Big Easy Busking goes Live on Kickstarter May 14, here’s the link
Interesting choices, great gameplay and a super unique theme, what’s not to love? It’s another great game from Weird Giraffe Games, and we’re gonna check it out.
Let’s start with the theme. So Big Easy is pretty easy to figure out, but what is Busking? If you’re like me, and I’m even from the South, you had to look that one up. Turns out it means Street Performance. So this game is about Street Musicians performing in New Orleans.
If you’ve never been to New Orleans, and you should go by the way, then you may not understand some of the choices that were made in making this game. First off, let’s talk about the art on the cards. The cool vibrant art fits right in and immediately reminds you of New Orleans. Also the theme fits because every time I’ve been to New Orleans, there have always been plenty of Street Performers, maybe too many. Anyway it’s great.
But enough about the theme, let’s talk for a minute about the game. Basically, this is an area control game. You and your competing Street Musicians are vying for the attention of the crowd at various locations throughout New Orleans. You will choose different songs from your own catalog to perform, depending on the mood of the crowd.
You might also choose to play some well known standard. Crowds love the oldies but goodies, right? Whoever garners the most recognition at each location gets some cash. You can use your money to tip your performers (inspiring them with more energy to perform) or you can purchase new songs to learn. Crowds don’t like the same songs over and over.
You get to rest up between rounds and get your energy back, but next round there will be more locations than before, with different moods, so you better learn some new songs and use your energy and money wisely, otherwise you will not be able to compete as well.
The winner of the game is the player who has the most money at the end of 3 rounds. You can try to just hoard your money and never spend it, but like most things, in this game you have to spend money to make money.
There are 2 ways to receive money from performing at a location. If you play a song whose mood matches the crowd’s mood, you can leave all of your Energy Cubes used by Musicians that performed at that location on the card. This will immediately score you $1. The Energy Cubes will also count towards your total when the card is scored at the end of the round. This is the other way to get money.
At the end of the round, whoever has the most Energy Cubes left on the location card will score the 1st Place Payout. You can also get money at this point even if you didn’t have the majority. As long as you had more energy cubes than the minimum shown on the Threshold Limit. Everyone who has more Energy Cubes than the Threshold Limit can score this payout. It is even possible (and usually probable) that the winner of the 1st Place Payout will also receive the Threshold Limit payout. Win win!
Each player will receive a card that shows your Musicians on it, a drummer, a saxophonist and a trumpet player. These icons are also represented on every song card, including the Standards. On the song card there is a number next to each Instruments Icon that tells you how much Energy you need to spend by that Musician in order to play that song.
Some songs are take more Energy from your Trumpet player, others are heavy on Drums. You start the game with 4 Energy cubes on each Musician and spend them throughout each round, starting the next round again with the same 12 Energy. You can always spend $1 to tip your Musician to give them 1 more Energy cube from your reserve, but there are only 3 of these.
During each round you will be playing songs for the crowd by choosing a card and placing the needed Energy cubes from your Band card onto the song card and placing it in front of the Crowd card for everyone to see.
At the beginning of the next round, you will finish playing the song, and make your choice as to what to do with your Energy. If you decide to go all in on this particular crowd you can commit all of the Energy used for that card to the Location card, in essence, playing your heart out for this particular crowd. You get $1 bonus for doing this, but you do not get to use these Energy cubes again this round. The cubes stay on the card for scoring at the end of the round. This only happens, of course, if you play a song that fit the Mood of the crowd. If you didn’t, then you can’t get the bonus, no matter how many cubes you commit to the location. There is also a Wild Mood symbol that counts for matching any Mood symbol on the Crowd cards. I like to think of these songs as the kind that everybody loves and always wants to hear.
If you weren’t feeling this crowd, or maybe they weren’t into your music, you can choose to redistribute your Energy cubes back to your Musicians so that you can play another song. This Energy can be split in any way onto your Band card, whichever way will most benefit you for playing another song you have yet to play this round, or on any of the Standards.
You can also choose not to play a song on your turn, but instead purchase a new song from the market to add to your repertoire. But, you have to do something. If you can no longer play a song or buy a new song, you must pass and you are done for the round. Once everyone passes, the round ends and you move on to scoring. You pay out the majority for each Location and the Threshold Limit payouts for each Location and then you start the next round.
So, spend your energy wisely, play the right songs and collect the most money from the crowds and you can be the winner.
Okay, so that’s a really brief (kinda) rundown of the rules, but really it doesn’t take much more than that to understand the game and get started.
So what do we think about Big Easy Busking?
First off, let me say that this game should win points for the color palette chosen. Colorful, and true to the theme and setting. The look of the game truly encapsulates the feeling of a trip to New Orleans.
But more importantly, how does it play?
At its heart this is an area control game. If you have more tokens on a certain card than I do, you are going to score the most points. But in this game, you don’t have to win the cards to stay in the game. You can also get money by committing enough Energy cubes to the card to pass the Threshold Limit. So, if your friend Carla has already committed way too many Energy cubes to a certain location and you know you have no way to win that card, you can still commit some Energy Cubes there and win some cash, even though you have no way of winning the majority. This allows for some interesting decisions throughout the game.
Since you can also only play each song once per round, the game forces you to build up your repertoire, or pay money ($1 or $2) to play Standards during the later rounds to keep up with other players.
Especially during 2 player games, you will find yourself needing to tip you Musicians to gain more energy to play more songs to stay in the competition. There were some 3 and 4 player games where I didn’t find this quite as necessary, but I didn’t win those either, so maybe I was too focused on hoarding my cash. So, again…spend some to win some.
This is not a heavy game. There are, as I said before, some interesting choices, but I never really felt like my brain was melting, and that is a very very good thing. I love small box games that play in less than an hour, and this one certainly fits the bill. You always feel like you have something to do, and never feel like you are too far behind in the game. Even in the games that I lost, I felt like there was a chance that I was going to come from behind and win. I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy myself, I really did.
I can see myself pulling this one out at the beginning or end of the night, or if I just have time for a quick game. I don’t know that I will put it in front of heavy gamers, since I think they will not really get as much out of it, but that’s not my usual crowd anyway. So if you want a fun, relatively quick game with a super unique theme, try this one out. I think you’ll like it.
Big Easy Busking goes Live on Kickstarter May 14, here’s the link.
Weird Giraffe Games sent us a copy of Big Easy Busking in exchange for an Honest review which is exactly what we provided.