Deduction Previews: Beast, Dune: Betrayal, The Thing, A Game of Thrones: B'Twixt, CotGM and more!

[Music] hello everybody and welcome to the strategy and social deduction collection of previews for all sharks 2021. autumn uh so if you're new to this let me tell you this is not a shut up sit down review that's the important part it may look like it i'm sat on my table there's a game but no no this is not a judgment or opinion we have not played any of these games instead this is just us previewing games on behalf of publishers because a lot of publishers still can't make it out to conventions so we're doing it on the internet how's that for innovation and oh boy have we got one heck of a game to start this series of previews with this is beast designed by elon and aaron middle with art by a whole bunch of people i think because uh it's not listed on boardgamegeek yet um which is a shame because i really wanted to shout out the artists because look at this game it's gorgeous we've got this dark scandinavian fantasy that oh it reminds me a little bit of the witcher but a little bit more stylized and spooky and what we've got here is my personal favorite kind of game maybe i think don't hold me to that this is an all versus one game where one player will take on a horrific and terrifying beast straight out of the wilderness and a whole team of other significantly less powerful players are going to be hunters trying to stop the beast from traveling around the map and gobbling up settlers now if the beast gobbles up enough settlers which are the little meeples you'll see in towns around the board then they win but if the hunters manage to stop that from happening for just long enough or if they just straight up kill the beast um then the team of hunter players wins but of course i'm doing my best to make this sound simple there's a whole lot going on here um so let's get stuck in um but just before i start teaching you the rules and how it all plays i should mention that this is not a finished production copy of the game i think a lot of these components are placeholder although a lot of the art is final which is excellent because it's very very good um so we have a little bit of a drafting card game here a little bit of hidden movement um i'll just sort of start talking about how a round works so this is what the game looks like set up as you can see we've got components everywhere except for this south eastern corner that's because i've set up a three-player game with two hunters and one beast player um and when you do that when you have a player count that's that small which is the minimum unless you have one player controlling two hunters you're not going to use some of the board um but for the rest of the board as you can see it's absolutely covered in farm animals who are almost certainly going to get eaten by the beast i should also mention here as well in addition to different hunters that people can play all of whom get their own cards and special abilities you have a whole variety of beasts to play and for this setup i have chosen hog bad because i mean how could i not choose to play a literal feral hog um so hog bad's uh token is in the middle of the map here but actually hog bad has done a bit of movement um we've got a movement track here and with some cards that are known only to the beast to show directions that hog band has moved so if you've played a hidden movement game you'll know a bit about how this works this token doesn't show where hogbad is it shows hogbad's last known location i think i'm gonna get something about saying the word hog bad over and over again is throwing me off um but basically the hunters know that this is where hog bad last was but hogbad is maybe there maybe one maybe two spaces away so they need to find hog bad before they can start inflicting damage so let's talk a little bit about how a round structure works so a round which is one day starts with a draft and you're going to take oh there's some effective cards you're going to take this action card deck and then you're going to take a number of cards for each player to draft and if you've not played a drafting game the way that that works is each player will look at these action cards and then pick one that they want or one that they want to deny to their opponents they'll put that down and then the remainder of the cards will be passed clockwise so everyone takes a card from the hand they got then passes the hand on and what players are doing here this is interesting because if you've played drafting games before you'll know that this is a combination of thinking well what do i want but also what do i not want to give to my opponents but of course this being an all versus one game has an interesting wrinkle here because most of the players are thinking what do i want to deny the beast but also what do i want to pass on to my colleagues you know if i've if i've taken a good movement card i should definitely make sure that other good movement cards get passed on around the table you're trying to pass good things to your team that's very very cool um so once you've all drafted some cards which i mean for the sake of argument doesn't matter let's just use the action cards that we've got here you're going to add them to the cards that are unique to your character as well as any items or beast talents that you've been able to collect and then you move into the i believe the day phase the draft is dawn then you're playing cards in the day and this is where the meat of the game is so players are limited on what they can do on their turn they can only play one card with one of these orange symbols and one card with one of these blue symbols and oh my goodness there's a wealth of different things that these cards can do to relate to movement or attacking or building what i let's start with the very very basics if um the beast wants to move they're going to do so by taking movement cards from their deck and adding it to their uh sort of movement track here keeping track of where they have moved related to the tile that is on the board however if the beast was to attack like let's imagine hogbad's movement cards had taken them to where this town is um they could instead on their turn player cards to attack and if they do that they immediately reveal where they are so you would clear all of the movement cards in the track there and then you would simply place the hog bad token in town and then hot bad with hog bat would start doing damage to the people that live there which is good because in addition to hog bad needing to kill people in order to win the game when hog bad kills well i keep saying hog bad i should just say the beast because i'll go less insane um when the beast kills things um like all of these farm animals covering the board the beast can collect grudge tokens and i love this this is just a small bit of theme but the idea that the thing that powers all of your special abilities for both the hunters and the beast is just grudges it's just hatred for one another that's lovely um so as the beast runs around gobbling things up the beast will collect grudges and become more powerful these grudge tokens will in addition to letting the beast use more powerful abilities um the beast can purchase beast talents now uh there's there's two uh sort of mirrored decks here the hunters can collect hunter items and the beasts can collect beast talents and what's interesting about these cards is they're the only cards in the game that carry over from round to round so you know ordinarily the structure of beast is that you know you do this draft and then everyone will you'll go around the table with on my turn maybe i'll play this and this and then this person will play this and this players can also pass if they're holding less cards than at least one other person at the table um but then once you've all spent your cards then you move into night which is basically kind of a reset phase where players can see what contracts they fulfilled which can give them special abilities if they manage to achieve certain things during the day and it's also where players can buy upgrades if they've collected enough grudge tokens so there's something like a miniature role playing game baked into beast with players leveling up because you can not only unlock your character and beast specific upgrades you can also collect items or talents from these two respective decks for the two different sides and here's what i really like about beast that's the whole game you know when i sat down this morning and set up all of these components i was like oh my god this rule is going to take me ages to learn it's not true i learned it really quite quickly because the round structure is just really straightforward every round starts with a draft and then players take turns to play all the cards they've got some of which are unique in some ways traction cards then you move into this sort of end phase where players can buy upgrades and you sort of reset tracks and then you move into the next round that's the game and then all of these components are just in service of providing you with cool things for example hunters can build watchtowers which enable them to find tracks that they otherwise have to search for showing them which direction the beast went this stack of tokens here are what's used if the beast has an ability which lets them change the biome because that's another part of this game certain beast abilities can only happen in certain areas like if you're the feral hog you're going to be comfortable in a forest less comfortable if you're splashing around in a swamp and these biome tokens are also used by the hunters when the hunters deploy traps i really love traps there's an item here we've got in the shop called the shrieker trap and when that's deployed by a uh hero they're gonna pick which zone they're gonna put it in but also which biome type that goes in so let's imagine that a player sets a shrieker trap in a swamp in this area then the beast knows that one of the biome types in this particular quadrant or the board is trapped but they don't know which one and so perhaps that's going to cause them to leave that area entirely they don't want to risk that because they don't know what trap it is or where it is another fun thing in this game that is just spilling over with fun things uh hog bad here can create miniature war hogs in fact most of the monsters have the ability to create little minions and by birthing or corralling or summoning or calling little warhogs then you've got suddenly little minions that can run around the board gobbling up more nobles and sheeps and pigs which is going to get you more grudge tokens i am absolutely hyped to play this game i think this is fascinating it's no secret that the classic sort of all versus one hidden movement horror game fury of dracula if you play it these days can feel a little bit clunky and complicated and fussy and it sometimes creates game states that just straight up aren't fun long-term bureau dracula fans will know the power of dracula going and hiding in like malta or sicily or somewhere and then just sitting there it's there are ways to play that game intentionally or unintentionally that aren't fun i'm not gonna say that beast is here to usurp fury of dracula's crown because i haven't played it but what i will say is that this is a game similarly full of fun stuff with a similar high concept of a team of players hunting down and trying to kill a fantasy dangerous monster but one with much simpler rules and with a foundation that feels just a little more straightforward as i said i haven't played this game but i am very very excited to try it it feels innovative and fresh and i mean who doesn't want to play a feral hog running around gobbling up pigs terrific stuff let's see what the next game is up next we are looking at city of the great machine published by crowed games and designed by german tikomirov and we have quite the thematic treat for you here this is an all versus one game where one player will control a great machine who maybe isn't that great because in this steampunk setting they are working on a master plan as dictated by this doomsday clerk to enslave humanity in service of efficiency and industrialism and other sort of steam punky uh traits and then a team of players are gonna be playing a kind of hidden movement game they're gonna be these steampunk revolutionaries they're gonna be running around town they're gonna be inciting riots and doing their best to ensure that the great machines great plan doesn't happen um i think there's some really really cool stuff happening in this game so what i've set up is a well it's always a three play well there are always three revolutionaries and one great machine player um but those three revolutionaries might be controlled by one player or two or three um but we've got the game set up here we've got the city set up and you can see a whole bunch of districts and you can arrange these districts in almost any way you want so long as each one has at least two entrances and then every district also has two robot guards and we've got the three revolutionaries set up in their starting districts but also the great machine has three sinister cyborg servants who are going to be running around town causing headaches for the revolutionaries but that's fine that's fair because the revolutionaries are going to be causing headaches for the city of the great machine i guess it's just the great machine um how do you play what's going on quinn's i'm excited to start some riots of course you are it's a great theme for a game um so i'm going to walk you through how just one turn works the turn structure and by the end of that we'll more or less be done with an overview of the game uh so every round is going to start with a city event so in the case of and this event deck is also the timer because by the time you get to the end of this deck uh the countdown accelerates um but today's event is join our side at the end of this round only each hero in a minor district can identify famous citizens but the master plan advances if there was at least one successful raid during this round and a lot of the events are like this they give some direction to both the great machine and the revolutionaries and that encourages both sides to kind of second guess what they think the other side is going to be doing um so we've got our event then everyone's going to receive an income of trust which is the sort of currency uh the energy the resource used by the revolutionaries and they're going to collect an amount of trust equal to the number of citizens in their district so you really want to end your turn in places with citizens but the great machine is going to receive a number of bonds which is six at the start of the game but as discontent rises which is as the revolutionaries kind of do their revolutionary thing the great machine is going to get more and more bonds every turn get more powerful it's all very dramatic um so once you've done that sort of event and income then you're going to go into my favorite part of the game which is all of the heroes all three revolutionaries i'm deciding where they're going so at the start of the game every hero has access to all of these access cards which are basically cards that show where you're going to be moving this turn but one one of your access cards is burned the grip machine doesn't know which it is at the start of the game so actually at the start of the game there's one district all the revolutionaries cannot go but with that in mind they're all going to look at all the districts they could be going and they'll say hmm okay this round i'm going to go here now you can play the card of the district you're in which means you just don't move or you could move you know one away but you don't want to sprint all the way across town because that's going to use up all your trust so the great machine knows you're probably not going to have moved far from where you are but then all the revolutionaries are just going to put their access card down and say okay i'm moving here but they're not going to reveal it and then you go into the great machines turns the great machine knows you're all moving but doesn't know where now this is where the great machine can spend some or all or none of its bonds doing actions so a lot of those actions might be movement um it costs one bond to move one of these little wooden guards from one district to a neighboring district and long story short these guards the amount of guards in a district basically just make it harder for heroes to do absolutely anything there so if you think there's a particularly important district maybe some moves from extra guards there um but maybe the heroes thought you were gonna do that so they didn't choose to go into that district because they assumed you were gonna move guards there i love hidden movement games um if you've played not alone by the way the excellent card game there were bits of this game that reminded me of that um so you can move uh guards for just one bond for two bonds though you can move servants and servants can do all kinds of nasty stuff now i'll just point out the special districts to begin with um by taking an action with a servant in grand central the kind of sinister machine headquarters the great machine where my directives the direct machine can draw a directive card which is kind of a law with a lovely um evocative illustration in this case i've drawn resettle uh which lets the great machine uh resettle uh sort of famous citizens around town and we'll see why that's important in a little bit and as long as you've got a servant in the tower of law you can take these directives you've drawn and put them into play and they become permanent laws that are always going to make the revolutionaries job harder or strengthen the great machine but also this is maybe what people will find the coolest by taking an action with the servant in the control nexus you can pick up any of these uh districts which are actually in the theme of the game on floating platforms and move it somewhere else in town which can be a real headache if any other heroes were trying to get there or move out of there um with their access cards this time but vitaly you can also use your servants to launch a raid and launching a raid is expensive you're going to spend your bonds and then you're going to place one of these raid tokens in that area with your servant and what that means is the servant is on the lookout for revolutionaries in that area now more mechanically what that means is if any of the three revolutionaries chose to go to that area this turn you're gonna slap the cuffs on them and arrest them and that is obviously horrible for the revolutionaries it's not game ending um but it does enable you to do all kinds of stuff i'll just explain it now actually if you happen to catch a revolutionary who's trying to get into the area and be detained you can either advance your game-winning doomsday clock one more space towards the 12 space which is where you win the game or you can take all of their trust which is their resource and turn it into bonds which is your resource or this is kind of my favorite you can just take their access card if they play this secret face down access card saying okay i'm going to the tower of law and you busted them entering it you can just take that access card away from them and this also loses them their turn but more excitingly it means you know that hero can never go back to that district sort of permanently shrinking their options for the rest of the game i like that a lot um so let's talk a little bit about what the heroes can do so going in initiative order once the great machine has taken their turn the heroes are going to cause some trouble and every heroes can tur and every hero's turn is going to start with them flipping their access card face up and revealing where they were going now do you remember that small pool of trust tokens that each hero got the start of the turn that trust is first and foremost going to be used for your movement so if you stayed still that's great you're not going to spend any trust but if you move out of the district you have to pay that many trust for each functioning guard in that district which means if you want to like crosstown that's like you know two four six or whatever you know you can very quickly spend all of your trust and if you're trying to leave a district and you don't have enough trust you're going to roll this charming looking escape dice which has on four sides this running away person which means you managed to escape the district even though you didn't have trust to pay but if you roll the cuffs you are detained and we go through the either increasing the doomsday clock or they take your access card or they take your trust but once you've revealed your access card and moved to the district that you were trying to get to and you've paid your trust then assuming you haven't been arrested you can take exactly one action and a lot of these actions you're gonna be taking relates to starting the three riots that you need to win the game as the revolutionaries so the first things first you're gonna need to increase discontent you're gonna have to if you choose to do that action you're going to pay one trust for each guard in that district and then you're going to increase this dis 10 track which is inside the great machines track up by one and as you'll see here you see this woman here she is an artist and she represents all artists in the game what that means is that once the discontent tracked moves up to that one bracket it means all of these citizens around the town that are artists will join a writer i love that this game recognizes that artists will riot just because it's in their blood um then if you increase discontent a little more though then you can get scientists on your side and then workers and industrialists and then finally nobles who eventually realize that you know what even though i've won this particular privileged lottery uh it's not gonna be good for me if the great machine enslaves all of mankind um so discontent is the first step towards inciting a riot the second step let's imagine that another hero revolutionary was also in that district they can spend an action which again costs an amount of trust equal to the number of guards to peak at what these citizens are they might be artists they might be scientists but also there are a number of traitors hidden around town and if a riot starts in a district with a traitor the traitor will actually join the guards in that riots that's all bad now at this point you're realizing so it costs trust per guard to create discontent it costs trust per guard to even look at every citizen this is getting really expensive so another action heroes can take is just to beat up a guard in their region they spend an amount of trust of their choice and then they roll this what i'm calling a violence dice um and if they roll the number of symbols equal to or less than the number of trusts that they spent they just succeeded at uh breaking a guard and not only is that guard useless unless the grip machine goes and repairs it which takes them time and resources it takes up a slot so that's nice isn't it um so finally let's talk a little bit about my favorite action this game starting a riot so if you're in a district let's just continue imagining that this district's uh where all the heroes are yeah let's keep using this example um if you want to start a right in that district it might be free it costs a number of trust equal to how many citizens you have not yet identified then you're gonna turn them all face up it's all kicking off um and what you do then is you count up the number of citizens who are gonna join a riot based on the discontent track so if the discontent track is at three all citizens of number three or lower are going to join the fight and if the number of rioting citizens is higher than the number of functioning guards plus the number of traitors then you've successfully rioted in that district and you place a big token that that district can't right again in this game um so you need to riot in two other districts in order to win but the heroes can do these actions to shuttle citizens that they might need for riots elsewhere to different districts in the game but then of course the great machine can pick up those entire districts and move them um there's a lot going on in this game obviously but it's not necessarily that complicated this isn't a super heavy game it's just full of ideas um more than enough ideas that i would be very excited to try this game and uh and see what it's like to play love bit of heavy movement love a bit of all versus one and don't tell anybody but i some i can be quite partial to a bit of steampunk as well so yeah that is city of the great machine and uh why don't you and i take a look what the next game is this is june betrayal every day is great with your june based social deduction game this is a little box social production game it's got some slightly funky stuff going on and it features all the characters you know and love from the upcoming film to do with june featuring uh the bad people who have no hair and are sad and the good people who have beards uh but still look like they really don't like your choice of karaoke song so in this game you're either going to be of house harkonnen or house atreides and you're going to be trying to sway the battles at the end of the game to your favor now first of all you've got to work out who you are and start the game everyone is going to be given one card that shows them the character they're actually playing as in the game maybe are mr baron harkonnen himself or maybe you are that really sexy man from star wars duke lito atreides it's been a long time since i've been looking at it i'm looking forward to the film hopefully it's it's not bad so the way it works is you get this secret identity and then after that you're going to be given some cards right everyone's going to get given one card that says house of tradies one card that says house harkonnen and one card that says fighter on it just saying this agent is a fighter and then based on the card that you got given you're going to keep two of these now if you got given for instance a harkonnen fighter character then you would keep these two and say that you're gonna be haas heart colon and you are a fighter you keep both those cards and you keep them face down in front of you and that would represent who you are it's pretty simple the only thing that's a bit weird here is the fact that if you are a noble then you kind of keep yourself so secret that basically you keep the house atreides and house harkonnen cards which means oh you're powerful but also mysterious so these two cards go in front of you next to your actual identity card and they remain secret throughout the whole game mostly it's a social deduction game which means people are going to be trying to guess who you are yes but also people are going to be trying to have a little peek here and there using powers and things that trigger during the game throughout the game we're going to have three different action rounds and then two targeting rounds which effectively is a big battle at the end to see what happens in the action round you're going to be choosing one of the three cards currently available in this rolling refilling shop of things and in addition to these cards giving you these really useful powers they're also going to give you points potentially at the end of the game now this is the funny thing there's little symbols at the top of these cards and that means that hey if you take this and then it turns out oh it's been revealed you're a noble then you're going to get a point for your house which means you're going to be trying to pick stuff that's going to help in the current situation and help you at the end of the game but also if you keep taking cards that are really obviously like harkonnen noble cards then everyone else is going to be like well that's harcon noble over there obviously some of these cards are going to let you actually peek at other people's cards and for example choose one of their two traits and have a look at it at which point that card will then be locked so nobody else can peek at it for the rest of the game although of course you've literally got mind benders here which means there are still ways that other people can do it but generally speaking that information is only going to be for the eyes of one person you're going to keep going around in a circle through these three different action rounds taking cards and activating them immediately or just saving them for the battle at the end of the game and then things get slightly spicy when we get into the targeting round in the targeting round everything's going to kick off now people have been playing action cards that will allow you to for example show your trait to another player and view theirs and then shield both of those traits other people can't see them tasty you can use cards to reject things and interrupt stuff immediately you can use cards to put assassination tokens on other players which means at the end of the game that player is inherently going to get minus one points for their team or give them a sigil to give them an extra bonus point at the end of the game so these things are effectively gonna be ongoing and you're going to be getting a bad sense about a player and maybe trying to put some minus tokens on them because you think that they're a bad egg whilst trying to protect someone else because you think they are a good egg but crucially this isn't a game where there's just one baddie you're potentially all baddies to everyone and everyone's trying to hide their identity at all times which is either incredibly exciting or exhausting depending on the sort of person that you are and then crucially what happens in these two final rounds is every player gets given two target cards and you have to simply choose in the two rounds what are you gonna do one of these cards is a defend card and one of these cards is an attack card and in those two rounds you're gonna just basically attack someone and defend someone else then you're all gonna reveal who you are and depending on who you are it's all gonna score out so there's talk of assassination and attacking people and stuff but in reality it all boils down to points at the end of the game there's no player elimination or knockout like in werewolf and your identity is going to base how effective you're able to defend the points of your team for example if you can get everyone to attack a fighter rather than noble fighters will lose points when attacked but not many meanwhile if everyone piles on the noble of the other side then really their points are going to go all over the place and then effectively you just keep moving this back and forth doing all the stuff until you've finished and hooray these people have won or oh no these people have won of course i mean house of tradies and house conan so that is it that is june betrayal a game of constantly trying to convince people that you're something you're not in the hope of getting them to accidentally assassinate their friends relatable content this is the thing infection outpost 31 from mondo games and based on the cult hit film the thing one of my favorite films ever made interestingly at the time critical flop no one liked it it cost a fortune hollywood thought it was rubbish they were all very wrong in this game you are going to be trying to move through this facility to try and get out of the outpost alive and escape on a heli chopper helicopter however initially you're only gonna have access to one part of the facility section one before moving into section two and section three now along the way there's gonna be some pickles you're gonna have to deal with and each of you is gonna be playing as a character from the characters from the film so we've got characters like clark copper knowles windows gary norris bennings you named them they're probably there admittedly it was just about 10 blokes in a in a cold hut and then you're going to be trying to work together to solve problems like fires monsters rooms being destroyed and the reality that actually one of you may well be the thing um the thing with the real thing was inside of us all along so how does it work well first of all someone is going to be the captain and that's going to be represented by them having this little gun and then they're going to be the person who chooses who goes on them with a mission there's going to be this mission log here and you're going to flip it over and things are going to happen sometimes bad things are going to happen there's going to be power outages in certain rooms there can be certain rooms that are suddenly on fire that seems bad oh actually this room number three the kennel has got a mysterious smoke in it if we don't go and sort that out then it's going to turn into a mysterious fire which is going to mysteriously probably burn loads of dogs doesn't seem good eventually though you're going to keep drawing cards until you get a mission that represents something that team have to work together to try and do now this will require one yellow character to go along and one green character for some maintenance and some science if you can bring those types of characters along then you have to there's three types of character leaders basically maintenance and science and then effectively the leader is going to choose as many characters as is pointed out on the card in this case four or five players and then after they've chosen the characters everyone is going to give them one of the five supply cards that they have in their hand but before we jump into that i'm just going to point out that yeah some of these team amounts are quite large and that's because this game plays up to eight players with eight characters definitely containing at least one or two things at that by the end of the game it's it's it's a game of quietly lying and not trusting each other which is suitable based on the film it's based on now these supply cards that each character has are going to be secret in their hand and do a variety of different things generally speaking they are going to be useful things like axes flashlights the ability to use a fire extinguisher to put out a fire or whatever else you want to do with it i'd probably do that but effectively you can spend these cards during these missions to hand the card to the captain and then that's going to contribute to the number of dice that you can roll and then you're going to need to roll over a certain number as a team collectively to actually pass the mission and not have everything go pear-shaped what happens when you pass well you get to flip over one of these little tokens on the board each of these square little tokens here has something underneath it maybe it's a useful item like a piece of rope maybe it's nothing maybe it's the thing oh it's a thing or maybe it's oh it's another it's a thing yeah a lot of the stuff in this place is not it's not great however as you go on there is some stuff that is pretty great rope for instance is fantastic because you can literally use it to tie someone up which means they're not allowed to do anything for a whole turn which is useful if you think that they might be alien dynamite is again pretty useful you can just use it to make a dice better or worse immediately at any point and the flamethrower the flamethrower is extremely spicy and the fact that you can do three things with it first of all you can use it to get plus three rolls for a challenge fantastic you can use it to activate a blood test where you can specifically point it to player and say i'd like to test your blood to find out if they're a human or maybe not as human as they'd like to be finally though you can use both of the flamethrowers two charges to literally just torch another player to just just set fire to someone unfortunately the crucial thing is you only get two charges with a flamethrower which means you can't test their blood and then torch them if you're going to torch them then you've just sort of got to go all in and hope for the best now the flamethrower crucially is an item that you're not going to find until you get to the third section of the base so basically the end of the game so it isn't a game where you can get player elimination have people knocked out really early in the game if it's going to happen it's going to happen when you're almost ready for everyone to get in a helicopter and leave and really most of the game comes about when we look back at these supply cards that everyone has the captain asks everyone who they've brought on the mission for a single card and it's up to you to give them one and then they are going to take them all shuffle them up without looking underneath the table and then they're going to have the option to basically look at them and take one of these cards out at secret put it on the bottom of the supply deck and take another one randomly from the top of the supply deck to see if they can improve their odds of the mission going well after that they're going to reveal everything that they have after again shuffling around the table and then effectively you're going to see how it went and you're going to roll the number of dice that you're allowed to roll although oh no we do have a sabotage card here if a sabotage card comes up that's very bad and effectively something bad happens immediately which will often mean that the mission fails when the mission fails you don't get to flip over a token and sometimes things just get dramatically worse after things keep getting worse and moving on if you're not careful then rooms start to sit on fire and become destroyed if the base becomes destroyed then you will lose unless you're the thing so crucially as the captain you've got the chance to look at the hand of cards you've been given and go oh no there's a sabotage card in here put the sabotage at the bottom of the supply and then draw another card which hopefully won't be a sabotage card and then everything will go well but that is assuming that the captain at the moment uh is not the thing in which case they might go oh i got a terrible card and put the best card in the bin in the hope of drawing something worse from the supply and therein lies the rub of the game now initially it suggests that you should be incredibly vague about what you've got and you're not allowed to actually talk about specifics of what's in your hand but then there's scaling rules for when people understand the mechanics of the game better in terms of allowing more and more information to be shared with one another until you really are running circles around each other by fictionalizing what's in your hand in the hope of making other players look untrustworthy across the board as well we've got all these different types of missions we've got tons of different supply cards we've got this funky little board that basically reminds you of all of the different things in all of the different areas so you know what stuff you can find and what stuff you're likely to find and then finally the blood test cards pretty neat in terms of the start of the game you're going to get given a card that says either human or imitation not ideal but then there is going to come a point later in the game where you're going to have another card and maybe you start off being human but now now you're not a human anymore which again very in keeping with the theming of the game if you can make it all the way through and get onto the helicopter without anyone being an alien then the people who are on aliens win but there's a whole bunch of ways that the thing can win uh most of which you'd expect having the building being destroyed getting onto the helicopter quids in crucially at the end of the game you are gonna get some blood tests possibly depending on how well you've managed to hold it together this little computer shifts along as bad things happen throughout the game and if you manage to do quite well and get to the end then you're gonna get to do three blood tests at the end have three characters tested to see if they are human or a thing then it moves on to just being one blood test and if you get into the really bad times then you've got none and you're just gonna have to completely guess before hopping onto a helicopter so good luck with that and that is the thing infection at outpost 31 will you all make it away i don't know you're gonna have to find out i suppose uh this plays between four to eight players and again loads of lovely little details in here production quality on the cards the board super lovely anna yeah very nice i think i think that's the end of the video now i think another video will come up soon i guess we'll just have to sit here and see what happens [Music] up next we have a game of thrones betwixt from fantasy flight to games a game of bluffing and betrayal for fans of games like koo oriflam or vampire the masquerade vendetta throughout the game we're going to be using our hand of cards to bid on allies that appear in the middle of the table with the person who bids the most claiming that ally but what's interesting about game of thrones betwixt is that these cards don't just go into your council right in front of you no no no they go in between players so you're sort of sharing power with the players around the table trying to pull the strings ever so slightly in your favor i've got a four player game set up here and we will play a number of rounds based on how many players are in the game and each round we're made up of a certain number of bids also depending on how many are in the game now at the start of each bid what we're going to do is reveal the top card of this ally deck we've got mr david seaworth up for grabs here and every player is then going to have the opportunity to play cards one by one into their bid pile i might play this pulling the strings four some of these cards will have abilities that activate instantly and some will have abilities that will activate once the bid phase is over eventually though players are going to decide that maybe they've bid enough at which point they will kneel signifying this by turning their card to one side effectively meaning they have passed for the round once everyone has knelt the player with the most of these influence cards is going to be the one that claims this ally they take the ally and they place it in one of the councils between them between the player to the left or between them and the player to their right regardless of who they pick they'll also get one of these little power tokens for winning the bid which will be points at the end of the game all the cards that were played are then discarded into the center of the table the first player marker is passed along and a new round begins but when do you get to draw up more of these cards well therein lies game of thrones betwixt's little secret you're only going to draw up to your full hand of 10 cards at the end of each of the game's seasons meaning that most of the decisions in this game about when you're gonna play your special corruption card that lets you move power around when you're going to use your contingency plan early or late in the round it's all very interesting so once you've finished the game's three seasons a bunch of these ally cards are going to be sat between players and maybe some points as well and loads of players are gonna have points ready to score and when this happens when the end of the game is triggered we're gonna look at each individual player's least powerful council adding up their points and the points of the lesser of their two councils beside them to work out their total score the player with the strongest lower council is going to win the game unless of course they are tied at which point the tide players then look at their higher council as well with whoever has the highest of the two winning the game so that's a really weird twist but alongside that there are a bunch of strange twisty decisions embedded into these cards they're the meat of the strategy in the game this betrayal card for example lets you move cards around into your bidding pile or that contingency plan earlier is a very strong card for a bid and it comes back to you if you don't lose it it's also important to mention that these power tokens that you collect have different values on them that aren't revealed to anyone but yourself so whoever is in the lead is obfuscated at any given time now let's also talk about the advanced game in the box you've got a couple of different modules you can try one of which are these white leader cards that you start with in your hand these will give you unique powers depending on which of westeros's many different leaders you choose to go with that game you also have these event influence cards blue cards that get added to the deck at the end of the seasons that really shake up the game the game is also playable in a shorter version and has two distinctly different drafting versions and you can play it with allies revealed face up so you can plan your strategy about what's coming next on the conveyor belt all the games allies have their own unique interesting artwork and the game comes in this perfectly sized little box so that is a game of thrones betwixt from fantasy flight games a game for three to six players takes about 90 minutes with loss of cards and spikes so this is picture perfect brought to us by arcane wonders and if i'm honest this is maybe the strangest of the orchards previews i've done so far i won't beat around the bush this game looks like this in picture perfect players are trying to organize the world's fussiest guests at the world's most crowded dinner party and at the end of the game you're going to take a photo of your nicely arranged characters and try and score the most points based on their individual secret needs at the start of the game each player gets given a number of these envelopes and inside each one are a list of that guest's special requirements so right at the start you're gonna read through all of these and organize your guests as best you can this is done secretly with the guests facing towards the player so no one else knows how you're arranging certain people once everyone is happy with their current placement of figures we'll draw one of these exchange cards from the deck in the center of the table this one is a rumors card these exchange cards will determine how players swap and or examine each of the envelopes around the table rumours has everyone choosing any one envelope looking at the contents and then returning it to its original owner whether that be the center of the table or one of their fellow players once everyone has rearranged their guests and is happy with their placement after seeing this new information we'll pass the first player card long and then begin another round of arranging drawing these exchange cards and manipulating the placement of our guests and after six rounds we'll score based on our final placement but what exactly is inside each of these envelopes well this lady in yellow here wants a specific set of criteria she wants to be stood at the table she wants to be stood in the middle section and she wants to stand next to this lovely chap over here and then the game starts to get a bit silly this houseplant doesn't want to stand next to a man wants to stand next to that lady in yellow and wants to be in the background so at the moment we're doing right if we move this lady here so you're trying to get as much information as possible and arrange the figures correctly until at the end of the game you'll take out your phone and literally take a picture of the guests trying to capture the perfect number to score you plenty of points and when you're done you remove the screen and look at your little scoring card over here in the picture you just took if the guests are having all of their preferences fulfilled you'll score six points and move up this track over here you'll score fewer points for the fewer preferences you manage and if you manage to meet no preferences of a guest you will lose three points and if that guest isn't included on your board at all you'll just score nothing for them so it's better to not place a guest at all rather than risk messing up their specific preferences now that seems like a honestly quite hellish logic puzzle but let's make things a little bit more complicated once you're familiar with the game you can play with the auction exchange cards this module replaces some of the exchange cards with new auctions like the single round auction or a secret auction or a fixed price auction for the specific envelope that you have listed but what are you bidding during these auctions why of course it is your decorations which at the end of the game are worth a point each so if you have a crucial piece of the puzzle sat in front of you you want to charge a high price in these decorations to get a bunch of points for your guests this game is mad and that is picture perfect a frankly bonkers game of organizing a bunch of dinner guests with these lovely envelopes and a cute dog standing on a stool takes about 45 minutes to play suitable for ages 10 plus and seats two to four players with their own unique little backgrounds that's picture perfect from arcane wonders and i'm quite excited to play in hit the silk from escape plan board games players are a bunch of crooks who've just hijacked a plane filled with money but now they need to split up all that cash between them players will need to make sure they have enough money to make that heist worth it and then get off the plane but your gang of thieves have quickly realized that there aren't enough parachutes to go round meaning that you need to find out who your friends are quickly and get out as soon as you can players will win the game by having a parachute and enough cash between players who have safely landed once they get off the plane for a four player game that's a hundred thousand dollars between as many players as possible and a turn in hit the silk is very simple all you're gonna do is any or all of these three things two of these options are nice and simple depending on your altitude you can discard cards to draw new ones from the deck maybe getting some new spicy options for later on your second option is to trade cards with your fellow players but there's a catch you don't have to be entirely honest you could put all your trust in giving your friend greg a parachute only for him to return the favor with a bunch of flannels the final option is where the meat of the game lies and that's playing any number of these cards with actions on from your hand steel cards will let you pinch opponent's stuff spy cards let you look through their hand if you have a revolver and a bullet you can shoot a player making them permanently lose a card and briefcase is full of cash and parachutes how are you gonna win the game but let me tell you about some of the stranger cards in this deck the handcuff cards have you cuffing two players together meaning that if one of them has a parachute and one of them doesn't they're probably gonna become a big meaty pancake handcuffs are gonna force players to collaborate or die trying but maybe you can go your own way if someone finds you a key but a key might also let you into the lockbox that hides some spicy items maybe a knife that protects you from theft or one of those spare parachutes you've also got poison and the antidote to cure it and if a player is poisoned they're probably going to die before they even get a chance to hit the ground but whichever of these special items you use you're going to slowly tick down the altitude of the plane and whenever you reach one of these parachute symbols it's time to vote if you're going to hit the silk here players will take a vote as to whether they want to jump out of the plane or not and if the vote passes then any players that landed safely with a parachute and the requisite amount of cash will win the game any players left on board well they do have one chance to get out in hit the silk's most charming and bizarre touch any players left on the plane will have a chance to try and safely land it this is a little mini game where you roll these two dice and see how far the plane lands and if you manage to park it right on that landing strip then you win too in the box there are also rules for an advanced game where you can threaten players with revolvers and handcuff yourselves to a briefcase and you can also add in double crossing challenges where lying during an exchange of items might have consequences and so that is hit the silk from escape plan board games a 20 to 40 minute game that seats between three and six players light breezy simple and probably quite funny

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 21,356

Rating: 4.910913 out of 5

Keywords: previews, deduction, hidden movement, social deduction, board games

Id: H3obP8_1NUw

Length: 50min 13sec (3013 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021