Century: Spice Road & Century: Eastern Wonders - Shut Up & Sit Down Review

today we're looking at some board game mad science century spice road though is a well likes card game about trading spice and do it century this Eastern wonders is a new pick up and deliver game about trading spices Hardy but together their powers combined you can are you making they become you will kill us I pick up and deliver card game we will die about trading spicy dead look at this wait there's more and as yet unannounced game in this series will soon be announced and released and this spice mix will get even more even more dangerous you mean I was just gonna say more spicy oh this was at the end of us we do it how would you even begin to review all of the the different combinations of well I thought we could review spice road they host and wonders and then we review them both combined madness I don't think it's very difficult honestly alright century spice road is a tidy little card game every player starts holding the same two cards and then the race is on to fill these contracts first which require different amounts of turmeric saffron cardamom and cinnamon and are worth different points your turn is most commonly spent picking a card from your hand and playing it transforming or ensnaring more and more spice like some kind of evil child catcher except spice doesn't have any parents and can't feel pain so it's fine or you can spend your turn picking up a card from the shop and adding it to your hand and then sliding all the other cards in this shop one down if you want something further up the conveyor belt that's fine you just have to leave a sticky trail of cubes up to the card that you want and then if future players take that card they get all the cubes on it the third way you can spend your turn is taking all the cards you've played and putting them back in your hand ready to be played again alternatively the fourth and final thing you can do in your turn is take all of the cubes required by one of the contracts and fulfill that contract and if you manage to fulfill one of the contracts in the prestigious number one or number two slot you get a metal coin that it's gonna be worth three or one point all right so immediately my question is why should I play this instead of Splendor another game of grabbing cards and sort of gem spices different colored gem spices like gem spice and purple spice and sapphires person whatever another card building engine game where you invest those gems and getting more cards which give you more gems which gives you waterfalls of cards until you're living in a hallmark palace we're having a Valentine's Day orgy or something you see I love splendor and there is probably no better example of a quick 20 minute engine building game that is all about getting stuff to buy stuff to get or stuff splendor has so expertly sanded those depths with its precision and sonar that century spice Road feels built like a tin submarine bouncing along the bottom of the ocean and I don't want to say it's not fun it is fun it is enjoyable but the two compared sorry it just does not have the same Sheen look if you know the two it's impossible not to compare them it's like having a chocolate chip cookie and a diamond chip cookie and I know which one of those I want to eat stop right there Paul Dehn eye mouth don't know if I agree I never fully fully got on with splendor right I just like that when I play it my friends are cramping down my decision space meaning I have less fun whereas in century I feel like I'm racing my friends it's more playful and they love that they're occasionally putting down spice to King cards spice that I can then Snapple up like a giddy Mentats splendor is short and sharp for a century is long and gentle and I personally don't know which of those games I think is better but at least can we not agree that this is not an amazing game it's not yes I like but don't love spice road I wouldn't necessarily race to recommend it and I dislike that it's targeted as a luxury card game where you're paying for these bowls and you're paying for these coins and these enormous tarot size cards and yet it falls down because the card backs are particularly nice and the art on most of the cards is really mediocre the art is a bit weird this man seems baffled about this other man pointing at his groin and these people seem to be harvesting purple what is there a saffron but the thing that shows mustard I can't remember all the spices are mustard ketchup wasabi brown sauce it is cool the mechanisms here great it's exciting to sync up all the cards in just the right order so that you turn one thing into two other things that become three other things and you do these with perfect timing so you snatch a card or even a victory card just one moment before one of the other players and then throw them entirely off like you have thrown a metaphorical card in the metaphorical gears of their metaphorical puzzle car desperately trying to draw but you're just driving a bit better and you're going honk honk yep and I loved the brain melting realization that there aren't just good and bad collected hands of cars and splendour there is different types I might have a deck of cards to lets me spin up a ton of cubes from when I go now to all nothing and Paul might have a hand of cards that means he can very quickly turn yellow cubes all the way into the maximum level cinnamon just kind of did that well actually there you go and yet both of us might struggle when trying to fill a contract that just wants a ton of red saffron's then you get a table of players all trying to think their way into this puzzle from different angles trying to figure out if any of their cards or maybe this one could do it but this is it this is part the fun is everybody will find different things and harder or easier as the game goes along and they will find themselves in sync with the flow of play or out of it and that's great and there are gonna be people out there I'm sure who absolutely adore this mental puzzling and we're not quite those people are we know there are still a lot of card games in my collection that I would rather play so we like it yeah not great it's very good but it's not very great so then shall we travel further down this spice road what do you mean that we travel I mean metaphorically oh the next review next review right we did the road is let's there are signs we're driving I'm driving here we go or you can drive I can't legally drive all right it's time to drop the bathrobe of mediocrity hanging off of this review and reveal the nude body of something beautiful for Eastern wonders the second game in this series we now have an art team that includes the legendary Chris Williams my favorite art designer working in board games today we have a game that feels fresher and more entertaining even the spices were collecting a more mouth-watering and involved less syllables we're now growing ginger mint chili and cloves much of the game is exactly the same players are still fussing with four colors of cubes and transforming them in an effort sir trying to fill contracts first but instead of fussing with cards now all aboard cuz there's a board and you've got a boat so I did a joke there so on your turn now you're going to move your boat if you want to move more than one space then you have to throw a big box of spices overboard when you arrive at a space you can build a trading post there but if someone else already has driven post there then you have to throw another spice overboard also if there's a boat there you have to pay the owner of that boat one cubed but once you've built the trading post there then you can transform things into other things the outposts you build are worth more and more victory points and every column you clear gets you a profoundly satisfying permanent upgrades do you want more cargo space a faster ship do you want a free bushel of chillies every time you build an outpost that's a trick question you're going to want all of this stuff Easter wanders lets you build new maps and new shapes of maps it lets you follow different strategies that's a bit of area control you end up clashing and playing with your friends and my goodness if spice Road was along and maybe a bit of a dry hike across a desert then Eastern wonders felt like the Oasis at the end or a salty sea spray that left me excited and charmed and invigorated so I'll tell you what I want what I really really want so tell me what you want what you really really want I wanna ha i wanna hurt i want to huh go here without having to pay you an extra cube to get mint well i'm not gonna move my boats immediately right from the start things are more challenging and more competitive and more interactive in the most frustrating way never have such tiny benign houses cause so much rage and anger right from the start the game the choices you make the places you go to the things you drop down matter great deal you're carving out your own personal territory your own areas of the map that you can bob around within relatively merry comfort and because there are so many different maps they possible because there's so many tiles you can rearrange every game is gonna be different for everybody the start or middle or end are different things it can be harder or easier making your initial choices even more vital making everything even more challenging I'll tell you what I like as well so the last tell me what you like what I really really like ah spice roads as a card game felt like a little card game in a big box and at $30 it just felt and too expensive of it wrong like a kid in a big coat who wanted to fire board games but he was under the legal age whereas Eastern wanders they've had to work really hard to pack this many components this much game into this box and yet they retail at the same price which means that this game this lovely game full of stuff starts of just twenty six dollars online that's really good I love it what is the legal age for buying board games lagarza buying board games is 45 as humanoid well no and Paul and I are wanted by police why we have to get into that coat well I am because Paul is 46 right right this point both games being similar there is really quite a lot of contrast here a contrast of what is obviously physically in the box a contrast for how I feel like I'm using my brain as I attack this problem of a game a contrast in how this so much more shoulder bargaining and pushing on the players aside as you try and get to the right island or the right resource of the the right thing that you need to right victory token and yet you still get to make your complex little cube machines and then cry and frustration as they don't quite sync up and produce you the right amount of cider or red wine or Jagermeister or scotch all right thank you agra meister is made yes it is It's Made on Yaga Island okay I love this game I can't Ramona to pack so much game is so much fun into such a small price tag with just one page of rules I would absolutely give this game the shut up and sit down recommends badge I love you but not this game so we're at an impasse I did think send you when you give her the badge I would not H I really enjoy it but it doesn't tease that it doesn't tickle your line it doesn't the gauge light doesn't come on when you're driving when you're low and feel that's not a good analogy have a really good time with it but not a good enough time that I really want to throw it back on the table and display all this advocate this has never happened before how he's giving it half a batch though we're what's half a badge a bat or a do this is a disaster can we move on to the main event yet I can't stop you this is where the boardgaming mad science begins do not try this at home unless you are a trained board gaming professional Quentin Smith please explain the procedure Yes Doctor so what we're going to do first off put down some of these blanks see spaces to make the Spice Islands worse we're going to get rid of about 10% of Eastham on its components and we're gonna bring in the cards from spice Road everyone starts at the same two cards laters in spice right and we have a little shrunken shop now on your turn you can play life spice Road either if you play a card to get some cubes or you can spend your turn picking up a card from the shop or you can spend your turn picking everything up but the new move in from Santa C is that you can burn cards from your discard pile or your hand before you pick them up again later to move your boat and build outposts now already when I start playing this game I had disappointment in my gut combining these two games into something had more heavy and nuanced was meant to be the unique selling point of this whole series and yet not only are we playing with no more or less components than these games we're not even playing with more or less rules still the rules are packed into just one page of manual and what happened next Quinn's the following reenactment features real participants in footage actually shot at the time some viewers may find this disturbing well I started playing from Santa C and I was focusing on the card game cuz it's a full card game you know and I was playing cards and having fun and then I realized oh my goodness you know this this whole board exists so then I started playing the board game and that it would just take out my whole hand and then I remember the card game existed and then I realized that to play well I was expected to play two games sort of at the same time and you know then I would have these turns where I had a really hard decision to make but pulled me in two directions at once and that's what I sort of I heard myself making noises can you make these noises for us now okay sort of it was it was angry sort of it's very hard it was it was hard you know like I see and then there was one time where Paul said something I'll never forget it he said this mint chili and get your king boat take that don't take your mint and shovel well with a clove in having these two different games you're playing of cards and area control it's kind of like having two pets and if you want to improve one then you have to let the other one suffer in this exquisitely painful and fascinating inter plane like if I have cards I could play but I want to move and so I have to feed cards and to move my boat as if I'm pouring expensive diesel into an outboard motor that's excruciating and I have to spend another time picking them back up that's awful much better right to just play them and get all the spice that I can get turn after turn except then I'm gonna watch my friends climbing space off the space after space on the board plopping down their little houses and that's awful as well you don't what you heard it here first I think designer Emerson mat-su cheap bloody did it I think he's taken to simple fun-loving games and in only them both you can play a third game where you don't have to learn any more rules and yet it's a very different experience I was shocked by how brain burning from Santa C is and I really really enjoy it and in what is maybe one of the most meta moments in all of board gaming history combining these two together to create another game is startling similar to the actual in-game mechanic of combining some cubes to create another kind of cube and also at the same time also is costly and time-consuming because here's the thing that's where you're gonna do isn't it you wanna have this game you gotta buy the two separate games put them together do you want to do that well yeah let's talk a bit about not just this game in the aesthetic design sense but what kind of a product is cuz it's weird so how do we approach this what do we say to people to be say buy the one game that you like and the other not bad and Bowl down to get a slightly better game well yeah I mean that could be to lots of like twenty or thirty pounds that's a month's rent in London town I mean yeah what's bizarre is that in order to fuse these games together they are both very similar and so the opinion of me and also people on the internet is that you're gonna like one more than the other for me it was Eastern wonders for some people it's spice road but that means if you buy both which is the entire point of this series then probably you like one more and cuz they're similar enough probably you'll just play that one and then not play the other which means whichever one you buy the other one then just becomes a kind of wasteful and expensive expansion pack so for me I say buy eastern wanders but then you're spending thirty pounds dollars just to get a deck of cards well this is it because to degree they share components that they wouldn't yes together yes if you buy these separately then of course you get to lots of bowls and to lots of wooden cubes the elephant that is not in the room right now is the third game which is coming out next year which I does that factor into your decision and we're gonna tell people to buy Eastern wanders only for them to release the third game which is better than Eastern wanders and then we're like are you should be Stern wanders quite possibly in 2020 they just release all of them in sort of a big box collection and then that makes everything because that's how board games work point yeah if they sell all of a century games in a big box or fifty dollars maybe that's worth waiting for it's weird it's really it's one of the hardest things to recommend we've ever had to recommend but hey here's what I say instead if isn't a right answer for where and how much and what to buy of century I don't know if there's a wrong answer either because it's get some perspective these games both of them even spice Road are still better than 95% of board games out there they do the job they entertaining I enjoyed both exactly so maybe if there's not a right answer maybe there's not a wrong answer either maybe if you want either of them you can just buy them and feel safe that you can't really go hey I feel like we're asking the people out there to make up their own minds we can do that have their own opinions that's what can't do that they'll become self-aware they'll start making their own choices that is what like honest what's now in the film The Terminator where he does his own things he has his own decision poor there's no way that's going to happen in real life yes so I'm all swirling would have make a decision would have his own independent thought yes it's also impossible that our audience could possibly become self-reliant after all these years killing machines all the gun all of them governing California at da same time doesn't bear thinking about if you liked that video good good I'm glad I'm very happy this is Quinton's combining two other games now which is twister and water which is a popular game in Britain is it is it good it C says it's great here are some other videos you can watch on YouTube the YouTube man will overlay them his name's Steven and he's the he what's in their office in that little shed that they've got great

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 232,881

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Shut Up Show, Board Game Review, Review, Shut Up, Sit Down, Board Games, Board Gaming, Family Games, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Quintin Smith, Paul Dean, Matt Lees, Century: Spice Road, Century: Eastern Wonders, Plan B Games

Id: u2GDSEWJZsU

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 29 2018