the two pieces next to each other and that can be slightly interesting. It's the hook to the game. It's okay. It's okay, right? It's very okay, but but remembering Pente, and I used to own Pente, you know, many years ago, but I used to have a Pente, you know, the one you you're picturing in your head, the one that was like everywhere.

Um I liked it. I I rated a six. I looked it up just now. And then eventually at some point I got rid of it cuz I wasn't playing very much Pente. But just comparing rulebook or rules to rules of Kells here, Pente is a more interesting game. There's two ways to win. There's two things you're watching out for.

I like that. I like I like the the the things to watch out for are diverse. You can lose both ways. You can can put pressure on you one way or the other. That's interesting. This one less so. There's sort of a Eventually I trap two of yours and you have to move one so you're not introducing a new piece.

That's okay. But I think I like Pente a little bit better. Yeah, well not having played that, I still don't know that I love this. I love games you get four or five in a row. Yeah, yeah. I like it. It's a good way to do abstract. out there, that's one of my favorite things. I'll get a bunch in a row.

I like that. This one is I have three in a row. Da da da. You better stop me before I put four in a row because then I can put it on either side and you go, why can't stop you because I can force you right to move this piece next. Oh, okay. But that doesn't work if you unless you can do that multiple times.

You have to be able to There's a clever move in the game, which is I force you to move therefore letting me win where I force you to move therefore I letting me stop you winning. That's the same kind of thing. But you have to really set that up. And it's just it's not it doesn't feel like it's a basic part of the game.

And when it happens you're like, huh, nice. And that's about it. It's a it's a It's no crescendo of emotions. It's like a little blip. >> They mentioned more fun than chess. They mentioned this. They opened the door, your honor. Mhm. Um so I can bring that chess evidence in. There's all kinds of neat things in chess.

Oh, there's the Queen's Gambit. There's this the There's all these things. This has one thing. Yes. Don't be inviting comparisons to chess, then. >> I agree, and it's certainly not It's certainly not more tense than chess. Chess has tension. Chess is an engrossing thing. Um it's much more complicated than this, and maybe that's where you should have gone.

Um but chess has trauma. This doesn't really have drama, unfortunately. I thought I was a little blip at that moment where you finally make that thing happen once or twice in the game, and then you finally win because the board is crowded, and it will happen. Um I did not necessarily find this uh the smarter than checkers thing, maybe, but I'm also but it also misses the drama that checkers has when you queen a piece.

>> a real big excitement here. Right. Where is that moment of like, "Ooh, the gloves are off." This is missing that, unfortunately. Um and I think that's kind of where where I was hoping this would go. I think it's okay. It is It is perfectly serviceable. This is okay. The cloth thing is okay. The pieces I found a little thin.

So, they're hard to kind of pick up and move, so that's okay. It's a five. Okay. It's a five. Well, I was going to give it a six. I was like, "I'm going to give this the lowest six I can possibly give it." Because I didn't actively dislike the game, but then I remember how much I hate that cloth board.

Yeah. >> So, I'm dropping it to a five, also. I I want to I want to be higher than that because again, this is kind of a genre I like, and I don't even mind it the silliness of the smarter than checkers, more fun than chess, whatever. That's not that big of a deal. But was anyone asking for this to be republished?

I don't know. >> be like, "Oh, man, I'm glad Calus is back in print." We play just to head things off, we play a lot of abstract strategy games. This is not a This is not our genre. In fact, this is the thing that me and Z like to do together the most other than maybe CCGs. We like playing these abstract games.

And we play a lot of good ones. >> Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of good ones. >> This one just doesn't rise to that occasion. Right. The thing this one has going for it is it's pretty simple and it's sort of mass market in a way. >> Probably cheap, too. And that's probably Yeah, that's probably it's it's And inexpensive.

It's calling is kind of That's That's what it does, right? It It is inexpensive. It is portable. It is pretty easy to teach to anybody. If you absolutely [clears throat] need one of those games, I still think there's better options, but maybe I can't really recommend it. There's so many other better abstracts.

And we cover them all the time. Look for those on the channel. Well, there you go. That's Kells. You're never going to guess what I'm going to do with this game for my collection. I'm Tom. I'm Zee. See ya. >> [music] >> Hey. Uh thanks for watching another video here on the Dice [music] Tower. Uh we really appreciate you stopping by and checking our things out.

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