Me: has a side table for drinks to prevent spills near the game. Tom: THROW MULTIPLE EGGS ON IT. Happy to see the return of both Lion Matt and Worm Matt in this one.
I almost got a heart attack when he threw that egg on it... thankfully, a few moments later you could see they placed a cling foil on top of it, so no lasting damage.
@@Wustenfuchs109 I love that they put in time to manage that plastic because from experience it takes time to get it to look perfectly crystal clear. Even on camera.
absolutely cracking vid, but now the bar has been raised for all board game reviews and I'm gunna be expecting an entire egg devoured, uncut, on camera, in each one. the industry can't keep up
I was so relieved to see the plastic wrap put down slightly move so I know for CERTAIN it was there... like I ASSUMED it was but it was still haunting me with the uncertainty
Noticing the wrinkles of the plastic wrap around the board when Tom ate the egg (7:25) was a weird mix of relief, that thank god they didn't actually smudge their board and cards with greasy eggy stains, and disappointment in the illusion being broken.
Do you mean Matt had a gun? Or did Tom have a gun at some point too? Or did Tom have the metaphorical gun required to adhere to Chekhov's Gun and Matt had a real* gun. *Hopefully not an actual legit real gun, but a prop gun.
@@KindredBrujah "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." legit 'hanging' (leaning) on the back wall ^^ 0:37
While this is not the first time I've watched a grown, hungry man devour a freshly-cooked egg off of a board game, I was still shocked enough to realize that I have no idea what Matt was saying at the same time.
@@stevetubeuk That was my first thought as well. It's also the kind of gag that can just get funnier and funnier the more takes one does, triggering a loop of egg-eating disaster.
Something that needs to be stressed when playing in that is that it is very much a race up the various tracks to get stuff 'n' bonuses. Like Lost Ruins of Arnak, Ark Nova showers the strongest player with further rewards to help juice their engine, which can leave those lagging behind in the cold (not quite as bad as Arnak, mind you. 3rd and 4th players can get a consolation prize of some cash in lieu of a juicier bonus token). In all games of Ark Nova that I've played, the first person to get access to the various goodies on offer invariably went on to win. Unlike Terraforming Mars, say, where there are arguably very few objectively bad cards in that you're always gaining something at least, in Ark Nova you absolutely can get junk cards that do nothing to support your strategy. Also in Terraforming Mars, each game feels largely equal and competitive up until the end - snowballs rarely occur and the various means of scoring points are well supported. This is in stark contrast to Ark Nova, thanks to its racing aspect. Your point dobbers for Appeal and Conservation serve to mark the end of the game when they cross over, so when your dobbers are adrift across the yawning chasm of the points track, you can only watch on helplessly as the frontrunner's dobbers rush together to close like the jaws of a steel trap. When someone's dobbers cross over, signifying the game end, they also serve as a point threshold as you get a higher positive score the bigger the crossover. It means every other player essentially gets saddled with *negative* points based on how far apart their dobbers were at the endgame. Bad enough that you never drew cards that supported your strong opener and pivoted too late, or that you spent the last hour knowing full well how far behind you were on the board, but then to be told your zoo scored -28 points? Christ, what were you even doing the past 2.5 hours? Building an anti-zoo?! Ark Nova has its merits but without some means of mitigating the card variance, it's difficult to recommend it over Terraforming Mars, with its gentler and fairer pacing, from a competitive gameplay perspective. Ark Nova is a different beast and I don't regret playing it, but for those unprepared to get their skates on and race you may well be left in the dust, with a half-finished petting zoo and some crushed dreams.
Thanks for the thorough elaboration. Im pretty interested in arnak for the engine building. My groupg had alot of fun with dune imperium. Would you recommend arnak?
I haven't found it to be too bad in terms of getting cards as long as you are prepared to pivot. If you've decided your going birds but the cards don't come up then just pivot and score something else. You can always go back to birds if you find them later. Grab some late game petting zoo animals, then throw them down for quick appeal points.
I'm a big fan of Arnak (130 games played on BGA). I don't agree that it showers the leading player with rewards, personally. One aspect of the game, the research track, gives a tiny bit of extra points to the player to reach the top first and has some bonuses along the way, but the leading player won't get all of them unless the other players are asleep at the wheel since there are multiple bonuses at most tiers. There are other avenues for gaining points, too, that don't give even these small benefits to the lead player.
I personally think TM playes way slower. Most of the times you are pushing cubes and trying to think of every possible action you can do (that is why I only play it with the app). In ark nova you always have an interesting option right in front of you, and the depth of this streamlined action selection system is just brilliant! And with two players under two hours playtime is perfect for a game of this complexity. You can't really say what game is better, maybe in the end it just comes down to the theme 😄
@@adamxpaul I'll proffess to not playing Arnak to such an extent as yourself, but my experience has boiled down to whoever gets first pick of the assistants so as to improve their conversion engines will go on to climbing the rest of the research track and grab those temple bonuses to win. Yes there are multiple bonuses per tier but woe is the 3rd or 4th player who has to make the same climb unrewarded. A research track frontrunner would need to have dropped the ball significantly to have their lead lost, outside of it being a neck-and-neck race. From experience, whoever started climbing the research track first pretty much stayed in first. All of this doesn't make Arnak a bad game, of course! It just means to be sporting I make sure to highlight the importance of the research track to new players since its significance is often lost in the spread of everything else that's on offer.
As usual, you jump from absolute silliness to discussing something deep like the ethics surrounding environmental conservation projects in a seamless whim. And there is a worm and an egg, so absolute SU&SD branding there. 10/10.
No, I was mad because they were ruining what I figured was a free copy for reviewing just for the review. Between that and the raw egg earlier I was super glad to see that they covered in plastic first.
No, they very clearly dropped an egg directly onto the expensive boardgame. In fact, the destructive effects of the infringing foodstuffs was so severe, that you can see that it instantly bonded with the surface of the board, melting and warping it the moment that Tom moved the egg with his mouth. Tragic.
The ending to this is comedy genius. Between Tom's face and the fact that it follows Matt's 2 minute monologue on responsible conservation representation... omg.
I was going to say the exact same thing. I feel like I wouldn't like the game, yet I keep coming back to it with my friends because it's just fun and enjoyable
We have played a few times now and drawing from the deck early game works, but snapping and using the card upgrade to draw from the table makes it more competitive. Our last game was 18 to 24.
The arc of that game though: it starts as a hectic efficiency puzzle to get your economy going and your action cards upgraded. Then there’s beautiful breezy exploration finding synergies in the cards you draw. Until you realize that the scores are really ramping up and you have to decide which of your plans you can still finish in the few remaining rounds. This is one of the greatest game designs in years!
Totally agree! Even if the endgame scoring can in fact be a little shaky, there is always a pleasant tension at the table. I do think the best player will most of the times win though, such "elefant-incidents" will be quite rare😁
@@Guinnes1988 Yah but in wingspan there are also multiple ways to increase card draw, cards that allow you to draw but force you to discard as well and cards that let you tuck cards from your hand underneath them for points. If you draw a card you don't need in wingspan it will probably still be useful to you if you are smart about it.
@@tylerbrown9797 All those points are also true with ark nova, I always have a good handful of cards and you also can stuff them under cards for extra benefits (with certain animals at least :D)
so happy to get to watch a double review in person. the zoom stuff and single is great but I love watching everyone play off eachother it's what has made SU&SD itself since episode 1. be safe love ya'll
Love it when two SU&SD reviewers work together! And I think Matt is on to something at the 14:30 mark. One of the things I really like about Terraforming Mars is that you can build an engine that is light with plants and fish and scrub brush, or you can go dark with nuclear weapons and drug-fueled metropolises and indentured servants. It makes no difference mechanically but it really adds to the flavor of the game.
Holy hell I was INDREDIBLY UPSET watching them put raw and cooked food on top of a beautiful board and cards. Then I saw they were using plastic wrap to protect it like good boys and just thought "Damn they hide it well"
And one which thankfully has died in the better examples of that style. End-game scoring is, of course, a useful way to create a little bit of uncertainty in who's going to win, but there are better ways than secret objective cards. Or at least ones with as vast a swing impact as the ones here seem to.
@@KindredBrujah They don’t even need to be secret. A lot of VP-based games have themed bonus scoring cards/tiles/etc that can be gained late. There’s always the chance you draw the perfect one and get a huge late-game payout in such games. I think this is less distasteful in shorter games. It’s probably a worse thing in Ark Nova since this is a longer game.
@@maxducoudray Still, the better examples don't do that. Terra Mystica, for instance, or Hegemony, do have end-game scoring, but it would technically be possible to calculate how many points everyone is going to earn, because it's all open information. It's just hard.
For some reason I've not been keeping up with susd vids for a year or so. VERY happy I get back into them by watching Matt and Tom barely contain their laughter as Tom slurps an egg. That's board games baby!
With the (often already problematic) deference given by reviewers to publishers over authors these days, I am surprised that folks find it so hard to distinguish between original publisher and international licensee. This is not a Capstone game. The game was published (and developed) by Feuerland. Capstone Games is merely the co-publisher in the US. They presumably had little to no input into the game development except for putting the logo on the box.
Video games have had this problem for a long time as well. As if a game coming from the same publisher, but not the same _developer_ , means it would be any more likely to be any good. Hell, even the better developers sometimes have duds, so that's no guarantee either, but it's at least a better measure than the publisher.
@@KindredBrujah (talking specifically about videogames here) I've rarely seen a publisher make a game "better in a way unique to that publisher" but examples of making it _worse_ certainly exist. Essentially any time they do anything but "give enough money, time and marketing for the game to become what it should" really
If you thought this was overly optimistic, you should play Endangered! That game is so realistic it makes me and my friends depressed when we play it. It's almost impossible to win and we call it the Eldritch Horror style version of conservation boardgames
Great review. Thank you. On the theme, there is something naturally sinister about zoos anyway isn’t there? People especially, very young kids, walk around a zoo looking at the animals failing to really acknowledge the bars or the glass they are staring through. Or later we shake our heads disapprovingly of the bars and glass screens, while failing to acknowledge why some of the animals in the zoo are endangered in the first place (where is the bin so I can throw my Pringles pack away). My god a walk around Sea World gave me chills, and I would still class myself as semi ignorant!! But I admire the fact that the game tries to bring light to how a zoo can work for a positive purpose, having said that I like the idea of a future expansion that has you making difficult moral decisions. Overall I love the game, and respect the views in this video. Thanks again.
The game had an opportunity to raise awareness about the untold harms against animals perpetuated by zoos under the guise of "education" or "conservation" (and really, in service of profit), and neglected to do so. I can't see it as anything other than a contributor to those harms in how it glosses over them and pretends everything is fine and zoos are great. Which, for the 98% of the population that doesn't give a shit about animal wellbeing, I guess works for them, but I won't be financially supporting it, and I certainly couldn't bring myself to enjoy the game due to this theme.
Great review and makes me want to play the game. As an aside, your 'elephant in the zoom' issue of pulling a lucky card to score big points is why I was unsatisfied with Isle of Cats, having scored 14 points for a complete fluke pull on my last turn in that game and seen other people do similar.
playing it I felt the game with so many intertwined systems to keep track off would work better as a computer game. So agree with the Zoo tycoon reference. Also there is little player interaction, everyone focused on their own little engine, may as well have been on a computer. I like the social interaction of sitting down to play a board-game and felt this one suppressed that.
Same. Aside from a few of the animal abilities which affect others and maybe blocking off or picking up a card someone else needs theres little to no p2p interaction and thats a huge fun factor for me 😢
Great teamwork on this review and I really appreciate the way your two takes give a much better whole impression. However the bit where Tom eats the fried egg broke the illusion, I will forever see the clingfilm behind the jokes!
What a great and nuanced review. I love that you guys don't just go in gushing at the newest hotness-great critiques on the luck factor in the competitive game and the overly optimistic nature of this game. I appreciate well-thought-out reviews like this. Keep it up.
Target of a hypnosis is quite often shown not remembering being hypnotised. So maybe your friends should bring tape-recoder with them when visiting those sneaky magic animals. Who knows what freaky stuff those animals are into nowadays.
I was today years old when I realised you guys put clingwrap on the components for your famous "food shots". No doubt because of the disaster that was the "Eton Mess Incident".
Agree that with some nice illustration work, this could have really popped visually. As it is, the photographs are "a bit naff". Some of the photographs are terribly chosen too. Eg, the frilled lizard doesn't even show it's aforementioned frill!
A small fix for the randomness in this game would be to have 3 face up animal cards at all times to choose from with set rules on when they can fully reset (like Wingspan).
That end game scoring thing that Tom mentioned is the reason why I hate Killer Bunnies. I was playing one time with some friends, and by all accounts, I was doing the WORST at the table. Just really bad, I should have had no hope of winning. But at the very end of the game, I drew *EXACTLY* the cards I needed, in *EXACTLY* the order I needed them, and it just snowballed into me actually winning the game. And that made me so irritated that the winner of the game can end up being a simple game of chance, I never played the game ever again, and I never want to.
