Hellas (2016) - Playthrough with Friends!

[@JonGetsGames]

CORRECTIONS: 54:46 - I DO need to put a house over there so that that cluster counts as a city. 1:05:46 - Technically this is NOT a city. A city requires at least 1 palace and at least 1 house. This cluster has no houses which means it shouldn't have scored for the temple or statue.

[@brazillb2]

Hearing you both talk about every agonizing decision was so fun. What an interesting game, that quarry economy is bonkers

[@mattmazzullo2194]

This is instantly one of my favorite videos of yours. Please give us more like this (and more Anastasia! She’s great!).

[@MohamadSobh]

Fantastic playthrough guys, now I need to hunt around for a copy

[@ludwigmises]

Hellas-Looks like a helluva good game.

[@cfrost6167]

Hellas has turned into an all-time favorite for me so I was quite excited to see you covering it - cheers! I did notice that Jon's grouping of Palace and Square in the top left does not constitute a city (a city is a Palace with 1 or more Houses - Squares don't count) so that would have dropped his final score by 8 VP (5 for the temple and 3 for the statue).

[@JonGetsGames]

Crap, I somehow completely missed this rule throughout 4 plays. Thanks for bringing it up, I'll be sure to teach/play it correctly in the future. I've added corrections to the video and to the pinned comment so that hopefully others can not be led astray by this. Glad you enjoyed the game!

[@cfrost6167]

For such a simple game, I find it can be difficult for players to wrap their heads around the scoring (I know it took me several plays on Yucata). It would have been so much easier if the game just came with a little player aid that you could point to. The "city" distinction, in particular, is probably the easiest rule to miss. Anyway, glad you guys could shine the limelight on this one - maybe one day another publisher will reprint it.

[@plaidflannelgeek]

I am getting echos of Attika while watching it. Neat playthrough.

[@shinjial]

Hey! I'm loving to see an actual gameplay here, and it's been a lot of fun so far. I appreciate your friend Anastasia participating and allowing you to do this.

[@JonGetsGames]

Glad you enjoyed it :)

[@terrytoriq]

Just lovely! More Anastasia. More full play throughs. More, please!

[@gobo2093]

A fun playthrough, looks like an interresting game. :) One suggestion though... At the beginning you displayed a text where you meant palace but said temple instead and that this would happen several times throughout the game. That's perfectly fine and a great way to let us know about minor mistakes. This makes all the other notes saying the same thing redundant, though, and it happened so often that constantly seeing that text started to get a little annoying. I believe the initial note is enough. :)

[@bensmithxlvi]

This is awesome! Your closeup solution works great here, no chroma keying required. I hope it's not too much more work in post. Thanks for another great video!

[@JonGetsGames]

I thought so too, thanks for the feedback. Glad you liked it :)

[@maxnix9256]

I liked the playthroughs, so I am glad to see this video. Was a lot of fun and also very interesing to see what you thought. To me this game is new, so maybe it I am wrong, but I think you can play much more cutthrought. at 32:02 you could have placed the house on the other forrest tile. This way you dont completely block the city, but you make it much more expensive to connect the palace to the city, while limiting the chance for a 2nd city of Anastasia to connect to the pillars, while also keeping your own chance of getting a city near the 8 pillars. When watching, I also thought your 2 first pieces where a bit risky. They could hace been enclosed easily. Investing in the four pillars next to it felt risky to me, as it even rewards Anastasia for blocking you off and prevent a temple down there. As I saied, I have not played this game and maybe it is bad, but I liked the tension :-)

[@JonGetsGames]

Agreed about your 32:02 note, I think double placing to try and isolate that placed Palace would have been a far better move that I just didn't really consider at the time. That would have been a hugely impactful move, heck I might have won the game if I'd made that slightly different choice. I'm glad you enjoyed this one, thanks for your strategy thoughts. It's cool to see what other people would have done.

[@samthielemans3797]

Thanks for the video, truly a gem!

[@timoseppa9124]

Yay, we get to "see" Anastasia!

[@danielschaublin]

This is a first in which you play a physical game on a real table with someone, since I taught it was be on TTS due to distance, etc. Anyway, I hope this tread will continue in the future, even if physical playthroughs with friends will be rare thing to see on the channel due to scheduling conflicts, etc. Maybe someday, we'll see a "Learn while playing with friends" where you teach a game like with your tutorials and explain the rules while playing with a friend. Also as a tip for future unboxings, you might want to keep either a ultity knife and a pair of scissors near you to help open up all the shrink wrap parts of the games, especially when the game has a lot of cards in shrink wrap, too.

[@JonGetsGames]

I'm glad you enjoyed this one. I will say that we actually experimented last year with doing "learn while playing" style while playing a game with others and it REALLY flopped. It was super hard for everyone to get into the vibe of the game when I kept stopping things to explain, and it felt like a pretty solitary experience for the other players who were constantly waiting for the teach interludes to end. The vibe was just completely off and it wasn't fun for any of us, and if it's not fun for us then it won't seem fun to watch either (also we won't get around to doing things that aren't fun like that).

[@MuztabaAhmed]

Dare I say it, I like your style way better than before you play. Please do this more. And I’m subbing to you patrion first ever for me. Just to see those extra content. Haha

[@JonGetsGames]

We are planning on making more like this, though it will likely be sporadic due to logistical challenges.

[@christianbank393]

I hope I can get my hands on this someday!

[@babydemon90]

Oh, I remember playing this online somewhere, it was fun. No idea where to find it in person though.

[@JonGetsGames]

It's really tough to find a copy right now. I don't even have my own copy, this one is Anastasia's!

[@mazmo_]

I really like your little bowls! I need to find the same!

[@JonGetsGames]

I love them for filming, though they are slightly small for gaming with others, depending on the components of the game I suppose. That being said, you can get them here if you like: www.amazon.com/dp/B08L55Y1N3?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

[@nuuqbgg]

That punching was impressive

[@dreamofempire2114]

Looks like a very enjoyable game. Hard to find a copy anywhere though. Hopefully it will get a reprint at some point.

[@JonGetsGames]

Interestingly Anastasia bought this copy only a couple months ago from a European retailer and she did it entirely to get up to the free shipping threshold for Messina 1347. It is a lovely game, I think it really suffered from a bland name and bland table presence. I don't mind the table presence, but I can see why this one didn't really grab hold of people.

[@StevenStJohn-kj9eb]

I was surprised you didn’t use the temple action earlier. (Steve meant to type palace.)

[@JonGetsGames]

In retrospect there are many things I'd have done differently when playing this. During the edit I kept thinking "gah why did I do that?!"

[@StevenStJohn-kj9eb]

@@JonGetsGames The unseen danger of making 2-player playthroughs on your channel. If you lose, you have to relive the loss in slow motion during editing!

[@JonGetsGames]

Hehe absolutely, though I did find it entertaining in a horror movie "Don't open that door!" kind of way :P

[@jeffhiatt1682]

at 28:00 Did Anastasia need to pay for the 2 pillars?

[@JonGetsGames]

Yeah, I did a "fast forward" through it probably too quickly there so it was easily missed. She turned in a 5 and took a 1 back.

[@jeffhiatt1682]

@@JonGetsGames i wondered if that might be the case. I was trying to see what the coin totals were but couldnt keep it straight in my head. thanks for checking.