 via Palletti is a game and you look at it. You see a bunch of wooden rods, right? That are vert, you know, and you see plates, these weirdly shaped plates that are in between the rods, making this kind of weird tower. And you say, what's up with that? And I saw this game in O2. It went to spele this jar game of the year best game pretty much in the whole world in the year of 2002. And I was like, what is so great about that game? There must be something great about it. But I never got the game. I never investigated further until Pax. I saw it there and I said, you know what? All right, we're looking for a game to play. And I like to play new games because even if it's a bad game, I like learning new games. I like opening new boxes, seeing new pieces, right? Rim doesn't like to waste time learning new games. He just want, he'd rather play a game you already know. I'd rather exercise the competitive and strategic parts of my brain other than the memorization and rules, remembering parts of my brain. You do one and then the other. But anyway, via Piletti was a game that I knew was a spele this jar. I had never played, right? And since I knew it was a Jenga type ish kind of game, I figured we'll be able to learn this really easily. And because Jenga ish type games are pretty impressive looking and they have, you know, a lot of suspense, you know, like topple, even, you know, crappy old topple. Yeah, even has suspense when it starts to wobble a whole bunch. So, you know, it'll get a lot of attention. It'll be easy to find other players, et cetera. So I pulled it out of there. I said, we're doing it. Fuck it. We're doing it. We pulled it out. Here are the rules of via Piletti. Very simple, right? That's, they're so simple. I can tell you them on the show. I'm not going to go into great detail, but I'll tell you the basics. You have all these rods. There's four different colored rods, green, blue, red and yellow. Okay. Each player is a different color. If you have two players, each person takes two colors. If you have three players, neutral color, whatever, you put a plate on the color on top of all the rods on your turn. You take your rods and you want to bring them up on top. So all your rods are under these plates or at least on the lower level. Maybe the plate isn't covering them, you know, and you want to move them up because when your rods move up, whatever rods are on the top level, count for points. Whatever rods are not on the top level, don't count for points. Right? So you have one rod that's worth three points. It's a big one. You have a rod that's worth two points, the hex, and you have three rods that are worth one point each, five rods. So you want to move the big ones up first. Right? Now the big ones are, of course, heavier. They're also have more surface area at the top and bottom. And remember, the rods that you're moving from the bottom of the tower to the top of the tower are the same rods that are holding up the plates. So it's not every rod is going to be able to get moved up because if you pull every rod out, the whole thing falls down and that's what you lose. And pretty much it seems to come down to at every level, you will have three pillars left or about it seems like about a third of the time, they'll end up with like two pillars at the bottom. And the very first game we played, me, rim and this other guy at Pax, right? We got the thing, right? We were building and building and building and building and we were on like the third plate because after you put up a bunch of rods, when no one can move rods anymore, you start putting plates on top of the rods. And we're on like the third plate and the thing was getting crazy. And then I pulled the rod out from the lowest level that wasn't pulled out earlier in the game. So now there are only two rods on the lowest level holding up this giant plate full of rods. Very, very frightening. It was very frightening and very suspenseful and very awesome. Yeah, this is definitely one of those tension followed by screaming games and basically it'll be nothing but tension. And then the tension will either be punctuated by, oh my God, I can't believe you pulled that off or Yeah, I think the thing about this game is that the bad thing about this game is that the rules aren't really, really specific. You sort of have to be fast and loose with it. Well, the thing is I feel like you could play it different ways. I mean, the way I read the rules, if you just read them at face value, you can't so much as cause another thing to pillar to move, touch another pillar, anything. You pretty much have to play this game like solid. However, unless you're a surgeon, that's pretty much impossible, but you can pretty much just play, like agree to a set of rules with your friends and run with it and never look back. Yeah, the only other problem with this game is that the turn order actually matters a lot. Like whoever is the first person to put a rod on the whoever gets to play the first person to put a rod on the green plate has a significant advantage in winning because it's going to be pretty much impossible for anyone to beat them and score until another plate shows up unless they screw up or something and a good chance that the entire thing will fall over before the next plate shows up. And thus the odds of that person winning are very good. So unless I don't think that's true among skilled players. No, not among skilled players, but I think, you know, in general, that is a being the first person to put a rod on a new plate has a significant advantage. See, because I feel like the strategy is very simple. The game goes between stable and unstable states. And what you want to do is you count ahead, you have to pay attention to the turn order and who is going to be able to move things up and who won't be. You have to position your pillars to try and prevent the people who would otherwise take the lead away from you from being able to because they won't be able to place they'll have to place the plate and then you get to place the thing on top. And then you want to make sure that you want to actually make the thing really, really stable. Unless you know that you're going to be the one based on your previous positioning to place the rod first on one of the big plates. And you try to, if you know that's going to happen, then you try to destabilize it. And then once you're in the lead, you'd basically try to make the thing fall over without actually making it fall over. Right. Because if you have the high score at the present point in time and you and someone else knocks it over, right? And if there's four players that's three out of four people knock it over, you win. So if the thing is wobbly, right? And you're in the lead, you don't want to knock it over yourself because then whoever was in the lead before you were in the lead is the winner. But you want to keep it wobbly so that someone else will have a much greater chance of knocking it over and that's giving you the victory. But if you aren't in the lead, you want it to be super, super stable unless it's only wobbly on the turn of the person in the lead. So they'll knock it over. And if you were in the lead before them, you'll win. I don't know if that made a lot of sense. But basically, if you have the high score, it's in your interest to fuck it over and try to not get the thing to be unstable and bleh, which in some ways is correct from a game, you know, perspective. There are three people trying to keep it stable and one making it wobbly. It'll probably going to end up stable and it'll be okay. But at the same time, it's sort of more fun to build a crazy tall tower. It's all insane. You keep saying that, but I win this game like almost every time we play it. I won quite a few times. Not so many. I tend to win because I tend to actually play it that many times. Yeah, we haven't, but I've won a good majority like two or three times. We played it more than that. But anyway, the reason is I actually pay attention to the strategy and the game is actually kind of strategically deep. But if someone like Scott is trying to just build it tall, it's really easy for me to win because I just get in the lead and then destabilize it. And then I win. Yeah, the thing is the only way to, you think, you know, the way to get in the lead is to move your bigger stuff to the top level, but like everyone does that. So it's not really about, you know, I don't always move my bigger stuff to the top level right away. Oh, you got to know sometimes I feel like I can stay behind because you can use the bigger stuff and put it in a safe spot and then not move it up right away as long as you know it's still safe, protecting it with your little guys. And then you have it free after you've trapped someone else's or you've got it now to use to destabilize the thing or stabilize it at the proper moment. That is one of the big key things about the game is remember each plate is going to someone's going to have to stay behind and on the lower level. So you sort of when you're putting your new guys up on the next plate, you want to put them sort of on top so that they're putting a lot of weight onto someone else's pillars so they won't be able to pull them out. But you also want to keep the whole structure as a whole, you know, solid or unsolved depending on your current status in the game. And those two things might be in conflict with each other. So you and you got all, you know, you have three people moving pillars up before it's your turn again. You don't know how it's going to go. You know, and sometimes, you know, you got to leave root, you know, you can control a lot of the plates are kind of small so you can control where there's enough room to put something on the plate. You know, you crowd the plate out and then shit, there's nowhere for me to put anything on the plate and good stuff like that. Oh, anything else if you play the game is really, really fun. I could play it like a bajillion bajillion times. I'll say this, even if you don't like the typical German board games, we always talk about this game is a thousand times more fun than Jenga, a much quicker to set up and play much quicker to tear down. This is like one of the best party games ever. Like if you've got, if you have friends by via Piletti, there will always be a time where you will have friends around who will want to play this game. If you, I mean a frat house, having this in the frat house, especially if you make it a drinking game, you replace the pillars with shot glasses or something, you know, tall shot glasses can have some fun. Yeah. The, the only problem is the game theoretically has a two player version. The problem with the two player version is that all the strategy of the score and everything like that is gone. And it's because it's only two people. It's whoever makes it fall over loses. The other person wins. I don't think that's a problem at all. It's just a different game. Instead of worrying about, you know, this pillar is worth more points. You only worry about I want to stabilize this pillar for me and yet destabilize it for me. I didn't say it's a problem. I just said, well, you did very specifically said the only problem. It's a different game and I feel like, you know, when a, you know, Puerto Rico, even though it's a slightly different game, it's a completely different game, but it's not that completely different. This is like super completely different. It's like, you know, it's like change football to flag football. Okay. Different, but football, the baseball completely different. Right. So Puerto Rico, three and five player are different the way flag football and football are different, but via Palletti, four and two player are different the way that football and baseball are different. I don't think they're that different. I think they're pretty different because it really just comes down to your free to place your, in fact, in fact, I think it's more fun in a lot of ways because you're just free to use the weights of the pieces to your advantage in stabilizing and destabilizing and building, as opposed to also having to play this meta strategy game of the points. I actually, I enjoy the two player game more and I wish I could take the fun of that and transfer it into the three and four player game better. No, I like, I like the three and four player game better with the point strategy and whatnot. And the thing is in the two player game also the turn order matters a whole lot more because, uh, you know, there's only two people. So it's like whoever goes first is probably going to be the person who puts up the plate and then sure if you have your own account. Yeah. Cause you have both have, you know, 10, uh, rods, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just asking if you actually calculated or if you're just kind of shooting from the hip. No, I calculated. Okay. Well, me, if there's three rods left, then maybe you're, don't forget the neutral rod rules. That's only if there's three players and not two players. Well, two players, it doesn't matter. You just play. Yeah. No, no one has an advantage at all. Well, it's a pen. You know, if you go, if you're the person who has to put the plate, then the other person puts the first rod and then they have a big advantage in the game because they have a big advantage. I think putting the plate is a much bigger advantage than putting the first rod, putting the plate is a big advantage. But in the two player game, it is definitely more of an advantage. No, I think it's, uh, why? Cause points don't matter. Why? Yeah. You didn't think this through. That's all right. Yeah. Yeah. You're just going to sidestep that. You know, the presidential debate is coming up and I think Scott has learned much from it. I think perhaps that you're a performance is prescient of perhaps everything that's going to go on tonight. Well, you must enjoy my performance so much then because you're going to spend your time watching it. I'm not watching the debate tonight. I saw the format. This debate is a joke. Well, that's what we were saying earlier. Until I saw the format. Anyway, I want to talk more about via plenty because I feel like we didn't say enough in this podcast, but there isn't that much more to say. Well, no, here's the next thing you say. I'm not going to bother because we basically our friends have not played this game enough. But the show would go at this point to anecdotes of the crazy via like the time you had one pillar holding the whole thing up. Yeah. Or the time you actually got pieces up on the final plate, the red plate at the top, and you actually had to put pieces on top of pieces. That's the cool thing. It's like the rules just keep going. If you run out of plates, the only place to go up is to put pillars on top of other pillars directly. And then you could even put pillars on top of those pillars if possible. This game is just so fun and so short. There is no one in the world would not enjoy this game. Buy it. If you don't buy this game, you're dumb. Yeah, it's also pretty cheap. Now, the one problem is, is we have the, I think university games edition of the game, right? That's the publisher. And a lot of people have published this game around the world. You know, there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different publishers listed on board game geek, right? The version we played at PAX, I think was the German edition, right? I don't know who published it, but it came in a yellow box. It had much better artwork, much better pieces, much better everything. And the version, the university games edition that we got, I bought it at fun again.com is not as high quality. The plates are not as, you know, quality. The rods, the rods are actually okay. The board that goes under the, you know, the bottom, the thing that goes right on the table, the cardboard disc is a lot worse than the German one. And in a game like this, right, the manufacturing quality of the pieces matters so much. You know, if you get like, you know, if I'm playing, I say I buy a game of a settler's box, right? And one of the cities is a little deformed or I buy Carcassonne. Carcassonne is losing all the colors. Green has the GIMP, right? As a GIMP, one of the meeples is gimped. He's got like a broken head or something, right? He's smaller than everyone else. Right. It's like, okay, there's a manufacturing error and one of the meeples is broken. It doesn't affect the game in any way. The game is just fine. You could have all GIMP to meeples and it wouldn't make a difference as long as they're all the right color, right? In a game like this, the manufacturer of the pieces matters more than anything. If one of your rods, like if a green rod is gimped a little bit, it's a little bit short or a little bit tall or a little bit lopsided, that kind of ruins the whole game. But at the same time, if it's within reasonable tolerances, it kind of adds to the game as long as all the pieces are within the same tolerances. Yeah. As long as they don't have to be ultra precise. Everyone has like, yeah, this one's a little short. This one's a little long. And you start to, if you play with the same set a lot, different colors will have different play personalities. Actually, if all of the plates were perfectly flat and all of the rods were ultra precise and flat and the same exact height and the same exact weight, it would kind of make the game blare and kind of not so good because then, you know, See, actually, I don't think it would because the, if it was like that, it would be a perfect game and it would be just as fun for different reasons. It would be, but it would different reasons. And I think that the reasons that the current game is fun would be sort of, you know, like a lot of times you'll go get on your knees and you'll see that like the plate isn't even touching a rod. There's a rod that just sitting under a plate completely untouched with no weight on it. But if the rods are all flat and the plates are flat, you wouldn't have that going on. And there'd be a lot more friction, a lot more instability. It'd be a lot harder to get the thing to go up higher. I like it. There'd be a lot more stability, not instability. Well, there'd be instability, not the, the, the, the building itself would be more stable. Because you're allowed to hold the plate when you remove. Yes. But the friction would still, there would be more friction going on. It would be more stable. Your argument of it being unstable is BS. No, there would be instabilities from other sources as opposed to structural instabilities. I think the only source of instabilities when you're removing pieces, but since you can hold the plate, that's really not a concern. Well, no, but you can hold the plate, but the still, the friction might cause wobble-age. I actually, I think it'd be less likely to cause wobble-age. However, I have a better idea. I would like to take a set and make an alternate set of pieces where everyone has one slightly longer and one slightly shorter of the little pillars. But then the long ones would all get stuck on the bottom. Not well, but then the game would get weird because it would get- And the short ones would move all the way up to the top. Not necessarily, because you'd get tilts. Like if there were a small number left at the bottom, you pull one out. Now what angles down is resting on the short one. And then the whole thing is tilted. You could, if you figured out the correct tolerances- You couldn't do it tilt because all the rods are flat on the top and bottom. It would still tilt because remember, they're kind of warped anyway. So it would, I think it would work really well. I thought I'd actually put a little- The difference in height would have to be incredibly small. I'm talking about no more than three millimeters at most. It's a tough call. I put a lot of thought into this and I think it would work really well. Also, considering the other games, you know, we played the German version at PAX and it came with a flyer with all the other similar games like Hamster Rollin'. Oh yeah, all those- There's apparently a whole bunch of games that are like this, that are basically wooden blocks balancing kind of games. And this one Hamster Rollin' was this big Hamster wheel that rolls around and has all these little shelves in it. And you put blocks on the shelves to get it to roll to the left or to the right. That game was looking pretty cool. I want that game. The implication is definitely that Via Piletti is the best of these games. Well, it did win a Spiel Desjards. None of the other games did, so. But still, I feel like because I saw the way those games were put together and I saw how stable this game ends up, even if everyone plays like really stupidly, you could really mess with the pieces and the game would still work just by the math of it. Yeah, the fact that our sort of poorly put together set, right, still works really well as a game, shows that, you know, the construction doesn't need to be perfect to get it to work. But yes, I feel like we're running out of steam here. Via Piletti is awesome. You should play it. And I'm going to go to bed. I'm taking a look at Hamster Roll here. It's looking pretty cool. Oh, man. Oh, it's a lot bigger than I thought. This has been Geek Nights with Rym and Scott. Special thanks to DJ Pretzel for the opening music. 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