Videos featuring board game gems! These games aren't talked about much any more. Maybe they didn't make a big splash, maybe people have just moved on. But these games are still great and haven't been fired by newer, shinier releases. Games don't stop being good just because newer games come along! Published three times a month, by Darryl Boone, owner of Pizzeria Ludica, a board-game-themed restaurant in Vancouver, Canada. I'm open to requests! The game should be older (though recent reprints/reimplementations are okay) and its BoardGameGeek rating shouldn't be much above 7/10. If you're on BGG, you can suggest it here: www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/279371/
Thank you so much for showcasing the basic version of Zoo vadis. Seems like all the influencers got the upgraded version from Bitewing and it is hard to find out what the differences are when all the videos have the deluxe pieces.
No problem! I'd guess most of the ones Bitewing gave out for free to influencers were the deluxe edition, to see the game at its best. This was bought with money. 😁 10-15 years ago I used to love deluxe editions of games! But standards have shifted so much, I find retail editions pretty great quality by my standards, and deluxe editions often, well, a bit much, actually.
It depends though. Part of the joy of root for example is the cute animal theme that hides the vicious, murderous even terrorist actions the players are simulating. It wouldn't work the same if it were realistic. It would be more like a GMT game, which is fine but doesn't cover the same audiences necessarily. I for example love Root but can't stand GMT games.
Hi, thanks for the video. I wanted to know if the old manual mentions that after scoring the huts/monks they disappear from the board. In the new version they don't mention it and every time I've played it I've left the monks that have already been scored on the board. But watching Zen Garcia's video I get the impression that they all have to be removed!
The rules suggest removing villages that are in "unfavourable terrain" after scoring zero for them. Villages that score stay on the board. In practice, it doesn't matter, the village will score once when it's formed (and that score may be zero), then it doesn't matter whether they're on or off the board, they'll no longer have any effect on the game.
@@BoardGems Yes, it's true what you say, although it sometimes confuses with the new board design, which is a bit color crowded. Anyway, it's a great game. Never get rid of your previous version. Greetings from Peru!
Hi, have you ever played Mundus Novus? I recommend that one. I had a bad knee/nerve problem on March and I know it's not easy to fix a knee. Hope you get better soon! Keep doing physio every day.
I've played it once a looooooong time ago. Didn't leave much of an impression at the time, but I'd like to revisit it! I'll add it to the suggestions list, so if I come across a copy easily/cheaply I'll know to pick it up!
@@BoardGems the rulebook is not completely clear and it's necessary to consult BBG a lot, but once you get the game right you will like it. It's very good even with only two players.
You can, so long as it's not on a fold in the board. If your board is split along a fold then the glue won't survive folding along that edge, and you'll need to look at some sort of tape solution. Even if not on a fold, you may need to add support underneath the board, or it'll be easy to come loose again.
Wow just discovered your channel and subscribed. Being a 51 year old board gamer I love to find these older gems and so few are focused on these classics and are only focused on what’s new. I checked your video list and don’t see a TOP 10 - I’d love to know your best of the best of these older games! 😁
Thank you! I find it so hard to compare different board games to do a Top Ten. I know that's kind of the expected format of content, I know other RU-vidrs do it, but anything I do feels quite arbitrary. Like, how do I compare Ave Caesar with The Rose King with Kingdoms, three of my favourite games? They have completely different "use cases" - I can say one is better than another in a particular situation, but not overall. Well, I intend to take a small break for the summer, and during that period I'll probably put together a handful of one-off videos without a set schedule. I'll give some thought to maybe doing something more or less along those lines. Cheers!
Hey Darryl! I recently acquired the older Kosmos edition, the plastic seems so be getting sticky, any board game know how expertise on how to remove the stickiness? Looking forward to playing and thanks for the coverage of the game!
Hmm, the Kosmos plastic is soft, kind of bouncy, compared to the hard plastic of FFG. But not sticky, not mine. I don't think I've encountered sticky plastic in any game! Sorry!
I got the new Allplay edition with the upgrades. I do like using the wooden camels, but the wooden leaders are almost unusable, so I use a mix of wooden camels and plastic leaders. I prefer the plastic oasis miniature to the wooden one as well. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm hoping that if I hole punch the baggies (or use larger baggies) that it will eliminate the lid lift.
The game comes with big baggies. And I always get as much air out as possible before sealing. Short of printing out the tuckboxes, or storing everything agonizingly neatly (like tiling the cardboard tiles at the bottom), I just don’t see no -lid-lift as something reasonably possible. Which to be clear might not matter to a lot of people! But it does to me. Using a mix of plastic and wooden camels would drive me nuts. 😄
according to Efka from No Pun Included you absolutely CAN fit everything back into the box without lid lift, if you know how to pack the game away properly
AllPlay provided tuckbox templates you can print out. After this video I took a long time to cut, fold and glue them. I have to CRAM them into the box, such that I’m not confident they will survive the pressure. But there is no lid lift then. Now tuckboxes don’t magically create extra space, so it’s possible, if you for example neatly line up all the tokens, or take the time to lay them flat tiled on the bottom. But bagged? Absolutely not, and it’s not even close.
I saw the production by Allplay at Dice Tower West back in March and couldn't stop shaking my head - and now it shakes again with your video: box crammed with unneeded expansions; replacing the iconic camels with hollow ones - a far cry from the originally promised wooden camels; weird scaling of the camel to board size; weirdly folder board with a misprinted - after how many previous editions?! While I'm happy the game is back in circulation, I think this edition clutters a previously elegant game. Sheesh! At DTW, we went to the library and checked out the FF version. Thank you and enjoy!
The wooden camels were an add-on that I didn't get. I like wooden stuff as much as the next old-school gamer, but plastic camels has always been the iconic look of TtD so I stuck with that. I actually can't complain too too much about the components, barring the misprinted board of course. But the box was *way* too small. I haven't decided which to keep for myself. I was pretty fine with my old FFG one. The only thing I strongly prefer in the new edition is the nice, big board.
My buddy got the wooden camels as an add-on. I can definitely say that switching back to the plastic ones were the right choice. It is really hard to decipher which caravan belongs to who, because you can only identify the leaders if you look from the sides. It shouldn’t be hard to play a game like this. Allplay charged so much for that add on as well. My poor buddy😢
@@BoardGems As I recall Allpplay's campaign (and there's some documented history on BGG), they originally previewed ONLY wooden camels. They looked more elaborate than the ones now available as an add-on. These were abandoned for the hollow plastic ones and I think the wooden add-ons were later added because of backer outcry (?). I think it's all reflective of rushed development, which is especially odd for a game that has existed for 25 years ... and existed quite fine. Thanks!
Strongly prefer the FFG version, so much so that I got rid of my Allplay copy despite the graphical improvements and extra variety. Going for the smallest box, but the largest components to the point where it won’t fit back into the box still baffles me.
For a brief moment I had a Z-man Edition and Allplay edition and I preferred the Z-man edition. The camels were much better ;). And the Allplay edition has a misprint on the board regarding the waterhole (one is missing).
That is the odd game that looks worse as you put more pieces out. A lot of older games look very bland at first but are a sea of primary colors by the end. This just looks so difficult to discern what is going on.
It's pathetic to see board game makers cave in to people who are so fragile that the mere sight of something rooted in actual history causes them to screech. Sigh.
I don't mind change in setting at all. If the change was so ridiculous that the setting/mechanisms no longer make any sense together, I'd be the first to complain, but it makes as much sense now as before. They could have gone with a space-colonization theme instead, and I'd like that, much, much less. If they're going to change the setting, this is the way to do it IMO. But yeah, the anniversary edition is really nice!
@@BoardGems I oppose out of principle. A year or so ago they were organizing an online lynch mob on BGG to try to destroy the life of the designer of Terraforming Mars. One of them dug a tweet containing wrong-think of the victim. They were doing not only with the blessing, but also the help of the BGG administration. I felt so disgusted I deleted my account from the site. This is the morality police that decides what themes we are allowed in board games.
Yet another disappointing production from Alea, unfit for such a great game. This printing is better, but I have the previous one without text in the buildings, and Alea just washed their hands of it. Will not be buying from them again.
Yeah there are many horror stories of the misprints and poor production choices in 1897, so many that the publisher couldn't/wouldn't fix them for everyone and mostly just quietly fixed it for new printings. I was keenly aware of it and waited REALLY long to pick it up to give them a chance to iron it out, and even then I was taking a chance that what I ordered was the newer fixed version and not some old copy. It worked out for me, but I feel bad for all the early adopters.
@@BoardGemsI was one of the earliest adopters. I got four coffee tiles and a replacement coin (came out of punchboard badly), then I got a new rulebook, then I (professionally) printed out five copies of the new building player aid. All good now and it's good that they sent the tiles and rules for free, but a bit of a palava!
I love the way Alea does their rulebooks. The sidebars are so helpful. I also love the colored boxes on the "insert" of Alea games. They don't really do anything, but they really make a nice backdrop.
Not sure if you mean physically bulky or, like, not streamlined in gameplay. I think Clans is not bulky in either way; Fae is a bit big. An even-more streamlined hidden-colour board game is Heimlich & Co., though I haven’t seen a small version.
What to do when I have a lot or even all of trump cards? Sooner or later i will have goten five tricks with the trump suit and then have to lead with trump. Doesn't that mean that if I have all or almost all the trumps I defenetely get negative points? I think that this is a fundamental flaw of the game. A solution would be to be the saboteur and only get 4 negative points, IF no one else takes the saboteur before me. What would you do?
Great game for a Board Gems. I have heard of Klunker, but didn’t really know anything about it. I do have a copy of that 7-player Bohnanza, so it might be worth a try!
Yes, but with caveats. They're not for everyone. Actually I tried once before to cover El Caballero, but had technical problems and after two attempts at recording I gave up on it. I'll return to it (and cover Kaigan) someday.
Bohnanza is good because, among other reasons, it teaches an actual real world valuable skill - negotiation. Attentive players can actually learn what it means to be in an advantageous position and how to leverage it. The downside to Bohnanza and other strongly player-balanced games (Modern Art, Zoo Vadis) is that basically every instance of the we games that I've ever played has been thrown (or made random) by an inattentive or less-caring player. As a result, these types of games have largely fallen out of my personal taste in favor of ones that provide a little more individual impact over the one's personal outcome. I would still try Klunker, though!
Board game we have played the most, old art. Gonna buy new style, nice saturation! but - coniferous trees were realistic unlike deciduous trees in mammoth times, now it looks like there are 25 degrees Celsius - tygers should have been kept red for clarity - great that hunter monument of ultimate power is gone, yes it was OP, made animals not interesting until it was placed - compared to classic Carcassonne roads, rivers here give you animals and fish, so game is more balanced, new version of hunters looks even more sensitive this way... but it's still not enough! I wish there was more animal power on weaker piles, so lakes wouldn't be better 80% of the time! Two mammoths instead of one on that pile of sadness where there is nothing else, for example *Some rules I made as a strategy enthusiast* 1. Everytime you get a piece you can't immediately score points with, you can send it to 'exposed public inventory' (exventory) and take another. Everyone can take pieces from there instead of standard move. At the end you must take from there. When someone points out there is way for you to score immediately you must play that card and you're not allowed to physically attack them. Player who has to build bigger alone is losing too much. Especially in games of many players it's about taking equal power in every small forest and river where fight for dominance is not worth it. This way players score the most per turn - and it's usually not your strategic fault when it's your turn and you can't do it. Therefore... 2. Player who owns the largest closed forest or river of the game and had no pawn intruders can keep their pawn laying down there and they have points one more time at the end - all river systems with no intruders also give owner doubled points at the end. When someone closes greater or equal forest or river, doesn't matter if with intruders, you don't get any second points. Your sad pawn goes back to your inventory. 3. You can't place river hut in the forest... but... this idea is too good: Forest hut: you can place one on forest card and immediately connect it to forest where you have at least one pawn. You take hut back when forest is closed, but you can't place forest hut when you're closing this forest. Each hut gives you half the power of pawn! This ruins overpowered forest cooperation and brings whole new decision on the table: river system dominance at the expense of forest power. 4. Great option is also to give some of these 3:33 to each player and use them as tokens of tribal demand: when other player is placing piece you want, you use up one token and piece is yours for next turn and they take another. Before that, player sooner on turn, if there is any, can decide to demand card instead. If they don't wanna claim it for themselves, you ask everyone (in order you choose) if they wanna disagree and use up their token to burn your demand. It's great mechanic because you want to use tokens in your critical moments but sometimes it's better to keep them to stop others, you want the most out of it but not waste it in conflict with someone else while 3rd side(s) manage to use it... makes game more exciting for plenty of reasons: - winning players will be stopped more likely than losing - makes it easier to get rare piece you need to don't get stuck, or to block/connect in conflict with less caring opponent - luck of taking better cards and bonus pieces becomes less important cos it can be stolen or drain you of tokens - makes more favorable to avoid major conflict due to which others use up their tokens and get nothing from them... That's usually still the best way to victory for how overpowered dominance over main pasture is. However, if you play tournament of many games counted together, demand tokens & lone builder bonuses add new winning strategies and importance of changing them according to situation. Uninvolved player can help the strong one on plain or river system to estabilish dominance and take away points from others involved, while building their own stuff. Strategy to steal wealth won't be that thoughtless decision, and it's a little safer to do what you want and achieve ice age success that way. Oh, did you just read this all? I doubt it! :)
