The bid fulfillment in Shut the Books is reminiscent of Sluff Off/Die Sieben Siegel. There are enough differences between the two for an interesting comparison. Bidding from your hand cards has a neat balance of potentially weakening your hand if you are bidding a stronger suit, or event strengthening if you are able to void yourself and can count on matching the bid card by number or through trump. Yet another game I hope to try at some point.
I just found out this week that Kiki's delivery service was originally a book that was published in 1985 and that the Ghibli movie is an adaptation of that
Ombres a fun game, used to centuries ago be the premier game of skill which explains why its so thoroughly spelled out in that and probably many other books. iirc some people in some pockets of the world still play it much like it was played back then. heavily gambling based though
These are both fascinating games, and both really clean and streamlined. Very cool. You mentioned a term "hammer" that I'm not familiar with - is that being the lead player? I tried to google that but not easily finding what that term is. Both of these games look really fun to play, and have clever unique ideas. As far as theme, I have a hard time imagining a solo song when multiple versions of the same dog are played.. Like, is it the same dog but in different parallel universes? Or different dogs of the same breed but singing together - then it isn't technically a solo.. maybe I'm the only one that is taking the theme this far.. LOL. I really do like the spotlights on the backs of the Vivo cards - nice touch.
I assume Taylor means "hammer" as the last to play in a round or trick. It's a common term in curling and Crokinole and I've definitely heard it applied to other games too.
Oh yes sorry! I usually use terms and jargon without explaining them, it's a bad habit!! I think someone explained below, but it's the last person in the trick! So sorry again! Thank so much for the comment!
So many clever concepts packed into just two games! In Vivo, do you think that it would have more opportunities for long term strategy if there was a visible progression from solo to quartet, or the other way around?
Here's my scalding hot take as someone who hasn't played Vivo but thinks it looks so fun: I don't think the solo/duet tricks count as must-follow? It feels like "must play" in that what happens when you can't follow is that you just don't contribute to the trick; you can't, e.g. play trump or something. Of course I guess there are games without trump suits where if you can't follow you just have to play a dummy card and it doesn't really count as part of the trick, but even then it might count for card points or something, plus the fact that this game moves between must-not-follow to "must play" complicates the dynamic. That's just what I think about when Taylor says it's a very simplistic loop -maybe it would be interesting if not being able to follow in those solo/duet or even trio tricks meant you could trump, or just pass (which could then give you an advantage in ongoing tricks).
Oh yeah i definitely think a trump could make things more interesting here! I think the solo is definitely must follow, as many games have off suit cards be nothing, but the duet is interesting! Great point!
@@ClaudeAndTaylor That's fair tbh! I was thinking after I posted this and watching another of your videos that my comment probably reflected the fact that most of my trick-taking familiarity comes from tarot games 😅
Can someone help me with a link? I would like to order vivo as a european. I have a service that I can use to order it in japan and send it to me. But for that I need the link from a japanese shop/site. And since I am not speaking japanese these sites a very difficult to find using google. THe only sites I find are US shops importing the game to the US but that of course doesn't help me. (And buying it from those sites, paying their import share and then prxying it from the US to europe is unnecessary complicated and more expensive than just proxying from japan. Thank you!
