Parks | Shelfside Review

[@draheim90]

I appreciate you mentioning the suboptimal insert. This game gets a lot of praise for its insert but I had the same issues as you did, basically couldn’t get things to fit perfectly without some lid lift and whenever I opened the game there were components everywhere, even when I tried to be careful. You also hit on several other things I felt about the game. It was too long at 4-5p for what it is. The resources/parks were *too* balanced, incentivizing just maximizing how many trails you visit every season. I believe I also houseruled to have the Lookout tile show up early in my games to make the game more interesting, and also the Nightfall expansion helped too. But for me, the cons outweighed the pros and the theme/aesthetics didn’t do enough to save it because of how much of a dry and boring resource converter it is underneath the hood. So even with the expansion this didn’t last too long in my collection.

[@bassmaestro1628]

16:45 haha, We picked this up last week from the local game shop and the employee legit said he didn't realize this was a game, he thought it was a puzzle.

[@CollectionTHX1138]

Good overview and review. Detailed. It’s good you based it on playing it a lot. I watched the entire thing as a result so here’s my personal typical detailed comments. It's rare I do it on a video. But often on BGG. Good you showed the B&N insert. That’s what people keep asking about on BGG. I was doing a solo video which was going to show that. B&N is out of stock though. True about the punch boards they come out easy yet don’t fall out when you pick them up. They have a nice satin finish. The Tarot-sized cards are pronounced ‘Teh row’ like Margot Robbie. And don’t we wish she came with the game. A favorite game Dead Man’s Doubloons uses that size to good effect. Racoon’s are Trash Panda’s I never heard that and I can’t unhear it lol I agree the rulebook isn’t the best. I would imagine those are difficult to write especially for a smaller company and you wonder if they hire good editors sometimes. I’ve read too many that are unclear or the pagination is incorrect. A book always starts the cover as page one for example. Players on BGG are making custom token trackers like a backpack graphic so you know how many you have up to 12 since you exchange them often. It’s a basic concept but worth noting that visiting parks often also frees up resources for that limitation. Their instruction about putting punchboards underneath the tray works for the KS not the B&N. The KS/Retail box is deeper. The token misprint they said is due to deciding they wanted to change the quantity after the printing. I was shortchanged a forest. You have to pay for them if you want more! I play solo so it doesn’t matter. Taking the camera does feel like stealing it. Your assault is nicely illustrated lol And hey you use an actual film camera like the game does! I sold my Minolta a long time ago to an appreciative buyer. Wish I would have kept it for posterity’s sake. It’s debatable how many 1 pt photos to go for. What's your average? Your cons are legitimate. But I guess at some point the designer can only explain their logic so much. I agree about the Gear card engine being fun to string actions together but not practical to win the game. It seems canteens are more useful. I hardly ever get the year bonus in solo play. The season of growth is easier than the others. Keymaster completely replaced the year bonus card with the new Nightfall KS expansion which adds some with immediate action and added Camping mechanic in addition to campfires which could be interesting. I backed it thru my FLGS. It’ll be released in Sep 2020. The other visiting a park rule is that you can blind draw the top card of the parks deck. I would do that late game if I don’t have enough resources and/or the point values are too high as a result. I take a chance something manageble will be drawn. Reserving can also be cutthroat if you pay attention to which resources someone is gathering you can surmise which park they’re going after or you just might take it and then they find out lol One thing I’d explain in my video is that seasons aren’t winter spring summer and fall they’re just a thematic rounds. But it doens’t seem anyone questions that. I like the season card abilities which I don’t think you mentioned. Such as adding resources to parks cards or a sunshine discount buying gear etc. I was also going to do the houserule before you said it that the Lookout tile is added in the first round. That’s a powerful tile that duplicates the end tile. It should be noted except for gear sunshine discounts. Interesting adding a reserve a parks tile houserule. I use about 2-6 wildlife tokens for flexiblity. However it helps if you get the canteen card that lets you do that. I keep one hiker hanging back in a solo game. Overall interesting (I use that word a lot but it's true of your observations) the more you just went for wooden tokens and didn’t worry about building an engine with cards the better you did. The first few games I didn't go for gear at all. It's one of those things you have to see it action to get what gear can do. Also worth noting sunshine and water are in abundant supply compared to mountains and forests. And wildlife can't fill canteens or buy gear. How many parks on average did you visit to score 30+ points and the player count about 10 cards with a lot of 2-3pt? And how many photos on average? Have you played the solo mode? Those instructions aren't as clear as they could be or maybe I just assumed they meant something they didn't. I'd have to explain it in a video. I don’t care for worker placement games because it seems like work. But Parks disguises that. I like exciting Ameritrash games. LoWD is also an exception which is fun with the corruption. As an aside BGG players figured out which LowD base game cards to take out that are redundant to the SoSP expansion cards but I end up just replacing most of them with SoSP to get corruption in the game more often. So out of curiosity how do you handle removing cards from the base game to add cards from SoSP. Do you do it randomly per the rules or use the BGG guides? of which there’s about three BGG player’s suggestions that are similar.

[@Shelfside]

Oh my god you’re a real one for putting up an entire review up on our comments lmao I’ll just go one by one and answer anything I see with a question mark in order, top to bottom. Average would I guess be like in the ballpark of like 3, but I don’t think average is good to go by since pics depends greatly on the game, I’ve had as low as no pics and upwards of 14 in one game where first round buying gear had a discount cause of year, and I started with the camera and went HAM on taking pics cause I had 2 2 wide angle lenses. Players don’t often contest the camera much if it doesn’t have anything to do with their year bonus since 2 resources for 1 pic is rather expensive not just for resources but also opportunity cost. For parks count, I mostly see our table getting 7-10 parks since everyone tends to go hard on the abundance strategy. These are mostly comprised of 3-5 pointers. When you don’t play the game solo you’re never on a clock because of rangers, so obviously if players wanna maximize points they’re all going to take their time. Also in multiplayer, parks never get removed for the round like they do in solo, which is why everyone’s able to consistently just stock up on whatever and just buy whatever comes up that has the highest point value since there’s always 3 options, so something’s bound to line up, especially since seasons constantly just give people more resources and discounts. I didn’t find the solo to be unclear at all once I started playing. When initially reading I didn’t have a good picture of what was going on but it clicked once everything was setup and moving. Keymaster seems to have a problem of not explaining things in a nice, progressing order and so you end up with details about mechanisms you don’t understand until you read further. This bit doesn’t answer any questions but I just want to point out that generally in solo, I’d be getting the 25-29 point range pretty often because there’s definitely a big luck factor imo. Games where the rangers constantly trigger events that don’t affect you I do really well on (30+ points), same with them randomly taking their time or if they double down on the same space when reaching the end. The fact that in solo gear and parks are constantly being limited, plus the fact that you’re on an actual timer makes it so that your point average is definitely going to be lower than if you’re playing multiplayer with dudes who are going for the high score. I was personally pretty annoyed with my scores in single player because it felt like my score was too heavily impacted by ranger randomness, not even including whether or not the lookout tile came out early (early lookouts generally cause higher point games in general). Though, I still appreciate how it was designed since there’s a good deal of thought you put into counter playing the rangers positioning and their events. Also, reserving in multiplayer never felt cutthroat enough because half the time the new park revealed would also be purchasable, and the opportunity cost of not visiting usually just means you lost out in points to people who exclusively visit (exceptions made for getting discounted journals, which just help greatly with constantly visiting). This is why I brought up the point in the video about people in our group usually only reserving if they really fucked up and didn’t get enough resources to visit something. For the last question about lords, unfortunately, I actually don’t know! I don’t own the game and someone else always sets it up whenever I play, but I’ve never heard them talk about this so I’m assuming they just shuffle in the skull port cards with removing base game cards because I never recall seeing them remove cards.

[@3MBG]

Sharp review this. Great camera work and presentation. I find the difference between the recommender review and personal review a little odd. But i get what you're trying to here. Nice job

[@Shelfside]

Yea we write all our reviews to try to both be critical and personal so you can see more of our thought process, but this one probably came out a little weird since Ashton didn't play the game enough to have his own personal score -Daniel

[@3MBG]

@@Shelfside Fair. I personally have barely enough time to get in a review bit, let alone two of them :)

[@Jilktube]

Great review, guys. This is the second review I’ve watched, and I like your review system.

[@fightingkitchen7960]

Is the nightfall expantion good

[@raodvanlaontotaoke4993]

I love this review. It is calming and very informative. There are also other reviewers who have great reviews but they often sound rushed.

[@Shelfside]

Glad it was helpful!

[@triskelionfaerie6605]

Very cool review. I just bought Parks a couple of days ago at my local Barnes and Noble.

[@Shelfside]

Thanks! If you got the same version as us, man that metal triangular token is awesome -Ashton

[@NATOnova]

Nice review. Im planning on getting parks so I can hopefully play with my dad who's not into gaming but enjoys hiking and visiting national parks

[@Shelfside]

nice! Yeah this game is definitely pretty non-gamer friendly, he might even whoop you with a couple of plays under his belt -Ashton

[@bobbyshipman6824]

Hey! Seeing this review a bit late, but I agree that it's a great light worker placement type game. I did have a quick question, have you tried your house rule of the visit a park/buy a gear card being the first tile to go out? Did it break the game balance at all, because I love that idea. We mostly avoid gear cards because like you mentioned, it ends up taking an action where we could be purchasing a park, but I feel like that's a whole part of the game we're missing out on!

[@Shelfside]

Well we've never made it into an actual house rule cause we kinda stopped playing after making this review haha, but to answer your question, think about any games of Parks you've played where the lookout tile came out first! It's still balanced for sure, but you'll probably notice some inflation where everyone scores more points than normal because everyone's buying power increases so much. I always remember those games the most because they're always the ones where, like I said in the review, weird dumb stuff is happening and gear is actually a thing haha. So if that sounds fun to you, then go for it! If you'd rather keep that as something that happens only 25% of the time then play with the normal rules, though it sounds like you also want to mess around with gear more so I have a feeling you'll try this one out lol

[@mistuhbear]

Fantastic review and breakdown of the core mechanics/issues - I can't wait for the fuckin expansion to just add diversity to the play. It's gonna be spicy af

[@Assie8911]

I just found out your channel.really loving it.Could you do a review if Everdell some time in the future.would appreciate it. Keep up the good work.

[@Shelfside]

I remember playing 1 game with friends right before lockdown hit and haven't touch Everdell since lol. It's on the list to play for sure though, and definitely gonna touch on the solo mode since I've read tons of people saying it's one of the best solo games -Daniel

[@browe]

So helpful, so valuable. Great job!

[@SmallTarkus]

Good video!

[@CandBT]

ME TAKE PHOTO

[@massfarmer818]

Cringe

[@Johji92]

How?

[@bastianvillebro6420]

No u

[@fightingkitchen7960]

Huh?