Mexica, Reel Rivals, Bridges of Shangri-la, Gheos - Kickstarter Preview
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Transcript
Welcome to Allies or Enemies. I'm Jess.
And I am Shannon and today we are talking about four games. So, this is a paid preview for the Play for Keeps crowdfunding campaign where they are remaking four classic games. And all of these are are going to be updated obviously. They're going to have updated bits. Some of them are going to have slightly updated rules. One of them is going to have a very updated theme, but we're going to run through all of that stuff in each of these games.
And for all of these, we have prototype versions. So, the components are subject to change. And for each of these, we're going to give an overview of how they play, talk about them, and you can hopefully get a sense of them. Let's get right to it.
Geos is probably the one I knew the least about coming into this. So, it was originally released in 2006. And this is a game where you are collectively building an island. You're populating it with people and you're kind of gods. And what you're going to do is you're going to have two tiles. Those tiles are triangles. They're going to be in your hand. And on your turn, you're going to play one of those tiles down somewhere. Either you're going to add to the island putting it adjacent other things or sometimes you're going to put it right on top of things already on the island. Then you're either going to start a whole new culture and you're going to place out a culture token. You're going to take the number of people multiply by the number we or you are going to just take one person from any culture that is already founded. And then how you're actually scoring here is interesting because you've got these epoch tiles mixed in. When you pick up one of those special tiles, everybody is going to do a scoring. That's going to be the people that you've put aside multiplied by the pyramids in their cultures. And you also have these three special scoring tokens that you can use at any point well on your turn during the game, and those are going to be special little scoring intervals as well. At the end of the game, whoever has the most points wins.
Yeah, and this one is incredibly interactive because you don't own any of those colors. Instead, you can have like a piece of each of them, but obviously, you're going to want to have the culture that has the most tiles and attached to the most pyramids and can score the highest, but everybody does. So, it's this interesting kind of like growth as somebody sees that this one already has will score a lot of points, so other people start taking those ones. But then it puts a target on that culture where it's like, "Well, we got to get rid of them, start a brand new one." And so, it's this constant like growth and like fall of civilizations.
Yeah, and how and what's happening with that target is when you are putting out those tiles, what I the start I said you can put a tile on top. And when you put a tile on top, often that is either going to join two cultures together, whichever one is the strongest, so there's also these little like swords on them. Whichever one has the most swords is going to win, the other ones are all going to leave it. Everyone all of the people that anyone has put aside already, those are all gone as well. And now that new one is going to fully take over. Or you can just split up a culture. So, if there's a giant culture, you can put something on top, that's going to split that in half, you can put new ones over into the other half. And that's going to happen constantly. This is a super mean game, and it reminds me a lot of uh the king is dead, kind of that idea of I don't own any of these, but I'm kind of invested in a bunch of them, but with a really simplified, really smooth rule set.
Yeah, it really doesn't take long to explain how the game works. And then playing as well it is quite quick because you only have the two tiles that you're choosing from. So, it is a limited choice, but you can make some big decisions with those tiles. And one of the interesting decisions is when you're going to score because you have your three scoring tokens. And so, you're obviously going to want to spend those when you have a lot of people that will get you a lot of points, but you don't know like when the height of that is going to be. So, often you're like, "Okay, good enough. I'm going to spend one now cuz I'm at least going to get some points."
Yeah, I think often people in their first game hold on to those, and then you realize that dead end can come really quick, and you end up with one or two of those left over. And so, you got to be like, "Okay, I'm only going to get six points. Maybe later I can get eight points, but you know what? Six points, great. I'm going for it. I'm going to spend that now." You got to kind of when it's okay enough and you get a sense of that the more you play this game because I I do like that those epoch tiles is just when you pick up that tile. And someone can pick up three of those in a row. You're going to score three in a row. We had one game where it didn't come up. The last one didn't come up till the second last tile. We had another game where we had like eight to 10 tiles still left, and that had already gone. So, it's a lot like that winter is coming in like forest shuffle where you've got a bit of a sense cuz you know four of the six have come out.
So, it's getting a little dicey, but you really don't know.
And speaking of scoring, I really like the point tokens. They just look nice, and they're like blank on the back, so you don't actually really know how many points everybody has.
Yeah, you can I guess kind of keep track, but you're not going to. No one is going to. One thing I will say about this game is it really does shine when it's played at the full player count. We did play this at two, and it wasn't quite the same experience. At four, when you've got everyone messing with everything, when you got a bunch of different people who are kind of it's a little bit of like a stock market like our trying to take stock in those different cultures. That is definitely when this is at its most interesting. Mexica is the one of these four that I recognize right away. I hadn't played it before, but I was aware of this game, and it is by Kramer and Kiesling. It was originally released in 2002. And in this, you are going to be building these pyramids and building canals, a whole series of canals. And what's going to happen is on your turn, you're going to have six action points. You can use those action points to build canals, build pyramids, move your worker around, and build bridges. And what you're trying to do with all of that is make these little sections that are surrounded by canals and have most of your pyramid in those sections. Because if your worker is in one of those sections when it closes off, and it is exactly the size of one of the goal scoring tiles for that round, you're going to add a tile into that section.
It's then going to be fixed to be that size. You're going to get points from that. And at the end of both the There's going to be two rounds. At the end of both of those rounds, you're also going to get points for having the majority of the largest pyramids in each one of those sections.
Yeah, so it's an area control game, and it is very competitive. And so you learn very quickly some of the sneaky things that you can do. Like when you first start playing, you don't necessarily realize how sneaky. Like you can have somebody who's just put out a level four pyramid, and if it's not in a district, you can just surround that pyramid with canals, and they're only going to get one point at the very end of the game. Or you see that somebody is in a space where you can totally block them off, and then they're going to have to spend five action points to get out of there.
Yeah, so you've got kind of a a save thing where you can spend five of your six action points just to warp any anywhere that you want. And really, especially with us, one of our key things is to make the other person have to spend those five action points to warp somewhere else. So, this is a super mean game, and it plays actually quite a bit different. It's interesting having those two different eras, because in the first era, what happens is you play out a lot of canals. The first era we found is kind of 75% of the playing of the game. So, you're playing out a lot of canals, you are starting to establish all of those different regions, and a lot of the big regions are Well, I guess it depends when the different tokens come out, but we seem to end up with that. And it's you are playing out your pyramids, obviously, cuz you play about half in the first era, half in the second era, but all those canals are going out, and all of the bridges end up going out in that first chunk, too.
And in that second era, you're spending a lot more time just adding to existing districts, and trying to build up your strength, or even where possible, just adding enough pyramids that there are no longer any spaces to add any more.
Yeah, that's a really interesting part of this game is for the first times we played it, it feels like those big ones, you want to be in those big ones. You want to be in that 13 and that 12, and you do. But, I think people kind of underestimate those little ones, cuz if you've got one of those districts, it's only three, that means you got a scoring token in one place, pyramid in one place, and there's no way that you can put something in that other place, cuz you got to stand in there. So, then it's locked. It's yours, you've got that three points, no one else is getting any points at all. Whereas, those big ones, those 13 and 12 and 11, people are still going to get like nine and eight and seven, or whatever it is for second place, and points as well for third place in those, and there's a lot of space to build. So, you're going to need like seven, eight points of pyramids in order to win that, instead of it three, you're only going to need like one point of pyramids.
Yeah, and if you're playing with more players, it can be interesting if you really see a couple of people battling it out for first, where they're spending a lot of pyramid points to try and get those top level points. And you see that and you think, well, I'm just not even going to compete for that. They're going to waste a bunch of their pyramids to try and get like this level 13.
And then there's also the interesting movement as well, because one of the cool things in this is you can move from a bridge to any well, to another bridge that you can draw a path on the water too. So, you can kind of warp all and you can go outside as well. So, you can go down the water to the outside ocean around the ocean into another one. So, you can kind of warp around the board, but you can also this is so petty, but if you put another bridge in their way, they've got to stop at that bridge first. It costs you it costs you a movement point to put that bridge out, but then it costs them a movement point to stand on that bridge. And sometimes it's worth it just to mess with people.
Yeah, and the moving can be really tricky because like the longer you play, the more there are the canals, so the more you can't just like walk and have access to big district areas, but then the flip side is the canals make it easier to move potentially along the bridges.
Yeah, and you're just standing on bridges too, so that people can't take your bridge, so that they can't like maroon you in one of those sections as well. So, yeah, I I think really the it's it's the arc of this game that that I found kind of the most compelling. And this one I think of the four is the one that that we thought worked the best at two players as well. So, we have played this at two and at four and four is great because you really can do a lot and there's a lot of competition. There's a lot of shenanigans, but even at two, there's quite a bit of shenanigans and you still have all of that competition as well. Real Rivals is definitely the one that at least on the surface has changed the most of these four games. So, this was originally released in 1998. It was originally called El Caballero and the theme of this has completely changed.
And I had not ever played the original game, I hadn't heard of the original game, but this is a game all about fishing. And it's interesting because playing this game, it feels like it was always all about fishing. This does not feel pasted on. But what you are doing in this game is you are going to have a bunch of tiles, I believe it's four tiles that you're going to be able to choose from each round. You're going to play one of those tiles. Everyone has to play a different tile, but they're going to do that in player order. Then, for whoever played the highest number tile, there and that that's a like fishing person, they are going to be able to choose one of the tiles that is making up the board, the pond that you are making. They're going to put that out somewhere and then they are going to put their fisher out somewhere. You want them to face the water. So, there's water and there's land. You want them to face the water because if you are facing a lake that's got a bunch of fish, you're going to score a bunch of points.
You also want the land to be beside you for two reasons. One is you want to see the animals that are on the land by placing binoculars next to your person. The other really important thing is you don't want other people to flood you cuz if they can put water facing the side or the back of your person, you are going to get flooded. You're going to have to get out of there, go fish somewhere else, but what that means is your tile's going to be removed from the game. The other thing that you're going to do after you have placed those tiles is you can put out one of each of these different tokens. One is a barrier, that's going to protect you from flooding. One is the aforementioned binoculars, that is going to help you look at animals. And then twice in the game, you are going to be scoring both for those fish that are connected in those lakes that you're connected to and for the animals that you are looking at.
And whoever has the most points wins the game.
It's interesting because I think fishing is like usually symbolic of like peaceful times and this is very, very competitive fishing. So whenever you're putting a tile down, you're being obviously very strategic about it. Often you're going to be making sure nobody else can grow their lake or you might even purposely like close off your lake so that no one else can join it. Or if there is an opportunity to flood somebody even though that won't get you any more points, you are going to do it.
Yeah, yeah, you're definitely going to flood people. That's and that really is a key thing of putting someone down thinking about okay, how can I have this lake? How can I have this lake that's only my lake or that I have the majority because when you get to those scoring, you're going to add up the points of all of your fishers that are around that lake. Whoever's there is going to get nothing at all. There's no fish left for you. So that is a real key. But then also you really do want to make sure land is all the way around you or barriers are all the way around you. And you don't have many barriers. You can get rid of your fishing tile instead of putting it down to get two tokens, but you're not going to get a lot of those barriers in a game. So you really do want to make sure that you can't get flooded.
And it is going to play differently at different player accounts because at two players, you're going to be less likely to get flooded because it's your turn every other turn. So unless you play a tile in a really silly position, you can usually protect yourself for at least one turn. That's not going to be the case for three or four players.
And sometimes you just got to hope that people are going to do what's best for them instead of what's worst for you for like a round so that you can protect yourself. And there's also the thing of sometimes you just want to put out low cost people because then maybe people aren't so worried about them. Whereas if you put out your highest cost, if you've got like your seven or eight out there, they got a huge target on their back.
Yeah, they really do. And this is just going to feel very different each game because of like the tiles and how that whole map builds out. Like you might end up with some games of lots of small lakes or huge competition for a really big lake with lots of fish. Other times, too, you'll have a land that has a whole bunch of birds on it. So all of a sudden it becomes like a prime spot to be able to look out onto that land.
So all of these are fairly kind of abstract strategy games. And Bridges of Shangri-La, I would say, is the most. This really feels like a classic game. It is uh 2003 is when this was originally released, but if you told me that this is a game that has existed for like 300 years, I would believe you because this really has that kind of like chess-ish feel to it. So what you're doing in here is you've got all these different little mini universities. They sit on these weird little like elevated islands. They've got bridges that connect to other islands. In each one of these universities, there is space for seven masters. And those are going to be represented by these tokens that you've got, these nice wooden tokens. And you're going to be putting those out.
What you can do on your turn is only three things. Either you can put a master on an empty space, one of those spaces where you already have a a master somewhere on that, but where it's got an empty space. Or you can put two students anywhere. Those are going to go on top of two of your masters. Or you can move all of your students from one of those islands across a bridge to another island. If there are more on the ones they're moving from, they're going to replace all of the masters on that other one, and the students are going to become the masters there. If there are more of where they are going to, they're only going to go into the empty spaces where they're moving to. But also that bridge is going to be removed from the game. And once all the bridges are removed from an island, you add a peace marker there, and no one can play there anymore. Once all the peace markers are on the board, the game is over. And then you just count up all of the tokens.
Whoever has the most masters on the board wins the game.
Yeah, and those bridges, I think, are the most interesting part because it means that path can only be used once. So, you really want to use it well. Sometimes you'll use the bridge to move all of your students and take over masters, but other times it may feel worthwhile to even just move like one or two students over, even if you're just going into empty spaces, because it's getting rid of that bridge and that access point.
Yeah, yeah, you can see what other people are doing, and sometimes you just are like, you know what? I'm just going to rush it. I see you are building up over here, and you are going to move in here, and you're going to take over my space. I'm just getting rid of your bridge. Now you can never do that. You can never make that connection. And it is just so simple. It's just, you know, put out that one, put out two, move a whole bunch over. So, it moves pretty quickly, but like those like like many abstract games, it is also really thinky, and you really do have to be thinking a few turns ahead.
And I think this one plays best at the full four players because at two players you may find yourself sometimes just kind of siloed in your own little area, whereas that's less likely to happen when there's more players involved.
Yeah, you can be a bit like, okay, I see you're not going to deal with this, so I'll do over here. I'll let you have that chunk over over there. Whereas at four players, there's no chunks anyone's letting you have. You're fighting for everything. You don't know when people are going to move across those bridges, and like lock you into your your section. You don't know how many students you can build up cuz at two players, I have had it where I've built up seven or whatever it is, six or seven of the students, and then moved en masse across a bridge because you were like, ah, forget it. I'm not worried about that. There's no way that that is happening at four players or if it is, the other three people are kind of half asleep. So, so it is a lot more competitive like that.
So, I think the big thing here is that there are very few rules. There's no luck and you have perfect information. So, it's one of those abstract strategy games that feels like it's been around like hundreds of years longer than it actually has.
Yeah, it really this really feels like a classic game. I kind of looked up like is this based on something else that I that I don't know about? I don't maybe it is. I maybe I don't know about maybe I still don't know about it. But that is kind of the player that this is going to be a fit for. And that is it. That is four updated versions of club kind of classic games or games from 1998 to 2006. Now they're all updated and they all have newer bits. Like we said at the start, this is first of all this is a paid preview. Also, these are still prototype versions. So, this is not necessarily the final bits that you're going to get in the game.
If you're interested in checking out the crowdfunding campaign, we'll have links in the description. Thank you so much for watching and as usual, please like, subscribe and hopefully we'll see you next time for another game.