6 Small Box Game Reviews - Wild Magic, First Giants, Carnuta & More!
Transcript
When you don't have 20 minutes to watch a full review and you're not looking for a how to play or an hour-long play-through and let's be honest when the interest is a little lower, too. That's why we have six small box games for you. Hey, I'm Alex Radcliffe from Board Game Co and this is my six small box game review series where I take a look at shockingly enough six small box games and then give you reviews on them. It's kind of what the title song and everything else would suggest it is. Before we dive into this video, this channel uh this channel is sponsored by All Play. If you go to allplay.com, you can find a variety of games both from All Play and their partner publishers. And depending on where you are in the world, you can get flat rate shipping for any number of those games that you order. This is also worth noting because we will be reviewing Pies today. Pies is an All Play game, so take any potential bias into account uh when we cover that particular one. With that, let's work our way let's do newest to oldest. No, that sounds Let's do oldest to newest.
Do I even know the oldest? Let's do left to right. Left to right. Let's start with Carnuta over here on my left. Your left would be this way. We're going to go this away. Carnuta over here, this is a relatively newer game from uh Repos Productions. Basically, Carnuta is a game of trying to gather cards by having various runes, so to speak, and then you needing those runes and flipping those runes. There's a little more to get into, but basically, you're going to be collecting runes onto your personal tableau. As you manipulate those runes, adding them or flipping them, you'll have the symbols you need to be able to gather cards. Sometimes you need to have things, sometimes you need to flip things, sometimes you need to discard things. You're using your limited actions in order to get the right runes to get the right cards to trigger scoring combinations because cards are going to have a variety of like types to them. So, you might have mushrooms or skulls or all these different things, but the skulls might want to give you points for mushrooms and the mushrooms might want to give you points for I don't even remember uh berries. Berries, there's berries, there's dragon eggs, there's all these other things. And so, you're trying to figure out the right combination of cards to acquire, but also being mindful of what your runes currently make more accessible. Card A you might be better for your tableau, but card B might be able to be gotten with less work because of where your runes currently are. So, you're constantly dealing with the trade-off of what is the easiest to get and what is the most beneficial for your current board setup. That's the general idea of it. Review-wise, it's fine. I played this a few times. I had a chance to play this I want to say at PAX Unplugged for the first time. I played it a few times since then both in person. It's also on BGA if you want to give it a shot or it was on BGA a while ago. I don't know if it still is. Sometimes games come and go on BoardGameGeek you know. But Carnuta is a fine game. I I think this is one of those things where I always try not to
let the amount of good games color my perception of an individual game. A game should stand on its own. But sometimes in a space that has so many great games it can be hard to be sure. Like for me, rating-wise Carnuta is a three out of five, which is fine. Nothing wrong with a three out of five, but it's also not particularly inspiring. But I do wonder if this one would have gotten a 3.5 if I didn't have as many games out there that make it harder to be impressed by this. Again, I try not to let the ecosystem of games color my reviews, but inherently enough knowledge and experience will affect like if this is the first game I've ever played getting into board games. This would have been a 4.5 out of five. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I've played Risk and Monopoly and now I can play Carnuta. So, I guess inherently knowledge does color things. But again, a three out of five. But honestly, I think its biggest criticism is there's just better games out there, especially ones that do point scoring combination.
Then from there let's go ahead and go into Pyes. Now, I know I mentioned that don't let all play sponsorship and all that and so that might color my review. But I am rating this one a 2.5 out of five. So, unless you think I would have rated it lower, I don't think I'm having my review colored that much. Now, this is an older All Play title. There's a few All Play games over the years that I just never got around to actually playing. They fell into the backlog. Pyes is one of them. I think I have like one or two left from like the older titles from way back when before I'm kind of mostly caught up. But Pyes over here, Pyes is an old game. Had this one for quite some time. Finally dove into playing it. It's a trick taking. It's It's round-based trick taking. It plays out across three rounds of cards. Uh you're going to be uh trying to graft cards in order to create recipes for the most part. In every single round, you're going to be uh trying to bid on fruit. So, it's kind of like a It's a trick-taking game, but also more of a bidding game where you're bidding on the cards you got. Because as players place cards down, depending on the highest card, you're going to be able to select cards back into your tableau. So, if I play a if we collectively, let's say a three-player game, if you play a 15, 10, and a five, uh the 15 can choose which card they want, which might be the 15, but it also might be the five or the 10.
Combine that with a few abilities as well and some card theft between the players, and basically you're trying to collect tricks, collect cards, not tricks. You're trying to play cards into a trick that really is more of an auction in order to gather the card in order to assemble recipes and get points with a few abilities along the way. That's the general arc of the game. Oh, and there's plums. The plums are wild, which are really helpful, but you got to have you play the lowest card, which can factor into what you're trying to do. Uh overall, I I found Pies to be in this weird place where the actual trick is almost more multiplayer solitaire uh rather than a trick-taking game because of the fact that it's not clear that you want a high or low. You just want to get a certain card, and how you try to get that card and also going for different objectives. You might be happy to get the 15. I might be happy to get the 10, and Joe might be happy to get the five. We could all be happy. We're kind of playing our own little game as opposed to a common goal of winning tricks or trying to do our thing. We're doing our own little thing as we go through it.
But then combine that element of multiplayer solitaire into a game that has like card theft, which kind of takes the fun out of it. I'm not into like card stealing in games unless it's done really well. You don't want to have a take-that mechanism. This kind of could have a take-that mechanism. I found the game to be in this weird place where it's not super simple as far as like, "Ooh, it's the easiest trick-taking to get into." Uh it's also not super rewarding, and it's both your own game and chaotic at the same time. All in all, I found Pies to be just not not my most fun experience as a trick-taking game. It could be one of those that I just didn't get uh because sometimes when it comes to trick-taking, it's about did you get the puzzle? Uh I I I I I think I got the puzzle. I just don't think I enjoyed the puzzle. From there we have Friendly Fishing over here. Friendly Fishing, this is one of the newer games from Gamehead. I just reviewed Sizewise on the channel. You may have seen Pet Quartet as well. This is part of that new lineup. In fact, we also have Wild Magic, which we'll be getting to next because of how the left-to-right thing works. But Friendly Fishing, this is a game in which you are basically trying to work together with the other players to go fishing. You're going to have a board over here where you're going to have a ton of like this boat is oversized. We're going to have a board with a whole bunch of various tokens, various fish on them. And they have a single boat that cooperatively you're all moving that boat around.
Everyone at the table is moving that boat around the table in order to get various things. So for example, the four basic colors you're going to score an increasing number of points if you can get all those. So if you want the reds, if you can get all six reds, that's 21 points. In a game where an end score can be between 20 to 40 points, getting 21 points from a single color fish would be huge. I think I've only seen it done once, but I have seen it done. But anyways, and there's a reason why it's more doable than you might think. But basically you're trying to move this boat around the board and trying to sequence, well if I go here, then John's going to go there, Sarah's going to go there, and I'll be back to my turn and I'll be able to get that. And based on what they want, I can get my stuff, which is already part of the game. The other part of the game is assuming you're not playing it as two players. I can't imagine why you'd want to play it as two players. You lose half the hook of the game. But if you're playing at a higher than two players, then you're going to have this element where my score is equal to my score plus the player to the left. And since the player to the left goes after me, it is in my best interest to ensure that not only that I get what I want, but that Jane gets what they want, and that hopefully back to John, they're not going to get what they want cuz John's score doesn't benefit me at all or anyone else who's not, you know, me and Jane over there.
Was it Sarah? Jane? I don't remember the name of these players that I made up. But whatever it is, you're basically trying to set up the player to your left because you benefit from their score. That's the hook of the game. Combine that with a few with a few special abilities, and you're going to have things like, oh, you can swap tiles with other players. You can go ahead and you can move tiles around the board, which can be more important than you want and more important than you think, especially considering the way when you run out of moves on the board, you can kind of return to the central island to start again. If things are cut off on central island, you can't. That tile lets you move things, that can be incredible. There's also sets of six different tiles, which you're only going to use a few per game, that are going to mix up the experience you have some degree of variability game to game, aside from the board setup. That's everything going on in Friendly Fishing. Move around the board, try to be mindful of the order of where the ship is going to go, and then get more points than other players when you count your score and the player to your left. Uh review-wise, I'm going to give this a 3.5 out of 5. I actually thought I would like this one more. The the premise of setting up the player to your left, I really like that idea. In practice, the potential movement pool is more limited than what I actually would like out of this, and so because of that, you're kind of you don't really have a ton of options for what I would call feeling clever in the game. I mean, I don't know why I would call that. Anyone would call that. You don't have a ton of options for feeling clever in the game.
You have this aspect where you are trying to get the thing that's good for you, and you are trying to help Jane get the thing that's good for her, but as far as how often I felt like I was really making a super cool move was infrequent. It did happen. It did happen where I was like, "Ooh, if I do this, then this. I really mapped it out." That that can happen in the game, but it's very much the exception to the norm as opposed to the norm. So, I still enjoy it. I still find the puzzle of trying to get my own stuff to be somewhat satisfying while setting you up and be mathing it out. I just found it less rewarding than I hoped it would be. Wild Magic. Wild Magic over here, this is from Reiner Knizia, and again, another game head title. Uh Wild Magic is an interesting one to try to explain. Basically, you are melding cards down onto the table. There's going to be six colors, and you're going to be trying to gather cards. You can gather cards from the central deck. Again, if I could try to loosely show it to you over here. You're going to be gathering cards from the central deck, but also cards from the discard piles. On your turn, you take one of three actions. But the basic idea, without getting too much into the weeds, the basic action is, let's say, draw two cards from the deck, and then discard a card to a pile. That's going to happen a lot at the beginning of the game. And so, you're slowly building up your hand. The reason you're doing this is because at one of the other actions you can take is you can draw two cards and then meld a set of cards. When you meld a set of cards, you're choosing a color, let's say yellow, and you're placing a bunch of yellows down the table, and if you have the most yellow, you also get this bonus token worth two points. The problem is if you ever meld yellow again, it doesn't add to your yellow, it replaces your yellow. So, you're really trying to think through when is the moment to meld a set of cards, when are you trying to gather too many cards and you're setting yourself up for failure versus when are you possibly not melding at all where versus when are you being repetitive in the
melds and you're being inefficient in your use. And so, you're trying to be mindful as to what the perfect ratio is. Keeping in mind that game end is triggered either when the deck runs out or when a player has six colors melded in front of them. So, there is kind of a rush to go fast, but also at the end of the game, the weakest color in each element is discarded. So, you're playing this weird game of being mindful of the table dynamics, what other players are doing, how fast you can rush end game, and how many points you can get out of all of this. That on its own is fine. The but the game gets much more elevated when you add the uh guardians, gods, whatever you call the special tiles above each color giving a positive or negative and it's a little loose, not to say positive or negative, but it's kind of positive or negative giving a positive or negative ability above each of these colors that will impact the way you play. Maybe when I meld yellow, other players are going to draw a card.
Maybe when I meld blue, I'm going to be allowed to pick up one of my previous melds which can be really helpful towards adding more cards to it. There's a lot of gameplay that gets added when you add in those special abilities per color. Uh overall, I really enjoyed Elemental Magic. I'm I'm a little I'm going to I'm going to give this a 3.5 to 5. I do think it might grow to a 4, but I'm not sure. There's so many games out there that it's it's hard to know where where this one will spread. But after a few plays in so far, I think the art is very charming, very straightforward. It's just a bunch of colors, but Jackie Davis, a good good good overall the art's good for what it's trying to do. But then ultimately, the puzzle of timing the melds is the thing that combined with the abilities is the thing that hooks me on this. Uh I'm having a lot of fun with it for now, but I do wonder if it has long-term legs. That's why I'm in that between that 3.5 versus a 4 rating. But, uh definitely check it out. Very straightforward, a little hard to explain. The actual rules are very easy. The explanation of it is a little Oh, and one thing I didn't mention is there's one of the actions you can do is pull cards from a discard pile. So, as the discard piles build up, there's also a timing as to when you want to gather those because you have to meld when you gather from the discard pile. So, that's another interesting balance. Overall, a very condensed rule set, very tight decision space that will be Wild Magic.
Then we have over here, we have The Rogue Monarch or Le Roi de le Ribaud. I'm The Rogue Monarch. The Rogue Monarch is a game in which you basically have a bunch of cards on the table over here. You have a bunch of cards in the center of the table, and you are trying to utilize your abilities. You're trying to you have kind of three basic cards. Well, not three, four. Four. You have bodyguards, kings, queens, and assassins. And each one has a way that they're going to score depending on, you know, having for example, having assassins face up on the table with a character between them. So, if you had two assassins between a character, they would execute that character. Alternatively, having you know, having the kings on the table or the queens in your hand. There's all these ways that the cards score as far as there's three victory conditions and four card types, each one enabling. On your turn, you take two basic actions trying to manipulate the board state in order to help you win over your opponent. All you're doing is taking an action to try to manipulate the board state to achieve one of the three winning conditions of the the handful 16 cards. All this is I think it's 16. Was it three of each or four of each? I can't remember offhand.
It's either 12 or 16 cards in this puzzle over here as you try to figure out how to set yourself up for a win condition. Gathering cards into your hand to get the queens, making sure the kings are on the table, or making sure the assassins are are going to go ahead and kill someone effectively. But, you're using the abilities of those cards in order to make that happen. Overall, it's a very fast back-and-forth puzzle. Rounds tend to games tend to last maybe five, six turns. I like the puzzle with one big critique. The big critique is that this is a game I played actually a few years ago, three years ago at Gen Con, two years ago at Gen Con, a while ago I had I had opportunity to play this at Con before it's out and I've always been wanting to get my hands on it since. The problem is when I first played it, I played it like once or twice and since then I played it like 10 times. I played this a lot since then. And the problem with it is I find it's very hard to fully prevent a win condition. Ultimately, you're going to have a win condition happen and usually sooner than you think. So, there is a puzzle of trying to delay it, but it's going to happen. It's very very hard to have like an elongated back and forth as a tactical battle. It's more about who can last that one more turn before someone falls into a win condition.
Overall, I do find it a fun challenging puzzle. I give it a 3.5 out of 5. Biggest issue is that once you played it a few times, you've kind of seen most of the ways it's going to play out and it doesn't have a ton of depth on top of that. It's a clever puzzle, but one with a limited amount of place to it in my opinion. And then lastly, we have First Giants over here. First Giants, this is from Who's this from? It's Matthew Dunstan and Brett Gilbert. I don't know if I realized that. It's from Space Cowboys over here. First Giants is basically a game of um of gathering dinosaurs. That's all you're doing. You're gathering dinosaurs from a display and what you're trying to do with those dinosaurs is you're trying to slowly display them. Well, you're gathering them from a central board and then they go into your tableau to give you abilities, but ultimately you need to display them in order to actually score points. So, you can see over here, you're basically going to be gathering them and then putting them into play in order to benefit from their abilities, but then you put them face down to be able to arrange a display where you can get points for sets. The sets are either going to be the same value or the same color. So, you can have multiple twos, multiple ones, multiple threes or you can have let's say the 1 2 3 of red.
There is an interesting tension to the game because of the fact that the cards enter your tableau first. So, you benefit from their abilities, but you have to ultimately display them to get points. So, you are trying to be mindful as to what the order you keep things in your tableau is. Also, like there's some cards that reward you for having tons of things in your tableau. Others reward you for having the first time you get a card of each color. So, there's really an interesting tension as far as when you when you meld versus when you display and trying to get as many points out of the system as you do so. I find the game to be pretty pretty fun overall. There's a good tension as far as again, getting things in your tableau versus displaying them. That is the main tension of the game, but choosing the right combination of abilities that will help you achieve your goals as you try to do this is where the main fun of it comes in. Overall, I'm going to give this one a 3.5 out of five. It's another one where it's a pretty decent time as far as the puzzle of it without necessarily wowing me over the top. It's a good time. I like the tension. I like the puzzle and I really like the combination. There's lots and you across multiple plays you have different arcs as far as how you can choose different strategies and which card types you lean into as well as the the the how early do you display versus how late or even how do you much do you build in-game point systems versus the ultimate goal of displaying cards in order to get those points. That's what we have on the table for you. So, we have six games over here. We have going from left to right again. We have Cornuta a three out of five, Pyres a 2.5 out of five, Friendly Fishing a 3.5, Wild Magic a 3.5. I almost want to go higher, but I'm not going to. The the Rogue Monarch a 3.5 and First Giants another 3.5. I didn't realize how many 3.5s we'd have today, but it does make sense. It is the most
common rating I have on this channel. In any case, until next time. I'm Alex Radcliffe from Board Game Co. Hope you found this review helpful, these reviews helpful and as always, I hope you have a good one.