Episode 170: Paladins of the West Kingdom
May 4, 2020
Contest: Board Game Box Art
May 19, 20201) The Pegs discuss their recent game plays including Caravan, Atelier: The Painter’s Studio, Cosmic Frog, and many more;
2) All the Pegs review Egizia: Shifting Sands; and
3) Look back at Tudor.
Join in the conversation for this episode over at our Board Game Geek guild.
Show Notes
00:01:01 – Trivia is for the birds.
Banter
00:06:14 – Congratulations to all the Golden Geek winners!
00:07:11 – Contest time! Send use your best board game box cover art recreation. Use whatever you have around the house – you, your children, the curtains, random fruit – and reproduce the box art from your favorite board game. Send it to us via email at bluepegpinkpeg@gmail.com, post it to Twitter and tag us, or post it on our Facebook page. We’ll pick our three favorite entries and post them to Twitter with a poll to let the Peghead nation vote for their favorite!
00:10:54 – Blue Peg Pink Peg will be on Origins Online with a Wisdom Check!
00:14:55 – Frosthaven design check-in.
00:18:49 – Jeremy goes running on his tiny, tiny feet.
00:25:46 – Jeremy’s online play with Funtail‘s Feed the Kraken.
00:29:47 – Christina’s playtesting with Inside Up Games.
00:34:27 – Pints are going fast!
Plays
00:36:01 – Caravan * [Buy] – Rio Grande Games; Designer: Joe Huber; Art: Martin Hoffmann;
00:44:20 – Cosmic Frog – Devious Weasel Games; Designer: Jim Felli; Art: Tim Barton, Jim Felli, Chad Hoverter, Tani Pettit, Naomi Robinson;
00:53:38 – Atelier: The Painter’s Studio * [Buy]; Alderac Entertainment Group; Designer: (Uncredited); Art: Many!
01:00:06 – A word from our sponsor Queen Games: Don’t miss the late pledge for the Shogun and Wallenstein Deluxe Components Kickstarter!
01:01:05 – The Potion [Buy]; FoxMind; Designer: Kasper Lapp; Art: Jacqui Davis;
01:05:33 – Escape Tales: Low Memory * [Buy]; Board&Dice; Designer: Jakub Caban, Bartosz Idzikowski; Art: Jakub Fajtanowski, Magdalena Klepacz;
01:12:40 – Scythe: Rise of Fenris [Buy]; Stonemaier Games; Designer: Ryan Lopez DeVinaspre, Jamey Stegmaier; Art: Jakub Rozalski;
News
01:19:58 – InsideUp Promotion
01:22:37 – Adventures in Neverland Kickstarter & Stronghold Picks up the Cajun Trilogy
01:25:40 – Smash Up: Marvel & Small World of Warcraft & Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game
REVIEW: Egizia: Shifting Sands * [Buy]
01:31:51 – Rules Breakdown
Egizia: Shifting Sands is a 2 to 4 player worker placement title designed by Acchittocca, Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto, Antonio Tinto, with art by William Bricker and published by Stronghold Games in 2019.
In Egizia, players will place workers in various action spaces along the path of the Nile, then utilizing the resulting actions to generate stone, strengthen their workers, expand their harvest, and construct various elements of ancient Egyptian civilization.
The first phase of the game is the Placement phase. In turn order, players will place one of their boats on an action space along the Nile river. On one side of the river, these spaces contain cards that the player will claim immediately to gain ongoing production bonuses, one-time or permanent benefits, or other special bonuses. On the other are a series of circular action spaces. For the first round of the game, players will use the actions printed on the board; later, these will be replaced with actions drawn randomly from a deck, so the exact actions and their order will change. Once a player places a boat on a space, they will not be able to place boats upstream – or behind the just-placed boat – on later turns. Further, once a worker is placed another player is blocked from that action.
Then, players will collect resources to contribute to the building of structures and to feed their workers, based on the field and stone cards they have collected so far along with any other benefits.
Next, and most importantly, is the Building phase. Three locations on the Nile will allow players to contribute to one of three building sites: The Colonnade and Obelisk, Statues and Pyramid, and finally the Spinx. Each building area has some specific rules as to how players will contribute to them, but largely each will rely on a combination of stone resources and worker strength that will get increasingly expensive as the features are built out. Further, with some exceptions only one worker can work on any particular building site, requiring workers to get stronger to contribute more; however, the stronger the worker, the more the food requirement during the the feeding phase.
The first two of these building sites offer relatively straightforward scoring opportunities – contribute to more expensive elements of the structure, get more points and more useful bonuses. However, both the Statues and the Sphinx offer end-game scoring opportunities. In the case of the Sphinx, this involved drawing a number of cards from a deck and selecting one to keep for a secret end-game goal. The more time you contribute to the Sphinx, the better your chances of drawing something useful.
Finally, each of the three building locations has one fewer available spaces than the number of players, so players can be blocked out of visiting.
After the final building space is resolved, and unclaimed cards are discarded and new ones are played onto the board – with later rounds having more powerful and valuable cards – the basic action spaces are shuffled and played out, and turn order is determined based on player score, with the last-place player going first, second-to-last going second, and so on.
Players will also advance on one of two tracks: one to gain and score stone at the end of the game, and another to manage the point penalties for not being able to feed their workers as well as some opportunities to score for surplus food production.
The game is played over five rounds, at which time final scores are tallied, Sphinx cards revealed and resolved, and the winner determined.
01:35:27 – Review
01:57:40 – Ratings
ReRoll
02:11:53 – Tudor * [Buy] – Academy Games, Inc.; Designer: Jan Kirschner; Art: Dennis Lohausen;
Check out our original review for Tudor during Episode 145.
Gameplay Photos
* Disclosure: These titles were received free of charge by the publishers or distributors. If you are interested in submitting a title for review, please read our Review Policy.
