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#282 - Two Player Town (Population Two)
In episode #282 of the Shut Up and Sit Down podcast, hosts Tom Brewster and Matthew Lee dive into the world of two-player board games. They explore the dynamics of gameplay and strategies in three uni...
#282 - Two Player Town (Population Two)
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Interactive Transcript
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Hello everybody and welcome to the very latest episode of the Shut Up and Sit Down podcast
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to podcast about board games, board games and the people who love board games.
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My name is Tom Brewster and I'm joined by Matthew Lee's.
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Hello, hello, hello, hello.
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And last week on the podcast, Matt, it was just me making it a one-player podcast.
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This time on the podcast, there's the two of us making it a two-player podcast.
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So we're going to talk about two plays.
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Yeah, I've put a 50-pence P in the machine and I've pressed the button and it's gone and you
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play it. Unyou play it. Unyou play it, but actually it's not four players.
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It's just I kept putting pound coins in the machine and pressed all the buttons on the arcade machine.
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It's going to lose now because two of the people aren't even being controlled.
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I was thinking that what we could do is we could just slowly expand the podcast into a two-player,
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then a three-player, then a four-player, then a five-player, then a six-player podcast,
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covering only games that fit those play accounts.
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And I'm trying to think when the wheels would really start to fall off.
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Maybe there's three or four seven-player games out there.
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Maybe there's five or six eight-player games out there.
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But I think when we get into nine and ten and eleven,
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that's when things are going to go really crazy.
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What would nine people on the podcast as well?
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Nine people on the podcast and finding the games.
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It's telling that my immediate worry was finding the kinds of games that would have nine players
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playable. Yeah, I think at that point, as soon as you get like eight plus,
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as soon as you get like, oh, this is a game for ten people, really what you're talking about,
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that point is sports. And that's kind of that's fine because I think that you get certain,
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a certain mass of humans that the requirement is to even how's ten people
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with your space? You're already getting to something that is the size of a ping-pong table that's
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just made out of people. Once you get to a certain number of people, they will naturally do sports.
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It's sort of what you're saying. Well, I just think if you have enough people,
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then distance between the people, it means if there's going to be any meaningful interaction between
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people who are far away, that's going to mean either A, people moving their bodies around,
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or B, people throwing things to each other. So there's an dexterity element to any massive
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gathering of humans. And that's my review of the world. On this podcast, we're going to talk about
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three two player games. We're going to start things off by talking about Tag Team,
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a Street Fighter-esque game of bapping people in teams. We're going to talk about
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Sooner Valo, a game about making a farm competitively to another farmer who lives just across the room
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from you, and you're really annoyed by them. And then we're going to talk about General Orders,
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Sen Goku, Jedi, a game about doing war on a tiny little board.
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First up on this podcast, we're going to talk about Tag Team. This is a game designed by
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Grisha German and Korrentin Lebritt, with art by Naird, published by Scorpion Mask. And this
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is a game of bifhing each other in the face with fighting styles. Yeah, it's two V2, which is
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very confusing because it's a one V1 game, but you both get to control two separate fighters.
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They stand next to each other and you guessed it, are going to be tag teaming back and forth,
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going, you punch them this time and then going, maybe I'll punch them again, but then it's your turn
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to punch them. And both of you are going to be punching each other at the same time because
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it's simultaneous. Auto-Battle Deck Builder. Yeah, you're going to be building these little tiny
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decks of cards that are going to sort of autonomously fight against each other. The thing that's
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interesting about this game is like the first round of it isn't really a round at all. It tells you
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please shuffle your deck and your deck at this point is two cards. Well no, you don't shuffle
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your deck actually. You never shuffle your deck. You choose the order. Oh yeah. And then you never
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shuffle it for the whole game. So the spicy thing about this is the fact that yeah, you get these cards,
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you at the start, you just have one card for each of these two characters and then the order you
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choose to put them in becomes your deck and then you both put your decks on the table and one at a time
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you just flip over your cards and you just act out the things that that card tells you to do.
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Usually it's like I'm trying to hit you or I'm trying to block, but each of the characters and
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especially these two beginning cards have kind of special spicy rules usually all of the different
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characters do things in odd ways and often these special cards that you start with are the ones that
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are kind of juicing the engine. But we'll get back to that. The main thing is that at the end of
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each round, which is just when you've gone through this deck of cards and got to the bottom of it,
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you're going to draw three off the top of your deck, which is made up of a 5050 shuffled split
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of the cards that are for those two characters that you're playing with. So basically you've got this
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one draw deck that's both characters and then you draw three cards, you choose one of them to add
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somewhere to your auto battle deck. But just like in a game like Scout or whatever, that is
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a fixed order, which means you can slide a new card in anywhere you want, but that's it. Once you
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have that in position, you can't move anything around for the rest of the game in any way other
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than adding new cards to shuffle along the specific order of what things are happening. And then the
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game itself is kind of like rock paper scissor in a way, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah, you're sort of just
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slightly nudging your cards like one place forward or back and then you're sort of seeing your engine
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run against your opponent and broadly all you're going to be doing is hitting each other when you
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take a hit. The character whose card was last played is going to receive the damage from the hit
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as it comes at them. But you can also play block cards. You can have block cards in your deck.
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Well, block hits and when they come up, that means that no fighting is happening. You're blocking
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all of that damage and maybe you're going to get like some kind of counter style effect. So there's
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like a lot of them where if you successfully manage to block an attack, you will do some damage back
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or you will gain some power or you'll trigger some other kind of special ability. Yeah, the cards
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are all all spicy, right? It's like you hit someone and if you do hit them, then you get this bonus.
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And then so really at the start of the game when you've just drafted a few new cards into your
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little like auto battle deck, it's that thing of really being like, okay, we've got five or six cards
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in there. Let's say and you know that last round you got hit twice in the face right at the start.
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So I mean, next time you might draft a block and put it on the top of your deck, meaning you know
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that you're going to block that first one. Yeah. Unless the opponent works out you're going to do
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that and then puts another new card on the top of their deck. So the first block you do doesn't block
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anything and then they hit you twice again. So really it's it's a game of like almost like a memory
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game, but not really because you can remember the order of like roughly what happened last time
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in terms of when they tried to hit me. I tried to hit them. They did their special power up and then
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I did this. But the only control you have is by shuffling along the sequence of what you plan to do
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by one card at one position in the deck. It's kind of a weird one where like trying to get your head
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around it. At first you're like, oh, this is really complicated. But actually that's all you're
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doing is you're just moving the sequence along by one space. But it's where you choose to do that.
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You do it later in the deck at the start of the deck. Do you maintain the sequence and just put
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something on the end of it. Yeah. And at that point it becomes this really cool little like
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gentle battle of the wits combined with a slight memory of people being like, how I put this in
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the right place. Is this the time where I should put the block in? And all the characters have
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these very bizarre effects to them. So the ones that it recommends you start with are quite
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straightforward across the board of all these weird characters in tag team. You start with a man
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who turns into a bear where he has these cards that increases rage and when he gets to a certain
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threshold he becomes a bear becomes very strong, very tanky. You've got a character that starts with
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a fleet of ships at her disposal and the effects that she has access to gently change based on
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how many ships she has. But then I think the interaction that made both me and you kind of like
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set up in our chairs a bit in our first game is that there's a character who's special or one of
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his special cards allows you to permanently remove a card from the other players deck. And if you
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can see it in the right place you can really knock out a temp pole of their strategy. So that ship
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maybe we just talked about she has this one card that's like cash in your ships do your big
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effect because based on all the ships you've been accumulating and this other guy just nudge that
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card out of the deck completely out of nowhere ruin me. I mean this game is so fast this is a game
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that you sit you grab a couple of characters you shuffle the decks together there are any little
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decks of cards and then you just go and you can finish a game in like 15 minutes if you're being
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nippy. So really having that level of like malleability and destructiveness within the gameplay the
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fact that you just destroyed my character's engine you know because the thing about that character
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ships thing is funny is that you build up these fleets and everything you're doing with these
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little cards is adding more ships to your fleet but actually you don't want it to be like really high
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like when it hits 20 and that card comes up you do a big wrap of damage and then it goes back to zero
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and you build it up again but actually in between that what the ships do varies and it means you
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want these sweet spots like it's pretty good having ships up to about seven and it's okay between
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like seven and 15 but then after that it's diminishing returns so by removing that it meant that
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like my ships were just stuck at 20 and I couldn't do anything with them I had no passive effect
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anymore from my fleet I just imagined somebody on a boat somewhere being like we're waiting for a
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message from the commander to fire the cannon it's like the commanders the commanders not on the ship
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anymore they're gone and there's all sorts of funky like like interactions with these characters
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yeah and I really like how all of these different characters kind of almost actors a bit of a
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tutorial for the sort of nuances of the strategy in the game like one of my favorite characters is
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go called shango and his whole ability is to set people on fire if he hits the same character
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over and over again he builds up heat on them and if they ever get five heat then they instantly
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lose just immediately they're gone and that doesn't matter how much health they have it's just if you
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get those five markers on them the trouble is if you hit any other character you get rid of all the
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fire on the original character and put it on this new ones you have to build it up from scratch every
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time you switch targets and the reason that I think that is super interesting is I mean not only
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is it kind of a fun mechanic to juggle in the game but it also gives you a real awareness of the way
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that the game handles damage because you only ever do damage to the character who is being flipped at
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this current present moment so yeah if you're trying to win the game in a really clean way you're
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trying to really target exactly one character which means you need to pay attention to where things are
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in the deck and focus all your efforts and then you realize how that follows into the fact that
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you don't want to just have your deck stacked with just one character because as much as you're
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giving them loads of moves and building up their power you're also exposing them to all the negative
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effects the opponent might have so there's there's there is nuance there there's not so much that
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it gets overwhelming though because as you say it's like 50 minute games they're really short
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sharp yeah I think that like it is interesting in the fact that like there's a really nice skill
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space like skill like there is a skill floor and a skill ceiling and skill walls
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yeah just like a nice little skill closet yeah yeah I love the skill architecture now it's
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there are some characters that are just very easy and chill to play like and you know that I think
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is it called malady I think there's like a yes basically a cool lady with a with a fencing sword and
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their ability is they just flip over these tiles you build up tiles and then you flip them over and
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you so when you flip them over though what they do you know what it's gonna do and they're all
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pretty good but the fact that you don't know what they're gonna do means you're a bit like yolo but
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it doesn't matter it means you don't have to think so much when you're playing and you're still
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probably gonna do pretty well yeah because it takes some of the thinking out of the way and in exchange
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for that loss of control gives you power on the other end of it you have got characters like Django
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where it's like you know there's a lot of finesse to it and if you're not actually thinking then you're
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probably not going to get much out of that character and there's a whole bunch of stuff in between
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and what I really liked about it is there's a whole bunch of characters in the box it's like 10 12
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yeah there's just a bunch a bunch a bunch there's there's what feels like in the base game
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enough for a delightful small box to play a game and within that they all do other things they
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all kind of break the game in different ways and I started to realize when I played it a bunch
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that whilst it wasn't a game where there was like tremendous like there was enough depth to get
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your teeth into but once you played all the characters it felt like a real fighting game in the
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fact that there were like clear counters there weren't clearly like this character has an
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incredible power thus this and that's when like it's one of the first games where usually when I'm
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playing a board game and it's like you draft the things at the start I'm like I'm not sure I can be
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bothered you know let's just jump in let's just either randomize it or you some suggestion decks
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but in this I feel like once you play that a bunch drafting is kind of essential because you
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means you can you can see a character and you can go I know what you're going to try and do with that
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so this is the counter to that and that's the point where I thought our tag team is not just like
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pretty cool it's like it's really great it's like it's neat it's tight because every time you find
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something that you feel is unbeatable you then find something else that would be it I had this come
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up in one of my games where there's a character called the so called the wild bunch or the rowdy
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bunch or something like yeah and their whole gimmick is that there's just five of them and so
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any damage to them kills one of the five of them but obviously if you do like 20 damage to them
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it's kind of wasted because it just gets rid of one character at a time so picking them means that
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character like Mordreds who is this sort of like power group get a whole bunch of damage and then
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defeat your opponent in one blow which is completely useless against them and so you might draft
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that kind of aggressively against Mordred or defensively the other way it's just very interesting
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there's like even there's enough there isn't there yeah the fact that you mentioned earlier the
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the ability that one of the characters actually a couple of carrots have the ability to remove
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that card and a card from the other players deck when you flip it over you just go both cards now
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out of the game one of the characters is just like some fairies and there's three fairies and when
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each one of them dies they become a spirit your powers get more powerful but then you're not actually
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out of the game when the fairies die you're out of the game when you flip over their special card
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that basically then says oh if you flip this over and all your fairies are dead then you immediately
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lose the game but it means picking that character in response to someone else who's picked those
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things is terrifying because if you manage to make it so that they accidentally remove that card
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from the game then that character is invincible yes and it means you then have to kill the other
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character to win the game because you only have to kill one it's just super pleasing and I think
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that like one of my favorite things in two player games are puzzles that you get to unfold with someone
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else you know that feeling of like you can just open a box and be like oh cool this does
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this does this it's a great game to play once you know it but that experience of just spending
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some time learning it with someone else and seeing all the intricacies firsthand it's just the
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joyful way to spend anything yeah absolutely yeah and it's like a pretty like low price
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of entry as well if I remember correctly like both interns at the time it takes to play and the
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actual cost yeah I'm I really quite like tag team I think we'll come back to it I think it's fabulous it's great
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next up on this podcast I wanted to tell you Matt about right soon a valo son of allo
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soon a little I don't know what how to say the name sonny D
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so that's the one this is a game it designed by Andreas Odendal with art by Lucas Seaman and
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published by capstone it is a one to two player game of building up a farm and trying to beat your
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opponent into the ground with it yeah one of those like your games basically a lot like the game
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we just talked about yeah but for farming but for agriculture yeah crying those seeds down into
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nothing the manual for this game proudly proclaims that it is a standalone two player
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game in the planter new bow universe and I just realized now I was meant to I was meant to run with
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that hey Matt have you heard about the hot new games soon a valo the latest in the planter new bow
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universe and try and sort of hurt your brain a bit pantonubo buddy they won't even let me plant the
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new bow so to briefly explain this game you are going to be building up a farm in this kind of a solar
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punk setting it's sort of like steam punk but instead of it being grimy and gross it's all blue
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skies and everything's nice and there's wind farms and solar power and all that stuff there's
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technology but it's not bad it's kind of the premise of solar punk I guess and what you are trying to
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do in this game is you're building up your little farm and you are going to be ultimately trying
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to get resources which are going to ship off to fulfill these various orders if you get some eggs
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and some seeds then maybe you can send them for some points what I've explained so far sounds
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kind of very by the book and much of the game is quite by the book you are going to be on your turn
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taking these cards from a little shared market and putting them into a tablo and the more cards you
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get the more actions you will get to take so for example if you take one is it'll green cards you're
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going to get some seeds and then every time you take a green card later on you will trigger all the
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other cards in that column and the same goes for every sort of collection of cards in the game get
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cards that give you resources and then get more of those cards to re-trigger those bonuses over and
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over again and build a bit of an engine rather than get into all of the gritty detail I'm just
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going to give you some of the little highlights of what I thought was really because all that super
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I mean that's it immediately I feel like this is one of those games where it's pushing you towards
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like minmaxing it's pushing you towards just doing one thing really well but I bet that's either
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difficult or leave as you want to percol for other reasons yeah it's a bit of both the mechanic
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number one that I'm going to talk about is the fact that you have very limited storage for these
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things if you look at a pitch for the board maybe I'll put one in the podcast thumbnail as a treat
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uh you'll see that each of the resources or each of the icons you have will often come with like a
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little bucket symbol below it which means that you have one little storage space for one little
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resource which means that sure you want to hit the same little bonus over and over and over again
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and get loads of eggs but you've only got space for like one egg at the start or you're just going
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to need to invest in more storage and I like that big egg or small bucket either way it's a problem
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for you I really like games that actually like properly engage with like inventory mechanics
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a game I'm sure will come back to at some point but I played a bunch of scarabray it was a game
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featured in our board games direct series you can find that on our youtube and that is a game that
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yeah it has this like very restrictive inventory you're always having to make sure that you're
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cleaning up after yourself and this has a similar thing here where you don't want to just
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well you do want to just hit the same bonus over and over again it's what's going to get you the
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most stuff but actually finding a home for it is much more challenging that it initially appears
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I feel like collecting things is just a I think that people love to do in games yeah regardless
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of why um in the same way that in that you know in video games as well like people like to shoot
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things and they like to collect things and yeah that's why I enjoyed it.
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The video game Destiny 2 is as popular as it is well exactly and I do enjoy it occasionally when
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you know in board games we we have a kind of push against these this this kind of collecting
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instinct by having like stuff like this so having a very limited resource storage space or having
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things of like you know between rounds you can only keep so many things so do as much as you can
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with it and there's no point having a billion bits of iron because the end of the round it's all
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gonna go away or even on the biggest scale at the end of the game you're not really going to get
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much for it so don't hoard things I love one of those like oppressive end of game rules where it's
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like I think this has it where it's like oh yeah like these resources get spent all this yeah it's
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like they translate into points at like a seven to one ratio or something crazy it's like as you
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just tip it all into the point bin um yeah so you're you're sort of building up these engines to get
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resources and fulfill these contracts but here's the thing that I think is is really special about
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this game and the sort of one mechanic that really sets it apart is that broadly throughout the game
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you're going to be buying these cards from this sort of shared market and putting them into your
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tableau stacking up these actions but every player has a little market of three action cards that
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sits above their board and that player will set their price for that card and the way they set that
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price is with their own resources so I might have to spend say like two wheat and I'll put it on a
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card to set the price of that card as two wheat and if my opponent wants that card they'll have to pay
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the cost on it so I have to pay me two wheat and I get the two wheat that was on it back for my own
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purposes later on or I could buy the card which would have me just shuffle the two wheat off into the
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bin and then I'd take the card and put it into my tableau and there are minimums on each card so each
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one of these cards has to have a certain number of resources so there's a bit of like fixed value
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where certain cards you know have to have a certain amount of resources on them but it wrinkles
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the game in a couple of really interesting ways way number one is is the sort of obvious one which
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is that you could grab a card that your opponent likely really wants and then set the price quite
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aggressively for something that you kind of need more of or if you definitely don't want them to
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have it you could set the price as a resource that they don't have any of at all essentially locking
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them out from it unless they do something crazy well this is I've got I have questions because this
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is interesting um do does this mechanic mean that the only way you can build things is by putting
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them in a shop and then buying them there's a shared market that both players can buy from
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otherwise all the cards sit in your little market and whenever someone buys one you
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replenish it from the market which can also be used aggressively because you know those cubes
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I'm saying you put the the price on them based on your own resource you have to basically spend
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your resources to set the price if you spot there's a card in the market that's like worth loads
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you could buy a card from your opponent and then if they and then essentially force them to
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replenish it with a card that they can't properly afford which means they have to put these
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shortage tokens on it which costs them points it's some nice horrible detail in there because
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it needs you have to keep like a float of resources so that you can set prices for things you can't
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do that thing where you you're constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel you have to have a
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bit of like through fair in your resources the game goes on it's really weird sounds weird mean
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to my favorite things it is weird and mean that there's a few other nice sort of like details here
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where the different kinds of deliveries you can make uh each will take a sort of different colored
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piece off of or sorry different shaped piece off of your board and there's this like very tantalizing
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point tracker to the side but in order to advance it efficiently you need to make lots of different
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kinds of deliveries and there's also there's also a whole bunch of upgrades that kind of like
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expand your board and win interesting ways and it just builds into this quite unusual experience like
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we've had a lot of these games like something like a feast froden or a greekler or similar where
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you are doing a kind of passive agricultural experience opposite your opponent but soon
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of all I was interesting because it's much too thier it's it's very like directly combative like
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it's very nasty from from the get go even though you're still doing this quite like passive income
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generation puzzle opposite your opponent it makes sense in the future when we replace all of the
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the bad energy with wind farm and solar that we have to find other ways to be horrible and
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disrupting other ways to exploit each other and our environment exactly yeah absolutely you've
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got to want to tickle that meanness out of me I'm going to go and be horrible to my neighbor for no reason
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finally Matt you've been playing general orders sin goku jidai designed by trevajban david
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Thompson without by the highly and published by osprey games I played the first one of these
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you're playing the second the newer the shinier one of these yeah I have not played the first one
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but I imagine I quite like it because I like this it's a strikingly tiny little war game for two
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players which basically has this set map where you have like you know these are the people you put
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in these positions you have these different types of units on this side of the map you're on this
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side of the map and then you have a slight bit of randomization in terms of there being these
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special locations marked on the map then if you hold them you're going to get little bonuses
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and sometimes they're they're mostly just passive things that make one aspect of the game a little
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bit juicier and this game comes with two maps one of which is kind of a smaller one the other one
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has a bit more like space to it and a bit more of a kind of sprawling build out and they both
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kind of have different units that are played with you get more advanced units in the bigger map
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kind of some more like siege equipment for breaking into houses etc. but I'll come back to that
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in a second on the basic version you know you you have the ability to uh that's what I told you
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don't worry there's always time for siege later uh you have your ground units and you have
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these little boats and a lot of the game is about just basically moving units around the map
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taking control of areas very traditional kind of war game little hexes move things into this
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basis so boats can attack people people can attack boats people can attack people boats can attack
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boats is very very equal opportunities here for land and water based violence however the dice you
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get to roll when doing that it depends on what you're doing and more crucially than that not all
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spaces allow you to do all things so the funny thing about this game is that in the corner of in the
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corners of the different hexagons on the board you're going to have these little symbols and a lot
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of the game is about placing these orders you get like you know six little columns that you're
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going to pop on of your color to show the you've activated a space and you might activate a space
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to move into it you might activate a space to shoot out of it you might activate space to do
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something else there's all these different symbols not all spaces allow you to do all things
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and that gets spicy very quickly because around is over once you've all placed all your things
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and it means going first is super important because if I place one of my little tokens in a hex
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to do something in it to move into it then the other player cannot move into it that round they
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may be able to activate a nearby space to attack into it to kill some people but they can't
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move into it because I've already activated that space so it's about having this interesting
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decision space where you're partially trying to do the things you want to do quickly but also
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trying to shore up your positions to ensure that other people can't do something that they might
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want to do and even on the small map when you have like a couple of little different fronts where
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you might be trying to do things my game I was trying to sneak some people across the river to go
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and take some juicy point spaces and a special location that would give me better naval power
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was also maintaining my hold of this small island nearby which had a factory which meant that
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every time I built ships I got to build another ship and I was taking control of the seas and it
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was delightful and glorious and you know I think what's really impressive about this is it does
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manage to create these kind of feelings of a big war game in a at a time that doesn't take very
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long and be a startlingly small amount of space you know this is a tiny board with some tiny
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components on it and then you have a deck of cards on the side there's these cards can do special
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things and give you little special one off powers that you can play I was going to ask about the cards
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are they like a sort of is it a set of cards that is designed to be somewhat predictable or is it
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a set of cards that's kind of a bit like Wolfgang Pau weirdness that you're kind of introducing by
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guess not there's not too much Wolfgang Pau weirdness they're pretty knowable once you've played it
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you know once you've seen them and interestingly there's different cards for the two different
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sides of the board like there you know it's not just one deck of cards because they're quite
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different battles and then getting these cards involves you instead of playing orders on the board
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you have this other little menu to the side that you can put them on which allows you to get more
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troops get more boats or take cards and snag the first player thing which is a kind of a big deal
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these aren't like it's just kind of a bit work of placency here in the fact that like the first
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person to go to these spaces is going to get the better reward but it gives you a nice
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flow to the game where you're not always moving around the map there's points where you kind of have
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a turn where the other player is really jumping for those good reinforcement spaces and taking a
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turn to just bolster up their troops and maybe get themselves some cards yeah cards you don't have
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that many of them in the game they pop up here and there but it's they kind of just add an uneasiness
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to the to the game in the fact that you you have a sense of what you're likely to be able to achieve
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but then never a hundred percent because as I say the combat is very dice based and is a case of
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like well if I attack well if I can get my unit to this space then I can attack those boats with
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three dice which is feels like it's going to be really good but you still might roll really badly
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right you know and what's nice about these little symbols on the board and the way that they
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give you different actions in different spaces is that it creates a sense of geography that
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it doesn't need art to have you can kind of see it in your head where you're like okay well from
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this space units can attack other things but from this space units can shell like ships and the
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ships can't attack them from the space next to them and you go yeah there's kind of a cliff edge
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there so you can kind of imagine like the dudes kind of going over the edge of the cliff and like
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shooting down at boats in the way that the boat's struggling to hit them back and this just it's
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just nice the way you then have this like quite 3d sense of a little space which isn't really
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supported by anything other than very gentle stylistic artwork and rules which is which is really
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quite neat on the on the bigger map I must say I much prefer the bigger map version of the game
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because it had a bit more of a sense of like momentum the small map is a bit of a skirmish with the
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other one you have more space between players at the start it's much more of a kind of moving out
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to take over areas building up forces the siege weaponry and moving out around and getting it
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into place it just felt a little bit juicier and felt a little bit more like you were playing a
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war game and even though the mechanics of it aren't the same at all I can't really put my
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finger on why but the whole thing reminded me a lot of advanced wars the old games that came
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with fans and that you kind of had that like delightful simplicity and chunkiness yeah yeah I
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really enjoyed playing I think that actually like my one criticism of the game which is
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it's wild to say this because it's we never say this but I think it might be too small
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you know I'm usually which is proof you know because we're always saying that it's too big it's too
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big this is actually too small I think because not only is it just slightly fiddly because you're
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you're dealing with a very small map and very small components it's very dependent on you being
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able to see the things on the axis because they're a lot of specific symbols around the edge of it
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and as soon as you start moving units into the spaces even though they stack up little chips
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stack up on top of each other as soon as you start doing that and placing your little
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poles little tall circles on those spaces it becomes a little bit harder to read the board and
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obviously it's a head to head war game so you don't want to be too obviously like you know being
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like can I have a look at that and it's just something that I feel like would be easily fixed with
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just a little more breathing room the board just being a little bit bigger yeah and I imagine that's
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also sort of an accessibility concern as well with these these arguably very very important icons
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potentially being too small to to realistically see or obscured by a sort of taller jaggedy piece
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which looks lovely like the photography on this game like the actual like images I'm looking at
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right here whoo it looks sharp but also I need to look next to a human hand yeah and also I think
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it suffers from that um what's the name what's that what's the blue and white game is better yeah
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this bower this bow got it one it suffers from the Lisboa complex a little bit in the fact that
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because it has this very like stylistic um graphic design on the board which looks awesome it does
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mean that like it's a bit less readable and it's not like pure Lisboa which I found just actually
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gave me a headache because I had to do all the thinking whilst looking at a blue and white diagram
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but he definitely has things where you sometimes didn't notice stuff or found it you know it wasn't
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immediately obvious where things were even where the map was empty you're like where's that space
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where's that space and you know it's not a huge deal because you are just playing on these two maps
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and you only have to play them like wants to be like I know what the spaces are um but again it's
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just something where if the board was just maybe a third bigger and just had a little bit more breathing
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room uh it wouldn't be an issue yeah I mean it's great to see these two designers that we've you know
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loved their work for like ages continuing to work on these like quite thematic little small box
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experiences like undaunted still keeps it down to like a pretty svelte box and this is you know
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taking that philosophy even further making it ever smaller smaller but still staying quite thematic
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would you say yeah I mean I I enjoyed I enjoyed the fact that this was a little head-to-head
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war game depicting a different era of war and you know I've grown a little tired of the the
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classic formula of white dudes making games about gaysha's and samarais if I'm honest uh but
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this like feels like an interesting little like snapshot of a of a conflict in the way that
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it feels earned and it feels different and it feels just evocative of a different space and I think
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that's especially helped by the fact that you don't have this sort of like big book of of different maps
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etc is just these two different conflicts on these two boards um yeah I really enjoy
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well I mean honestly it's like them mechanically a lot of fun and it's just lovely to see something
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like it isn't just another World War II game because uh you know we've we've we've got a lot to
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that there's some of that there's a few of those so that was general orders singoku jidai and that
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is the end of this week's episode of the show up and sit down podcast we talked about tag team
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soonavalu and general orders and go who jidai and we will continue to talk about more games on a more
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podcast more podcast for the future yeah who knew thank you so much listening everyone we'll see
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you again very soon good bye