Roux Dat: First Giants, VNTYPL8TS, & Last Lantern
So, it’s been a while since we streamed some games, I think back to when The Jay Bell visited the Gumbo Pot. With Jerod off to Arkansas, and Mitchell pretty busy, it’s been tough to get a regular game night on Twitch. But, summer’s here and Mitchell and Connor are freed up to play some games! I’ll talk about the smaller games we played first, and then write up our experience playing a really combo-y euro next time.
We had a busy last night with our first summer stream. We started with VNTYPL8TS, a brand new party game from designer Clarence Simpson (The Wolves, Chomp, Squirrel Away), who we interviewed a few years back when his design, Merchants of Magick, was published. Clarence’s designs are multi-faceted jewels for sure, everything from quick little party games to one of my favorite all time area majority games, The Wolves.
To be frank, none of us were expecting much from VNTYPL8TS — until we started playing. We should’ve known. 25th Century Games starts with an excellent production, with solid game boards and a billion different owner cards, each with funny little sayings (I believe) written by Nathan Thornton (who also did Green Team Wins).
The premise? Simple. Craft vanity plates that would be perfect for their car owners, with each car owner have a unique trait like “cowboy” or “airline pilot” or “hacker”, but you can’t use vowels or symbols and to score points, you have to use the three consonants that your round’s requirement card dictates.
The first round was rough, because it’s not easy thinking in terms of letter like that. But after that, we adored the challenge of creating the most recognizable (or funniest) license plate. This is one of those games where the score doesn’t really matter, it’s the story that develops during the game that counts. I’d love to try this late at night at a convention with a big group of creative people and see how much wacky fun we can have.
Next up, we played Last Lantern from Wonderful World Board Games, at both two and three players. We lost three times in a row on the base game! Our strategy of trying to game the meeple system — ensuring before we saw the tiles that we had the perfect meeples to maximize our bonus plays — clearly wasn’t working. I think it’s more important to minimize the spaces, control the pace of the play, and fill every square with tiles. As Mitchell said, this is a tile laying game, and you have to efficiently lay the tiles — that’s part of the game.
Once we did that, in our fourth try, we breezed through the win. It’s time to move on to the challenges! The game comes with six ‘hidden’ (not really) challenges in a sealed envelope that modifies the game. I think our team is ready to try those out.
Finally, I broke out my copy of First Giants from Space Cowboys for the first time as a three player play. All of my plays in person so far have been two players, with games lasting only about twenty minutes. Would the addition of the third player change the flow? Honestly, it did. The game plays three to five players, and I think it’s going to be no problem playing with more players. The competition for the tiles gets a little bit stiffer, and there is definitely more interaction in terms of the bonuses you get for the multi-player cards.
First Giants has turned out to be adjacent to Elysium, but really stands alone as its own game. Sure, it is not quite as “take that” as Elysium, and I’m thankful I still have the Greek gods version of this system when I want a longer, more in your face style game. But what I liked the most about Elysium was the mechanic that forces you to decide how to build up an engine, and when to tear it up and rebuild it again. Those are crucial decisions — knowing exactly when to ‘museum’ one of your best engine building cards is a tough choice to make. Final verdict? First Giants is a keeper. The only thing left? Find out if those promo newspaper tiles make any difference in the gameplay.
We are off to an auspicious start. We played four different games that night, with one of them multiple rounds. Mitchell probably has over 50+ plays of games this week alone. It will be a glorious summer!
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** Complimentary copy of Last Lantern and VNTYPL8TS were provided by the publishers. **