Board game review video, it starts with full disclosure, being honest about the review, whether its a paid preview or not and informing the viewer about possible bias. A reason why I find myself more into boardgames now than video games. Video game media has a lot to learn from you Tom Vasel.
BUYER BEWARE: The snaps for the bags are VERY tight, and have been reported to rip out on people's first playthroughs. ALWAYS, if possible, open the bags by the buttons, NEVER by pulling on the flaps. You may have to get alternate bags, or get a tailor to put velcro on these. Also, the backing for one of my coins fell out, had to glue it back on. I shudder to think that this will happen to the other cardboard pieces over time, but this only happened on my second playthrough. Good game, but know this if you are planning on buying it!
acabado Hearing the snap close is part of the game, though, since it signals when it's too late to continue negotiations with the Sheriff, for example. But if it works, it works.
My game group picked this up at GenCon. It is a great time. Nothing beats getting contraband through the whole game, and then you burn the last sheriff with a bag full of 5 apples. Satisfying. Highly recommended.
Played this for the first time last night and loved it! There is something so satisfying about either: having the sheriff open your bag when you have told the truth and when the sheriff returns your bag (without opening) with a bag full of contraband. :)
Awesome game, great for drinking, too! Great for new players to board games. Great to bring out with your dad friends. I have a monthly dad meetup and we played this, and then two dads bought it when they got home.
I was sold on this game after watching a version of it played in the Dice Tower 24 hour gaming videos. Very funny..... But the big question is, will there be a european release?
Tom, you shared that you were, at least, part of the driving force, behind getting this printed. I have been speaking with others, on separate threads on Facebook about a game we all want re-released. There are many many of us who want this accomplished. It is HeroQuest. I understand this was published by Milton Bradley, so I don't know if this would be an issue. Is there anything, we, as the gaming public, can do? Thanks for any advice or help you can give. Nina
If you make a deal with the Sheriff are you bond to that deal? Like if I say "Tom if you don't check my bag, I will not check your bag when I am Sheriff." Am do I have to honor this or can I lie in the negotiations?
Within the same round is binding - if I say "Sheriff, I'll give you 10 coins to open player X's bag now", then if the Sheriff accepts the bribe, they HAVE to check the other player's bag. However, the deal you proposed (do X for future benefit) is not binding, as far as I know. You can lie, but then no one will believe you in the future.
Hey Tom and Arcane, how about reprinting Manilla for the next Dice Tower Essentials? Good game family friendly/ gamer approved highly rated on BGG and out of print!
What I don't understand about this game is that if players only start with a total of 50 gold (1x20 5x5 1x1) why are there so many extra coins (even after 5 players have been given their starting amount) and especially the single 50 gold coins. As far as I can see, these coins worth 50 gold each will never get used. Am I missing something?
Coins are used to bribe the sheriff or pay penalties if you get caught with contraband. Or, if you are the sheriff, to pay the other players if you open the bag and you found only legal goods.
Mike B my guess is easy for players to get change frm bank in order to bribe sheriff lets say this player wants to give Sheriff 8 coins so he wont check his bag, but he only got a 20 coin value of single coin, so he change for smaller change frm bank and give 8 to sheriff
Is there any indicator on the cards for legal/illegal status besides the color? The red and green seems like a bad choice for people that are red/green colorblind, but I suppose that there aren't a whole lot of item types so it probably wouldn't be that hard to just remember which is which It looks like maybe down in the bottom left corner of illegal items there is something like a sheriff badge to show that it is illegal. Can anybody confirm this?
I'm sure the goods are still distinguishable based on their picture and text; there's also that chart that can be leveraged to tell you which goods are legal/illegal. It seems like there's only a handful of legal ones, and the rest are illegal.
James Pedid yeah, there is no distinguishing marks for legal/illegal goods, and while I think it would have been a good addition, it isn't actually that big of a deal. I own the game now and there are only 4 types of legal goods. Everything else (even the promos) are contraband. Still, a different texture or icon of some sort for color blind players would be cool.
yum X That's true, though there is still no indicator on non-Royal Goods contraband beyond the color. It isn't hard to determine if something is contraband by the name alone. As you said, legal good are listed on player boards, but I still think it would be good to have some sort of icon or different pattern on the contraband. It is something that ends up being really trivial, but it still would have been a nice touch to give red/green colorblind people all the information right on the cards instead of relying on the players' memory or having them refer to a separate sheet. But like I said, its mostly trivial as you will easily learn what is legal and what isn't after playing the game for 10 minutes.
I don't understand how the number 3 and 2 was come up with at @8:30 when it clearly says 6 and 4 gold. If it's half value then how come 10 seconds later 2 cheese was spoken when it clearly said 6 gold
That's unrelated, I think. The number in the top right hand card is the gold value, the number in the bottom right is the penalty value. The "counts as two cheese" rule, I think, is the text under the card's name.
Hello Tom, is it a legal move in this game to bribe the sheriff to open another players bag? This caused a heated debate at last nights game night ;) Thanks!!!
BAG_217 Hey there, I am not Tom and this is two months late but here goes. You're absolutely allowed to do things like that, the negotiation is open between all players during that phase. You can make bargains involving other players or simply waste the sheriff's time by sidetracking if that's your plan. Any agreements made that can be satisfied the same round must be honoured (agreeing to search other people's bags, making payments from the bag or market stand etc.) Any parts of a deal that involve future rounds (like "I'll let you through when I'm sheriff next") are not binding: you can live up to your promise or choose not to when the time comes.
lordcactuar Trade of luxury goods often were restricted in different ways to funnel them through power-backed monopolies. A tale could be spun that they could corrupt the less fortunate to hedony. Green apples?! Think of the children! Silk and pepper specifically would have been imported too, so what Derrick Marais said especially applies.
maybe they're reserved for royalty only, so it's illegal to sell them to others outside the kingdom or take them when they're supposed to go to the king and his family?
Just a thought, even I know I'm just splitting hair here. Why would a sheriff of a medieval town would pay out lots of money to people who don't smuggle illegal goods in? Just because he accused them? He wouldn't care at all and would rather take some sort of payment from them anyway, just because he could. Justice wasn't strong in those days...
Again, same with the Dan's review. You both don't mention what you get for the illegal goods in the end of the game.. Isn't that one of the main points of the game? I mean, you say that you reveal them at the end. What then? Count the coins values, or again the majority of some good?
love this game,but i have one little complaint (that can not be handled with house-rules): why don't the merchants have one male and one female side? please have that in mind for next time =)
I really don't think I understand this game. You get more points from being the King of the legal goods, so why would you even want to try to sneak illegal goods through? And when you do try to sneak illegal goods, why would you bribe? It could be that you're bribing them to make them suspicious to get you to look, but any small bribe would give that away, while larger bribes would more likely not be worth it. So any bribe you give just feels like a crap-shoot.
Nick Clinite You see this is a psychology game.you can give bribes to make them think you have illegal goods when you don't to get them to pay the fee. Also the contraband have a 4 penalty fee and a 8 payoff. so if u bribe 5 both the sheriff and the player gets money. The point of illegal goods is to get extra money because they can go with the legal goods.
Derpy Panda I know it's supposed to be psychology, but it's a form of psychology where I feel I have nothing solid to base my scheming on. I've played the game twice, and the act of bribing feels like a total crap-shoot--it could either make them look, or not look, or not look but they weren't going to look anyway so you're out of a bribe, with no way of knowing ahead of time, so you might as well never bribe and then they can never get a read on you since you're too consistent.
Teeto That's kinda the problem though: essentially I'm saying the move that feels most reliable is to just not participate in the game. And that's never a good thing for a game to feel like to its players.
This game is all about the experience...if you are heavily concerned about winning this may not be the game for you since you can do boring things(always tell the truth, never bribe, etc) and still have a chance at winning. But this game becomes fun when everyone gets involved in the experience of it all instead of worrying about making sure that winning is the only thing that matters. To me, most party type games or interactive games like this is about the experience....if I want to play a game competitively and to win win win, then I'm not playing a party type game like this.
The game is NOT great. Arcane wonders made a big no-no with the promo cards. Basically they remove essential contraband cards from the base game in order to offer them as promo cards. Now the base game suffers badly of balance issues. People that say the truth almost always win (depending of card draw).
+Munteanu Catalin That is not entirely true. People that say the truth can win, yes, but people who know how to lie creatively can wind up pulling tremendous upsets. For example, in round 1 of the game, I was completely honest, but I used that to manipulate people later on as I rammed all of my contraband in the bag and convinced them that it was full of nothing but cheese. Said contraband gave me a whopping 27 gold in one play.
+DarthMessias I think that games like these do a lot better if you inject a lot of personality into it. Going on its own merit, Sheriff will quickly become boring, but inject some sass and cheeziness in there, and you've got yourself a great game.
Board game review video, it starts with full disclosure, being honest about the review, whether its a paid preview or not and informing the viewer about possible bias. A reason why I find myself more into boardgames now than video games.
Video game media has a lot to learn from you Tom Vasel.
Thanks for the review. That font sure says "Shrek" loud and clear.
BUYER BEWARE: The snaps for the bags are VERY tight, and have been reported to rip out on people's first playthroughs. ALWAYS, if possible, open the bags by the buttons, NEVER by pulling on the flaps. You may have to get alternate bags, or get a tailor to put velcro on these.
Also, the backing for one of my coins fell out, had to glue it back on. I shudder to think that this will happen to the other cardboard pieces over time, but this only happened on my second playthrough.
Good game, but know this if you are planning on buying it!
thanks for the tip!
I ask my friends to just put the cards inside and close it by putting the flap inside of the bag itself.
acabado Hearing the snap close is part of the game, though, since it signals when it's too late to continue negotiations with the Sheriff, for example. But if it works, it works.
yes. the snaps are horrible.
I can imagine my aunt playing this: "Sheriff, think of how many orphans this crossbow will save!"
Lmao
My game group picked this up at GenCon. It is a great time. Nothing beats getting contraband through the whole game, and then you burn the last sheriff with a bag full of 5 apples. Satisfying. Highly recommended.
Bought it for Christmas. It's perfect for my family, something everyone will love!
Played this for the first time last night and loved it! There is something so satisfying about either: having the sheriff open your bag when you have told the truth and when the sheriff returns your bag (without opening) with a bag full of contraband. :)
Awesome game, great for drinking, too! Great for new players to board games. Great to bring out with your dad friends. I have a monthly dad meetup and we played this, and then two dads bought it when they got home.
played this at Gencon and was instantly hooked. bought it immediately and my game group absolutely loves this!
Picked this up at GenCon and I can confirm that this game is a blast. So much fun! Thanks Tom!
Tom, I believe in Dice Tower Essentials. Just bought the game Can't wait giving it a try. Thanks for your great work!
I thought this man did not have the top of his head. Never have I seen this before.
I love the game type: "lie directly to someone's face" haha
Your previews are awesome! Keep it up.
I was sold on this game after watching a version of it played in the Dice Tower 24 hour gaming videos. Very funny.....
But the big question is, will there be a european release?
I was also sold on to on the 24 hour show.
Chad McKnight Same. After seeing the artwork I immediately pre ordered.
Looks like he was smart to include the game in that show since I also preordered because of that! :)
Tom, you shared that you were, at least, part of the driving force, behind getting this printed.
I have been speaking with others, on separate threads on Facebook about a game we all want re-released. There are many many of us who want this accomplished.
It is HeroQuest. I understand this was published by Milton Bradley, so I don't know if this would be an issue.
Is there anything, we, as the gaming public, can do?
Thanks for any advice or help you can give.
Nina
If you make a deal with the Sheriff are you bond to that deal? Like if I say "Tom if you don't check my bag, I will not check your bag when I am Sheriff." Am do I have to honor this or can I lie in the negotiations?
Within the same round is binding - if I say "Sheriff, I'll give you 10 coins to open player X's bag now", then if the Sheriff accepts the bribe, they HAVE to check the other player's bag.
However, the deal you proposed (do X for future benefit) is not binding, as far as I know. You can lie, but then no one will believe you in the future.
Hey Tom and Arcane, how about reprinting Manilla for the next Dice Tower Essentials? Good game family friendly/ gamer approved highly rated on BGG and out of print!
Manila is being reprinted this year by Zoch Verlag.
What I don't understand about this game is that if players only start with a total of 50 gold (1x20 5x5 1x1) why are there so many extra coins (even after 5 players have been given their starting amount) and especially the single 50 gold coins. As far as I can see, these coins worth 50 gold each will never get used. Am I missing something?
Coins are used to bribe the sheriff or pay penalties if you get caught with contraband. Or, if you are the sheriff, to pay the other players if you open the bag and you found only legal goods.
Mike B my guess is easy for players to get change frm bank in order to bribe sheriff
lets say this player wants to give Sheriff 8 coins so he wont check his bag, but he only got a 20 coin value of single coin, so he change for smaller change frm bank and give 8 to sheriff
They can be used at the end of the game to count up victory points.
Hey Tom how many board games do you own...Please do a game room tour
Do you know when it'll be released in the UK? Would be great to play round the Xmas table
Excellent Review! Looks like a Fun Game!!
Can somebody please tell me what the name of the game (bottom shelf, second from right) is? The one with the lady with a hat on?
I think it may be Nothing Personal.
Thanks so much, Jighm Brown!
Is there any indicator on the cards for legal/illegal status besides the color? The red and green seems like a bad choice for people that are red/green colorblind, but I suppose that there aren't a whole lot of item types so it probably wouldn't be that hard to just remember which is which
It looks like maybe down in the bottom left corner of illegal items there is something like a sheriff badge to show that it is illegal. Can anybody confirm this?
I'm sure the goods are still distinguishable based on their picture and text; there's also that chart that can be leveraged to tell you which goods are legal/illegal. It seems like there's only a handful of legal ones, and the rest are illegal.
James Pedid yeah, there is no distinguishing marks for legal/illegal goods, and while I think it would have been a good addition, it isn't actually that big of a deal. I own the game now and there are only 4 types of legal goods. Everything else (even the promos) are contraband. Still, a different texture or icon of some sort for color blind players would be cool.
yum X
That's true, though there is still no indicator on non-Royal Goods contraband beyond the color. It isn't hard to determine if something is contraband by the name alone. As you said, legal good are listed on player boards, but I still think it would be good to have some sort of icon or different pattern on the contraband. It is something that ends up being really trivial, but it still would have been a nice touch to give red/green colorblind people all the information right on the cards instead of relying on the players' memory or having them refer to a separate sheet. But like I said, its mostly trivial as you will easily learn what is legal and what isn't after playing the game for 10 minutes.
Hey Tom, is there any chance getting this in german in, let's say, 2015?
I don't understand how the number 3 and 2 was come up with at @8:30 when it clearly says 6 and 4 gold. If it's half value then how come 10 seconds later 2 cheese was spoken when it clearly said 6 gold
That's unrelated, I think. The number in the top right hand card is the gold value, the number in the bottom right is the penalty value. The "counts as two cheese" rule, I think, is the text under the card's name.
Hello Tom, is it a legal move in this game to bribe the sheriff to open another players bag? This caused a heated debate at last nights game night ;) Thanks!!!
BAG_217 Hey there, I am not Tom and this is two months late but here goes. You're absolutely allowed to do things like that, the negotiation is open between all players during that phase. You can make bargains involving other players or simply waste the sheriff's time by sidetracking if that's your plan. Any agreements made that can be satisfied the same round must be honoured (agreeing to search other people's bags, making payments from the bag or market stand etc.) Any parts of a deal that involve future rounds (like "I'll let you through when I'm sheriff next") are not binding: you can live up to your promise or choose not to when the time comes.
Thank you for the reply!!! It's nice to have a definite answer
haha that makes it sound more fun.. and I want to play it now haha
love this game!
Euro Game? Could you finally be reprinting El Grande?
Great game for people who already don't trust each other.
One question, why are silk and pepper illegal goods?
They were probably not illegal, just heavily taxed.
Good answer!
lordcactuar Trade of luxury goods often were restricted in different ways to funnel them through power-backed monopolies. A tale could be spun that they could corrupt the less fortunate to hedony. Green apples?! Think of the children!
Silk and pepper specifically would have been imported too, so what Derrick Marais said especially applies.
maybe they're reserved for royalty only, so it's illegal to sell them to others outside the kingdom or take them when they're supposed to go to the king and his family?
I was kind of hoping this would be one of the negative rant reviews this week, hehe :D
Just a thought, even I know I'm just splitting hair here. Why would a sheriff of a medieval town would pay out lots of money to people who don't smuggle illegal goods in? Just because he accused them? He wouldn't care at all and would rather take some sort of payment from them anyway, just because he could. Justice wasn't strong in those days...
Awesome Game!!!!
Again, same with the Dan's review. You both don't mention what you get for the illegal goods in the end of the game.. Isn't that one of the main points of the game? I mean, you say that you reveal them at the end. What then? Count the coins values, or again the majority of some good?
love this game,but i have one little complaint (that can not be handled with house-rules): why don't the merchants have one male and one female side? please have that in mind for next time =)
Because there were no female merchants in the middle ages?
Just go away with your SJW bull****, please and let us enjoy the game.
Daniel Dukai nothing SJW about their comment. Unless you think diversity is wrong?
Curratum of course there were lol. There were also women in charge of entire towns and villages. What are you smoking?
I really don't think I understand this game. You get more points from being the King of the legal goods, so why would you even want to try to sneak illegal goods through? And when you do try to sneak illegal goods, why would you bribe? It could be that you're bribing them to make them suspicious to get you to look, but any small bribe would give that away, while larger bribes would more likely not be worth it. So any bribe you give just feels like a crap-shoot.
Nick Clinite You see this is a psychology game.you can give bribes to make them think you have illegal goods when you don't to get them to pay the fee. Also the contraband have a 4 penalty fee and a 8 payoff. so if u bribe 5 both the sheriff and the player gets money. The point of illegal goods is to get extra money because they can go with the legal goods.
Derpy Panda I know it's supposed to be psychology, but it's a form of psychology where I feel I have nothing solid to base my scheming on. I've played the game twice, and the act of bribing feels like a total crap-shoot--it could either make them look, or not look, or not look but they weren't going to look anyway so you're out of a bribe, with no way of knowing ahead of time, so you might as well never bribe and then they can never get a read on you since you're too consistent.
Nick Clinite Well you could do that and win
Teeto That's kinda the problem though: essentially I'm saying the move that feels most reliable is to just not participate in the game. And that's never a good thing for a game to feel like to its players.
This game is all about the experience...if you are heavily concerned about winning this may not be the game for you since you can do boring things(always tell the truth, never bribe, etc) and still have a chance at winning. But this game becomes fun when everyone gets involved in the experience of it all instead of worrying about making sure that winning is the only thing that matters. To me, most party type games or interactive games like this is about the experience....if I want to play a game competitively and to win win win, then I'm not playing a party type game like this.
Gouda = Gow-dah
The game is NOT great. Arcane wonders made a big no-no with the promo cards. Basically they remove essential contraband cards from the base game in order to offer them as promo cards. Now the base game suffers badly of balance issues. People that say the truth almost always win (depending of card draw).
The promo cards were designed AFTER the game, so nothing was taken out of the original game.
Oh well. Then we can call it a huge design error. This game is flawed, therefore a NO-BUY at least for me.
Munteanu Catalin My apologies if you think so. I don't find the game flawed at all.
+Munteanu Catalin That is not entirely true. People that say the truth can win, yes, but people who know how to lie creatively can wind up pulling tremendous upsets. For example, in round 1 of the game, I was completely honest, but I used that to manipulate people later on as I rammed all of my contraband in the bag and convinced them that it was full of nothing but cheese. Said contraband gave me a whopping 27 gold in one play.
There are many other bluffing games that are better than this one. My group who likes bluffing and traitors in board games was bored to death...
+DarthMessias care to suggest any? I would be interested to see what others may be better
+DarthMessias I think that games like these do a lot better if you inject a lot of personality into it. Going on its own merit, Sheriff will quickly become boring, but inject some sass and cheeziness in there, and you've got yourself a great game.
I played it at GenCon. I didn't care for this one at all. But if you like to lie to people you'll love it, and you're a horrible person.