Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
Debrief: Silos...Cows, Aliens, and Mind Control
Aliens have landed, and they're hunting the most intelligent species on Earth—cows! Welcome to the wonderfully weird world of Silos, where Bitewing Games has transformed Reiner Knizia's overlooked Municipium into a delightfully quirky strategic experience.
Clay and Travis pull back the curtain on this alien invasion adventure, exploring how players navigate human society in disguise while collecting specimens for experimentation. The game's brilliant twist? Your alien scientists have determined that bovines, not humans, are actually Earth's intellectual superiors, making them valuable wild cards in your collection efforts.
We break down the elegantly simple yet deeply strategic gameplay, where positioning your aliens for influence across town locations becomes crucial for triggering mind control events and UFO abductions. The shared action deck creates a fascinating mini-game of timing and anticipation, as players carefully track played cards to maximize their opportunities. With dual-sided alien meeples showing both their true forms and human disguises, plus charming details like cowboy hats and diplomas that boost your influence, the production brings this zany premise brilliantly to life.
Bitewing deserves special recognition for their approach to reimagining classics. Rather than simply refreshing already-popular titles, they've rescued games that perhaps missed their moment, giving them the thematic and production treatment they deserve. Clay confidently declares Silos his favorite Bitewing production yet—high praise considering their growing catalog of Knizia revivals.
Looking for something that blends area control and set collection with a healthy dose of humor and strategic depth? Grab your cowboy hat, polish your spaceship, and join us as we explore why Silos might be the perfect addition to your next game night.
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Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast. We're back and better than ever. Joining me, as always, the Elliot of the podcast, clayton Gable. How are you doing, clay?
Speaker 2:I'm doing awesome. Is that a reference to something I should know about that's relevant to this particular game?
Speaker 1:well, et, that was the closest.
Speaker 2:Oh, and we just watched that the other day I hadn't seen et since I was maybe five or six five or six and it's okay, I wouldn't go out of my way for it, it's.
Speaker 1:I remember it being super scary, but I have not watched it in probably 15 years. But yeah, okay, it was probably scary as a you know, 10 year old. Well, uh, you guessed it. Today we're talking silos, the Reiner Canizia reboot of what. What did it?
Speaker 2:revamp Municipium. Go ahead and click on Municipium real quick. Municipium this is what it was before. For the listeners. We are gazing upon one of the most obscure looking covers I've ever seen in a board game obscure looking covers I've ever seen in the board game. I think the theme is you're in ancient Rome vying for societal power in this municipium. It's. It's a theme.
Speaker 1:It is a theme, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the, the good folks at bite wing though they have, they've been making a name for themselves on taking these older, unpolished gems of dr reiner kinesia, splashing them with a fresh coat of paint, a theme that might be more interesting than what I. I've played Municipium, so I'm not going to crap on it too hard, but I will say, at first blush, this cover looks amazing and the theme is, instead of vying for ancient Rome power, in the Municipium you're aliens landed on Earth. You're trying to blend in with society and collect different groups of humans for experimentation, but mainly you want cows, because those are the most intelligent life forms on earth. So it's got.
Speaker 1:it's got a zany theme and it's a lot of fun before we jump into all this, just looking at the box art, I have sat there and stared at this box art for a while now and I just now realized that at the bottom they have all these, you know, citizens they've got doctors and lawyers and graduates and all this stuff but then you have aliens that are kind of sprinkled in amongst those people and they're like trying their best to behave like humans, like the. The graduate, the person with the graduate cap, is actually an alien, and I never realized that previously yeah, and it another kudos to the bitewing production team.
Speaker 2:You're like alien figures that you're putting out on the board. There's one side of them that shows a human and then the back side of it shows your alien figure that is disguising itself as a human to blend in around town. That's so yeah, it's awesome. And not to mention, your leader alien figure gets to wear a cowboy hat. So just that's freaking sweet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so tell me about the rules to set up the play.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the rules of this game.
Speaker 2:It is a straightforward game, but I don't know if it was a rule book or what have you, but it might have been laid out just in a weird way that it was not clicking really, when I was like going through the rules for it a little. It's a little convoluted. Yeah, you know it talks about power, events and things, but really at the end of the day, you're vying for influence in the different locations around town and on your turn you can move your alien figures two spaces, or one figure one space and another figure one space and then you either play a random power card or common card, I don't know what they call them. You play a random card from a shared deck or you play one of your three faction cards and everybody has of your three faction cards and everybody has the three same faction cards and they're super powerful because you know what they are and you can time it just right to have these goals. But that's it. That's your turn.
Speaker 2:Where the meat of the game comes in is the locations. Have these different actions on them. So there was one location, location like the newsstand Broad strokes in the game. I said at the beginning you're trying to collect different groups of humans. It's a set collection game. So to turn in your humans for some societal power, you have to have a set of every type of human which is a purple human, green human, orange human and white human, and those stand for the different kind of professions in human society government operators, public influencers, politicians and professionals. So when you get a full set of those four types of humans, you can turn them in for a societal power emblem and the first person to get five of those wins the game. So basically, all this is just to collect humans first. The five sets yeah, five sets of humans.
Speaker 2:And cows are wild because, again, they are the most coveted species on planet earth. They can be government officials yes, absolutely. They run laps around us in terms of brain power. So the one location, the newsstand or news station it made it so that when that location activated, whoever has and it's all based on whoever has the most influence there. So if you have the most influence in location, you have the power to take advantage of that location action.
Speaker 2:So at the new station, when that power activates, you can turn in three of any type of human. They don't have to be different sets, different colors. They can all be the same. You can turn in three of whatever you got and you can get one of these societal power emblems. So that's just like an example of one of the things you can do at these locations. There's ones that let you take humans from here or there, but essentially each location has a space on it for a ufo abduction. So the ufo abduction spot has a cow always and then a random human from the bag for three and four player yes, I, I played two players.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, go ahead two players.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, go ahead Two players, only a cow, and then three and four player gets the additional human.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I played twice at three players, so that's good to know about the two player differences. And then there is the focus group section of the location. So this is a spot. It holds up to three humans in it and most locations have. Every location can have orange humans. I think the politicians they infiltrate everywhere and then they have another color that goes out there. So you know, this location might have green and orange and this one might have purple and orange, have green and orange and this one might have purple and orange. But as soon as the three spaces in that focus group fill up, you immediately have what they call a mind control event and this allows again whoever has the most influence in that location. When that mind control event goes off, they get to take two of the humans and whoever has the second most maybe not the way it is in the two player game but in a three or four player game whoever has second most gets the leftover human.
Speaker 1:And then I think it's two in one for two player.
Speaker 2:Okay, so same. Yeah, okay, so you got your abduction site, you got your your focus group, and then you have the location action and those are like kind of the three things that you're kind of paying attention to at these different locations. So the different power cards that you might be playing, the easiest one to understand is the UFO abduction and it's the most common one in the deck. So when you flip over the ufo abduction, the alien spaceship goes one space forward on its little ufo track and then you have an abduction event at that site. So you know, if you happen to be the person that was had the most influence in that site, you get your cow.
Speaker 2:The other person if you're playing three or four players gets the random person put out there and then that's that. And so as these cards come out of the common deck, you kind of place them around the board so you can see what's been played and you can kind of know what might be coming next, because there's only maybe 15 cards or so in this deck. So it's not that hard to keep track of and you can kind of time it right, you know if you're it's your turn and you can see. You know all the cards that you might want to have been played have been played already and you might not want to draw from the deck because it could only stand to benefit someone else.
Speaker 1:If we can pause for a second. I found that to be one of the most interesting parts about this game is that that deck of those common actions, the common decks or whatever it was. There's so few cards in there that it's really easy to keep track of what has come out and what has not, and playing the timing of that deck becomes a game in itself. Like you only have your three cards to play, you're kind of card counting, as they're laid out around this outside of the board to figure out when is the right time to like, spring that next action or to take that next step. And I thought that was that's like a game within a game, and I really, really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I didn't appreciate it as much the first time I played as I did the second time and it all started coming together and you're like, okay, I got to time this right so that I have influence over here, because I know that alien abduction event is going to happen and I want to be able to get two of these stinking humans instead of one. Really cool stuff. Another type of event that's in the common deck is a I forget what it's called a marked specimen. So basically you just pass the bag of humans around person to person and you pull one out at random and then you can place it in one of the focus groups and again, when that focus group area fills up, you trigger that mind control event. So it gives you a lot of power. When you get a chance to place those humans in focus groups, you want to find a spot where you might be able to benefit from that, and then the other type of card basically activates a power, for everybody gets to activate a power where they have the most influence. So if you have the most influence in six spots, you get to pick one of those spots and activate the location's power, and everybody does that around the table and then there's one card in the deck and there's only one of them that when it's drawn you go around all six locations and activate every location's ability, which can be exciting you get to really pop off some cool events but also kind of slows the game down a little bit, but it only happens once every 20 turns, so it's not that big of a deal. And then, like you said, travis, the timing of it, because you do have those three cards. You get three cards that you know what they're going to do and once you play them, you can't play them again. What they're going to do and you can. Once you play them, you can't play them again. So finding the right time to play your special cards is also an important consideration of the game, because you have one that lets you pull four humans out of the bag and put them out in focus groups, and so as you're doing that, you can really I mean pulling four out you have a good chat of triggering a mind control event and being able to work that out so that you get two humans and somebody else only gets one. Yeah, ufo sighting. That basically lets you pick your time when you want that abduction event to happen. Again, you can set yourself up. If I know I'm going to use that card, I get my two movements before I can go ahead and converge into a location, play my UFO sighting, move the ship, get my cow, get on with life.
Speaker 2:Then the last card that is specific to a person is the your Powers, which lets you exert all the power events in the locations where you have the most influence. So that's kind of what you're doing here. You're going around, everybody's moving, playing either a card from the common deck or a card from your three that you have and being the first one to get five. I only played there. In the rule book it says if you want a shorter game, play the four. Yeah, and I played the four both times and I thought it was appropriate. It was probably like 45 minutes for a three player game. Yeah, I don't know that. I would want to go much longer on this. I think you get what you you want out of it in that timeframe. So maybe I'll try it at the five societal power game end.
Speaker 1:But uh, you know, for now the four seemed like a pretty good experience yeah, I think the the only thing that you did not hit on is the town hall in the middle of the whole board, and the more people that you put out there in the town hall, the higher priority in turn order you take correct.
Speaker 2:That is true. And also, if there's a tie at a location, the higher priority you have there, the better. You get to go first and there's definitely ties.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but also, especially in a two-player game, there are a lot of ties, so that town hall becomes super important. It's also important because the UFO will never go there, and so you're always balancing do I want to compete for that next person, or do I want to back up my forward troops, so to speak, or those aliens that are out at these different locations, by jockeying for position in the event of a tie? And that's like a, a constant push and pull on where you want to spend your alien meeples which are, you know, by the way, those alien meeples. Oh, yeah, uh. But yeah, it's like man, what? Where do I allocate that next alien? Well, how do I like jockey for position or a priority?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, man, such tight decision making in this one, I like it yeah, and then there's also a way at one of the locations I mentioned, your leader gets a cowboy hat which makes them worth one and a half influence wherever they are. But there's also a location maybe it's called the it would make sense if it's a university because when you activate that power, the person with the most influence there gets to put a diploma hat or a graduation cap on their alien meeple. And now that guy's worth two, which is super helpful. Like you put that person somewhere and they're doing double duty. So a lot of interesting stuff.
Speaker 2:And you know, again, the turns are, for the most part, unless you trigger one of those, hey, everybody do a power or do all the powers. Turns are pretty snappy and I think, I think it more plays is gonna like make it even more evident, like when the timing's right to do different things, because you know, trying to get sets of the four different types of humans was also interesting, because you know some locations are more prone to having the certain colors and just, you know, trying to figure out where to be and when, uh, you know you can't just hang out with your aliens in one spot the whole game, or you're not going to get the, the right distribution of human people to turn through your power that's right, uh, okay, so give me like your general impressions of this one like what do you think is it one of reiner's better games like?
Speaker 1:or your general impressions after two plays yeah, I had two plays.
Speaker 2:I first play, I like I said I read the rule book, I watched the videos and just like something about the, the way it was laid out just wasn't clicking. It seemed more convoluted than it turned out to be in practice, like, but once I got into it I was like, okay, this is pretty slick. It's, you know, random. At times you're drawing cards off the top of the deck. It could work out. It could not, but I like that and I like the interaction. Like there's never a time where what somebody else was doing wasn't interesting because they very well could draw the card off the top of the deck. That lets everybody activate a power and you know, now I get to do something cool and it was your turn. So, yeah, there's it's engaging the whole time. Um, it's cool, like trying to figure out where you want to be.
Speaker 2:Like I said, and I I don't know if I would go so far as to say it's one of his best games. I know it's one I'm eager to keep playing. Yeah, I, you know, I I saw, you know, the dice tower. They kind of were tough on this game, but I don't, I don't know, I I'm trying to, you know, put myself in the critical mindset here and think you know what, what there's not to like about it? I know, travis, you said you were fumbling your way through it and quit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean life nowadays is a little, uh, tough to get 45 minute game sessions in. But um, yeah, I mean we played like half a round and then had baby meltdown, so it was just kind of like we got a sense of the rules. I just want to kind of feel it out a little bit. I really enjoyed the tight decision-making. I really enjoyed, you know, kind of the card-counting aspect of it. Like, after a couple turns it's really, I mean, you flip through the deck once you know what's in there. There's not that many cards in that deck and even for new people you're not at that significant of an advantage as long as when you're teaching this, you show the people the cards and you say, look at all these cards, these are the ones that are available. This is what they do, and they know that that next thing is coming.
Speaker 1:I think you can really level the playing field for new players. I don't think there's all that much of a curve in terms of experience being better than newbies. But yeah, my hot take right now, especially since they're ByteWing is doing this big re-implementation of old Reiner games is that this is what movie studios are doing. They're going back and they're like remaking all of these great movies that have fond childhood nostalgia. Looking at you, disney. I think movie studios need to take this approach where they take movies that could have been good and just maybe have missed the mark, maybe needed different casting or put some new paint on it and make it new and make it fun and make it relevant again.
Speaker 1:And I love that bite wing is doing this. I love that they're going back and taking these games that, like you know, you look at, what is it? Millennium, not Municipium. Look at Municipium and it's like 6.7 on BGG and might have just been too drab to be noticed. Maybe it wasn't the right time, I don't even know who published that one, but they take these old games that might not have gotten the love that they probably deserve and they bring them up and they elevate them and they throw some gorgeous artwork on there. Maybe they control f, replace the rule book. Maybe that's why it's so uh, convoluted and kind of hard to follow, but I, I believe that bitewing probably did their due justice and their due diligence on, you know, bringing this thing up to their standards, and I, I think it's great. I, I love this game, I'm excited.
Speaker 2:I I have not played the other ones yet, uh, ego and orbit being the other two, but man silos is uh right up my alley how I get yeah, I I maybe tamped down my excitement a little bit just because I only did play it twice, but after that play I was really high on this game and I will say it has been my favorite game that Bitewing has done so far. Oh, yeah. Favorite of any Bitewing. Favorite of any Bitewing.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know I played Orbit once, twice and then Ego I've played. You know Beowulf the Legend. Yeah, I'm excited to play Ego. I've played, you know Beowulf the Legend. I'm excited to play Ego and try it out. But this one I really dug. This has been a home run for me in terms of a re-implementation and, yeah, like you said, if you guys do get this stuff, it is cool. In their rule books when they do these re-implementations, they put like a whole page in the back that kind of talks about the thought process they went through when they were looking at this game. You know from a publisher's perspective and how they could make it better and you know the different tweaks they did to it. I think one of them is that part that you and I both alluded to. Liking is having the cards that have been played stacked around the outside of the board so that you can, like easily track what's been what's been played before. So you know a lot, of, a lot of cool stuff yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1:I don't have a whole lot bad to say about it right now. I haven't. I haven't played it as much as you have. I know that between us we only have two and a half plays, but it's enough to get a feel for it, and we trust ByteWing, we trust Reiner. So, yeah, this is a good one and one to check out. If you are looking for something unique, maybe a unique theme, or maybe you just have a hole in your area. Control set collection gap, heck yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, this has been Silos by Bitewing Games and we have been Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clay and we are out Outro Music.
