I agree! It's a really breezy game that is engaging the whole time. At two I have played it multiple times and my group at five (experienced gamers) loved it.
I agree. I rated it an 8. Once you learn how the use the star port and wormhole networks properly you find the luck of the cards goes down a bit. Don't get me wrong there is an amount of luck, but after many many plays we found the better player with knowing when to pick up pairs from the star port, created a more efficient wormhole network, and deliver to all planets the scores were more controllable.
Agree as well, it’s a family weight game. There is some randomness, but you can pick a strategy, are you going the discovery route and building a network others will use or delivering through others networks giving them a few points for big delivery points for yourself. That said, If everyone does everything it does come down to a lot of luck.
This looks very simple, but fun! Interesting little efficiency puzzle almost. I like that it naturally gets more exciting as the game processes. I bet this has a lot of room to add stuff with future expansions. Variable player powers, different "cargo", new obstacles, etc. It could address some of the concerns that they had.
A thought to negate the luck factor.... You can leave all 4 of your passengers (cards) on whatever planet your at to draw up to 4 new cards. Those passengers you drop off STAY on that planet. You score only for the ones that were supposed to go there. The others are face up. Perhaps those passengers are worth more to others. Perhaps someone will be left on a planet that will make it worth a stop for you. It makes stops to pick up passengers as interesting as dropping them off. Maybe even pick up passengers you know someone else wants to take them farther away from someone who needs them since you're headed that way anyway. All you'd need is a way to keep track of which planets have which passengers
Great review, probably the most highly recommended "unrecommended" game I've seen. 😉 Sounds like it needs some house rules: only 1 passenger per drop-off location per turn, some sort bidding or cost mechanism for passengers (significant gameplay changes), and/or ...??? In the end this seems like a very nice kit for making the game one wants it to be.* I'm looking forward to this game quite a bit now. *Back in olden times, I found Risk quite unsatisfying when I was first introduced to it. Dividing the water areas into regions and adding navy pieces to transport or block troop movement over water was much better. Didn't get to adding resources though before moving on to Avalon Hill and SPI wargames. (Didn't get to things like combining Jutland or Wooden Ships and Iron Men with Risk 😄)
Thinking along the same lines. Maybe just add this rule: It is not allowed to deliver to the same planet you last delivered to (not even on a future turn). Pretty much eliminates the "set collection" aspect and emphasizes strong route building.
This looks really fun! I don't have much pickup and deliver, so I was very tempted to get it. Hopefully there is an update to the system that removes the randomness
I'm listening to this - having not playe dit at all - I wonder if one or two simple changes would address most of the issues: 1. initial draft - what if you drafted the first hand, like some do with Terraforming Mars 2. draw 3 - pick 1, put the other 2 at the bottom of the deck With this, if you are drawing one card, you pick 3 instead, and then to of them go to the bottom of the draw deck. Just wondering how this would change things.
You do have to really watch how you set up the maps. A couple games I played the 10 planets were discovered within the first few rotations of five players. This makes the game start to end as soon as it gets going. You don’t want to place the photon cannon too close to the space station. And want the space station to be on the edge, and not central. When you set up like this it extends the time for exploration and gives players more time to do dropoffs
Easy to fix the luckiness of the game - make each planet generate resources - make usage of each resource give you point so that the you would want to go to each planet. The further away the planet is the more that resource will be worth since people dont want to go there... it's a self balancing system that give incentive to visit each planets.
I wonder if it would have been better if the drawing cards was more in line with ticket to ride type drawing vs draw upto 4? Hmm I wonder if the luck was mitigated in some way if that would have made it better for your plays? I have never played it yet, but still am curious about the game.
Perhaps a simple fix to the card problem would be to introduce more criteria to the planet (like a red planet with a ring and a polar ice cap). Then the card draw could be any planet with a ring or any planet that is red. The player might draw the "ringed" planet card. There is a ringed blue planet nearby or a ringed green planet further away. Perhaps the nearer planet could be worth fewer points because it is easier to get to and the further planet is worth more. This would introduce more strategy as well. Or... the card itself has a variety of choices to choose which planet to deliver to, a delivery to a planet with a common feature (like color) would be worth less than a planet with an atmosphere (more rare).
I haven't played this game, but I am keen to. Thanks for the review. The luck is an interesting issue. I think there are plenty of games of a similar weight with the same luck issue that are very well thought of. Ticket to Ride immediately comes to mind. Someone gets more than their fair share of locomotives with the random card draws and some player barely gets any. The initial ticket draw massively affects your chances of winning. If your starting tickets are in similar directions requiring similar routes, they'll be able to complete more tickets in less turns than someone whose tickets aren't anywhere near each other and may only then keep 1 or 2. Then you have people who midgame draw 3 tickets and keep 2 which they've already completed by pure luck and they draw tickets immediately the following turn whilst another player that draws 3 tickets may barely be able to complete one of them as none of the routes they've claimed are useful for any of the tickets they've just drawn. Despite all this, I like Ticket to Ride and I enjoy playing it. It sounds like I would enjoy playing Wormholes. Generally, the more luck, the more family friendly a game is as it means that it gives anybody a chance to win rather than the best at the game always winning if there was no luck involved. Perhaps Ticket to Ride is a game I'm more likely to play with casual players or non-gamers where I care about winning less and more about everyone having a good time. When playing Wormholes, perhaps I'll be more likely to play it with gamers and that is a situation where I do care more about trying to win. Who knows, the luck might bug me in Wormholes too.
Blow out???? Every game I've played has ended with very close scores. You can manage your hand by which passengers who discard. And what the heck is wrong with luck in a quick, simple game.
The game sounds and looks so interesting! Too bad that it seems to be ruined by some dumb luck of the draw. So a spontaneous idea, having only watched this video and not looked deeper into the rules: if you just ditch the whole card drawing and cross this with Age of Steam - have cubes on the planets that you generate in some way at the start to make it an open information game. It is a redesign and not something you can just house rule, yes, but it really got me going :D
I don't know that I've ever matched to Tom's opinions on a game so exactly before. He literally stated every single thing that I liked and disliked about it.
Yes and no. You have a hand limit of 4 cards/passengers. You can't go over and then discard down to the limit, as you can in many games. You can discard any or all of your passengers at any time. We are not barbarians so these passengers are not jettisoned into space or abandoned on any unwelcoming planet. Instead they go to the Space Station Docks, where the discarded passengers wait for a ride to their desired destination. However, there is no benefit to doing so if you're not in a position to immediately draw new passengers, so you should wait until you're at a planet or the Space Station and able to pick up more passengers. You are only allowed to pick up passengers once per turn. There's a token you flip over when you pick up passengers to help you remember if you did. At a planet you draw blindly from the passenger deck, up to your hand limit of 4. If you draw a passenger with the planet you're at, that passenger goes to the Space Station Docks and you draw a new passenger. Remember, if you have any unwanted passengers you must disembark them before embarking new ones from the passenger deck. At the Space Station passengers are waiting at the Docks organized by their destination planets. You may choose up to 2 different planet groups, up to your hand limit of 4. Early in the game there might not be any passengers waiting at the Docks. Picking up passengers at a planet involves luck. Picking up passengers at the Space Station is much more strategic since you know what passengers are waiting for rides.
Dune does have the spacing guild, which uses highly esoteric science fiction words to be able to transport people from world to world nigh instantaneously. Its not TOO far a stretch. There are just better comparisons, maybe stargate or mass effect. There is probably a better comparison than those even.
There are definitely better options, but for some reason Dune came to mind. I think I had recently seen the cover the 2019 Dune board game, so when I heard the name wormholes, I thought of that cover with the worm coming out of the sand.
This was the most anticipated game for me this year and I rarely wait for any game. Seeing such lack of enjoyment in the reviews was quite sad. I'll pass it and wait to play it somewhere, someday by any chance. Thanks
I know Shut Up and Sit Down raved about this one. Interesting how different tastes can be. I think I’ll get it based on SU&SD (not that you should or anything, but I am).
It didn't seem like lack of enjoyment, just hang ups that dragged it down. I didn't feel they were trashing it at all, just stating some frustrations that kept it from being a real endorsement.
After rewatching this review.. isn't the main concern exactly as in any Ticket to ride? When you draw the new ticket you could be lucky and instantly have that connection, right?
That's what came to mind for me, but with a more modern approach. Rather than the blocking that happens in T2R, which angers some people, in Wormholes people get to use your "routes" and you get rewarded.
Great review as always DT. So frustrating to watch you all tie yourself up in knots as I could feel your pain. You all really like and dislike the game in equal measures. Maybe if the wormhole mechanism is used in another game in the future they will get the pick up and deliver sorted.
Yeah, this doesn't make any sense. I mean I gave the Crew a "10", and I gave Titan a MUCH lower score. I dare you to run a correlation on our review scores with the sizes of boxes, and see what happens.
@The Dice Tower I wasn't attacking the Dice Tower and I'm not suggesting that you tend to rate board games in bigger boxes higher than board games with little boxes. Note that if I was suggesting this, a couple of outliers does not disprove a trend. What I was referring to was at 0:26 when Tom said, "It's not a big box game, although, it could be one I suppose." I don't know what difference the box size would make. It obviously means something to Tom. I was joking about box size getting a higher score, because I'm sure on BGG ratings are higher for bigger (playtime, weight, thinkiness) games, of which box size plays a small part of. In terms of box size, people think they are getting more game in a bigger box. It's why cereal and chip packets are half empty. I believe board game manufacturers put a game in a bigger box than it needs to be in for this reason, and they can sell it for more money. So, looking at The Crew (fantastic game, 9/10 from me), would it have got as much attention if it was in a smaller box the size of 6 Nimmt or Coloretto? It's a game box size I think people associate with very light games. Can't answer that definitively now. Why did they rerelease No Thanks in a such a large box to hold 33 cards and 60 tokens?
The intro fell through a wormhole and came out again after the teach!
Fixed it will show up soon!
@@thedicetower But it's so thematic!
I thought for sure it was their way of saying the game is repetitive.
Thank you all for the review-much appreciated as always!
After playing this last weekend I think they are underselling it a tad. It's a solid 7-7.5 in my book.
I agree! It's a really breezy game that is engaging the whole time. At two I have played it multiple times and my group at five (experienced gamers) loved it.
Absolutely agree! It’s not an 9 or a 10, but it is a fun, solid, light game! :)
I agree. I rated it an 8. Once you learn how the use the star port and wormhole networks properly you find the luck of the cards goes down a bit. Don't get me wrong there is an amount of luck, but after many many plays we found the better player with knowing when to pick up pairs from the star port, created a more efficient wormhole network, and deliver to all planets the scores were more controllable.
Agree as well, it’s a family weight game. There is some randomness, but you can pick a strategy, are you going the discovery route and building a network others will use or delivering through others networks giving them a few points for big delivery points for yourself.
That said, If everyone does everything it does come down to a lot of luck.
This looks very simple, but fun! Interesting little efficiency puzzle almost. I like that it naturally gets more exciting as the game processes.
I bet this has a lot of room to add stuff with future expansions. Variable player powers, different "cargo", new obstacles, etc. It could address some of the concerns that they had.
A thought to negate the luck factor.... You can leave all 4 of your passengers (cards) on whatever planet your at to draw up to 4 new cards. Those passengers you drop off STAY on that planet. You score only for the ones that were supposed to go there. The others are face up. Perhaps those passengers are worth more to others. Perhaps someone will be left on a planet that will make it worth a stop for you. It makes stops to pick up passengers as interesting as dropping them off. Maybe even pick up passengers you know someone else wants to take them farther away from someone who needs them since you're headed that way anyway. All you'd need is a way to keep track of which planets have which passengers
That's a very interesting idea. And maybe as part of setup dealing 2-3 random cards on each planet for starters.
Would a modified ticket to ride card drawing system help; ie, select your draw card from a few face up cards or choose a blind draw?
I had the same thought as I was watching.
Nice ideas 👍
Great review, probably the most highly recommended "unrecommended" game I've seen. 😉 Sounds like it needs some house rules: only 1 passenger per drop-off location per turn, some sort bidding or cost mechanism for passengers (significant gameplay changes), and/or ...??? In the end this seems like a very nice kit for making the game one wants it to be.* I'm looking forward to this game quite a bit now.
*Back in olden times, I found Risk quite unsatisfying when I was first introduced to it. Dividing the water areas into regions and adding navy pieces to transport or block troop movement over water was much better. Didn't get to adding resources though before moving on to Avalon Hill and SPI wargames. (Didn't get to things like combining Jutland or Wooden Ships and Iron Men with Risk 😄)
Thinking along the same lines. Maybe just add this rule: It is not allowed to deliver to the same planet you last delivered to (not even on a future turn).
Pretty much eliminates the "set collection" aspect and emphasizes strong route building.
"some sort of bidding" now you've got Age of Steam.
This looks really fun! I don't have much pickup and deliver, so I was very tempted to get it. Hopefully there is an update to the system that removes the randomness
I'm listening to this - having not playe dit at all - I wonder if one or two simple changes would address most of the issues:
1. initial draft - what if you drafted the first hand, like some do with Terraforming Mars
2. draw 3 - pick 1, put the other 2 at the bottom of the deck
With this, if you are drawing one card, you pick 3 instead, and then to of them go to the bottom of the draw deck.
Just wondering how this would change things.
You do have to really watch how you set up the maps. A couple games I played the 10 planets were discovered within the first few rotations of five players. This makes the game start to end as soon as it gets going. You don’t want to place the photon cannon too close to the space station. And want the space station to be on the edge, and not central. When you set up like this it extends the time for exploration and gives players more time to do dropoffs
Easy to fix the luckiness of the game - make each planet generate resources - make usage of each resource give you point so that the you would want to go to each planet. The further away the planet is the more that resource will be worth since people dont want to go there... it's a self balancing system that give incentive to visit each planets.
I wonder if it would have been better if the drawing cards was more in line with ticket to ride type drawing vs draw upto 4?
Hmm I wonder if the luck was mitigated in some way if that would have made it better for your plays? I have never played it yet, but still am curious about the game.
Perhaps a simple fix to the card problem would be to introduce more criteria to the planet (like a red planet with a ring and a polar ice cap). Then the card draw could be any planet with a ring or any planet that is red. The player might draw the "ringed" planet card. There is a ringed blue planet nearby or a ringed green planet further away. Perhaps the nearer planet could be worth fewer points because it is easier to get to and the further planet is worth more. This would introduce more strategy as well. Or... the card itself has a variety of choices to choose which planet to deliver to, a delivery to a planet with a common feature (like color) would be worth less than a planet with an atmosphere (more rare).
Maybe it's a fix if the number of different passenger cards also determin how far you can move? The more of the same, the less move actions you have?
I haven't played this game, but I am keen to. Thanks for the review. The luck is an interesting issue. I think there are plenty of games of a similar weight with the same luck issue that are very well thought of. Ticket to Ride immediately comes to mind. Someone gets more than their fair share of locomotives with the random card draws and some player barely gets any. The initial ticket draw massively affects your chances of winning. If your starting tickets are in similar directions requiring similar routes, they'll be able to complete more tickets in less turns than someone whose tickets aren't anywhere near each other and may only then keep 1 or 2. Then you have people who midgame draw 3 tickets and keep 2 which they've already completed by pure luck and they draw tickets immediately the following turn whilst another player that draws 3 tickets may barely be able to complete one of them as none of the routes they've claimed are useful for any of the tickets they've just drawn. Despite all this, I like Ticket to Ride and I enjoy playing it. It sounds like I would enjoy playing Wormholes.
Generally, the more luck, the more family friendly a game is as it means that it gives anybody a chance to win rather than the best at the game always winning if there was no luck involved. Perhaps Ticket to Ride is a game I'm more likely to play with casual players or non-gamers where I care about winning less and more about everyone having a good time. When playing Wormholes, perhaps I'll be more likely to play it with gamers and that is a situation where I do care more about trying to win. Who knows, the luck might bug me in Wormholes too.
Sounds like there should be an easy house rule fix to the cards issue, no? Looks like a very cool game.
I was thinking this. We may just change the drawing rules when we play.
I wonder if using this worm hole mechanic on a bigger game like “firefly” would work ?
Blow out???? Every game I've played has ended with very close scores.
You can manage your hand by which passengers who discard.
And what the heck is wrong with luck in a quick, simple game.
if the pickup mechanic hadn't been just drawing from a deck this could have been so much better.
The game sounds and looks so interesting! Too bad that it seems to be ruined by some dumb luck of the draw.
So a spontaneous idea, having only watched this video and not looked deeper into the rules: if you just ditch the whole card drawing and cross this with Age of Steam - have cubes on the planets that you generate in some way at the start to make it an open information game. It is a redesign and not something you can just house rule, yes, but it really got me going :D
I wonder if some kind of draft element could balance out card luck
Almost seems like if there was just a common face-up pile of cards for people to play from it would eliminate the luck of the draw stuff.
This sounds like a fun game, maybe a variant rule or two can fix it. One can hope.
I don't know that I've ever matched to Tom's opinions on a game so exactly before. He literally stated every single thing that I liked and disliked about it.
On your turn, can you just discard any number of cards and redraw?
Yes and no.
You have a hand limit of 4 cards/passengers. You can't go over and then discard down to the limit, as you can in many games.
You can discard any or all of your passengers at any time. We are not barbarians so these passengers are not jettisoned into space or abandoned on any unwelcoming planet. Instead they go to the Space Station Docks, where the discarded passengers wait for a ride to their desired destination.
However, there is no benefit to doing so if you're not in a position to immediately draw new passengers, so you should wait until you're at a planet or the Space Station and able to pick up more passengers.
You are only allowed to pick up passengers once per turn. There's a token you flip over when you pick up passengers to help you remember if you did.
At a planet you draw blindly from the passenger deck, up to your hand limit of 4. If you draw a passenger with the planet you're at, that passenger goes to the Space Station Docks and you draw a new passenger. Remember, if you have any unwanted passengers you must disembark them before embarking new ones from the passenger deck.
At the Space Station passengers are waiting at the Docks organized by their destination planets. You may choose up to 2 different planet groups, up to your hand limit of 4. Early in the game there might not be any passengers waiting at the Docks.
Picking up passengers at a planet involves luck. Picking up passengers at the Space Station is much more strategic since you know what passengers are waiting for rides.
Cover looks very interesting
I enjoyed how quick and snappy this game was!
Seems like Chinese Checkers in space.
It’s a journey game😀 As long as it doesn’t take too long, I’m fine with that.
I love you tom, but you need to stop hating on luck in games gezzz 😂😂🤘
Adding an auction for those cards would possibly improve this.
Dune does have the spacing guild, which uses highly esoteric science fiction words to be able to transport people from world to world nigh instantaneously. Its not TOO far a stretch. There are just better comparisons, maybe stargate or mass effect. There is probably a better comparison than those even.
There are definitely better options, but for some reason Dune came to mind. I think I had recently seen the cover the 2019 Dune board game, so when I heard the name wormholes, I thought of that cover with the worm coming out of the sand.
This was the most anticipated game for me this year and I rarely wait for any game. Seeing such lack of enjoyment in the reviews was quite sad. I'll pass it and wait to play it somewhere, someday by any chance. Thanks
I know Shut Up and Sit Down raved about this one. Interesting how different tastes can be. I think I’ll get it based on SU&SD (not that you should or anything, but I am).
It didn't seem like lack of enjoyment, just hang ups that dragged it down. I didn't feel they were trashing it at all, just stating some frustrations that kept it from being a real endorsement.
After rewatching this review.. isn't the main concern exactly as in any Ticket to ride? When you draw the new ticket you could be lucky and instantly have that connection, right?
Sci-fi Ticket to Ride?
That's what came to mind for me, but with a more modern approach. Rather than the blocking that happens in T2R, which angers some people, in Wormholes people get to use your "routes" and you get rewarded.
I had no interest in the game, but after watching the How to Play it piqued my interest. I would have thought it was at least a 7.
It should be. They all had a CRI on this game. (CRI = cranial-rectal inversion)
Great review as always DT. So frustrating to watch you all tie yourself up in knots as I could feel your pain. You all really like and dislike the game in equal measures. Maybe if the wormhole mechanism is used in another game in the future they will get the pick up and deliver sorted.
Wormholes!!
Chris couldn't let the game get a 666 score!!! Good man.
Sounds like a game that is begging for house rules.
No doubt if the game came in a bigger box, it would have received a higher score.
Why?
@@DTChrisYi Human psychology.
@@JeffGoris Depends I guess. I've gotten so tired of boxes that are bigger than they need to be I might have put it down even more.
Yeah, this doesn't make any sense. I mean I gave the Crew a "10", and I gave Titan a MUCH lower score. I dare you to run a correlation on our review scores with the sizes of boxes, and see what happens.
@The Dice Tower I wasn't attacking the Dice Tower and I'm not suggesting that you tend to rate board games in bigger boxes higher than board games with little boxes. Note that if I was suggesting this, a couple of outliers does not disprove a trend.
What I was referring to was at 0:26 when Tom said, "It's not a big box game, although, it could be one I suppose." I don't know what difference the box size would make. It obviously means something to Tom. I was joking about box size getting a higher score, because I'm sure on BGG ratings are higher for bigger (playtime, weight, thinkiness) games, of which box size plays a small part of.
In terms of box size, people think they are getting more game in a bigger box. It's why cereal and chip packets are half empty. I believe board game manufacturers put a game in a bigger box than it needs to be in for this reason, and they can sell it for more money. So, looking at The Crew (fantastic game, 9/10 from me), would it have got as much attention if it was in a smaller box the size of 6 Nimmt or Coloretto? It's a game box size I think people associate with very light games. Can't answer that definitively now. Why did they rerelease No Thanks in a such a large box to hold 33 cards and 60 tokens?