Minecraft: Builders & Biomes – Craziest BoardGameGeek Session w/ WEM

Many video games that made the leap to tabletop play thanks to adaptations from designers and publishers and I’ve been left on the sidelines for most of those as I don’t play video games I prefer tabletop play playing with actual people with physical things and move around just what I prefer so I have

Almost no familiarity with the subject matters at hand so I’m often just left with reading Wikipedia to figure out what something is Metal Gear Solid is a video game that’s the extent of my knowledge on that topic so I can’t do much when talking about adaptations with

Certain titles but thanks to a son who did play Minecraft for a few months I can talk to a very small degree about the adaptation of Minecraft to Minecraft builders and biomes a game by overt bloom and a Robbins burger that will debut HBO 19 and be out in the u.s. in

November so the subject matter of Minecraft builders and my ohm’s is very familiar to people who have already played lots of games you’re collecting resources you’re building things you’re fighting monsters it’s all very familiar subject matter it’s kind of interesting how that all works out the resource gathering works in a very Minecraft

Ian’s way as of course are the creatures that you confront and the objects that you build so let’s take a look at that here are the components of Minecraft builders and biomes you are the builders you’re starting in the center of this grid which is composed of 64 tiles you

Randomized the tiles with four tiles in each stack laid out in this four by four grid no matter the player count two to four you have weapons that are laid on the outside of the grid you might spread these tiles a bit farther apart on your own table because you’re moving the

Builders around in these spaces in between the grid but for this video shot I want to try to get everything in and show it as large as possible within the same shot you have a 4 by 4 by 4 block of bricks you have various resources available to you the emeralds are wild

And then you have sand wood obsidian and stone that you’re going to use to build buildings that are on some of the tiles that you reveal during play each player has their own bored upon which you will build with different biomes as different environments slightly different layouts

But they all functionally work the same on a turn you were going to do two of five actions the actions available to you are shown in this card you must choose different actions for your two choices at the beginning of the game you know nothing about the environment you

Have no resources available to you so you can’t fight a mob and you can’t collect a weapon because they’re too far away so you’re left with only a few choices you can’t build either so you can collect blocks you can only collect blocks that are available have a top

Surface that’s available and two sides available so in the first turn you can only get these four corners but I can draft this one and then I’ll take a wood as well whatever you collect you put in front of you you have those resources available to you and now I’ve exposed a

Few more cubes for other people to grab including the ones on the bottom possibly I should not have taken that wood because now there’s two jokers available you set up the resources on this board that you can rotate so you can see everything available let’s go

Back in time and pretend I didn’t take that way I’ll take this one although initially there’s no sand available so maybe I don’t want to make sand available to people either there’s all sorts of resource denial that can come into play as you’re taking resources from this cube when you move

You move 0 to 2 spaces and then you reveal anything that is facedown so perhaps I want to go over here and show these weapons show those creatures so these buildings and this is now what’s available to me in the future so kind of Enderman mmm got some desert building

And a couple of weapons which in fact are the same thing a crossbow so that would in my turn if you want to fight a creature you must be adjacent to the creature and everything is diagonally adjacent this game you start with five tiles that are called weapon

Tiles even though in fact three of them are potatoes and are not weapons at all you also have a wood sword that the one damages steel sword this too damaged and on a turn when you attack a monster you shuffle your weapon cards you reveal three of them and if you reveal enough

Heart to match or exceed the total shown on that monster then you defeat it you might get an immediate reward six points in this case you might get an in-game bonus this is two points for every forest biome you have on your board but I don’t even have six hearts in my deck

So I can’t possibly defeat the Enderman I could draft a weapon and when you draft a weapon you add it to your stack and you’re gonna shuffle it in this does two points of damage and when you reveal a crossbow you do one additional tile you reveal one additional tile from your

Stack well of course now I have only five hearts so I still can’t even kill the Enderman and this of course assumes I don’t just reveal potatoes I can take this on my turn but I can’t take a second weapon I can move and show something else so let’s move two spaces

Reveal these tiles as well show you some more things that are here and so on my next turn I could build this for only one wood if I want to do that no one else is adjacent to me even if they move up here if they don’t already have wood

They would have to spend a turn to collect wood and I’d be able to build this first what you’re trying to do is score points and minecraft you have three scoring phases during the game the a B and C phase that are shown on the reminder cards here that I’ve kind of

Pushed out of shot and when the first level of blocks are completely gone you have the a scoring where you look at your board you look at the largest connected biome that you have there are four types of environments the mountain Tundra deserts and forests and you score

Points for them three to six points as indicated on the reminder card so initially you start with eight points of forests that are connected together that’s the largest thing you have as you acquire cards so if I acquire this building on my turn I can place it

Anywhere that I want and if I do this I now have four squares of four that are connected which will be worth 16 points during the a scoring if I acquire this building as well now I’ve got 20 points of forest and that can continue so each time you build a

Building then of course the next tile is face down someone else will have to move here or I can make a move of zero and then I will reveal these two tiles so you’re trying to build up for the a scoring but you must keep in mind the B

And C scoring the be scoring takes place when the second level blocks is completely gone C when the third level is completely gone and then the game ends at that point except for the in game scoring for any monsters you’ve collected the be scoring relates to the material that these buildings are

Constructed with so in this case I’ve got a building made of sand or sandstone I guess another one made of wood so these will not score because I take the largest contiguous set of buildings that are of the same material and I score three to six points for them likewise at

The end of the game I’m going to score for the type of structure that I have and in this case I’ve got animal enclosures so this icon is here those are worth five points each so I have ten points of animal enclosures already connected so you’re trying to score the

Most you can in all three levels of play that requires you to gather resources and be next to the buildings that you can take in order to score in a good way I don’t want to mess up these two you can cover over buildings in order to replace them with something else so

Maybe I score my forest now and then I’m going to end up getting a building that matches can’t find anything it’s another forest everything is forest here get this it’s in stone structure and I build up that on my board as well and then on the third squaring I’m gonna score for

Animals so you’re trying to have overlapping scoring’s that ideally everything scores in the best way some buildings are worth points when you acquire them because they require lots of resources or resources that are slightly harder to gets the Obsidian has only ten blocks and the stack or as the

Sand has sixteen so two points for this when you build it but it doesn’t match anything that I’m building now so it’d be worth two points for me and nothing else you can earn points when you call the monsters you can collect monsters as well for the end game scoring in

Addition some monsters provide another type of bonus these are both in game scoring other monsters when you get them will allow you to take an additional turn so if I kill the spider which only takes one heart it should be easy right if I do that I earned two points for

Killing the spider and then I keep this tile on the side and I can choose to spend it when I wish to take an additional action and when I do that I can choose whatever action I want even one that I have already taken so possibly you can store up blocks and

Have one big turn where you’re building multiple things or fighting multiple things or taking lots of weapons to plan to fight in order to score lots of points that way as well as with the in-game points oh because this creeper will let me score three points for every

Animal enclosure I have try to put everything together to score the most points after that third levels completes because the game ends immediately after that scoring and there’s a quick render of Minecraft builders and biomes which I played twice on a review copy from Robins burger both times with three

Players you might think from the sound of it it’s a very standard game and in many ways it is you’re collecting resources you’re building stuff you’re trying to get the most points there you go has lots of Minecraft flavor to it in terms of the creatures that you’re fighting the buildings you’re building

The weapons and tools that you have available you can turn over pickaxes so when you use a pickaxe as a weapon you also get to take one additional block from the stack and when you use a hoe you get some extra points and you have metal swords that are worth four hearts

Or do four points of damage you also have TNT five points of damage that you can use if you wish so you can get the TNT put it in your pile if you flip over enough to kill something without you then you get to keep it otherwise

Bye-bye Enderman so there’s lots of feel that way and then you have the taking of the resources as well just the overall look of the game just hits all the right marks in my three player game I’d play with someone who was not familiar with Minecraft other than in passing and

Someone who had actually played there’s lots of different levels and versions of Minecraft this is all based on my understanding a bit from a distance as we had the Xbox version and mostly just played locally we did not go online there was no competition with other people I see all sorts of different

Comments from people that don’t jive of my understanding of Minecraft but I think it’s just because we had an Xbox version and we did certain things and there is lots of other Minecraft experiences that you can have so the gameplay works on those two levels where if you don’t know anything about

Minecraft you’re just learning the vocabulary of it in terms of the mobs available to fight certain other things in the game if you are familiar then it hits these certain resonant fields for what the thing is it works like a standard game otherwise whatever way your whatever your experience is with

Minecraft because a lot of it relates to the timing and the resource gathering what you’re trying to collect and what’s available to you you reveal things on the board if you have the resources form great if not you have to collect them but of course you collecting them

Depends on them being available someone else not taking them first someone else coming over to buy the thing that you were going to buy because it fits perfectly with whatever they’re building it helps to know what’s available in among the tiles which we did not do I

Know I generally I don’t do a count and say how many desert tiles are and how many tundra and all that type of thing so it turned out that many of us were trying to collect bridges which is the rarest type of structure and there were very few available so we kept digging

And digging out findings and sort of we had a go secondary path or okay clearly that not enough bridges are available for all of us to do that so we had this scarcity where they were either buried on the bottom or just not there because there’s not that many of them so then

You have to adjust and make plans like many other games works out that way where I collected resources and try to pile them all up so I could build multiple things at a time but someone else stole them or they just weren’t the right things that I was trying to

Collect for what I wanted to do had a building path that in theory could work because I grabbed an early bonus where I’d score four tundra at the end of the game so I wanted to specialize in that but then if there’s no Tundra it just

Doesn’t work out so you have to go digging and hope to make that available possibly building something to reveal and then you can flip that over and eventually hope you find more tundra possibly you don’t because you have to worry as well about the timing of the

Removal of the blocks that is not completely in your control you have some ability to adjust the timing but it’s mostly working towards when the scoring will take place if I’m digging and taking only from the lower levels I can extend the amount of time available to

Me for that first a scoring but other people might want that to happen they see what I’m building up for they see oh this tundra is available Erik puts that together that’s another six points for him and let’s take the blocks off the top and we’ll score before that can

Happen so is this interesting balanced everything works together all in a traditional game that works for those familiar with Minecraft it not so seems like Robins burgers sort of threaded that needle for what they’re trying to do placing this game in front of the mainstream markets at least in

The US and attracting people who want to have that minecraft experience with other people in the family it’s the Christmas gift for those Minecraft fans out there so hope they enjoy it they get that feel and they just explore modern games in general if you like playing

Games it works for you as well so maybe you can bring different people to the table who might not have played with you otherwise there you go quick overview of Minecraft builders and biomes