Episode 229 - Totally Mechanical!
February 20, 2025
Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Time Division and Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West. Then, we talk about our favorite board game mechanics and why we like them.
Intro: 0:00
Announcements: 0:38
Recent Games: 2:22
Favorite Mechanics: 12:52
Outro: 25:56
Bloopers: 27:09
Games discussed this episode:
Time Division: 2:22
Android: Netrunner: 14:30
Codenames: 15:07
Beasts of Balance: 18:15
Junk Art: 18:26
Tales of the Arabian Nights: 23:42
Artisans of Splendent Vale: 24:01
Legacy of Dragonholt: 24:04
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Use the code "BLITZ10" to get 10% off your entire cart.
Board Game Blitz's theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Transcript
[0:06] Crystal: Hello and welcome to episode 229 of "Board Game Blitz," a podcast about all things board games that you can listen to in less time than it takes to refill your car's blinker fluid. "Board Game Blitz" is sponsored by Grey Fox Games. This week, we're talking about our favorite game mechanics. First, we discussed a couple games we played recently, Time Division, and Ticket to Ride Legacy, Legends of the West. Then we talk about which mechanics we always get excited to see in board games. And now here are your hosts,
Ambie: Ambie.
Crystal: And Crystal.
[0:38] Crystal: One quick announcement before we hop into the main episode and that is that two weeks from now, when our next episode drops, we will be at Dice Tower West here in Las Vegas where I live.
Ambie: Yay!
Crystal: Yay! I'm only going for the weekend, even though I live here.
Ambie: Yeah, me too.
Crystal: Okay, yeah. I mean, you don't live here, but yes. My job, my days off are actually Sundays and Mondays now. And so technically the only day of the con that falls on one of my normal days off is the Sunday. And that's like the day everybody's leaving. So I did take off work Friday and Saturday so I could do the three days, but I was like taking off four days of work. Yeah, that's why. Like when you're, when you're a contract worker, that's not easy to do. So I'm gonna miss out on a little bit of stuff, but.
Ambie: Yeah, I'm actually gonna fly into Vegas on Wednesday, I think. I think we're taking Thursday and Friday off of school with the kids, but we aren't getting badges until the weekend, so.
Crystal: I mean, there's lots of stuff to do here, right?
Ambie: Yeah, we have all this other stuff we wanna do and we have kids, so once again, we're not gonna be at the con like 24 seven.
Crystal: Yes, but if anyone is attending Dice Tower West and wants to say hi, if you're not in our Discord already, that's probably the best place to try and coordinate a hello if nothing else, but possibly even like gameplay or something like that. Obviously everything is schedule dependent and whatever else is going on, but like, I know for me, since I don't have kiddos, if I'm available, I'll sit down and play a game with just about anybody, so I am happy to do that. If anybody wants to play a game, unless it's a game I completely hate and then I might say no, but there aren't a ton of those, so. But yes, come see us at Dice Tower West.
[2:22] Ambie: Recently I played Time Division, which I got as a review copy. I'm showing the cover on our YouTube, but it's a, what is it called? When you can flip it upside down, AmbiGram or something?
Crystal: No, and AmbiGram is--
Ambie: Okay, it's not actually an AmbiGram, but like the art is like two-sided kind of, because you flip it like--
Crystal: Yeah, there's face-up artwork and upside down art.
Ambie: So it's written right side up and upside down as well. So it's not an AmbiGram, but it's just like, it looks cool.
Ambie: Anyway, Time Division is a two-player card game designed by Alexander Schreiber and published by HeidelBÄR Games. It is themed around like time travel, like you're going to different eras. Toby and I played it just to like one era. There's three eras. There's an ancient Egypt, a dark ages, and an eighties era. So you can do like all three eras in a campaign or one era in the game. And so we just played the ancient Egypt era, which it says is for your like first game you play that. So the way the game works, it's a two-player competitive game. You're trying to get the most points and each round or each turn, you each play one card. The cards have numbers and then powers. They like, they say things that you can do. And the person who plays the higher card number gets to choose like which card gets activated for their power and which card gets scored. One of them that gets activated and the other one gets scored. You don't get to pick the same card for both. But so like you can choose like the other person's power gets activated, but then your card scores or vice versa. And so you're trying to score the card points and like the number of the card that was played is the points that you would score in your score area. But then powers are different. Like it'd be like, oh, if the other card is this, then you can score that. Or like you take a card from the score area and put it into your area or something like different types of powers. And before you play, there's gonna be like six rounds, six cards in your hand and you play them all. Before you play, there's like a drafting phase where you take three cards from the deck and each person gets three cards. You give one to your opponent, one to yourself and one to this other pile, which is, I forget what it's called, but it's like a face down card pile that can be used with some powers. So basically you're kind of like, each person is gonna end up ultimately picking three cards for themselves and three cards for their opponent. And then that's their final hard they use. I didn't particularly like the game.
Crystal: That's a bummer.
Ambie: Yeah. It felt like playing the high card was like super important because being able to choose what happens, like you have the power, whoever plays the higher card has the power over which card gets triggered. And so like if the other card, if they played a power that was like really good and you don't want it to trigger, you just don't trigger it and that's fine. You just let them score it and like, okay. And then you get to trigger your power or something. Like you can always pick the better one if you have the higher card. And so it just ended up being like, we played it twice in the second game. It's like, okay, let's just, when you're drafting, just take the high cards. So like, yeah, I didn't, it seemed like there could be some cool combos and I did manage to do like a cool blocking of like the high cards so that Toby couldn't score one time because I had like a power that he didn't want to activate, but then he could just activate or like he let me score, but it was like a zero or a one scoring. So it just doesn't really do me any good.
Ambie: So, but yeah, and then also like the high cards, a lot of those, the powers were pretty decent too. So like I thought maybe the high powers would be less decent. Like if it's a high card, less decent power, but then I guess it was too bad, then like you'd trigger the power and it does nothing, which did happen sometimes too.
Ambie: Yeah, so I didn't particularly like it. Oh, another thing about the game is there's a lot of symbols. Each card has a different ability on it, but the abilities are all like, there's no words on it. It's all symbols. So like each card has symbols and it all has a player aid, but it only has one player aid, which is what the symbols are. It's like, I want one more so that both people can have it. And it's like reference of all of the symbols.
Crystal: Whoever lost the last game gets the player aid.
Ambie: Yeah, so like that type of game for me, like I used to be better with card driven games with like lots of symbols. Like if you play it a lot, then you get into it and it's okay. And after, I think the second game, we were getting it a little bit more. It's like, okay, I recognize the symbol now and what it does and what it means. But for learning a game like that with all symbols, it was pretty hard and just having one more player aid would have been incredibly useful. So yeah, that was time division, two player card game that I did not enjoy.
[6:42] Crystal: All right. Well, I recently started a game that I had been wanting to play for quite some time and we have not completed it yet, but I wanted to give my first impressions. And that is Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West. We've talked about many legacy games here on the podcast. And we've also mentioned Ticket to Ride, the regular Ticket to Ride game and some of its expansions over the years. But they finally decided to mash those two things together. And in 2023, they released Ticket to Ride Legacy, designed by Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock and Alan R. Moon, published by Days of Wonder. This was obviously a pretty hot, like a buzzworthy title before it came out. A lot of people were really excited about this one. And then after it released, pretty much everything I heard about it was positive. Obviously, since it is a legacy game, people are not generally gonna be spoiling things within the box. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of a legacy game, generally it is a game that you play over a series of games, kind of in a campaign style, but different from a campaign, you are usually changing the rules or the components of the game in some way after each game you play. And that can vary from game to game. Sometimes you'll be adding components, you might be removing components, you might be getting new rules, doing things differently. It is not a spoiler to say that in Ticket to Ride Legacy, you start with a very small board and it is a puzzle like board that you piece together. As soon as you open the box, you see that there will be other pieces of the board that will eventually come out and you get to start unlocking those at a certain point and adding them on. And so the first few games, we've played four out of the 12 games in the campaign so far. And the first four have all gone relatively quickly because the board hasn't been expanded too much yet. If you're familiar with base game Ticket to Ride, you already know how to play basically right out of the box with a few exceptions. And they do a really good job, I think, of introducing things slowly. So I think if this were to be someone's first legacy game, it would definitely be approachable in that way. There was one physical item in the box that we got to open up, I think right after the first game. And I was so excited to see it and it's a very fun item. It's in normal life. I don't know how fun it is. I guess you could call it office equipment to some degree, but in the context of this game, it's very fun. And I like using it. And so I'm loving Ambie's face right now because I'm not saying what the thing is. Anyone who's played will know what item I'm talking about. And it's such a simple thing technically, but it adds a little bit of train feeling. Like it's neat. It's a neat thing to have in the box and it's a fun thing to use. And yeah, we have so much content that we have not unlocked yet in this game. There's a section of the map that I will not name that we haven't unlocked yet, but we know the name. Well, I guess it's not a spoiler because when you first open the box, you can see the names of all the regions that you can unlock. And one of them is called Haunted Wastes. And I don't know what that is or what it means or what's gonna happen when we unlock it, but we haven't yet. Although I think we might pretty soon. So again, I'm being pretty vague generally about anything else involving the game. Cause I do not want to spoil it for anyone who wants to play it. But I would say after four games, we are enjoying it. We like the rule changes and the additions to base game ticket ride that the legacy game is adding. And I expect that we will continue to enjoy it going forward, but I will give a full update after we have finished the campaign.
Crystal: So yeah, I mean, it has an 8.7 rating on BGG. That's nonsense. I mean, I'm not saying that the rating isn't a deserved rating. I'm saying you don't see games with an 8.7 almost ever. Obviously the type of people who are rating games on BGG are the type of people who would like this game, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's still like, that's impressive cause gamers also love to hate unpopular games. And yeah, this one's got an 8.7. So I expect we'll see some fun stuff as we continue. But yeah, that's ticket ride.
Ambie: Are you playing two player?
Crystal: Yes, we are playing at two player. I don't know how different it would be multiplayer. So far playing at two players has not seemed to hinder the experience in any noticeable ways. I guess that could change later on, but I like playing Ticket to Ride two player cause even when you can't, you can only build one route on the double routes. It still feels less stressful than like a full player count game of Ticket to Ride where you have to wait four turns and you're just like, please, nobody take that route. Nobody take that route. Nobody take that route. I mean, that still happens in a two player game too, but you basically, if that happens, you kind of knew it was coming or saw it coming or should have prevented it in the first place. So yeah, I'm liking it. It's fun to dig into Ticket to Ride a little more deeply again. I do wonder if I'll run into the same problem with this though that I did with Pandemic. Because when I played Pandemic legacy season one and then season two, I still to this day have not played a game of vanilla Pandemic since then, not once. And that's now years ago. I like the game Pandemic, but after having played Pandemic legacy, I never want to play vanilla Pandemic again. It's just not as good. It's fine.
Ambie: Well, there's like all the other Pandemics you could play.
Crystal: Yeah, that's true. And some of those I actually haven't tried. Like I didn't try the Cthulhu one or I don't know, one of the ones based in Europe. I think there was one that I didn't try. So maybe, yeah, maybe I could look into those, but I don't want to ruin Ticket to Ride for myself. So hopefully that will not be the case, but I think it'll be fine.
Ambie: Yeah, I actually haven't played Ticket to Ride that much, but I do want to get this one, the legacy one for when my kids are older, maybe to play with my kids if one of them still likes trains.
Crystal: Yeah, that's the train game that they can play too. That would be awesome.
[12:52] Crystal: If there is one thing that makes a board game, a board game aside from, well, a board, but that technically isn't even a rule anymore. Like we've got lots of board games but we saved our board games and they don't have boards in them. But I would say most board games involve some kind of game mechanics in some fashion. So we're gonna talk about some of our favorite mechanics, the things that when we see them, like when we hear a game described and it's like, oh, it has this and this and this in it, we're like, ooh, like that was the ones that make us excited and want to know more about a game.
Ambie: You might already know this about us if you've listened to the podcast before.
Crystal: Yeah, this is gonna be not surprising to most people, at least for you especially, cause you really have a wheelhouse and it's a good wheelhouse. So I don't blame you for sticking in it, honestly.
Ambie: Yeah, so I've got like four mechanics that are like my tops that I will instantly put a game on my want to play list at this point. And that's real time, cooperative, deduction, and communication limits. Those four and combinations of those four are like my favorite things ever.
Crystal: Yeah, if you build a game that has all four of those in it, Ambie will literally show up at your house and like poof, like into your living room and be like, oh, a game for me.
Ambie: But yeah, so like, I love real time games, cooperative games, real time cooperative specifically. I think I don't like real time as much when it's not cooperative. And then deduction games, I like all deduction games and then communication limits are good. Usually those are cooperative too. Although I guess I also like it when it's competitive cause that's like mind games. That's what I call mind games. I think communication in a competitive game is like in a Android netrunner, you're hiding stuff and then playing mind games. I think that's the same mechanism on BGG. So like BGG has a list of all the mechanics.
Crystal: I'm too expressive of a person. When I play games with communication limits, like anyone who knows me knows that I am a person who tries to follow the rules generally. Like I'm not gonna cheat intentionally in a game, but if you put me in a game that has communication limits, my face is going to betray me. At some point, yeah, just, and my partner is staring at me from across my desk right now, giving me like the most knowing look ever.
Ambie: When I play Codenames, people always comment how like, I'm like, they can't tell anything when I'm the clue maker on Codenames.
Crystal: Oh, I just don't look at anybody. If I'm the spymaster in Codenames, I just kind of like look down and just like don't make eye contact with anybody after I've given a clue. And then in my head, always one person will immediately say the thing I meant to point to. They'll be like, oh, it's that. And then everyone else will spend 10 minutes debating a different word that they'll then end up picking instead of my word. And the whole time in my head, I'm just going, dang it, dang it, dang it, dang it, dang it. Go back to what so-and-so said. They've had it right right at the beginning. It's fun and also frustrating, but yeah. I'm not always good with communication limits.
Crystal: I want to know how much, why you like cooperative games so much. Like, because obviously it's kind of in comparison to competitive games. But what is it about cooperative games?
Ambie: Well I like competitive games too.
Crystal: Yeah, you're like, oh, I like all games.
Ambie: Yeah, but it's just like, I think I like cooperative because it's a different, it's less stressful. And then here I go liking real time games, but.
Crystal: Yeah, which are like extra stressful.
Ambie: Yeah, so it takes the stress off of competing against other people and instead like competing against the game, I guess. So I like working together with people, I guess, to it all stressed together.
Crystal: Yeah, so it's like the group stress is better than the singular stress.
Ambie: Yeah, so yeah, I do like competitive games too, but yeah, the singular stress is different feeling. And I'm not always in the mood for that. I think in recent years, I've been more into cooperative games and less into competitive games too. And so also I have some friends who are like also more into cooperative games because they get too competitive and competitive games, so they don't like themselves when they're too competitive, right? Sometimes I'm sure too.
Crystal: I'm sure there are people in our audience who experience similar things.
Ambie: But yeah, I do like working with people. And then like my favorite things are escape rooms. And those are real time cooperative deduction, maybe sometimes even communication limits. Yeah, sometimes. In really cool escape rooms, yeah. So it's those things, so yeah. It's just my favorites. Like I like others too.
Crystal: Yeah, I think I've been in at least one escape room where we like had to start with people in two different rooms. Yeah, I've done too.
Ambie: Yeah, so like, yeah, they definitely.
Crystal: I also had started in one where we started handcuffed, which wasn't really a communication limit. It was not just like a movement limit. So the first thing we had to do was find the key to all of our handcuffs. That was fun.
Ambie: I don't know if movement limit is a board game mechanism.
Crystal: I don't think it is either. What if that's on BGG? I mean, with some of the dexterity games, where you have to like, I don't know, like there's certain ways you have to like.
Ambie: Do you have a favorite dexterity mechanism?
Crystal: I, for dexterity stuff, that is tough. I would say in general, I like stacking in dexterity games. It's kind of more generic, but it has been done in a bunch of different ways for different things. You know, you've got classics like Jenga or things like Beasts of Balance, where you literally have an app as part of the game. And when you put these little electronic plastic animals on top of each other, it changes things in the app. Or you've got things like Junk Art, where you're not just doing the same thing every time, but you are almost always stacking pieces to some degree. So I think it's a versatile dexterity mechanic, but I will admit, I really love seeing different unique stuff in dexterity games, but the, you know, the stacking works in so many different situations. It's hard to beat, I would say, for like most dexterity games, but there have been a bunch of others that I've really enjoyed as well. Like anything involving like throwing or flicking dice or things like that.
Ambie: Yeah, I like flicking. It's like the action of it is fun.
Crystal: Yeah, it's satisfying, right? It feels nice.
Crystal: So that's, I guess, for me for dexterity games, but if we're talking non-dexterity games, you guys have heard me wax poetic a lot about worker placement games and tile laying games. I'd say those are two of my favorite mechanisms and they tend to be, like, those are really broad. And so I'm obviously like, I don't like every worker placement game and I don't like every tile laying game, but there is something satisfying for me in tile laying games about taking one singular thing and building out from that and finding what you end up building as a result of whatever, right? Like whether it's squares or hexes or anything else, having to start from nothing and build it into something that is worthy of points or whatever else. It's a satisfying feeling for me. And then worker placement, I like the visualization of actions, I think. Cause in some games where you have lots of different action choices that you just have, like here are the things you can do, but in a worker placement game, it's a more visual thing and it's a more tactile thing to choose your actions. And it also then potentially helps with the whole indecision or choice making in that, like if somebody else has already gone to that spot, you can't go there potentially. And so now your options are more limited and what you do as a result of having limited options, the strategy that you have to build around changing what you're going to do based on what other players did to me is also really interesting because it's not luck based, but it also is somewhat unpredictable. And so I like having to kind of think on the fly to some degree. I don't, if I had played games where I could plan out my entire turn in advance every time, I don't feel like that would be as interesting for me. Obviously some games like that are fine.
Ambie: Well, cause then it wouldn't matter at all like on what other people do. Yeah.
Crystal: And that gets, like there are games like that, right? Where what everybody else is doing has no bearing on you whatsoever at all. And it can be easy to potentially tune out during other players' turns, which can lead to either you not knowing what's going on or potentially you being distracted and making the game take longer. There's a lot of downsides potentially to that. And I like being engaged in the game as much as possible, you know, when I can. So.
Ambie: I also like worker placement when action drafting is like, I like both of those. Those are up there for me. They're just not my immediate want to play list, but yeah, like a lot of my games that I like are worker placement, a lot of the heavier games, like the Vital Lacerda games that I like, my favorites of his are worker placement ones. You might only have one worker, but it's still worker placement cause you're like tuning the actions. And I like having to plan ahead and doing different things. And then also like trying to block other people or like seeing what they want to do and like, okay, wait, they're going to try to take this. So I have to do this and this and stuff like that. So yeah, I like, I like worker placement.
Crystal: Yep. Some other mechanics that I really like, but don't see, I would say as often in games, the I cut you choose mechanism. There have been a few more games that have come out with that mechanism in recent years, not all of which I have gotten a chance to try, but I love, I don't know what it is about it. I think it's like my core, my inner being wants things to be fair. And I feel like I cut you choose forces people to be fair about things. And so I think that's-
Ambie: That's like the game of that fair,
Crystal: Yeah, like you have to basically, you have to make things either better for the other person or as equitable as possible, because otherwise they're always going to take the better thing and you get screwed. So you have to be nice. And I like when people are forced to be nice because I don't like jerks. So I think that's why I like, I cut you choose games.
Crystal: Another one, which I'm kind of grouping three into one here, but I love trick taking, ladder climbing and card shedding games, which all to me fall into the same kind of category. And I've played a lot of them over the past few years as they've been kind of really popular. And a lot of publishers have picked up some interesting ones. Yeah, I'm hard pressed to name a single one that I've played and disliked truly. Like there are some that I'm like, oh, that was fine. But I don't tend to dislike games in this genre. I think for the most part, they almost all hit for me. So one other really big one for me is narrative choice, which you also don't find very often in games because it usually involves a whole lot of work and writing from whoever's publishing the game upfront. And we've had some really, really good examples of games with narrative content over the years. Tales of the Arabian Nights is a older, but really good example of this.
Ambie: Yeah, I like that one too.
Crystal: Yeah, like that's one that a lot of people really like. And I know it just got or is getting-
Ambie: I guess I do like that mechanism. Like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective that. I was just looking up like, oh, what? Yeah.
Crystal: Yeah, Artisans of Splendent Vale definitely had some of that. Legacy of Dragonholt absolutely had that. And I like feeling kind of like, the thing to me about board game stories that make them special compared to other forms of media like TV and movies is it's nice to have some control over the narrative. It's nice to feel like you have power. I guess technically Netflix has done a couple of their things.
Ambie: Choose your own adventure movie things, yeah.
Crystal: Yeah, where you could like control- I get
Ambie: the books also, choose your own adventure books.
Crystal: True. Books to me feel like a different type of experience because they're a very solo activity. Whereas board games generally are a group activity and movies and TV shows can be as well. But yeah, I like having that power and I like not knowing where something is going. I like that feeling of not like, okay, it's not definitely gonna be Prince Defeats the Dragon and the Prince wins the princesses hand in marriage kind of a thing. Like I like that, oh my, we don't know what's gonna happen. And in some of, in at least one of those games that I mentioned, for instance, like a character died as a result of some choices I made. I'm being vague now because of spoilers. And so I won't even say which one it was, but like it was a moment that really, really struck me. And like I did, I was like, oh my gosh, if I had done something differently, could I have saved them? And I think the answer is yes, but I don't know how. And I think it really just adds some emotional weight to board games and I really enjoy that.
Crystal: So we would love to hear from you all what your favorite board game mechanics are. So hit us up on social media. We are on all of the platforms, Blue Sky, Facebook, the platform formerly noticed Twitter, although I will admit I'm not really on there anymore. We're on TikTok, follow us on TikTok and we post some cute videos from our podcasts on there. We're at Board Game Blitz pretty much everywhere. So just look for us there and let us know what your favorite mechanics are or hit us up in our Discord.
[25:56] Ambie: And that's it for this week's Board Game Blitz. Visit our website, boardgameblitz.com for more content and links. This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. February 25th is fast approaching and we hope you're just as excited as we are because that's the day Champions of Midgard's 10th anniversary collector's edition is coming to Kickstarter. And as always, Blitzketeers get a special offer when shopping at greyfoxgames.com. Use the code blitz10 at checkout to get 10% off your entire cart, including exclusives. Join the Blitzketeer community on Discord for game nights, discussions, and more by following the link in the show notes. Support the show by leaving us a rating and review on your podcast provider. And if you like us a lot and want to support us monetarily and get some cool perks, check out our Ko-fi at ko-fi.com slash boardgame blitz today. Our theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow. Until next time,
It's too late (It's too late)
Roll the dice (Oh roll the dice)
I'll admit game night's just passed us by
Ambie: Bye everyone
Crystal: Bye
[27:09]Crystal: The dog is like whining because I said goodbye to you and so he thinks I'm getting up.
When I say bye to people on Zoom, they think I'm getting up away from my computer now. And I'm like, no, not always.
Crystal: This week we're talking about our favorite game mechanics. Oh, I said put mechanisms there. Hold on. This week we're talking about our favorite game mechanisms. Is it mechanics? Wait, it's mechanics, right?
Ambie: They're interchangeable, I think.
Crystal: Are they? I don't know. I want to keep it consistent. And I can't read apparently, or I have to read apparently.
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