10, OUT OF 10 (Part 4): A Roll & Write Special 🎲

[Music] hi everyone I'm Amy this is my wife Maggie and together we are think of thema this is our fourth part to our series 10 comma out of 10 where we are reading our entire board game collection out of 10 and in doing so we're choosing 10 games and we're looking at our shelves and we had a realization that we own a ton of rolling rights yes so many that we were like actually we can probably make around three videos I think we could really be able to cover them all we've got um you know at least probably around 30. I would say yeah so uh we're not going to bombard you with rolling right episodes but we did want to kick things off with this one special episode where we'll talk about 10 rolling right so let's just get straight into it with our first one let's go Metro X I don't know where to start you're already just right out of the gate smiling when you're looking at it uh metric X is a rail and right game game because it is all about mapping out a subway map yeah the lines in the subway so essentially what you're doing is um we're flipping cars it's technically a flipping right and the cards are going to usually indicate a number and with that number we're going to decide which line do we want to start building and so we commit that number to at the end of the line you have the actual windows and the little trains and those are limited so you would commit one you know that number say for example it's three put that number on that one of the the windows and then you get to mark off three of your little kind of circle stations along the way the aim is to complete as many lines as possible the first person to complete a line gets to call it out you'll have completed line a for example and then they're going to get the higher number of points for that line every person who subsequently completes that gets the lower number of points for that yeah the puzzle yeah it gets interesting yeah it looks pretty simple but the beauty of this puzzle is that it starts to get quite difficult because a couple of things happen one you look at the number of Windows that you have available for a given line and you're like well how am I going to get all the way to the end of this line using just two numbers yeah and you are going to be able to do it because there are intersecting lines so the lines are crossing over each other so as I'm filling out for example the red line I'm also helping to complete the orange line so you need to think about how you sequence out which lines you're contributing to um but you're also you it is a high possibility that you will run out of Windows on a lining won't be able to complete it so you've got to be carefully watching how you ration those numbers to each of the lines and then the really interesting thing is when you even though it helps to intersect a line because you fill in a station on another line it's also bad because it blocks you because if you get a regular number that is drawn so a three and you can only you only have one spare station before there's one crossed off from an intersecting line then you can't move past that and you're essentially way tasting the rest of the numbers and so that's when there's some other spicy little cards that come into the mix there's um a skip card and that allows you to uh to get around that problem so you can jump stations when you're putting the crosses in um then there's a transfer where you have to block off one of your windows essentially use one of them but then you can cash that in for a lot of victory points when you place that transfer at a point where a lot of different lines cross so there's a few different things going on here but basically you're waiting for the right numbers to come up to to allocate them to the different stations and then you've got to think about how much do I want to race and commit to one finishing one line versus chipping away at many um you know in order to get either the big amount of points for being first or just try and complete them all because everyone's going to get the same number of cards uh because we're going to play into all the win windows are filled yeah but you are going to have different numbers of stations left over and if you have stations left over they're going to be worth negative victory points on the actual circles along the way yeah for any lines that you didn't complete um so it is deceptive it looks simple but it is actually really easy to teach that's one of my favorite things about this game really accessible really quick to get to the table and everyone I've introduced this to really loves this is very satisfying it is just one of those like it's just thinking enough but it's easy enough to wrap your head around but it's also so easy to block yourself and then go oh no and then there's I've done everything wrong yeah and then there's that tension of like you know someone goes oh I've completed this line you're like no was about to do it or like with the excitement if you're the one who's like yes I completed this first and so I yeah there's just so much that I enjoy every time I play through this game it is a great game I have scored Metro x a 7.9 I've scored at an eight because I just thoroughly enjoy every time I play this game and yeah I just I love introducing it to other people as well it's like it's so easy to bring in with you to a con or any sort of like Gathering very quick to like have it as a warm-up I just yeah I love this game yeah I really enjoy it too probably the thing that holds it back from an even higher score is just because of its Simplicity and it is beautifully simple um you know it doesn't have a lot of variability there are two different maps that are included you can get an expansion I'd love to get the expansion for this because the different maps are really what makes the puzzle more complex the the amount of uh intersecting lines and that type of thing um but yeah I just love it for what it is uh it's really wonderful that is it through it nice the next game is an even smaller box but I crowd favorite um it's silver and gold so in silver and gold we're going to be it's like exploring I think we're kind of like Pirates and we're exploring and kind of filling in Treasure like trying to look for Treasures or by essentially finding the trade I'm gonna really stretch for theme here getting treasure points by completing this Maps which essentially means that you've covered the entire Island you've scoured the entire Island can you just help me here with the actual how you how you play it because it's like that's as far as I could probably stretch with a thematic uh reach for this well everyone is going to have a number of islands that they're dealt at the beginning of the game and what you're trying to do is this is another flip and right game so we'll be flipping from a deck of cards interestingly the deck itself only has eight cards and we'll be revealing seven of them and there's actually a sheet that shows what each of the tetris pieces are going to be that comes out so you get a little bit of a sense of what you you can kind of predict what's left what's left so as you go you can kind of keep track of that um but one is going to be missing so you can't be entire you know it's not a sure thing that that shape is going to come out but what you're doing is when that polyomino shape is revealed You're simply choosing one of your islands and you're marking off that shape uh but each of the cards that you complete is going to be worth victory points at the end of the game um and there's a lot of little things or symbols shown on the island itself so for example when you cross off a little palm tree you get to you get a point for that palm tree but you also get to look at the market of cards that are available uh because you're going to be drafting new cards as you complete the island cards and for every other palm tree that's in that market you're also going to get a point for that palm tree those palm trees as well and so you might want to time that for when there's lots of palm trees in the market you also can collect coins and when you collect coins you're marking them off in a row and when you've completed that row you get to to claim a number of victory points according to the next highest trophy that's left in the game because as people are collecting them they're going to get marked off and become lower and lower in value so you want to race to collect the most coins first um and the final part is and probably one of the more fun combo-esque parts of this game is that if you cross off an X you get to immediately cross off another box anywhere on one of your Islands which allows you to get into those nooks and crannies that are difficult to fill with polyomino shapes to help you complete them and it also just gives that nice like combo feel and now cross off this X and I'll cross off another X and you know so you get that kind of feeling from it and there's also sometimes synergies between the maps that you complete will also then give you extra points for a maps of a particular color that you can play it's an in-game scoring yeah you might end up wanting to like yeah synergize or combo the the colors that you're doing or the the maps that you're completing if they're going to give you additional points for other maps that you've already complete yeah I think yeah again this is another one that is extremely accessible it's not difficult at all or simpler than metrics I would say this is a very simple game but as Maggie mentioned it is a crowd favorite a lot like most people have introduced this to have gone off and bought the game yeah um yeah it's just really quick and easy to get to the table it's super satisfying in the way that you just get to continue completing this little poliano island like you just like every time you complete one you're like and then you get another one and it's just like that really satisfying like feeling as the completed Islands start to stack yeah you really get a sense of almost like when you're going through your to-do list in general and I guess ticking things off it's like yes another Island like sort of added to the to your to your stack to your file it's a really fun one and it's just super simple and what's your rating uh let's see my rating is a seven um I I really enjoy it I think it's super accessible for me there's maybe not enough meat on the bones for me to want to get it out for myself but definitely to share with other people is a lighter experience yes it's a 7.3 for me so a little bit higher than you but I agree with that assessment it's a little bit more on the simple side so it's something that I'll you know gladly have fun and play with with other people but if it's just the two of us or just myself then I'm going to be reaching unless we're going to traveling I I definitely wouldn't take that traveling it's very a pretty easy game to play when you're you know in transit or very portable yeah um I will say that the pens yeah that come with this yeah uh absolutely incredible they're reusable markers and that is not always the case these ones really high quality anyway yeah that is still silver and gold all right um the next one is going to jump up in a bit of complexity um this is Riverside which is a slightly newer release um Riverside comes with a modular game board that you're going to set up in the middle of the table that is the river and you have a a passenger boat is it a ferry it might be a ferry yeah um that starts I always think of like kind of like the the Titanic but yes that's sort of like a flipped full of tourists yeah it is full of tourists so we'll call it a fairy yeah um so this beautiful fairy or Steamboat oh yeah it is quite yeah it's much smaller than the Titanic I think it's yourself considerably smaller I think it was just the uh what do you call it the chimney in the middle call it the Titanic I did it multiple times during this uh this video so far so it does look a little bit smaller it's like one of the lifeboats of the Titanic it's like not that nobody if anyone asks think athema did not call this the Titanic game Titanic roller gray uh so ruin aside I don't know if the Titanic would fit in a river anyway we digress we're very digress the river is going to form the path for the game that this Ferry or passenger ship is going to move through um throughout the course of the game and what you're trying to do is you're trying to I'm trying to stay on the thematic explanation but it's quite difficult should I jump in and try and help you are collecting passengers and placing them in seating oh you're you're not you're yeah you're because you're kind of getting seatings for your passengers but then you're also taking them out on Expeditions for the different areas yes but the player sheet is very abstract so let me explain them again it's colors and yes you're going to be rolling a handful of dice and these dice are all different colors and there's a slight complexity here in the way that you're going to put put those dice out to be available for people to choose and use on their player sheet so you're going to roll them all and the green one is set aside because the green one is a special dice that you have to spend a certain type of currency to use that you have a limited amount of for the whole game it's like little fire that currency yeah um and you only get to use a certain number of that and if you want to use the green dice you're going to have to pay for every pip that is shown on that you're going to have to cross off one of your heat icons so you only want to use that when you really need to use that um but the rest of the dice get allocated in a quite a strange way so you're going to have the remaining five dice and you're going to take the median dice so the value it is so the value that is in the middle of the range you're going to take so imagine that was a three and that die as well as all of the dice that fall below that value are going to remain at the bottom the cool side the cool side uh they were the cool selection of dice anything that's above that median is going to be placed up with the green dye and it's gonna um those dice are going to cost you heat in the same way that the green dice does so basically all that means all of this complex allocation of dice is really to say that usually to get a lot of value in a high scoring diet you're going to need to spend heat or you can use a lower value die for free and what are you doing with those values well for each of the Pips you are going to well first of all you're going to choose a color so they're all different colors and that color is going to give you a part of your ship that is indicated on your player sheet you're then going to count the number of Pips and cross off that many passengers in any of the rows that are within that color component of the boat it's very hard without looking at the player sheet I realized um and what you're going to be doing is when you fill a row within that section of the boat it's going to give you a ticket and the tickets are really interesting because the way this game scores is as complicated as the way that you sort the dice because the way the ship is moving is going to give you access to a certain number of ports so you can access any port that is uh within a three range of that fairy ship um and uh at the end of the round you're going to get the opportunity to deliver some passengers to one of the ports and each of those ports is a different color that relates to the colored part of your ship and so for example if I wanted to activate um you know sorry if I want to deliver to White then I would look at my sheet and for the number of tickets that I have uh completed so the number of rows that I've completed within that section of the boat gets multiplied by the number of that port on the river this is so confusing so convoluted yeah and that's going to play into our review of this game so you told this thought um but basically you are then tied into this strange scoring conundrum where as you continue to deliver to that same colored Port throughout the game the score that you achieve always needs to be higher than your previously delivered port number which means that before I deliver again to White I want to make sure that I'm either delivering to a higher numbered white port on the river or that I've crossed off more tickets so that that multiplier is higher ah so at the end of the game you are going to be getting points for the uh the now the value of each of the tickets you've crossed off as well as those points that you've collected along the way from deliveries and then there's this weird captain score as well so at the end of both ends of the river there is a special Port that you can deliver to and the value of that delivery is going to be equal to the number total number of tickets on your boat times either two or times one at the end of the game and it has that same thing of if you deliver it the times two you need to be able to deliver more at the end of the game but the reason why you want to deliver to these ports is because that's an interactive element of this game where the person who's delivered the most is going to get a bonus 15 victory points and the person who's delivered the least um minus 15 and that that hurts it really hurts but then to add to that there's this hole you also add to that your lowest value of deliveries from or actually your lowest value score from all the other colors yeah so you can't really neglect any one color which one it's one of the fun things along the way where you realize oh no I've really neglected blue and so now it's this like mad rush to try and get some points yeah and I told you how when you complete a row within a section of the player board you get to cross off a ticket that's one thing you also get a number of bonus crosses that you can place in a different color and that's the most fun part of this game so I've talked about a lot of the complexities of the game but there is a really fun comboing of well if I cross off yellow that's going to give me two blue and then if I cross off those two like blue that's going to give me one brown and you're just like you know you get to have these long satisfying turns where you do so much with one turn this game for me is a bit of a conundrum I I do really enjoy it I really appreciate the design for its complexity because I'm like huh I would just never think of that in a million years and it's so it is so thinking there's so many layers to it but for that same reason it makes it super hard to get it to the table and I can't be bothered teaching it a lot of the time it's strange because it's like once you know what you're doing it's not a complicated game but the flow ironically the flow the flow of this river is so clunky like it's so like oh but then this thing oh but then also that thing oh but this talks to this and this activates this other thing oh and remember that you have to multiply this by and so and particularly for the first few games of people playing it feels quite slow because there's always going to be people who are struggling on weight so what am I doing with this again yeah and scoring is complex and the numbers are so high the match yeah by the end of the year you are doing a lot of multiplication and you're trying to make sure that you know that value is higher than that value so can I do it and so there is a lot of math that's going on while you're filling out your sheet so it's like a combination of fun Combos and difficult math and it's just a it's just a strange and I would say that it's not even difficult nice it's high maths so I think it's actually probably I was just thinking it's a great game uh in a school setting or in like a teaching mass or getting to practice maths uh setting because yet you end up having to do really large calculations towards the end yeah it's just a super interesting game what did I give this game Riverside I gave it 7.4 I got a 7.6 so quite close I yeah I enjoy my time with it I don't mind I actually don't mind the maths in it like because I do actually sometimes really enjoy like crunching numbers and doing that that aspect yeah I don't mind it myself but I find that it it restricts the amount of time that I get to the table and for I will say that I do kind of when I'm evaluating role in rights like in in this particular episode um I'm thinking a lot about how easy it is to get that rolling right to the table because that to me is the like I like yeah because it's like rolling rights are great for a bigger group usually um and you know I like to be able to explain it in a very logical way this is hard as you just saw me suffering through that yeah short teach is hard to explain quickly there's no real interaction either in this one which is often the case with a lot of rolling rights so like there's a solo mode which obviously plays out you know quite similarly to the um to the multiplayer mode so again it's one that I enjoy but but there are like for me there's also the concern of replayability because it's like once you've kind of done it yes all those the modular sort of of setup of that River will change with every game but ultimately you're still kind of doing the same thing time and time again and for something that is so seemingly convoluted math wise which trying to kind of do the combo thing um I would probably be uh not probably definitely be looking more at a like a gash on Clever type thing which we're not actually covering yet but uh yeah you'll hear more about in a future episode it will stay in our collection I think we both enjoy that it's a meteor experience because we like that so uh that is Riverside do you want to go this way all right so we'll go to clip cut Parks this is such a unique uh little game because in clip cut Parks you are actually using scissors yeah I have to open this one because it's gonna show it what game comes with four little pairs of scissors yes with just this rounded uh rounded edges safety safety scissors yeah but in this game it's yeah you're going to be you have different maps that you have to complete in terms of uh shape so usually like like a polyamino type shape out of your full sheet beautifully colored uh multi-colored sheet that you have to be cutting out and the way that you decide you know how many Cuts you get to do and how long those are is by the roll of a dice that tells you well how many cards so you'll have usually a couple of circles simply you say it's you know one two three cuts and then what the length of those cuts can be um so this is one of those games where as you're kind of figuring out okay so I can go one way this way and now I can go two ways this way you want to be very careful that you don't cut off a piece well sometimes you do want sometimes because you need to cut off individual sections of terrain to meet the conditions that are on the cards in front of you so the cards in front of you are going to be like you need to have you know a red square next to a green square um and so you're very carefully trying to cut that off and create the clean piece that you need to then get positioned onto the card in a way that fits yeah and you're trying to do that multiple times in order to complete the thing but if along the way you clip off something else that you weren't intending that now is uh debris that you have to scrunch up into a little bowl and that's going to be a bad thing yeah in the end so if you and this has happened to me many times if you accidentally cut off a piece that you realize is actually the mirror image of what you need and now that piece doesn't fit on any of your cards yeah then you've got to scrunch it up or if yeah you just completely miss that by making that cut something else is going to become dislodged off your sheet yeah and that also can't be placed again you're going generating unnecessary waste yeah it's not good it's not a good thing um yes I was just going to say um in also in this game there are some other conditions on the cards so sometimes there'll be a walkway that's shown on the card which means that you can't just cut off two independent squares and put them on there they need to be actually connected so you need to make sure that you cut them off together which creates like difficulties when you're looking at you know the because you're looking at the the colors that you have left and what's next to different things and so there's a lot to consider and it's quite a difficult spatial puzzle to wrap your head around with the cut and then what's going to fall off and then what you need to uh so if you're working towards a particularly difficult combo you need to be be sure that your other cuts are not impacting your ability to eventually get there and snip that off I haven't found that the spatial puzzle that I find it really difficult but I have a problem with colors yeah I don't find it difficult I really enjoy it it's more usually the the whole I haven't realized that you know one of these Cuts has met another cut and now all of a sudden I found myself like dropping a piece that I was like I didn't intend for that to happen yeah you really don't want to do that if it's a significant part of your sheet because then you're in real trouble you've just you know cut off a quarter of your sheet and now you've had to scrunch it up and throw it away so much fun though yeah this game is so much fun it it sounds easy and it is when you play on the easy mode but then there are more well and in this game we should say that you start in the basic mode you start with five cards and you're only going to turn over two of them and the ones that you're trying to complete and the player who wins is the person who completes their five cards the quickest so it's when you've completed one you get to reveal another one so there's no victory points as such it is definitely a race game but when Maggie and I play it we throw in as many of the difficult cards as we can because there's an advanced variant that has a harder to complete spatial puzzles yeah and so we throw all of those in I think it's occasionally we've played with just those um and we make it really difficult on ourselves and it just makes us laugh so much every time we play this it just everyone is laughing because it's so silly and just simple but then it's just like so mindful because you're like you know it's like craft time you're like you know you're cutting your little piece and like I really yeah I really have my time with it I really do too it's super unique um what did I give it I gave it 7.5 um I you know as I'm working through my ratings I realized that I do tend to favor some things that have a unique mechanic or something that I haven't seen before and this definitely does that I really love the physicality yeah of this game I go to 7 0.6 so again a little bit higher than you I really really enjoy it I mean ultimately again it's a it's a fairly simple kind of complex uh concept I should say but uh yeah I just it's just so pleasant so yeah yeah that is a clip cup part yeah um the next one and this is the one where I start smiling if you know if you watch this channel you can probably already anticipate my feelings about this game um this is welcome to and welcome to is a flipping rat game where there are going to be three piles of cards and at the same time you're going to reveal the next you're going to turn over one card from each of those three decks and what that's going to give you is a combination of number and on the back of the cards or once you flip them um an action or an ability uh that you get to cross off and use and when you're choosing uh which thing that you want to get done this round you have to choose an number and action combo so it's you can't just be like oh and do this action but I really need that number part of the difficulty of the puzzle is looking at what you're going to draft and when you are playing those onto your player sheet you are playing as a 1950s architect trying to build out phone plan yeah trying to build out some housing estate and you've got three streets to do that on and along these streets um you know back to Mechanical terms you're going to be drawing their house numbers ranging from 0 to 17 but there are there's not 18 spaces on each of these streets so what you're going to be doing is you're going to be choosing a number so for example if I choose the number six then I've got to choose where to place it on one of those streets allowing myself enough space either side to place either lower numbers or higher numbers when I'm going to need to choose those numbers later in the game so this game is all about kind of pushing your luck a little bit and estimating um you know if I have a six I might leave maybe two or three spaces to the left of it for some lower numbers um and also thinking about your three streets and the distribution of numbers that each of those three streets is going to have so because you know you don't want to make them all so you can't place low numbers on any of them yeah but then there's so much else that goes into this game so there are three City cards that are revealed for each game these are going to be objectives that everybody around the table is racing to complete the person who completes them first gets more points you can complete them later but you'll get fewer points um these relate to different combinations of houses and certain things on your board but the most common thing is housing Estates and housing Estates require you to draft an action that is a fence and I do not use the same terminology as here I use the icon terminal which I think most other people probably do as well like I really need a fence because a fence is going to create a dividing your numbers which sets up a housing estate you can also then use another action to increase the value of housing Estates of certain sizes so if you increase the value of housing Estates of three houses then you want to make sure that you divide up your streets to have those three houses grouped and completed as much as possible there's a whole heap of other Dynamics in this game for scoring that I won't go into but I want to talk about why I love this game so much and I do um in the puzzle itself here is just I just find it so excellent it's very clever it's just I and you know granted this came out early into the the wave of Roland rights um and it is you know there's probably a lot of things with more complexity or puzzles yeah yeah but it I have great nostalgic feels for it because the first one where I was like this game is so good and I just want to play it all the time and I want to get all of the expansions for it and I you know want to go deep into this world um I I love the the fact that you do get to choose between those three groupings of numbers and actions so it feels like you get a lot of choice and it feels like you are kind of competing against yourself in order to like take like taking gambles yeah or the whole way along yeah it's exciting because it's like again it's one of those games where everyone starts on an even playing field and we all have the option of the same kind of set of of uh choices to to pick from and yet as soon as you make a choice you start kind of going in very very different and directions so yeah I feel like it was also one of the first flipping rights that we ever played yeah it would have been it would have been early into the you know the craze of wrong right and I think since then we have seen a lot more games that have that combo choice of like oh this is not ideal but I really need the number I really need the thing or the um but this was obviously quite uh revolutionary at the time or quite it felt so new and unique um I also just love the the fact that it tries to force you away from your plan so you could be eyeing off a city card and you're like I really need to focus on just complain that City card and then our pool appears with a house number that is just going to fit perfectly into your puzzle where there's a space for a pool house and so you're just like that's tempting I'm just gonna grab that pool and so you're just trying to be up to opportunistic at the same time as working towards a broader strategy I love array subjective we see that across many games but I just really enjoy enjoy that it's done really well here and I just found that for something so simple and fairly unchanging you know without any of the expansions I've had so many games of this with so many people and it just is always super satisfying as a puzzle I just always feel so good about myself if I can complete those three uh streets and interestingly one of the end one of the conditions for ending the game is when someone is not able to place a house for the third time so three strikes and they're gonna end the game so everyone needs to be pretty careful with their puzzle and it's it is like slightly frustrating when someone ends the game and you're like no it was so set up I knew I was going to be at a completely yeah yeah so um I don't know it's just it's just I love this game so much what did I give it I gave it a nine whoa yeah a nine and that is a nine relative to many great High rating games in our collection so yeah just speaks to how much I really adore this I I enjoy this game but not to the level that Amy does it's a 7.7 for me because it's a game that again like I was very taken and very uh impressed when I first experienced it and I think like over time I'm like yeah okay like obviously you know it's it's numbers and placings and things so it's like there's limited uh enjoyment that I don't know what it is it's a perfect combo yeah and we do have some of the other games in the series and we'll talk about those yeah we'll feature the videos later but suffice to say in its purest form it's just excellent yeah I just love it the way it is um that is welcome too all right my turn we're gonna move on to Rolling Realms so rolling Realms is a very unique and clever uh implementation of a roll and write Where You Are essentially you're kind of rolling these two Mega Dice that are very really satisfying and then you're going to have a selection of different Realms which cleverly relate back to different stonemere games so you know you might have a viticulture uh card and you might have a um like non-blanking yeah like a wingspan and so so all of those it's like all of these are mini games that then you're going to be um kind of they all have their own sort of rules of how they play and how they score ultimately all of them are going to be giving you Stars which are going to be the points for the end of the the games however has the most points wins but then you're also going to be collecting um resources so you have you know little hearts or coins or pumpkins and so they also all of those one they're either going to be decimal points at the end of the game if you don't use them but they also are going to be able to be used for particular you know abilities what I really love about this game is a couple of things one is the Nostalgia of uh that those mini games reminding you of the big game that they represent like those those Realms that they're representing and now it's actually expanded to the point where there's even non-stuntmeyer games uh being being represented as part of the Realms so you're going to be playing over three rounds and in each round from memory is three different Realms so you get to play through nine different kind of mini mini games or different yeah any Reds and the fun in this game is that because you are seeing nine different Realms in a particular game it's like I think it's really fun that each one of them Works slightly differently uh and the mechanics that are related to that realm relate back and and very much are related to the mechanics in the original stoma game yeah and so for any fans of stomaching or so my games if you have the collection it's just like there's this yeah the nostalgic feelings of like ah I see why that is and making the connection of why that works the way it does because of the game Scythe has like top actions and bottom actions you're like oh that's right because that's what the pendulum has the the timer so it's like oh that's right the timers they were intense so in bit of culture you've got the little grapes and so I was like it's all these little touches yeah the other thing that I love about this is the soul military mode they kind of had this solitary mode that is a campaign and it's a mini golf theme and so you're kind of working your way through all the different homes and each hole is a A new challenge so clever I still don't quite comprehend how minds are able to come up with this combo of puzzles but it's a combination so it kind of gives you a particular challenge with a combination of Realms and a particular uh yeah goal that you have to that you have to reach or a particular set of limitations that you have for each one of those and and I just really enjoyed working my way through that campaign and sort of going oh you get stuck and then you can kind of get a little handicap and try again and so very very clever implementation there are some of the additional expansions we we don't have yet so but it's one of those things I definitely want to get forward to yeah checking out yeah some of those ones so rolling Realms rolling Realms I gave it 7.4 um and I really and enjoy my time with rolling Realms I particularly enjoy rolling Realms when I'm actually just playing with Maggie I think it's because the the reason why the score is a little bit lower like it's still still a great game great score but the reason why it's a little bit lower is just because I again with Roland rights it's something that I when I think of that category of games I think of playing it with a lot of people and I know that this game is really love for its solo game I really enjoy playing it with Maggie but I think to fully appreciate it it really helps to know the games that are referenced in it definitely that's a layer of enjoyment it's like the main thing for me in my enjoyment of this is remembering the other stomai games I know that you can get more uh you know obviously other games that are non-stone Meyer and pack them into the game but my main thing is that I play with a lot of people that haven't played that style of game so they're never going to get any of those references uh so for me it's just it's just more limited in its occasions but I still really think it's really fun and I like playing it with you because then also you know when you're playing with another gamer you don't have to spend the time explaining how each card works or differs so much so each of the Realms like you're more likely to pick it up quicker wait we did give the rating No I gave my writing oh I haven't given my rating so it's a 7.8 for me I really really enjoy this game uh it's the only reason it's not highest because again it's a fairly simple and straightforward uh kind of game and I feel like yeah once you've sort of played through those mini games it's like yeah okay like I feel like I've done it so now it's just more about adding those additional um kind of expansion Realms it's still quite High yeah and also one of the best we were talking about the markers before one of the best markers of everything as well yeah yeah yeah amazing thank you uh for that marker in particular that's rolling Realms I was like you're thinking me are you no you're thinking Jamie I'm thinking Jamie yeah I'm thinking the game and Jamie from the choice of marker um so the next game is TWA dice now this is a re-implementation of a bigger Euro game in role and write form to our dice it is different to the euro game which we also have in our collection we'll come back to in a later episode um but twice dice is the way it works is you're going to be this is one that actually does have dice um they're going to be rolled and they're going to be placed out into the center board that is essentially like parts that refer to different sections of your player board so they've like colored little zones and their borders also split into two it's going to be day and then it's going to be so morning and afternoon and uh the game is going to play it out over the course of eight rounds and in across each of the rounds you're going to have a morning phase and then that afternoon phase and so in this game you only get a total of 8 18 turns I.E you're only going to be writing down 18 turns or doing 18 actions total so that is one of the hardest things about this game is that you are quite strapped for things that you can get very limited yeah so you know you have a limited number of rounds in which to do things and you're not going to be able to get everything done so it's like it's stressful from the get-go yes and so before stuff gets started to get destroyed yeah which makes even more stressful yeah and I think one of the most interesting things about this game is there is well a couple of things there's a black dye that is incredibly destructive and so there is an event phase that happens after the dice are placed out onto their little sections of the ball that you're going to choose from there's an event dice that at the beginning of the game the early phase I think it's phase one through three it's just going to make it that one of those options is not available to you so one of the sections is not going to be possible but in the later stages of the game it's actually going to start to destroy parts of your player sheet and that's really annoying because there are lots of things that you need to get done in your player sheet but I think the most interesting thing about this game is that one of those things you can do is build buildings so you can use the appropriate die to mark off buildings on your player sheet but then those buildings are only going to score if you mark off the corresponding Cathedral and when you mark off the corresponding Cathedral you're going to be locking in the value of each of those buildings depending on the timing at which you activate it so the more buildings that you've built of that type before you mark off that Cathedral the more victory points each one is going to be worth at the end of the game so you've got this real tension of do I early on Mark it off so I can ensure that it scores because it might get destroyed [Music] um or do I wait and push my luck and collect as many buildings as I can can before I go and mark off that Cathedral so there's this like Risk mitigation element of this game which is really interesting because then you can also build these forts to protect from being destroyed if we take certain parts of your board from being destroyed but that's going to use up a whole turn so you don't get anything from them you don't get anything in the building may never get destroyed so you might be building this for nothing yeah yeah but you're trying to offset or mitigate the the bad luck of uh what can happen in this game which is I've worked really hard in all these buildings and now the scoring opportunity has been destroyed uh so now I'm in a lot of trouble it's a really low scoring game which is interesting I at least for us you know I mean if you're better I'm better uh at this game then yeah but it is at the low scary game as terms of rolling rights I found it the most challenging to kind of wrap my head around how to do well um and I don't know if I'm a fan of the flow of the game it's like okay for me I don't mind puzzle yeah but it's a little bit again it's one of those games that it's it's quite there's a bit of nuance in uh what you can do and what that black dye is doing and then the the way that all of that scoring element is going to come together that makes it a little tricky to teach so it's a little bit more complex than your average rolling right um but I'm just not sure that it feels satisfying enough to me there's no like the the combo element is not strong enough for me to like get and the satisfaction is not there and then when those bad events do happen and something gets destroyed I feel like kind of like ah like that was unlucky and you should have done something but now I feel like not that great about it so it's like I I will play this I like it um for me it's a seven what did I give it oh yeah so for me it's actually a 7.7 ah so why do you like it well because I sort of feel like I don't mind the the sort of interlayered thing of like I I enjoy the thinkiness of it I've kind of going oh this is going to score with this or the the yeah the interrelation of those factors I agree that it's not the most streamlined of uh flows but like thinking now of like Riverside where it's also like a little bit clunky in terms of you know oh this thing what am I doing with but this one like it's I wouldn't say that it's clunky I think it's like the yeah the the relationship between oh okay making sure that I have enough of these buildings but it's like they're not going to score anything unless I activate the you know that cathedral but also the timing of when I activate that three little Cathedral is going to indicate the multiplier that I'll get for those buildings and so I feel like there's way more thinkiness and and uh almost like meat on the Bones from this one so I almost like don't like I'm happy to uh um pardon or like forgive the yeah the the the sort of stuff the clunkiness or the stump start of like oh wait what relates to what because there's actually like I feel like the the level of strategy is deeper with this one so I I do enjoy I will agree that it's not my favorite role and ride just because it is quite abstract and obviously I'm more of a like thematic I like to sort of feel like I'm achieving something or doing something in a creative sort of way very high score for me yeah yeah for something that I also find not very thematic at all I do feel like this is like levers it is it is very much leave it's like they're kind of tried with the three types of abilities well yeah because it's like the buildings and they're related like it feels like I think from them it's like clerics and civilians and what but it's like realistically in the gameplay now it's just colors colors I think Maggie just really enjoys difficult puzzles that she gets to work on no work on by herself so very like multiplayer solid happy place but yeah so let's try dice I just try dice ah put it to your pal but yours is six all right so now we're gonna go into a beautiful little game called offeringdados el Camino amid Clan now this is a again a Mexican game so made from a team in Mexico and it's about the the celebration that happens with a day of the dead so the other Muertos where in Mexico the it's very and obviously you would have seen it so colorful and you have all the you know the skulls and all of that but the whole thing is about celebrating or reuniting with those uh loved ones who have passed on and so this the way that that it happens in real life so the way the celebration is you families will build these um altars and put the ofrendas which are kind of like the the offerings to attract and to sort of uh celebrate it's kind of like preparing a a table with a bit of a feast um because you're having people over and so this is this is a way of like putting all the all of your loved ones favorite things so that when they come and and hang out with you then they've got access to all the things that they love the way that this happens in the game and also in the you know in terms of the the uh the celebration is there's the El Camino so like the road it's the the path between the world of the living and the world the the you know of the dead and so that that path is made of uh these flowers now I can't remember the name of the flowers but they're also represented in the game so in this game you're going to be using um dice to then determine in your altar so you're going to be drawing different offerings to in your altar all of those offerings will have different ways of scoring and even the way that they score is so beautifully thematically integrated with what those offerings are so there's things like um the particular like the sweet bread that they use and then the papel picado so they're like the the um sort of chopped paper that they use and so those are the things that you're going to be drawing and so that's one of the dice you can use to to draw those things one of the other dice you can use to get coins so the coins are going to help you get um some of these cards that will give you unique abilities essentially taking those cards you get either additional points or some of them are going to be abilities along the way and then the other one is a die set allows you to put flowers to build that Camino to build that road and the path between the living and the dead which if you don't contribute to that if you don't manage to to complete that or create that path anything that you do in your altar at the end of the game is worthless because it's like well if you weren't able to establish the path for that connection and your loved ones weren't able to come and see you then what's the point of the The Altar and so the way that you're going to be doing that is you have this um this this path where you're going to be placing these uh beautiful little flowers and those flowers um we're kind of collectively going to be placing those flowers down but the the flowers will kind of go in particular um particular types of flowers so there's going to be two things one is some of those flowers are going to give you benefits along the way so you're like oh yeah it'll be great for me to get that type of flower next because I'll get that particular benefit that either will give me points or allow me to draw other things on my on my altar but the other thing is there's going to also be a majority scoring for the different types of flowers at the end of the game so a lot of um different little things going on it's not a complicated game to learn beautiful um thematic like a lot of thought and love that has gone into the the theme of this also obviously coming from Mexico and even in the uh in the rule book they have that context of what that celebration is all about and so you get to actually learn about that I just yeah I just love um some of them it's so much yeah yeah me too thematically it's just I think Mexico in general holds a special place in our heart we've traveled there often um and yeah I just I really love all the thought and attention that went to this I Really Love Actually drawing having to draw the icons yeah so actually having to test out your artistic ability which is terrible I love it so much but I'm so bad at drawing yeah but it is so fun because there's few games where you get to yeah you know exercise that so it's kind of fun to draw the little it's a beautiful altar by the end because it's like all those different icons and all this yeah yeah I actually really enjoyed some of the scoring conditions that happen on the Altar and the way that that all gets summed up I like the kind of semi-area control things or every majority things that are going on with the path and yeah there's just all of these little scoring elements that I thought were really clever um for me the game is a little it's like a straightforward it's a fairly simple game um and some of the component tree does let it down a little bit um the yellow and orange uh die dice are very close in color yeah very very close in color and that was quite confusing when we were first playing I often made the mistake of using the wrong one for the wrong thing before realizing having to undo my turn so that was a little bit frustrating and everything is like quite small so the dice is small and the little flowers are really small so if either of those things are a deal breaker for you you're starting to consider but if you're just into this theme it couldn't be more thematic it's a beautiful game and it's great to you know support small Publishers like this yeah it does it makes me so much just so bright and colorful yeah it's just such a beautiful and that's the thing even with the color choice so it's like oh you know these two are so close and and you kind of get used to it the more games that you play but particularly in the first few games you're comp like several of us would get confused and go oh no I I thought it was for this and but it's like I can see why they chose those colors because those are the colors of that you see in the celebrations when you when you're there and that that's happening so yeah what's the what what did you give it I gave it a seven I really love some of the creative elements I like some of the scoring conditions I love trying to build out that puzzle in the ultra particularly so yeah I give it a 7.4 so obviously a bit higher for me love the theme makes me feel so like warm and kind of Joyful inside but ultimately yeah the the puzzle itself is fair really kind of straightforward which you know it's good but it means that then it kind of suffers from that replayability yeah a bit more if you've played it than you know a few times yes but it is very endearing oh we keep it in our collection for sure yes that's open um and the next game is a game called dungeons Dice and danger I believe this actually came out this year yeah so this is a 2022 release it is an interesting Roland right in where you are going on an adventure through a dungeon and you are making your way through this dungeon and you're going to find these layers that contain different types of monsters and it's somewhere in this dungeon is going to be our boss monster and everyone is trying to compete to defeat these Monsters uh before other people so that you can get the most uh the most gems as Point uh which translate into victory points um and this game is interesting in that the way that it works is the active player is going to be rolling 5 Dice and when they roll these five dice there are going to be four White die and one black die and they're the only person that gets to use that black dye unless someone uses a special ability to get access to it and what you're going to be doing is you're chopping and mixing those dye together in order to get um two pairs so you can choose like two dice to sum together and another two dice to sum together and then you're going to take those two summed values and you have to place both of those numbers somewhere on your board and the way that it's placed on your board in this game is you're not writing anything anywhere you're simply Crossing off that value but you can only cross off the value if it appears next in a path that you you're creating so next to it adjacent to a square you've already crossed off or from one of the starting spaces and so you're you're essentially building out your journey throughout this dungeon exploring new spaces through your dungeon yes and there's a few things that come along with this you're going to be able to pick up Treasures along the way um you're also going to be able to gain access to these layers that I spoke about to find these monsters and so there are basically in order to be able to access a monster you have to have marked off one of the the doorway spots um so the next number on the path once you have access to the monster the monster has is going to take a certain number of hit points and the hits are going to be based on a value so if you can get one of those dice combos to be value five well that's going to help deal a hit to this monster and you'll be doing that over and over again until they're defeated and hopefully you can do that before anybody else the winner of this game is going to be the first person who can defeat all of the monsters on their map specifically triggers end of game Sorry that triggers end of game but usually the person who can do that is going to have a lot of points yeah um and so yeah yeah they'll definitely hopefully be ahead by the time they seek to trigger that unless they did something really really uh badly or were very risky along the way and got a lot of minus points in terms of their health going that's right because anytime that you can't place either the two numbers which can happen you're going to have to mark off a life point and the more life points you have the more negative victory points but if your life points actually run out you are eliminated from this game this game has player elimination you will be dead um and so there's no more taking on monsters for you you're out of the game and everyone else continues but there are ways that you can mitigate against that you can unlock some special abilities that give you some bonus life points you can also unlock an ability that allows you to use the black dye when it's off turn yeah so when you're the passive player and it's really important to have access to that because when you are the active player you have a choice of I believe nine different combinations of pairs of numbers when you are not the active player you have two choices and so having access to that Fifth die really increases significantly the number of numbers that you can choose from and therefore the direction you can take with your puzzle in my mind I'm still like lost in there what are we how many choices do you have about four dies is that because it's ten yeah like that pair or that pair or that pair isn't it more choice I don't know it's very confusing um and as you play there's a lot of summing involved because uh what you're trying to do very quickly is work out all of the possible combos of dice so especially when you're the active player there's a lot to think about but it is made a little bit easier by the fact that you might only have a certain number of numbers available to you so you're really looking at the puzzle and being like well actually I really I'm searching for a seven so if I add these two dice together I can get that seven but what's the other two gonna that are left over gonna give me and can I use that as well and so that usually dictates a lot of your choices in this game yeah um but yeah I first of all I'll say I feel like this is really unique oh yeah as a roller I love the the concept of having a yeah a rolling right that is so epic and you actually can see the progress of your a journey through the game so I and it feels you know fairly I'm gonna say thematic but it's like it just feels like I'm I'm doing something that I can kind of understand I'm kind of crafting this path and then I'm battling these monsters and it yeah I think it does feel automatic I really like all of the different maps that it comes with so it's a huge variety of these Maps yeah and they are beautifully Illustrated I really enjoy it they're bright and colorful and they just look really great on the table yeah and you do get that sense of adventure I agree it's very thematic one thing I'll say is that it's a bit long I I find the games you know they can go for an hour which is a more substantial role and right experience but if you're after that adventuring like Maggie loves the joy like just wants to go on to a longer Adventure Adventures yeah so um for me dungeons Dyson danger is 7.3 okay so it's higher for me it's a 7.8 because I really just yeah I love I love going on that epic adventure sure and I love that you know as even though we're not kind of battling together there's a little bit of an element of that because it's like whoever manages to defeat a monster it's like you they've weakened it so they get to have the highest number of victory points for that but then everyone else gets to still have a go at that monster but we get to like yeah to the time that when we go and attack them they're gonna be weaker but we're also when we defeat them we're gonna get fewer points so this is that even though it's not really interactive there's a little element of like it we're kind of in this sort of together sure as far as rolling right but mostly you know working on your own which is what I like do you do like just yeah I am feeling like overall your scores for all the rights are a bit higher because of the facts that you do enjoyable to play Solitaire yeah um but this um I wanted to say something about this game is that it can be a bit AP prone um I find myself uh like I don't want to commit to a set of numbers until I've worked out every possible combination of numbers which can you know for people who are oriented towards that um optimizing it can be a little bit slow to have the sum and often I find I actually find it very difficult to look at five numbers five dice together and sum this one and that one and that one and that one like I actually find I need to physically move them yeah so that they're there to group them together and then for my brain to be able to compute that which obviously is really annoying for everybody else around the table because I'm like can I has everyone done can I just like push these around and I find it you know much quicker to do it that way but anyway yeah I'm more interesting I feel like that's more about me oh yeah that looks good yeah I'll just make do it with the other combo or I like it's something to be aware of though there is a lot of summing in this game so if that's not for you then this is definitely not for you yeah but that is Dungeon Dice and danger all right final one final one is cartographers I just want to say about this collector's edition and that I think we should score it for the base and the reason why I say that is because the base game is contained in here yes um there's a whole heap of other stuff that comes along with the collector's edition we have the heroes expansion uh we've got the skills both skills expansions and a ton of additional Maps but I don't feel that we've played all of that content enough to give it a score based on everything combined so I just wanted to say that because we don't have the base box anymore but no uh we're going to talk about validated things we're going to talk about the small retail base box that you can get yeah so a cartographers we are cartographers so we're mapping the land and trying to make the best well this yeah this is interesting because they were technically mapping the land but we're getting to choose what goes where so I'm just now I've always just realizing Whoever has the best memory of what the land looked like yeah and so there's going to be um there's going to be objectives so we're going to be playing it as uh through our different seasons and as replace through those different seasons there's going to be combinations of objectives for scoring purposes so for example when referring in the playing the first season it might be all about you know you're going to get points for this type of combination of residential areas that you that you manage to get or or um it might be around the forest residential areas eventually because it's like yeah it's like Villages because it's like the little houses like a residential zone is it still if they're residences it would still be residential I don't know so yeah it doesn't feel of the time but I mean but wouldn't it be like it's still rested as I don't know um or another example would be like the forest area so it's like you might be getting points for columns or completed columns or rows of of the the Green Forest areas and so you're having to kind of time and so the way that it had like everyone's had their own starting map um which is kind of like the the the empty-ish grid usually with a couple of obstacles along the way and then as we're revealing cards which will have uh usually a combination of either um a type of terrain so let's say a residential Brazilian and then a couple of options of uh polyamin or shapes that you could put that Terrain in so you you know we're all getting to kind of go oh okay so I know that I have to put that part that type of terrain but I might have an option of like smaller like this this will take some take up smaller space but it'll give me an extra coin or it'll be a bigger sort of piece that will help me kind of cover up more of the map so you're getting to choose that or some other cards might be a couple of different it's like this is the shape that you have to do it but you can choose between these two types of terrain and so it's got this really interesting interesting progress Revolution through the game where you're seeing how at every round it's going to be a slightly different combo of scoring um objectives yeah but you can also plan for what exactly yeah exactly so you you've got and sometimes you kind of find yourself working towards something you're like wait a second this is no longer going to score like this is not going to score anymore because we're past that that point but it gives the game one particularly with this one like being able to fill it out in color so using the color uh pencils makes this really beautiful final multi-colored map come to life yeah but even if you're not using Color you're drawing the symbol that relates to the terrain and so you do get like that same artistic it feels very creative like this map is coming to life and you know if you you don't have to search very far to see you know that you can buy stamps for this there are so many different ways that people artistically bring to life that's right incredible Maps um ours not so no we have a much more similar more uh basic way of of doing it but I I think if you love like a polyamino puzzle this is one of the best this is a really really great because accessible as well extremely accessible because people understand inherently understand polyamony tiles and it's not that much to Overlay to that if you're talking about the base game you're just looking at different terrain types and then if you all collectively go through okay what are the two objectives for this round remember yeah remember that's what's going to score at the end of this round and so you're looking at your Maps I think the one little element that some people might not enjoy about this game is the take that style element where a monster is revealed a monster card a monster card is going to be associated with a particular polyominos shape but you're going to draw that shape on your neighbor's sheet so it's going to tell us which way to rotate the sheets and then you will take your neighbor's sheet and put that shape in the most inconvenient spot possible because I mean unless you're really nice but no one surely is going to be that nice um and what they don't want to happen is that well once you get your sheet back and you look at this horrendous position that someone has put this piece puzzle piece in you then need to surround it as much as possible because you don't want any monsters to be next to empty spaces because they're going to be worth negative victory points so um there is that take that element of the game which some people may not enjoy you could completely remove those cards and not worry about that part of it but it does add a little bit of spice it mixes things up in it and you never know when it's going to occur so when it does occur it's like oh no you know I was working towards something and now someone might mess that up um so I I enjoy that part of the game I I really love the strip back version of cartographers and yeah as I said we have dabbled with some of the other maps and things from the expansions but for now we'll rate just the base game um cartographers I gave an eight as well and again that's based on the on the core or base game because agreed like we haven't like I don't feel like I've really explored the other one the other sort of add-on you know so much additional content but also when I have kind of dabbled into it it's like I I actually prefer the core game by itself I feel like yes like those things are good if you're wanting a bit of variety or if you kind of you know played it out yeah but but it's like really the beauty of it is in that core puzzle I agree yeah it's a great game it's really easy to get to the table everyone that we've introduced it to really loves it it's a classic for a reason and it was another one of those games that really came into the role and write scene and like at the right time when the wave of Roland Rights was here and it kind of changed the way people perceive yeah all the rights I think so um yeah absolutely fantastic games that is cartographers so that's the last one that is the last one of the first 10 of the Roland rats in collection we will take a break from Roland rights because that was a lot um and get back to some bigger games that's like probably like a 10 comma out of 10 comma out of ten so it's like 10 rolling rise come out of 10 games of our collection come at rated out of ten yeah out of 30 rolling rights out of yeah out of ten out of three parts so we're gonna run out of character limit in the like this we've hit the character a little bit yeah that's right um we hope you are still enjoying this series if you are please hit like subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and we'll be back with more board game content soon but otherwise bye for now bye foreign [Music]

Channel: ThinkerThemer

Views: 12,389

Keywords: board games, board game reviews, board game mechanics, tabletop game reviews, board game themes, thinker themer, thinkerthemer, top 10, boardgames, boardgame, top 10 boardgames, metro x board game, metrox board game, top 10 roll & writes, top 10 roll and write games, cartographers, dungeons dice and danger, riverside board game, troyes dice game, clip cut parks, welcome to board game, roll & write games, roll & write, 10 out of 10 board games, roll and write, board game review

Id: ym_rh_s_s4A

Length: 68min 28sec (4108 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022