The Grand Carnival Review - with Zee Garcia

hey everybody z garcia here it's 1937 and it's time for us to build the biggest attractions and bring forward the biggest crowds in the grand carnival [Music] in the game each player is going to have seven rounds or a week seven days to uh build up the grounds where their carnival will be get the best attractions and have customers walk through buying tickets you'll be scoring based on a variety of things but your turns and the things you can do are very straightforward very quick so we're going to go ahead and take a look at it on the table i'm going to show you how it works then we'll come on back up here and i'll tell you if this is the carnival you're going to want to visit in this overview i'm going to be showing you only the area for one player this would be the area for the red player they have their board five of these pawns off to the side three more in the reserve this is also the start player piece so this player will be the start player and then when we have one guest at each of the entry spots on their board now the rest of these components are the common components this common board is tracking the day's ie though the the rounds in the game uh and then we've got these pieces up here that we are going to use to build the grounds on which we put the attractions these are the attractions over here the amounts vary based on the number of players and then i put these out here just to show you that everybody's little workers little pieces are different per player they're also a little fragile some of them are as you might be able to tell pretty thin they have a few thin spots and they i did get a handful of broken ones as well as these uh little guests that's the guys here at the entrance they are very fragile and they have a lot of little broken pieces all right they can just kind of in fact this little guy sort of has a little foot coming off that just happened right now i don't know if you can tell but a little piece just fell off of him anywho i've got these barkers over here and then we've got three special abilities from a handful of cards here we're going to put three of them out and if players accomplish them they're going to get um special you know rules bending and rules breaking abilities to use in the game that's what these three extra guys are for once you achieve one you'll mark it okay so let's talk about how the game works like i said you'll be playing over seven days and the objective is to build up the grounds to put attractions into play and to have your guests walk through visit the different places buy these tickets for the different places and maybe eventually make it up here to the big top you'll be scoring based on sets of attractions if you have a bunch of the same you're going to be getting victory points for that as long as they have some tickets okay you are going to be getting um attractions uh if you have one of each size you'll be getting points for that that one requires the tickets the other one doesn't necessarily uh guests in the big top and then also any uncovered building hammer is going to lose you points and the barkers here are going to make you some points so i'm going to be the start player like i said on my turn i'm going to select one of these i'm going to move it over to this numbered spot and i am going to take one of three different actions my actions are i can place a foundation i can build an attraction or i can move a guest place a foundation i'm going to take this i'm going to put them there and i can build a foundation of level three because this is three or lower so i could take this one and i'm going to play it right there then we are going to replenish these up here i'm going to slide the remaining ones to the right here of the spot i took and then pick one from here and put it in the five to refill it so that's my first option but the other players will go maybe they'll take the you know second player takes that and we replenish this and the third player uh takes uh to uses the one and they can take a face down one that way they can just take whatever okay they take that one okay and they build it now if you take a face down you are allowed to cycle these out of here just keep that in mind comes back around to me we're simulating a three player game here uh again my two other options are besides building this i can build an attraction or i can walk my guests building an attraction very simple in this case i will let's uh assume i've already jumped up a couple of uh turns here i did that one let's say that was on uh i don't know where i took it from let's say it was on four okay and now comes back around to me i'm going to build an attraction i want to build in these spots here these are paths for my characters to walk through these are places where i can build now this is four i could build one of these it's the right shape it's the right size and my four is already taken but i can pay for that with my five so again it's always whatever the number is you spent or lower is what you can put out there so i can put that right there great and then again like i said as my people walk i'll spend the one to have him walk one wherever he uh stops anything he's adjacent to he will put a ticket on that's on that attraction each attraction can hold as many tickets as their size this one will be able to hold four tickets so no matter where i stop around it so you know next time i go like that and he moves one two i'll add another ticket to it somewhere it doesn't really matter where but it can hold four okay and as soon as i have moved to both of them so let's say he's moved up here and now both of my entryways are empty immediately whenever that happens immediately i am going to grab a marker from the pool assuming there are any left i'll put that barker somewhere and then i'm going to refill both my entries with two new visitors all right now with the barker do well it gets me victory points uh but it also does two other things it's gonna block whatever spot he's sitting on so you got to be careful these guests and barkers can never walk through each other unless we deal with some rules bending like i said but also when you use a a spot to move a worker to move a guest they can move one further spot by uh based on the barker so for every one barker you've got so again for example assuming i could move as much as i wanted to if i did this and i have one marker i can move the guest three spaces not just two right okay so once everybody's built all five of these we are going to take them all off remove them to the side we advance the day we pass the start player marker to the next player and we do it again that's it extremely quick extremely uh straightforward turns so the only thing i really haven't talked about very much are these cards up here so like i said it's three random cards they have two parts the top how you accomplish the thing they want you to accomplish what you need to do the bottom what special ability they give you once you've done so if i've accomplished this this one in this in this case is move a guess to the big top great um let me just simulate how i would get one up there shall we i'm just going to do this randomly just to show you what that might look like uh this is probably like the longest path by the way these cannot be rotated i don't know if you're noticing that but i cannot just willingly rotate these this is probably again not necessarily though the way i would do this but i'm gonna do it just to show you what is happening and what i'm talking about eventually if this looks like so this guy could move up here especially with some barkers in play i can probably run him up there he can come up the top he's now at the big top all right this one as soon as i have somebody at the big top these characters can no uh don't no longer have to follow the rule like that they cannot walk through each other i can now have them do that now as soon as i accomplish this i put a worker on one of my three extra guys everybody else has their following turn to accomplish this as well if they do not then it's just me who did it right anybody else who does accomplish it great they also have that special ability okay so that's one of them let's see let's just look at a couple here right this one over here as soon as you finish uh a row so as soon as i get four across anywhere i'm going to then from that point on every time i play uh one of these face down ones i can look at them and then take one over here we've got as soon as i build an attraction that encompasses three foundations it goes across three foundations great i am going to ignore my score penalty for revealed hammers at the end of the game so each one costs you one normally if i have my little guy on here i don't pay for those so you definitely want to cover them right each one of these is one any of these that are still exposed well those are one as well so there you go that's basically that uh you are trying to get everything out there built make sure that you cover them up put some tickets on them because if you have 15 or more tickets in play you will get 12 points and try to come out on top there's a lot of different things to sort of focus on and you will not be able to do them all but you uh are just trying to get the best score you can from the ones you do choose to focus on that's gonna be it for my overview i hope that all makes sense it's a fairly straightforward concept like i said with a lot of player aids and everything all over the place let's go ahead and go back up top uh scoring pad by the way let's go ahead and go back up top let me tell you what i think of this one there are a lot of games that do what this game does at least on a surface level right games in which you are you have a board in front of you you are grabbing polyaminos and building them up and putting something together right there are tons of those probably too many of those and i tend to like that style but this one i have to say really stands out from the crowd by being not just a fun polyamino game but a thematically uh vibrant and engaging one one that is both quick and simple but thinkier than the average polyamino game for me i really like this game i really like it i think it's fantastic so let's go ahead and talk about it shall we a little bit more i'm going to start right at the top with the theme like i said it's so charming it's so whimsical so wholesome i love it the theme here is fantastic and really works in what it is you are doing in the game and then folding right into that the aesthetics which i think are except for the meeples yes they're too frail they they went a little too um they went a little too thin and tiny with some of their designs you know i give the company props for trying that the wood quality doesn't hold up to those designs but besides that everything else is so beautiful it's so captivating it all clearly fits in the same world right that same view that i think the aesthetics here are great i really like them the replay value this is so fun any number of players you're gonna have a good time with scales well uh you are going to have turns come around so quickly that you'll always be thinking about something there's a nice turn angst so that's gonna keep it sort of coming back to the table for you and you can definitely follow a few different paths to hopefully victory so i think the the that replay value is going to stay high from game to game the game arc good tension always one more thing you want to do the the week always seems to run out before you're ready for it to run out oh i needed one more action one more a little more extra moment and i love that that's what you want right you want that that feeling of i could have done something better like if i had an extra moment an extra a worker if i'd been a little bit quicker to achieve that that you know bonus and i i find that just so compelling and engaging so game mark here again fantastic ease of play so quick such you know uh some simple straightforward turns i love that the the cadence of the game cleaning up from one round to the next you you push the five guys over past the start pawn that's that's it that is it and you are playing the next round already besides setting up this game is lightning fast not that the setup is you know particularly long i just mean like you know putting out all the tiles and everything figuring out the polyaminos all of that stuff everything else is every turn is just so quick i love that about it lastly tactics look strategy i like that you can wipe away the tiles that form your foundation if uh if you need to if you feel like they're getting stacked then you can take take an action and you know get rid of those which is nice i know some polyamino games that sort of stagnates a little bit tactically rich it's a lot of sort of reacting to seeing a towel up there that you think oh this is great i can place this here and run my uh my visitors up this path being careful not to cut off their paths up to the big top if that's something you're going for there's so many little things to focus on i'm just going to put a bunch of tickets out i'm going to try to go for these uh the large uh attractions i'm going to try to get three of the fives that's a bunch of points if you can pull that off i'm going to try to get one of each i'm going to make sure that i get at least one of those bonuses i like that bonus i'm going to try for that first so it gives you kind of a nudge at the beginning of the game those three special abilities right i think that's so vital because you look at those and you go oh the first thing i want to try to do besides you know everything else i'm trying to to achieve is get a got a row across okay great if i do that then i get that bonus for the rest of the game so that gives you direction and incentive the whole thing is perfectly paced i think it's just a slam dunk this game except for the meeples like i said and except for the fact that yes it is another polyamino game right this is possibly my favorite of that kind of game the two layers you're building on is so engaging i love that about it so yeah i really like this one this is going to get a 9 out of 10 from me seal of excellence i definitely recommend it uh this is going to be good for a lot of folks it's got solo play in there it's going to scale well like i said it's both quick and easy to play with just about anybody but you can dig into it and try to squeeze out a better score than someone else you know you know in a head-to-head or a more interesting more thinky match you'll get it so there you go 9 out of 10 from me the grand carnival is a fantastic game i definitely recommend it and that's it for me everybody my name is z garcia i'll see you on the next one

Channel: The Dice Tower

Views: 10,249

Rating: 4.9215684 out of 5

Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10, GeekUsername: zunyer

Id: oBZtHAlsxUo

Length: 17min 16sec (1036 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020