 Anyway, so yeah, this game is called Ratanir and when we saw the game, at least I was immediately attracted to it because as the name implies, it is a combination of rats, squeak-squeak, eating pizza, and also buccaneers, yarr, we are pirates, let us be cute pirate rats, pirates who are cute, I don't know why they didn't translate it to pirate, but Ratanir is okay. Yeah, it's a game where you are pirate rats trying to out pirate the other pirate rats. So it's not a great game, it's not in the class of like Tiggers and Euphrates. I mean the theme though, the theme. The theme's good. Yeah. And the game is relatively unique in that there are few games that use a mechanic like this. I cannot, there are not many games that you can compare this game to mechanically, no. The game, but the game has a lot of the elements, like I feel like a game that was meteor that did some of the things this game does would be very much up my alley. But this game is good. It's a good game to bust out at a convention because it generates a lot of moments where everyone goes, oh shit, really? And something crazy happens. So first of all, the game is really cute. I was immediately attracted to these pieces in the game, one of which had a tiny cute rat and a little red and white floaty rat. There are only two images of this game on Board Game Geek. Yeah, which is the cutest little rat I've ever seen. And then I was told that that is the rat king of the sea. The rat king of the land is pretty good. The rat king of the land is also cute, but not as cute as the rat king of the sea with the red and white floaty. The floaty is what does it? Yeah, I'm all about the rat king of the sea. I almost thought about making that a Twitter avatar. So the theme is your rat pirates, whatever, but the just to the game, the main mechanic that matters. You do a blind bid for where you're going to go. Everyone's got two pirates and you never get more and you could get some deck hands, but whatever you basically secretly allocate to. There's a chain of islands from the land out to the Treasure Island in a straight line and you allocate secretly where you're going to send your pirates and your deck hands to be like. I'll send a pirate to Island one and I'll send a pirate. Yeah, I'll send a pirate to the magical Treasure Island and a pirate to this Middle Island and a deck hand on the land and so forth. And the islands all have goods that you're going to do some stuff. All the islands do stuff. Whatever. Well, the islands all have goods on them. The Treasure Island has crazy bullshit on it. Everyone reveals and then simultaneously and sends out their pirates and deck hands to the thing. But starting at the land where they guess the tavern is right where the money go in order. You do the thing on the first place. You go in order and as soon as you reach a spot in the chain, it's just a straight line where there are nobody sent anybody. No one sent a pirate. No one sent a deck hand. No one sent anything to that spot. All of the islands further out in the chain. Everyone just gets swept away to the beach and doesn't get to do that stuff. So it's really hard to do the Treasure Island because to do the Treasure Island, you need to have something on every single other spot. Something to keep that chain alive so that I guess you can get home safely with the treasure. Now you also, this leads to those situations where every round, especially late in the game, people are thinking, did anyone go on Space One? Please, I hope someone went on Space One. There are a lot of times where no one goes on Space One and everyone gets washed away to the beach. The end. Now the rest of the game is pretty simple mechanically. Like it's not even that exciting. Each of the different islands does something. The first space just gives you money. The second space lets you by helping cards and more deck hands. All the other normal spaces are all the same and they have cards that line up next to them that have goods and the goods become victory points. And then at the very end of the Treasure Island. And this, I think there's another one that lets you flip victory points and then the beach. Yep. Whatever. The game is only of sort of moderate actual depth. The main mechanic is the main mechanic that's fun and interesting and that you care about is the one I just described where you want to send you guys deep. But if you do, they might just get washed away to the beach and sort of risk and also looking what other players are going to do. But trying to guess what they're going to do. And then, you know, if you fill in stuff to go deep, you're giving other people potentially a stepping stone to go deeper. Right. And if you, you know, you look at some spaces in the middle and it's like, well, that's a really good spot to go. But if I go there, Rimm also goes there. He's going to, I'm going to get less stuff. But wait, if I don't go there, Rimm is going to go there alone and take all this stuff. So here's where this guy has another level of that same sort of like guessing what the other people are going to do and anticipating and risk taking is that all the islands where you get stuff. If you're there by yourself, you get all the stuff. Yep. If you're there with other people, you take turns, based on some rules and who gets stuff. You're basically looting cargo ships. But if one of those islands has fights on it, you got to win the fight. Otherwise everyone dies and goes to the beach. If you win the fight, the dudes you use to fight the fight generally die. So you have cards, but all the people on that island share the fight and the results together. So if you get someone else to fight, you get that you can get treasures by joining in. So there's multiple levels, but if you go there and then no one else goes to fight there, you could just die. Multiple levels of anticipating what other people might do and planning on that and risk taking based on that. Now, in terms of strategy, the trouble with the game is that really the only thing like the strategy is pretty simple. You play conservatively when you're ahead and in the sense that you play easy plays early in the board and you don't ever give people opportunities to go deeper because why would you if you're already ahead and there's a turn when no one gets to do anything, you stay ahead. And if you're losing, you take increasingly desperate, risky strategies to try to go deeper, to try to get a big payoff because you're hoping that nobody went on the place with three fights and you get all the goods. And that's really the only strategy involved. Yeah, I mean, but that's the interesting part, right? What other game does that most of the risk reward games are games of like pushing, like, you know, thanks where it gets deeper and deeper and deeper and you take it or those games infiltration, infiltration, where you go deeper and deeper and deeper, then turn back, right? Or deep sea adventure. You go deeper and turn back. Let's talk about this game every single turn. It's like, how deep is it safe to go every single turn? You're making a brand new judgment. It's barely punished for going too deep is the splendor of that kind of game. But then you try again experience. Actually, and Decker has that to a big degree. A little bit. And Decker, when you're exploring, that's the how much are you going to risk? What's the risk reward ratio? But most of these games, the risk taking is independent of anticipating what other players will do. Like in infiltration, it's obvious what other players will do because the game's actually infiltration. You don't have as much freedom. I have an increasingly dour opinion of because the game always plays out the same way and you have very little agency. It takes too long for what you get out of it. That's true. And there is, it is almost never viable to go even halfway into that stupid place. You need some luck to get deep. You need a lot of luck to go deep. Unlike Deepsea Adventure where you can get the big treasures for a lot of things. Retinir is a pretty good balance of these mechanics. And you get to have that go deeper, not anticipate other players over and over and over again. My only complaint, and I'm not going to complain that the game's a little random with the cards because it is, but that's not bad. That's fine for this level of game. My only complaint is the game takes about 10 to 15 minutes longer than it feels like it should. Yeah. My complaint with the luck actually in this game is that you have the land seat rat king and the water rat king. Right. The cutest pieces and they rotate around the board fairly. So everyone gets a roughly even number of times as both. And basically what those do is they allow you to either have priority on the land spaces or priority on the water spaces, which gives you more context to decide what other players are going to do. So when you are the sea rat king, you want to play your guys out in the water and you will get first dibs. Even if someone goes to the same space you go to, but everyone knows you're going to do that. Obviously, but I mean, you just do it anyway, because you still get first dibs. Well, they can do about it. Right. And then if you go land, you're the land rat king. You also get first dibs. You can get more money or more cards or whatever before other people. And so they rotate evenly and it's kind of fair. But the thing is there's a lot of situations where, for example, I was the sea rat king once. And no one went on the one space. Just coincidence that time. And I had a good play and I just, oh, I got, I got burned. And that's, you're only going to get to be the sea rat king like two or three times. GG. I basically lost right there. Why'd you take that risk? I didn't, you know, how was I, but why would I go in the land space when I'm the sea rat king? You put one deck hand there as insurance. I just, but I'm just saying it's like, you know, it's a risk reward. This game you literally can spend actions, which are the primary economy in the game because you don't get many. Yep. To buy insurance. Yep. By putting a deck hand somewhere to ensure. I'm just saying, you know, it's just the thing that can happen, right? It could be not even getting a big nod. That's, that's an example of really big bad luck. Yeah. I'm talking about a little bad luck. Like, oh, I was the sea rat king and there really weren't any good islands to go to. Like there weren't a lot of cards out there to pick up on when I happened to be the sea rat king, because of the way the turns went. And then I, so I, you know, I did what the best I could and whatever. And then I passed the sea rat king to the left. And suddenly all these amazing diamonds get dealt out. And now the person to the left to me is the sea rat king. And they get all these victory points by going to this awesome island. And because I was just the sea rat king, I have more. I have like no priority on water. I've prayed on land. I can't get those victory points just because luck. Yep. I mean, that's why I say the game needs to be. I'm not saying this is bad. Board games have luck. It's a thing. But that's what I'm saying. The game needs to be like 15 minutes shorter. It doesn't ruin the game. It's just, it's a thing. If the game were shorter, that would be less of a concern because you just play it again. Yep. The other funny thing as demo is they'll just point it out in the chat. It's not localized so well. Well, yeah. There's some really funny things like so this money artisan. Yes. There's a car. There's cards for the special rats that you can buy on the land at the tavern. A few of them are basically like translated wrong. So, right? Like the surgeon is the thief. Yeah. They wrote the wrong words on them, but the, the, the best one is money artisan, the counterfeiter who gives you like a money every turn basically something like that. But instead of saying counterfeiter, it says bogus money artisan, which is amazing. I will at any point in my life where there is an opportunity to say the word counterfeit, I'm going to say bogus something artisan, bogus money and say bogus money artisan. Yeah. But it could be bogus anything. It could be a geek nice episode in the future or bogus board game. Are you a bogus mp3 artisan? Is that what you are? But I would say that if you are the kind of person who whips out games for people, like you're the kind of person who brings a game to your group and says, Hey, let's play this game. It's cool. This is a game to have. This is a game that a lot of people you bring games for have not played before. Right. Also, it's people haven't played this. It's people that can bring people in has a cute pirate theme that you can get into. It's pretty quick. Even though it has some problems, you can still get enjoying out of it multiple times. It's easy to learn. It's quick to learn. Even though it's too long for what it is. It's still not long to play overall. Yep. And it's unique. It's not like other games. You have this unique mechanic that make it worth playing. There isn't like some replacement game. It's like, oh, you shouldn't play right near play this instead. It's like, there isn't really a game that I've seen that has that chain connection mechanic. That's really interesting. I almost sort of feel like it's a fury. It's not easy. Nothing like for you. Dracula except for you. Free of Dracula has the Dracula's hidden movement mechanic. That is amazing. That is unlike any other game. And the rest of the game is met right near has the chain simultaneous placement mechanic, which is unique and unlike any other game. And the rest of the game is a game. If we could make the make the combat and fury of Dracula act somehow like this blind bid system in right near. So basically take two unique systems and combine them. And that's the whole game. Yep. Two really interesting unique systems together. I feel like that could work. Go for it. That goes against most of the advice we give people for designing games. But yeah, it's a, you know, definitely, I think, you know, there was so much attention on the Euro games. I'm glad we have some friends who pay attention to the Japanese produced more games out there. I haven't been. I do not have time to pay attention to that. And I'm sure there are other countries besides Japan and European Union that are produced and United States that are producing quite excellent tabletop games. And I would like to see some of those. Please translate them and deliver them to us for the way. This has been Geek Nights with rim and Scott special. Thanks to DJ pretzel for the opening music. Can't leave a web design and brand. Okay. For the logos, be sure to visit our website at front row crew.com for show notes, discussion, news and more. Remember, Geek Nights is not one, but four different shows. SciTech Mondays, Gaming Tuesdays, Anime Comic Wednesdays and Indiscriminate Thursdays. Geek Nights is distributed under a Creative Commons attribution 3.0 license. Geek Nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience. 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