Adrian: 0:42

Welcome to Whose turn is it anyway, a podcast all about our gaming group and of course the board games we've played and we've played a few over the last few days. My name is Adrian and I'm joined by other players including Kerley.

Kerley: 0:52

Hello everyone,

Adrian: 0:53

JP,

JP: 0:54

I'm knackered

Adrian: 0:55

and Davey.

JP: 0:56

Hello. Hello.

Adrian: 1:03

In this expansion episode, we're going to talk about the amazing weekend we've just had at Gridcon. I am absolutely knackered but have that warm post convention glow. How's everyone else doing?

Davey: 1:13

Yeah, yeah, I slept well last night. Had numbers appearing in my my head and moving pieces around again. Thinking, I could do this or I could do this. But no, it was good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lots of games played games.

Kerley: 1:30

Yeah, absolutely loved. It had a great time. I was kind of glad it ended a little bit earlier than I was expecting. I don't know about you guys, but it was like an excuse to like, okay, now I need to decompress. Because I think it'd be gone on till 11 o'clock. I'd probably stayed till 11 And I would have probably regret it to be fair. It was great.

JP: 1:47

Yeah, kinda went on. I need to wrap this up now so I can see my family I've not seeing for two days. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?

Davey: 1:54

It was really Yeah, it was it was played more games than we did at the UKGE Yeah.

JP: 2:02

Probably more than we played within a week. Yeah, back to back gaming, which is quite a rare thing to have the opportunity to kind of do isn't it, and just kind of sit and go right play this game. Oh, my God. Yeah. was great. Next.

Davey: 2:19

Next, and lots of new games. As I say that's what I was really nice. There's lots of games. Yeah, that I've been wanting to play in try out and we're able to get to the table.

JP: 2:29

Yeah, some of the Essen releases that have come out this year. Yeah. Privileged to try, and even stuff that's not even out yet. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute.

Adrian: 2:47

So for those who don't know, Gridcon is a three day event hosted by Paul Grogan from gaming rules they upgraded to Taunton from Tiverton, yeah, got a bigger hotel, are able to fit more people in. Across the weekend there were several gaming rooms, a library of games, including a hot games library, which you say were games that come from Essen. Paul ran demos pretty much solidly all weekend. I don't think he actually stopped to play anything for himself. He just demo'ed games all weekend

JP: 3:14

He was handcuffed to that table. He was never allowed to leave. I'm not sure he slept to be honest. I've gotta demo all these games for everyone. Bless him.

Adrian: 3:25

There was a particularly good raffle.

JP: 3:27

I heard it was all right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, effing amazing.

Davey: 3:32

Yeah. It was ridiculous. But the biggest winner was the charity. But yeah,

JP: 3:37

It got to the point where I was mentioned in the raffle to the members of the gaming group and Adrian was like, 'be quiet like slimming down my chances of winning'. Yeah, he was like 'No Shut up'. But no, it was amazing wasn't it? Like the lots they had some of the games I think Frosthaven te pledge was one of the lots

Adrian: 3:55

Hopolomachus Remastered. Yeah, several copies of Cloudspire

JP: 3:58

Just loads of games that have been donated by Mineclash, Chip theory and Eagle Gryphon.

Kerley: 4:03

I was really impressed. There were lots of games like you said, were almost pre release. I know they're out.. Like Frosthaven's out in the US. I think they've started shipping, but certainly nothing over here yet.

Davey: 4:13

Yeah. Solid it was a good haul

Adrian: 4:19

We'll get to that later. All right. And also a bring and buy which was fairly heaped with games, like little small room but almost wall to wall.

Davey: 4:30

Yeah. It was strange walking down, because you're walking into the actual rooms where all the rooms were, I was like, 'is it just in a room? Is there gonna be like a bed there with just some games on it? And I was 'oh no, it's just a cupboard

JP: 4:41

I kind of walked in and then there's like four people in there. And I just felt like I'm kind of in everyone's way. Yeah. And I'd kind of, I don't know, it's just a bit too much. It's like an assault of post it notes and games. I don't know what to do, I need to leave. So deposited a few of my games and I ran away.

Adrian: 4:59

There's a few bargains to be had if you went and rummaged every sort of few hours to see what had been bought in new, so I managed to get a couple of those. So should we start by talking about Friday? Day number one. So I was lucky in the fact that I turned up, was able to turn up at like nine in the morning or whatever it was on Friday. First doors, and managed to get a game of the Great Wall in. So we talked about the Great Wall before, wasn't sure about it, wanted to get it to the table, played with three people I've never met before. And they were great sports, great players and listened to my kind of mangled teach, and we managed to get it all sort of through and done, and we managed to get it into a fairly decent time slot, we would have run over a little bit, but we all had some other games, so we kind of just rushed the last turn a little bit to kind of get through. But they enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed it more than I did my first game, but not enough to hold on to it. So it did go into the bring and buy and I managed to sell it, which is good. But yeah, definitely a better second play. And I'd be up for playing it again, which I didn't think I would have been after the first play.

JP: 5:57

Yeah, it made me laugh because of the WhatsApp message you put. Went 'yeah, played Great Wall, it's in the bring and buy'

Davey: 6:05

What what did you enjoy more this time around?

Adrian: 6:09

I think it was because I like I wanted to try... So last time I tried doing a mix of everything. And this time, I wanted to see if it was such a like 'defend that wall' kind of game. And so I tried to do very little of that, just enough, so I didn't get too much shame. And just build up the walls and see if I could then just run for the end of game stuff. And uh, you couldn't quite, you still had to do a little bit of everything. But I think just understanding it a little bit more. And just... I don't know,

Davey: 6:35

It wasn't so linear as such, because that's one of the things you didn't enjoy about is you thought there was like, kind of only one strategy at the end of the day

JP: 6:45

Like you couldn't broaden your strategy to actually do well, you felt you had to just go down one avenue.

Adrian: 6:49

I still think you have to do... you have to hit certain points, there's going to be no like, I couldn't just build walls. And win. I had to still do a bit of the stuff. So there was a little bit of that sort of handcuffed to what they want you to do. But for the most part, I sort of... I don't know why I just enjoyed it a little bit more. But yet not enough for it to stay in my collection. So

Kerley: 7:09

I think almost all games improved a little bit after the first game. The first game was like, even for people in like learning new games. I think you kind of learn the complexities in that first one. And then you understand a little bit more to do your proper strategies straight from the off maybe. Yeah, I don't know. That's, that's definitely the way I feel.

Davey: 7:26

I agree. I think it's also good when you play against... and another time you play with people that understand the game as well, because usually that means there's a little bit more competition there a little bit more...

JP: 7:40

Competition,

Davey: 7:41

No, variation, in kind of what's going on.

Adrian: 7:44

I will say it did help that probably I think the last time we played was quite late in the evening where I'd had a bit of a naff day. Yeah, and I got to play fresh faced on Friday morning. Excited gaming and all that kind of stuff,

Davey: 7:55

At a convention, with the atmosphere

JP: 7:57

It makes such a big difference. If you think you'd... like you say you've had a shit day, and then you think'I've got set this thing up' or I've got to teach this new game or whatever. And I just wish it wasn't tonight. Yeah, but you do out of the... like the fact that it's been booked in and you do it and yeah, I think it's an interesting one. Probably a good topic in its own right. Isn't it? Just how moods affect your enjoyment of games,

Kerley: 8:20

But not only your mood, but the people you're playing with?

JP: 8:23

Especially when you're me, but

Kerley: 8:26

I wasn't gonna say that. It's true, though. Yeah,

JP: 8:29

Someone comes up grumpy. Right? Yeah. You're gonna bring me down man. You bummed me out.

Adrian: 8:37

Well talk about Sunday later! And then Kerley, you got a few games in on Friday as well.

Kerley: 8:43

Yeah, I've got a couple in, a little bit different to you, I suppose in the fact that I had a rubbish day at work, but then I was still quite keen to sort of get back, get cracking you know? Yeah, so turned up and I want to say we played we played Astra and Lords of Waterdeep basically I can't remember the order because I'm getting old. What can I tell you?

JP: 9:02

I don't know. But I was gonna like, hold you to which one? Which one did you play for? Yeah, no, you didn't!

Kerley: 9:12

I know it's little bit marmite: a lot of people don't like it, but it's one of my favourites probably always will be. Yeah, so loved playing that. That was a nice kind of, you know, break me in and Astra, it was quite interesting on that one, because none of us have played it. And there's not often games that I actually play where no one's played it. No one's watched the video. No one really knows what's going on. So you're kinda really cold.

JP: 9:35

Because you hate doing that? And, Becky hates doing that

Kerley: 9:38

I think because it was me who was doing a lot of the reading from the rulebook, that helped. Okay, so because it was me sort of taking the lead on it a little bit. It did help. Becky had kind of read the rulebook before, cuz she's got it coming soon. On, is it Gamefound or Kickstarter?

JP: 9:53

Nah, she's pre ordered it I think. Directly off a retailer.

Kerley: 9:56

I'll take your word for it, my friend. She has a lot of games these days. I get a bit lost.

JP: 10:01

I know, because I recommend it.

Kerley: 10:02

Yeah, there we go. You're responsible. We'll get to that. So yeah, that was yeah, it was great to sort of go through that reading through that with Becky and, and actually it's the first time... is it Mindclash Play's first game? Because I was really impressed. I don't know if you guys had a chance to have a look at it.

JP: 10:22

Yeah we meant to have a go on the last day. But just ran out of time

Adrian: 10:27

Yeah, I kind of caught the last, because I think it was your last game because I was sort of done with mine, and just waiting for, like to go home basically, because Marcus was still at the table and he was staying at mine. So I kind of watched over your shoulder for like the last half a turn, didn't really know what was going on, but certainly looked interesting.

Kerley: 10:45

Yeah, it's got a lot of depth for what is a relatively light game. I mean, they've, you know, got the exact bullseye for what I think they were aiming for, which is kind of like a medium to light. But with elements of Mindclash to it. Yeah,

Davey: 10:58

I sat next to you guys while you're playing through a game, and asked the odd question, and I think I understand how to play it now. So it wasn't, you know, the fact that I could do that about a Mindclash game says it already.

JP: 11:09

What is it?

Kerley: 11:10

So essentially is a game about constellations. That is essentially what it is. You are looking up at the sky through telescopes, and kind of finding the different constellations. While the crux of the game is that you're sort of looking at the different stars and you're discovering that part of the constellation. And you all do it as a group, but it's the person who finishes that constellation with the last star on that part of the constellation gets to keep the card. And the crux of it is that when you get the card, you get a little power, it's not usually too powerful, but you get a power, you've got the... each constellation has got a different element, for example, Pisces, you can guess what element that is, it's water, right? And that adds up to kind of... you get the different elements to make different combinations for VP's at the end of the game, so it's all kind of... you get... you see that one come up, that happens to be an earth one that's got the exact right power that you want, it's quite easy to complete. And it's like, you know, it's tick tick tick.

Davey: 12:07

It's taken very small amounts from area control, puzzle, and like a deck builder. And very, like with the little powers where you exhaust your card to do that. It was interesting.

Kerley: 12:19

It is really interesting. But yeah, essentially that's what it is. And you know, there are the

resources: 12:22

kind of like a telescope or you know, the actual Stardust which you actually have to have to spend, to actually get a star

Davey: 12:30

One of Mindclashes favourites, those little acrylic Tricarion shards

Kerley: 12:37

These are ever so sligthly small I'll have you know!

JP: 12:40

Are they?

Kerley: 12:40

They're about this big.

JP: 12:41

Okay.

Adrian: 12:42

The game is just lighter,

JP: 12:46

50% smaller than it normally is!

Kerley: 12:48

But no, it was really good fun. I'd recommend it. It's not a deep game. You know, you could probably give... now that I know the rules probably hour and a half I guess for a play. So yeah, it's just a nice kind of middle weight to light. It's good fun

JP: More importantly: 13:00

Did Becky enjoy it?

Kerley: 13:02

Becky loved it. I mean, we all did. Everyone at the table was like, 'Oh, I'm not sure about this' at the start, when it was like constellations and stars. And it's all sounded a little bit too cutesy. But yeah, by the end of the game, we all got into it. There's a definitely a depth to the puzzle on that game. And it made us all go back on the next day and rent it out again, book it out again. And we played again. Nice Saturday morning. It was that good that we wanted to have a go now that we really knew what was going on

Adrian: 13:29

Yeah, Marcus has talked about it a fair bit after we left the con. So he was obviously quite impressed with it. And it's just good to see

JP: 13:35

Hopefully get a game soon. So yeah, yeah,

Adrian: 13:37

I played a few more games that day. So I played Space Base, which is fairly new to my collection, I talked about it or will have talked about it, it will have come out by then. So it's basically roll two dice, you either activate those ships separately. So if I rolled a three and a four I can activate my three ship and four ship separately, or I can activate my seven ship. And as you upgrade ships, the ships that you upgrade from, you can then use them on other people's turns, so if they roll a three and a four and you've just upgraded to your three and four ship, then you can use the three and four on their turn. And you kind of go up through, and it was simple enough game, everyone seemed to enjoy it. It's kind of a bit of a light sort of maybe hour/ hour and a bit game, really enjoyed it, got that to the table again, which is good, then played It's a Wonderful Kingdom. So everyone I think probably knows my love for It's a Wonderful World. The first play of It's a Wonderful Kingdom was a bit rough when I played it, we played with the saga module. So with It's a Wonderful World, you just play the same game each time. With It's a Wonderful Kingdom, it's a two player version. And you play the same basic game as It's a Wonderful World almost with slight variations, except for it's an 'I split you choose'. So we put things in different piles. And you can play some of them face down with trap cards. And as you place them down, the other person has to choose, and then they put some down and you choose, and you're kind of trying to get them to take the cards that are rubbish for them, and all that kind of stuff. And we played with think of the Nemesis module because you have to tack on a module on to every single game, and there's different types of modules, and it worked really well, I was much more impressed with it the second time around, don't know whether it's just the modules better or just getting...

Davey: 15:11

It makes a big difference wouldn't it, every individual module, how many are there?

Adrian: 15:15

So this is the the awkward bit. So in the Kickstarter, I think there's four modules

Davey: 15:22

Are these the ones that are only available in Kickstarter?

Adrian: 15:24

So three of them are available through retail. But the area control with the big board that looks impressive was only available from Kickstarter from what I can see. And it also looks like the most interesting module. So I'm kind of intrigued to see if they kind of bring that out as an expansion, or something like that in the future. But yeah, I really enjoyed that. Great to get it to the table. And I hadn't played it in ages, and only played it once before. So got that to the table again,

Kerley: 15:49

Is that the game that made Marcus start roaring? Was it Marcus, you're playing that with?

Adrian: 15:53

Yeah,

Kerley: 15:55

You're the other side of the room, and I've never met Marcus, and I can just hear him roaring in the background, I was like 'Oh, he's having a good time!'

Adrian: 16:01

There's just the chance to, you know, there's a trap card down, which means it's face down, it could be something bad, it could be something that they want. But they want you to think it's bad, so that they can take it on their turn. And so you can do things like, you know, they've put trap card down. So now I'll put a trap card down. So now there's my bad in there as well as your bad. And you're going to take it for that reason. Or you can really start and play a bit of sort of mind games, just with your choice not even with your face. You know, a lot of games when you try and lie about things, quite often you have to physically lie to someone. Yeah, this one, you can just put a card down, stare at them blankly and watch their mind melt as they try to decifer the decision you've just made. And we had a couple of realyl good, like he had a couple of turns of doing really well at that. And I had a couple of turns that doing really well at that. And so it kind of made a really interesting games. So yeah, that's why he roared is because I've made him pick up his own his own Nemesis as well as mine. And he was trying to work out if I was playing mind games with him. And he's like, No, I'll take it all. And then he turned the cards upside down at the end and realised it's fallen for my trap basically. So yeah, played that. And then I played Marvel United as well. I had about an hour between games and thought I'll put a 'looking for player' up, and just set it all up, sat there, a couple of people wandered over, played a couple of rounds of Marvel, Marvel United. So that was really good. I really enjoyed that.

Davey: 17:19

What's Marvel United?

Adrian: 17:21

Marvel United is a Cool Mini co-op game, where it's chibi miniatures. And it's a very simple deck builder game, essentially, what you're doing is I put a card down, you either move, you take like a rescue action or a punch action. But not only do I get the card I put down, but I get the one card that was in front of it, in what's called the timeline. But in the row, essentially, yeah. So if you need to move, but you haven't got any move cards, you might say to me, can you play something with a move on so that I can move? So it's very loose coop. Like it's a very simple cooperative game, because it is just as simple as I need to move or we might need to punch or whatever. So can you play something that's got to move on it, and you kind of do a few bits and pieces till you unlock the bad guy. And as you do them, the game gets slightly harder. And once you've unlocked the bad guy, you then kind of just have trying whale on the bad guy as best as possible. And yeah, I do like it. I played quite a few times. I've never played it just sort of cold with strangers before as such, but they seemed to enjoy it.

Davey: 18:21

That's the main thing

Adrian: 18:21

Yeah, as I say, it's really simple taunght it to kids and stuff like that before, in groups.

JP: 18:26

Just a quick aside. Because obviously, me and Davey weren't there on Friday. So I was at work, so I couldn't go. I won't talk about it because it just upset me again. But when we, me and you, talked to Mr. Grogan, when we did the episode. Obviously, that was one of the things I wanted to kind of get feedback from you. Attending, kind of, your first convention and how you found it with... you know, like you said, I went there on my own at the start, and I pulled some people together and got players, how did you find it? How did you kind of experience it? Because I know that's something you raised? That was like your first convention?

Adrian: 19:01

Yeah. So I probably made a mistake. It turned out good. But in hindsight, looking back at it, I probably shouldn't have booked my first game on the Friday with loads of people I didn't know because from a social anxiety point of view, not great to kind of... you start off, you've not warmed up to gaming or anything like that. And you just book a game with with random people

Davey: 19:21

Makes you nervous before hand

Adrian: 19:23

So I was... kind of screwed up

JP: 19:24

Good job you picked a light one?!

Adrian: 19:25

An easy teach, right?!

Davey: 19:28

It's a game you love as well?!

Adrian: 19:31

As I was setting it up, I was slowly getting more and more anxious about it. And then I'm gonna I'm hopefully gonna get them right. So it was Rachel, Paul, and Mac, I believe, okay. And sat down, they sat down, started immediately, just chatting away and having a laugh and all that kind of stuff. And it just sort of eased... calmed me down a little bit. And then I say, had a couple of other games with people from the group. And then I just sat down, I thought, I've got an hour. I'm really in the mood for gaming. Let's do this'looking for players' thing. Yeah. And just put... thought I'm gonna do it, put it out on the table, set it all up while I put it out on the table. A couple of people walked over and went doesn't look for me. And I thought, Yeah, no worries. And a couple of people went 'Yeah, I've got time for a game'. One of them said 'doesn't look for me, but actually why not I'll give it a go'. So they sat down, and yeah. It was a easier than I expected, after sort of midway through Saturday, I was like, Okay, I just might need to settle down with people I know. And play. But I actually... yeah, it was a lot less stressful and a lot less sort of fearsome than I ... it was good to have the fact that I had like Marcus and yeah, people, you know, Becky in Kerley out there, because I did have a way to sort of, you know, fall back on if I needed to. But yeah, halfway through Friday, I was feeling quite comfortable in the situation and in the sort of event.

Davey: 20:46

I guess what makes it easier is all these people were here for the same reason, everyone's into the same hobby, you know, and everyone's in a good mood to be in a convention. So it's a nice atmosphere and a nice buzz around as well.

Adrian: 21:00

Well, I mean, like, so everyone was lovely. I spoke to... I literally jumped into the middle of people's games, kind of thing, tapped on my shoulder. 'Sorry, can I just, is this a good game? like. Cos they were playing something I wanted to try I wanted to get their feedback. And they were lovely. They were like, Yeah, no worries. Yeah, we're loving this. It does this, that and the other last, I'm sorry for disturbing you. And moved on a bit. I did that two or three times. And people were lovely about it. I spoke to people at the bar when we're waiting for food. And just everyone was lovely. But from a social... from my point of view. There's events before where I've not felt that, even though I know that everyone else is there and have like, for the same reason, I've just not felt as confident or as up for random playing games with random people, I don't know sort of thing. So you know, I felt comfortable.

JP: 21:44

I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I just, I thought I'd ask the question, because that's kind of a nice tie back to what we were talking about. You just reminded me

Adrian: 21:51

We've talked about it a couple of times before, where it's something that I can struggle with. But on this occasion, I say, maybe in hindsight, a bit of a mistake, set it up. But it worked out for the best, you know, on first game on a Friday to be with with people I'd never met before. But so it worked out. They were lovely. And yeah, from that point, I guess it's kind of got into the groove.

Davey: 22:10

This is kind of, it's not a... welll convention wise, there's no like competitive gaming. There was no like tournaments. There's no... it was all... everyone's just there for the love of it. Yeah, it was real casual. And it was nice.

Adrian: 22:23

And then finally, because we haven't got through Friday yet.

JP: 22:26

We're not on a timer.

Adrian: 22:28

But I played Starship Captains. So another one of the big Essen releases.

JP: 22:33

From Czech Games Edition.

Davey: 22:35

Is that the same people that did Deal with the Devil as well?

Adrian: 22:38

Yeah, yes. Yeah. It was good. Not great. Is, is the thing I would say about it,

Davey: 22:46

Really? Because that's meant to be the big hitter, isn't it?

Adrian: 22:49

Kind of, it's got a lot. So I think the game is going to be in a bit of a catch 22, Because it's got this lovely production, and it looks heavier than it is. But it's quite rules heavy compared to how light the decision making it

Davey: 23:03

So it's not going to appeal to one side or the other potentially.

Adrian: 23:08

And my first thought afterwards was I would love a tiny epic version of this or like a small box version of this, but I don't think it would have got the press it got with a smaller production. Yeah, so it's kind of it a damned if you do damned if you don't for that kind of thing. It was enjoyable to teach. I just got handed a rulebook and like, you can teach, taught a few games before, teach from the rulebook. So I did the thing that I don't particularly enjoy, which is just reading from a real book. There's a paragraph I got stuck out to explain four times because I just wasn't getting it wasn't going in. But it's a nice it is a light game. I think if you're the kind of group that's going to play light games over and over again. I think that's the group that is there as beautiful production. You got these lovely little sort of Star Trek esque minis Star Trek,

JP: 23:56

it's not star trek. No. No, it's not.

Adrian: 23:59

I mean, the ships are a disc with some jets on the side, but it's not. And everyone's either red, blue or yellow. Absolutely not Star Trek. There's an undeveloped point here that there's an Android there's captains and stuff like that. And there's pirates. Yeah,

Davey: 24:16

there's character called Pok

Adrian: 24:21

so yeah, it's about as it's about as de trademarked as I think I can make it sort of thing but it is basically Star Trek, like, like Star Trek game. I enjoyed it. I think it's in a weird place with too many rules. For what for a light game. And as again, I think the production kind of sells it for more than it is and I would love a tiny epic version or a small box version of it. With maybe a couple there's a couple of rules that are no rules designer but I'd just kind of gone maybe could get rid of those and then they'd be less of a teach to it.

Kerley: 24:53

So it's interesting that's been happening a lot lately. I do think games have been over produced more so lately more for the publicity than anything else. It feels like

Davey: 25:00

it's a new thing is that one of the biggest things because they want to be the new best thing. Obviously, if you're there's so many games now trying to do things as original films original the means they're having to match together a lot more different.

Adrian: 25:15

It used to be you had the biggest box on the shelf, that's how you stood out was you created a big, nice wide profile on the shelf when it went on sideways sort of thing. And that seemed to be the way that our companies like, they'd put two decks of cards in a box that was like seven inches deeper. So what's interesting

Kerley: 25:33

is, I do believe that to a certain point, it's been too big a subject for now, but it's just like it for me, it's making a lot of board games to niche for a lot of people. It's like you're looking at 100 pound being the minimum really for, for me, I

Adrian: 25:47

think this is only for 60 quid, I think if I don't quote me on that, which isn't too bad, but considering how light a game it is, I almost feel like I want a third secret. I feel like I almost want a lower production game. And it's not the light. It's not like float away, like there is decisions is where, what's the basic content? Or do you have to do so essentially, you can do one of three things you can or four things I suppose you can move, you can shoot a pirate, and the pirates sit between the planets that you want to travel on, click on. Yeah. Or

Davey: 26:19

imagine the little popup pirate why

JP: 26:24

we're doing that next week.

Adrian: 26:27

You can upgrade your ship and you can repair it. And then the other the art, that's kind of what you do by just spending a mini sort of like a red, blue or yellow Mini, they all relate to those different ones, okay. And the repair ship opens up small slots for you to upgrade your ship with which is just like, it'll be like, Oh, here's a new room. So you can put your blue person in this room instead of just doing a standard upgrade. It's just very light. Right? So it's like, oh, when you move you get an extra point of movement. Yes. It's nice light engine building. And then the other thing you can do is you can go on a mission where you sign a red and a blue person. It allows you to do things and move around on some trackers and different things like that. And then it all kind of comes in together into a point salad. So you get points for upgrading your ship. You get points for clean pirates, you get points for recapturing pilots, they don't say kidding, although there is ability for you to like, change pirates into extra movement, which I just imagined was them throw you know, they're just like, oh,

JP: 27:24

you need to go fast. I get that pirate

Adrian: 27:27

the pirate to go faster. What am I doing like chucking in the Coalburner or something? Like it's just a bit like there's oddities in there. But then all this kind of stuff going around on the trackers and completing missions and site. All of that adds up into a nice little sort of point salad. Yeah. And so you score some great points from it. So that was my Friday for like I've been talking for a while you

JP: 27:49

already because you were there early was we weren't you guys gonna start hanging get well, we'll be playing games. But no sound like a good first day?

Adrian: 28:01

Yeah, that's good. got loads of games and a few new ones. So that was good.

Davey: 28:05

Good luck playing the new games.

JP: 28:09

Saturday, day to day to mean debut arrives. We do. And Rob and Rob Yes. No. Yeah.

Kerley: 28:18

It was so good till then.

JP: 28:19

Yeah, you know, you can't win them all. Everyone said it peaks by Friday. Anyway, whent downhill. I don't know why. No, we Yeah, I had Lacrimosa booked out at the kind of hot games library. So as Adrian mentioned, at the beginning, there was the games library. There's the hot games library. And there's another secret library behind the Hot Games library, which is Paul's special copies of games that he will only kind of lend out to people who trusted I'll talk about one of those later. But Lacrimosa was the hot games library and I played before with Adrian on the channel we had a game and I thought that's quite a nice game to start already know how to play it. We can just get that table and off we go. So yeah, me Adrian, Marcus and Paul Richards who are actually a great con to last year. Lovely chap if you're listening Paul, thanks for playing with us mate. It was good for the be the fourth play even though I probably saw it a few times during the day when no he had a very early burst lead. Okay, one of those one of those where everyone starts Yeah, yeah, it was like you get what you're doing. So it was a lot of banter going on at the table. I was coming in fresh and you know, I'm like, you know, lots of energy. Yeah. But annoying, you know, standards and common standard behaviour, but no Lacrimosa is a midway year again, focused all around. Basically after Mozart's death and your play like I don't know if player sponsors or yeah sponsors of like Mozart and his works and essentially you're appealing to is widow and we like retelling the memories or what Mozart's done for his past career and finishing

Adrian: 30:04

off his last piece of work which you'd left unfinished Yeah.

JP: 30:06

Requiem. So the boards the beige as you can get really

Davey: 30:10

I actually quite liked the genuine. I

Adrian: 30:14

think it suits the theme and it but it is very beige Yeah,

JP: 30:17

like much more colourful go beige. So they kind of split into kind of core sections. The top row is like your card row, your market row where you get what's called memories and opuses that appear at the top that you kind of get buy from the middle section of the of the board is literally the map of Europe, and which is where the Mozart figure kind of travels around. And it's like a communal piece that you can move around. And then at the bottom is the Requiem, which is literally there's like a song sheet, all divided into movements, and it has like symbols, electron pits, and violins. And then other kind of musical instruments are available here that you can kind of play. And, and essentially, it's like the I can, I'll have playable agents gonna laugh because we literally had this conversation all weekend. But the player boards in this game are beautiful. They literally like fold out notebooks, and you kind of open them up. And then they have is kind of jaw layered. And also it has slots for the cards to go in sliding at the top and at the bottom. And essentially on your action, you have a handover for four cards in the age of four cards, and you pick two of them, one goes in the top one goes in the bottom that your use cards. So the top one is the action that you do. And the bottom of the card is the resources you'll get for the next round. So you kind of think I want to do this now. But I also need these resources. So the next round, I want to do these things. So you kind of do in that in that. And it's kind of got some light deck building elements, because of the cooktop market row, you can buy what's called document and memory. And that's like empowered improved versions of the cards that you have in your hands so that you can kind of get one out and put another one in so you can start to do some more cool stuff. And, and yeah, it's just it's quite a satisfying game. And the little bit at the bottom where it talks about the rec room and the song sheet, it has an area control element that I had not seen before. So normally they're in control, you're trying to dominate with your kind of play colour so you get the most but it has a twist on it where you're kind of discs that go on the on the the Requiem, have a single note or a double name. And that's corresponding to the composers that are helping to complete the final kind of piece. Yeah, they recommend piece of a piece of work and it kind of scores on area majority based on the notes, not the colour. So if there's more double notes on there, then it's the basically the plays that I have gone down at the double night route gets the highest pitch for points for each of their colour pieces and you kind of work together and kind of work together in some case, but you kind of been going well I really want the power that the double note gives me on that composure. But if I don't want to give them that bloody when I go the single

Adrian: 32:58

note this is going to tip it so that now that person that's gone so like if for instance I've gone all in on one area and double notes, everyone else might put a single note down but there'll be lots of them and so but they've really done the over because I'm gonna get multiples of the double notes so I think so there's a real nice area control bit at the bottom isn't now in the middle is just wandering around you because I've always fought them one time bonuses

Davey: 33:20

we've described so far as it sounds like every every game at the moment with the whole pay in the cards, having a top ability and a bottom ability like last Lost Ruins of Arnak, Dune Imperium, Revive we played seems like the in mechanic of a lot of games at the moment.

JP: 33:39

Everyone loves these dual purpose cars. Yeah,

Davey: 33:41

so but the area controllers, what kind of separates it from these other games? Or is it just

Adrian: 33:47

I think it's a mix, I think it's just a nice mix for me is that the end of game scoring is available to everyone, including the stuff that's on the map, where if you've done the resources where you can go and grab extra End of game scoring. And it's just a nice little point salad, it does a really nice job of slowly upgrading your deck if you want to travelling around and getting these mostly one time bonuses or endgame scoring. And at the bottom is this little area control. And it's just I think it's a nice mid weight mix where you can see exactly what options are no time, there's no sort of real hidden information or anything like that. And travel

JP: 34:24

and change strategy. And Travelling is a bit unique and well from my perspective is that because it's a communal piece you're moving. And that is actually quite an interesting decision space because like you're going right I can see that I want to move two spaces away, it's going to cost me three buckets, right points, or money box, QuickBooks, whatever you call it. And then you got to spend some resources to do it. But then some get moves it the other way, you know,

Adrian: 34:52

just two more coins to go after what you had before you don't have those two coins. So

JP: 34:56

the tug of war, tug of war going like really want to get the most hot piece where I need it so I can then get the bonuses I want to get to and I found that from an interaction perspective is very interesting as interesting.

Adrian: 35:07

It's also one of the things that I've sort of over three plays now that I quite like is that the resource at the bottom tend to tends to relate to the action at the top so if you go heavy on certain actions, you get the opposite resources at the bottom because you've plugged in the one that would give you so the one that gives you travel points is also tends to be the travel action. So if you plug it in the top, you don't get the reward in the you put in the bottom. So it kind of means that this term Yeah, you can go heavy in that direction. But if you do go too heavy in that direction next time, you're not gonna be able to do it at all. Okay? And so it really creates this sort of push and pull on what do you want to do? And how do you want to do it this time versus next time sort of thing?

JP: 35:45

So always enjoyed my second place your third play, right? Yeah, yeah. Good fun. What up? I know. That's because I like it. I just got fun.

Adrian: 35:56

I've really enjoyed every play. It's it's in one of my top games of new games is play I've played this year. I think I said this last time on another episode, but I don't think the theme is particularly enticing. That I would get be able to get other people to play it. And I've now had I've now had three plays of it. And I feel like yeah, I'd like a few more. But I don't want to

JP: 36:16

but you would buy it you said you'd buy it as a simply read edition.

Adrian: 36:21

I don't quite remember saying that. I didn't know that might have been your we said

JP: 36:24

we said instead of the requiem it it was money's too tight to mention at the bottom of the board. And you had to kind of fill out and we add more coconut on the box rather than

Adrian: 36:34

Yeah, is the guy over your head? Yeah.

JP: 36:37

When is too tight to mention cut back? No, no. I bairly know who Mick Hucknall is

Adrian: 36:41

on the front. You could just go with a ginger highlighter. And kind of there is some options there for you to simply read and

JP: 36:48

talk about my Metallica version as well. Yeah, you can.

Davey: 36:52

Seal and seal

Kerley: 36:56

do sound interesting. But the theming does turn me off completely. I'll be honest. But mechanics is

JP: 37:02

what? The theme doesn't grip me at all. And it didn't excite me when I first played it. But actually the gameplay is solid.

Davey: 37:10

I mean, what? I can't think of any recent games where the theme other than maybe dungeon crawlers for me were the themes been like, wow, look at the themes were on point. Anyway, carry on.

Adrian: 37:22

So Furnace probably Yeah, I played, I'll hand this over to yourself. Because yeah, so as your as your game.

Davey: 37:30

Yeah. So I was looking at this or Gollum. And I ended up buying Furnace because I thought Golems, another heavy game. And I've got enough of those. And they're hard enough to get to the table as is. So I'll get Furnace. And yeah, I'm glad I did. It's got enough weight for me to like it. And but it's also light enough. And quick enough that people who don't normally play these will play it, basically. So it's kind of like a little engine builder. You have a market of cards out in front, which everyone has to have a you have a little auction phase where everyone has to put their discs down, you've got a 4/3/2 and a one highest wins. And you can't ever double up the same number or have to have your own colour on on each card. But you get compensated. So if I put three down and someone else put four on top, they're gonna get the card, but I'll get the resources on top. So there's this nice little competition where you're just like, oh, well, I need the resources here. So I'll probably but I need enough of them. So I'll put three there. And hopefully someone else might bid more than that, then if they don't, you're screwed, you get the credit card you don't want and it's you can screw other people over by putting twos down, so no one else can put a two on it like Adrian did to me. And

Adrian: 38:45

yeah, the two left in his hand, and I was like, oh, we'll put a two there, they stopped him going down, alright.

Davey: 38:51

But then once you've once the auction phase over, you've got this little engine. And basically, you always have a starter card. And that gives you a chance to upgrade your other cards. But you can only use it at once turn unless you have a power. Everyone's got these little asymmetrical powers, which are quite light, but they're, they've changed it enough. Yeah, that your gameplay changes every time. And then you have this little row of cards and you do a production phase. And you have to do the basically, you ignore the resource at the top and you just do the little production at the bottom. And the main aim of the game is to get money. And most of this is just converting resources. So you convey coal into oil. And then you've got another card later on them, say spends one oil for for money. And you But the caveat is you have to run the whole card, you can't just take pick and choose little bits from it, you have to run a whole card. And there's even a version where you have to then also structure it from left to right and run them in a in like in a sequence. And you can never change that sequence where you

JP: 39:51

acquire the card as the guy on the left of your batch or the right of your bag and yeah, I mean crossed my head was brain based game that alone.

Adrian: 39:59

I like the idea of that the simple version. It took what 40 minutes, 40 minutes 40 minutes, we taught the game when as for player went into the patron support of hoto Yeah, and finish the game in an hour. Yeah, like it was

Davey: 40:12

and you feel like you've played a game. It's not like oh yes, it's it'll be a real nice warm up game for every euro.

Kerley: 40:22

No, no, I didn't get, I think

JP: 40:23

you'd really enjoy this. It's literally I came in thinking I was gonna be a bit light. And I went across my head. Because it's like when you're doing that conversion, I mean, the auction bits fun, because you're just like, wow, I really want that card, but i don't want to show. I want to be honest and simple, but really effective. Like, literally, it probably wasn't the quick the first round, because I was like, What the hell was going on. But once you get your head round, it's like bang, bang, bang, bang bang, get the cards. But then when you've kind of doing all your conversion and running the engine, and you like the puzzle that's just in front of you. So I'll do that card first. And I'll activate the next one over here. And then I'll get that and I'll move there and do this and do that. And

Adrian: 41:02

it's like, so you talk about the conversion and conversion can also happen as part of the compensation right? Yeah, and there was one time when I think I put two or screw you over Yeah, I mean, I'm JP got screwed over several times. But there's one more I put two, I'm thinking someone is gonna go for this, this is a brilliant card, I'm gonna get the compensation first. And then later on, I'm gonna get compensation to turn that into stuff. No one else when I got the card, like it was my card. No one else wanted it. So I got the card and then didn't have anything to convert. Even though it just some great choices. And also really nice that you can take that one and put it down. And you feel that you've got something from it the number of times in these kind of auction games where you don't feel like you've got anything for putting a low number down. Sometimes when you put two down first and think well gives me options for one later if I just want that one item once people have started putting stuff down, and it also kind of ups the ante a little bit on that card. My first play quite often, which is to to an aside, I don't necessarily want my card, but I want to make people work for it if they get it.

Davey: 42:03

Yeah. And then I'm still gonna get some compensation after so there's

Adrian: 42:09

that card if no one else goes through it. There's some really meaty choices

JP: 42:13

if you don't like it on a search right.

Davey: 42:15

Quick. definitely made the right choice though because we did end up playing Gollum on the Sunday which I'll talk about in a bit. Yeah, yeah, Furnace was definitely a keeper.

Adrian: 42:24

Yeah, I enjoyed.

JP: 42:26

Cool, What about you Kerley?

Kerley: 42:29

Oh, what on the Saturday? Yeah, yeah, on the Saturday so on the Saturday we played Astra again first thing in the morning it was just one of those games that was on our minds and we were so enjoyed it and Becky was really keen she's still waiting for it. So we gave it another go and loved it even more if anything so yeah, just to mention that very quickly. Right. The rest of it was mostly playing games that I've would play before just with you know, the family my brother and Becky but the one that I really wanted to get to the table was Northguard which I've talked about before on your Kickstarters months ago yeah a couple of months ago I haven't had a chance to get it to the table I kind of feel what you were saying about great wars similar to what I feel at the moment about Northguard Okay, in the fact of I can see a bit of potential there is there going to be enough in it for me to keep I'm not sold yet. However me and Davey cos Daey play with me it was my brother as well. We have to look at the expansion and it does look more interesting so everything how the game felt yeah the game felt a bit bland but basic was the basic I mean the whole idea of Northguard when you really break it down we've you've got asymmetrical clan powers and stuff but really when it comes to it, you've just you've got a deck that you upgrade a little bit was it eight or nine card deck that you upgrade over time and every time you play a card you play the action it might be recruited troop it might be build a building, it might be you know move or whatever, but it's quite basic. Nothing fell different or special about it. I suppose

Davey: 44:06

Felt like a more basic Inis without any of the drafting aspects Yes.

Kerley: 44:11

Yeah, I would say that put it this way, there was nothing that for me differentiate it from any of its rivals. But having said that, the expansions add there are two different expansions one of them seems to add a lot more not like aI but like there's a lot more like monsters out on the board for you with the different powers you draw from a deck and all this kind of stuff have

Davey: 44:31

negative effects on that space need to deal with them. So it's not just there, they're going to fight this negative effect on that whole space. So the mechanics the the

Kerley: 44:41

other one was the main one in it, and it provides a lot more asymmetry for the clans, right? So you get a clan war chief, whether the expansion is called warchief. I think you get a clan war chief, lots of different abilities and extra cards, there's more cards, buildings, all that kind of stuff. So it just added a lot more variation that we're hoping will elevate to that next level. And if it doesn't, I'll say is definitely one that I love the computer game. Whether I love the board game I'm not writing it off, but I'm not sold.

Davey: 45:11

It definitely needs another play

Kerley: 45:13

Definitely needs another play. Now that we know that we know roughly what's going Yeah, it was it was quite easy to

Davey: 45:18

Pick up really wasn't it? It wasn't too bad. There was some like little niggles Yeah, with

Kerley: 45:23

But nothing more than that. It was nice for me as well, because again, we were learning it straight from the rulebook. So you know, I hadn't really done much prep for it, and we just kind of took it along and gave it a go.

JP: 45:34

I think you can kind of forgive that these convention sometimes because that was the point. Yeah, just as the opportunity to get stuff off the shelf that you haven't had chance to play. And I think normally like if you're determined to win a game nights and so I'm just going to read from the rulebook we'd shoot you. Totally different? Yes, you would like can you please leave and learn it? And then come back. But I think the biggest factor, I think, isn't it? I think that's it. And convention even it's still time is limited. Like you only can get to get so many games kind of in any kind of one day, but Speed games relaxed. Yeah, exactly. Shield and you don't mind.

Davey: 46:13

Three hours. The next one? Yeah,

Adrian: 46:16

Some people like myself, Marcus talked about this afterwards was that maybe the Friday is the day just to book it chocca from like three hour slot, two hour slot or whatever, get all the games in that you want to get in and then maybe relax more on the Saturday and Sunday. Whereas before I didn't book too many on the Saturday or Sunday, but I did feel like I could have squeezed a bit more out of the Friday and done that. And Marcus had booked quite a few games in and he was feeling pretty sort of on Sunday evening, the afternoon like 3pm on Sunday book to gaming and he was like awwww not sure I should have done this sort of thing enjoyed the game. But I do think there is a way to do this, which is booked ram full Friday of games booking system getting done. And then just relax a bit on the

Davey: 47:00

I only booked one. So I'll just say I want to book one game. And then I'm just got to see what happens. Because I know I'm like yeah. So

Kerley: 47:10

yeah, apart from that. Played Gugong again, which I'm playing a little while I enjoy it. Yeah, I've really enjoyed that. I always enjoyed it

Davey: 47:16

I enjoyed it more that time than I did the last time because I wasn't sold on in the first

Kerley: 47:20

It's a game that I think just grows on you is such got an interesting mechanic. Yeah,

Davey: 47:25

There's a lot more to it. I think this time we played around. I don't know why I didn't think that before but maybe I wasn't in the mood or I dunno. But this time, it seems like there's a lot going on. And yeah, it was good.

Kerley: 47:35

Yeah. So I really enjoyed that and got that off the table in a while. So yeah, apart from that, just a couple of old oldies but goodies, you know, nice.

JP: 47:42

I think Adrian should talk about your smiling moment.

Adrian: 47:45

So happy. So how long have we talked about the Lacerda games? And then you've gotten to them in the last couple of weeks. I'm just entering Lacerda. Yeah. And I played The Gallerist on Saturday. And I don't think I've ever been happier finishing a game than I did The Gallerist genuinely is a was such a standout moment. I mean, I yeah, I was grinning for a good 45 minutes afterwards, couldn't wipe off my face. I could poke holes in it. But it's a very difficult job to do. And I was just so it was the I turned up there was two other guys that have played it before I turned up. They weren't expecting the teacher. And as I have not played it before, I've watched a couple of videos. So I've got very rough run through and then learn bits and pieces as I went. But it's such a clean design. Well produced I felt like the theme landed. Again sometimes with these euros The thing is a bit pasted on. I'm sure people could say that about this, but it was enough there is tacked on enough love super glue put on top of old inspiration. I thought pritt-stick And yeah, just had a whale of a time was so good. I can't wait. It's on my to buy list for sure. There's two games that are about the same amount of money. And I'm really,

Davey: 48:53

I think I've looked at it before and I really

Adrian: 48:55

I want to get but it'll definitely it'll get there in the next six months. I'm sure.

JP: 49:01

He came back. And he literally had his biggest grin on his face. Right. All right, I'll just play gallerist sent me I don't think I've ever seen you so happy. Like

Adrian: 49:11

It was yeah, it was, you know, when sometimes you're like, Okay, these mid to heavy weights. They're just kind of dragging me down a little bit like not fast, perhaps a bit harsh, but just kind of done with them. I feel like I know what to expect from them now and all this kind of stuff. And it was a complicated game that was so clear, or like a complex decision game. But it was so clean, and just really well done. So just to not beat around the bush anymore. Basically you own a gallery, you're for up to four galleries competing against each other. And you're either commissioning an artist to make a work like finding discovering an artist, which means that you get to buy it no matter how expensive his artwork gets later on. You get to buy it for the cheapest amount because you discovered it. So he's going to create a work of art for you at some point, or you buy a piece of art at the cost is then so someone else had discovered it. It's gone up a bit of money and you're then trying to pull, I, there is names for them. white, pink and brown is specific but they've got specific things and it does make sense but I can't remember the name of them and the White seemesthe most important and you're pulling them in, you're trying to essentially get tickets to pull them into your galleries, you get more victory points for doing things and more money for doing things at the same time you're trying to buy artwork, and some of it, you're then trying to make this artist more famous, to then sell it off for more money. And the most money at the end wins, essentially, or you're trying to keep it in there to unlock benefits, because you want people to come and view the artwork in your gallery. So there's four spaces. Each of those spaces has two actions, each of those two actions has a couple of options, you can either get a contract, or you can sell artwork on one space, you can found an artist or by work on another space, you can increase an artist's reputation or gain workers and other space and then you can do auctioning, like get involved in the auction, which gives you a masterpiece at the end of the game, or do some little upgrade pitch, I can't remember quite what it's called on the on the on the left hand side of the board as it were. If you're already in that space, and I want to go into that space, you can go down the next set of victory points, which is like five more victory points, and then you can take that action as well. So sometimes I'm looking at a space going, it's not the ideal thing to do. Or it's what I want to do, but you're gonna get an action I know you're gonna get better actually, you're gonna get more out of it than I am. So you always have the option of taking that space. It's never perfect, like put like permanently blocked off. But it's the opportunity to give someone else if they're willing to lose the victory or someone else benefits someone else benefits from it. And it's just yeah, it was so clear. I was so happy with playing that game

Davey: 51:57

Yeah, that's a bit of interaction. You like it when they add some it's

Adrian: 52:02

I't's not just a block and you're trying to I did get the sort of strategy a bit its first game right so you get bonus points for selling off certain types of artwork at the end of the game, which is your own little hidden thing. And you get bonus points for having the artwork arrayed in your gallery which again is a little hidden thing that the only two hidden victory conditions in the game. There's only four different types so you already competed on stack. But yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Davey: 52:26

Yeah, sounds sounds good.

JP: 52:27

I'm glad you had fun with it. Yeah,

Davey: 52:29

So I played on the Satuday, I turned up and I played Deal with the Devil, didn't know what quite what to expect. I did watch like a review video of it. I didn't watch Paul's how to play video. Yeah, Paul was running the game, which was really helpful. But yeah, we've I played with Mark Dainty from not board gaming on YouTube. Played with Chris and Andrew. And it's it's really good game. It's gonna be hard to get to table because it has to be four players. But basic,

JP: 53:07

Not min 4, like the rest of them. It's minimum four, max four Yeah.

Davey: 53:11

4 only. yeah, four and a half. So if you've got two friends, you're fucked There's three people here. But it's whether you play or not

JP: 53:28

Adrian'll never do social deduction games

Davey: 53:30

So it's a social deduction game, but it also has kind of like this trade aspect. And basically one person is a devil who people are mortals and one person's a cultist. The cultist has two pieces of soul, the mortals have their whole soul. So three, and the devil has none. But the devil has a shite tonne of resources. And you, it's kind of got an engine builder to it as well, where you want to spend these resources, because you've got little hand cards, and to play these cards that give you different effects and bonuses. And the devil, you're putting all your stuff in this little box and you'd be like, Well, what do I need, so you'll put some stuff in a box and you're kind of indicate what you want for it, this level dial thing, check your box, but hand it over and scan over an app, which is got a little QR code on the bottom. And it will tell you once you've shuffled these boxes, where each box goes to which each player, you open it up, you have a look and you think oh do I want that? So the devil was basically putting resources and in and is saying this is gonna cost you one soul. And so you open up and you go, Oh, is that worth one of my bits of my soul? And actually yeah, I want to build I want this card. So you put your soul in trade it

Kerley: 54:42

It's quite macabre?

Davey: 54:44

Yeah, pretty much. And then there's a build phase and you kind of all build and you get points for having certain built like card combinations. And yeah, so you're thinking, Well, what's so bad about losing part of my soul? Well, there's a witch hunt phase where basically you can all try and vote on who you think the devil is or who the cultist is and you put your votes in the box and you hand out, do the same thing over again. If to do the same. You get little mob come out in front of you unravel wherever the mob basically means you start getting in there active effects that happen to you, and these negative effects will impact you later when you have the Inquisition. And the Inquisition basically, is these little call effects that you have to reveal but to solve for to ignore, and they're like, pay a shit tonne of resources or lose loads of VPs and so that's why the devil wants your soul so that he can start revealing oh look,

JP: 55:40

I'm human Yeah,

Davey: 55:42

So there's also a thing of witch hunt where if you get voted if you show 3 pieces of soul then then they don't, the mob doesn't come for you as well. Yeah, if you play a really good game and got a load of souls as a devil, you can be like 'ah yeah, I'm fine. So

JP: 55:56

And cast shade on other players. Yeah.

Davey: 55:57

And to be honest, it was one of the most unique... I think it was my game of the weekend. It's my, it's really unique. And it had this real nice aspect of a little bit of bluffing but not too much a little bit of Euro. Were you building your cards and having certain effects. It was just good fun. And the biggest thing is it's different, there's so many games now where

JP: 56:21

That're similar, seeing similar...

Davey: 56:24

And, yeah, I just really enjoyed it. Paul did a great job of teaching it obviously. Yeah, he said he really enjoyed running the game as well actually. But he said he doesn't enjoy the game himself. I think it is really divided because of how that social aspect of it the deduction

JP: 56:44

You either like that kinda thing. Polarising. Really it's do you want to wheel and deal? Did you feel like a used car salesmen throughout the game? Is that where you kind of feel like?

Davey: 56:53

No, I have a soul mate. So yeah, I was more I was I was having to like trade my soul away, so, but I was just trying to get to the devil as I thought it was Mark for ages. I thought he was resources. But now you've just been given the soul away willy nilly. Yeah, it was just it was good fun. And I think it's not something I definitely will buy because I don't know how much I've got to get into it to the table. Sounds intriguing, but I would definitely play it again. And I think that second playthrough would dictate if, if I would buy it, because I wanted to give it another go on the Sunday, but I just never got around to it. But yeah, so played that. Then we played Furnace because we had a quick little filler, which we've already spoken about as my first play. Yeah, it wasn't that I played Northguard, which we spoken about. And then we played Hunger.

JP: 57:46

Yes, yeah. The end of the day. It wasn't Yeah.

Davey: 57:49

Hunger. Yeah, it was made by Richard Garfield. So Magic designer, Key forge, made loads of other things. So to King of Tokyo, which I realised

JP: 58:03

No one believed me.

Davey: 58:05

It's not his usual, like kind of forte though is it?

JP: 58:09

So I'm going to do a kind of a lightweight family game.

Davey: 58:12

Yeah. Which I suppose Hungers quite lightweight game, really. So basically, you've got this big Clank esque board because it's done by the same producers Renegades Studios. Yeah. And it's got a similar mechanic where you've got to kind of push it back and get out. But it's then got this little deck building aspect because you're vampires, and you've got to go hunt these humans. And the hunt is you basically collecting more cards, but they start clogging up your deck beyond too many. So you need some other powers in there to keep yourself moving. Otherwise, you end up just fat and stuck at the entrance. Swearing swearing. Sounds good. I did not move anywhere from the outside that card. I was literally on the feeding on the air. Yeah. And I didn't do too bad. It definitely had some unique combinations. And it was quite a light little deck builder. It was good fun, really. So

Adrian: 59:03

You have to get normally you try and go out as far as you can post and get you stuck at the end, which is definitely a strategy but

Davey: 59:09

It's cos I had a pig, which meant I could hunt twice by just standing still. So I'm just going to be a pig pig and truffle and truffle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Adrian: 59:18

Normally the people when you go in vampire people So when you go and hunt people normally get more points if you hunt them further away from the castle. And you then have to get back before it's daybreak and at the very end of the track is a rose and the rose gives you permanent repeat abilities so it's quite good to get out of that. What you tend to find if you're delirious at the end of a Saturday is everyone starts doing the Seal 'Baby'. Sorry apologies listeners for that. That's what we were doing, wasn't it?

Davey: 59:56

Yes, that's what we were singing well, I thought we're singing it because of the Lacrimosa comment earlier for Marcus so I thought everyone was just singing the song so I'm singing along and then Marcus you destroyed Marcus's rose after I spent all game getting

JP: 1:00:11

Jumped on him and made him discard it every every opportunity moment I could which he swore at me all the time. It was just funny

Davey: 1:00:17

And he's mentioning this rose and I was singing because there's a rose in the game and I was tired Yeah, but literally it just everyone there

JP: 1:00:30

Are laughing like that game wasn't my favourite game, but it was my favourite... One of my favourite experiences. Socially it was I think we're all knackered Yeah, I say delirious. We weren't really taking anything too seriously at all. There's a lot of banter being thrown around a table probably making too much noise but we're just having pretty

Davey: 1:00:50

Much well because it was it was Joel from Devon dice.

JP: 1:00:53

Yes. It's his game. This game wasn't it, and he's a nice guy.

Davey: 1:00:57

Yeah, he was a nice guy. But it told us some funny anecdotes as well, isn't it?

JP: 1:01:02

Yes. Yeah, we won't repeat them. repeat them.

Davey: 1:01:05

But I was gonna say who

Adrian: 1:01:10

The we got a look when when you went? Oh, there's a row. Like the noise we made in laughter just crying with laughter everyone's like what is going on?

Kerley: 1:01:22

To be fair, I was the table next door and yes, they were getting looks. I just looked over and Daveys got his head right back and it's actually laughing It's brilliant. It's

JP: 1:01:39

It's ust one of them games where like, it didn't matter who won who lost. It was just we run out of time. We literally have five minutes to do three

Davey: 1:01:47

speed game and it was quite literally as if they like it was coming out which is

JP: 1:01:54

a good finish to the day. Yeah, but rewinding a little bit, because I haven't talked about my game of the show. Yes, yeah, Hopolomachus. I got a sneaky peek. Game of Hopolomachus remastered was taught to me by Mark Dainty again from not board gaming again. Lovely chap. Lovely guy. Lovely to meet him and me. Rob, I managed to get Rob in on this. And Emma, from gaming rules patron. We were all kind of played. And then me and Rob are on a team and Emma was playing with Mark Dainty who's played the games load times. So I was thinking, we're gonna get absolutely massacred because he knows what he's doing. But it's just kind of a teaching game you did essentially Hopolomachus it's coming into productions. You've got a Victorum, which is the solo only kind of big adventure big box. Kind of going round the world ended up in Mount Vesuvius and basically giving the kind of the big boss a big kicking at the end of the site, as they're called. But the remastered is essentially the remake remake of the original Hopolomachus, which is done by Chip Theory games, hey, you know, surprised. Sorry.

Adrian: 1:03:05

It comes in a big box.

JP: 1:03:08

And, of course, I've already backed this thing. And I was just really keen to give it a go. But essentially, we're playing like a skirmish mode in a gladiatorial basically arena. And it was a kind of a team V team. So one v one kind of game matchup. We were playing as the Parthians. And Mark and and we were playing as the new Argonauts. And essentially, we have our team we have our squad and you draw out for from chips on the bag there you're starting units that you have like your hand. And in there could be a beast as well. Every team will faction has a beast that you can have, and also a Beast Master. And beasts when they come out, or if you deploy them without these masters, they're a bit uncontrollable, you have to use dice to kind of point them where they're going to move. They're a bit random, but Beastmasters allow you to control them the bloody powerful things like we had this thing called the ibex, but it's big, grand thing, and that the other team had a massive bear. And I felt like oh, we're gonna get massive barely just kick the shit out of everyone. So essentially, as you can kind of imagine a hex grid arena, you've got your kind of squad of gladiators fight in the opposition, a lot of dice chucking, but very tactical kind of play lots of like key words as you'd expect from chip theory games. And, and essentially kind of how it works is like you You start by deploying when you deploy a unit onto the arena, you have deployment spaces where they come out, they typically start dazed. So you can't really move them or do anything. So they're coming out the arena the glory of the crowd, and they're soaking it in nothing's really happening unless they have skills like first strike or their tacticians, which means they can move or first strike music and attack straight away. And obviously it starts quite slow because I deploy unit can't really do much you're going on deploy unit can't really do much till your go. Then you deploy another unit and then I get to move the units already out there. And then you can kind of move them you can play tactics on the opposition of these tactics chips to bolster health. How about hamstring, your opponents and all sorts of different core stuff that you can kind of do to mitigate certain things. So start simple and aim bloody grows in kind of complexity the more units you have because now you're thinking well if I go there then they're going to do this and that and position plays so important the order in which you activate things the order in which you attack things and it was just as I thought it was going to be I've always gonna be brilliant I just probably thought he's better I just loved it I just wanted to kind of elbow rub out the way and go get out the way Rob I'm gonna play this on my own but I'm not a git so I wanted to kind of share the experience but yeah, absolutely. Just fell in love with it.

Davey: 1:05:57

Is there is there a resource to bring unit out or is it just a

JP: 1:06:01

Yeah, so you have Yes, it's an important part so in Remastered you have tracks on each side of the arena, your red and blue essentially the two sides of the team every time you kill the opposition you gain to favour crowd favour. And every time you start your round on the stone plinths in the middle of the arena, you gain crowd favour so you're like soaking in Go.

Davey: 1:06:24

Sounds so much like a game called Pox Nora which probably no one will ever know no very much computer game, but it sounds exactly like yeah,

JP: 1:06:31

and as you progress up the track, you unlock your hero, like your heroes, your big beefy character is going to do a lot of damage. However, if the opposition kills your hero, they win.

Adrian: 1:06:41

So it's essentially King of the Hill Isn't it like an arena style King of the Hill

JP: 1:06:45

And the more you unlock you get some of your tactics back that you've played you can get some of your units back that have died. And ultimately there's like a neutral hero at the top of the track so you kinda tactically do want to hold the middle and Gain Crowd favour but get an absolute kicking or do you want to hold back and kill things to do? Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, that's just remastered and in that box has one v one mode like deathmatch for player like literally or going in 2v2 solo I mean there's so many modes just in remastered game. Yeah, good arena game and then because of Victorum which I didn't play you can mix and match like fractions units and all that kind of stuff. So it kind of makes it rich overall experience. Yeah, loved it. My game will show brilliant. Yeah.

Davey: 1:07:35

Yeah,

Kerley: 1:07:36

It does sound like the sort of game that will fit into might not be played 2 v2 or or Yeah,

Davey: 1:07:41

I was just thinking that I don't think so. I think that

Kerley: 1:07:45

Seems to me like no no way

Davey: 1:07:47

no but they weren't playing 2v2 they were playing one by one rules but with two players

JP: 1:07:53

yeah on that particular game but it can play

Davey: 1:07:57

Say you have your own unit you're controlling he has their own units controlling their own resources span

Adrian: 1:08:03

Yeah, that was my done with it was yeah I'll shortly

JP: 1:08:07

stay deathmatch

Adrian: 1:08:07

um yeah some people will want to play the 2v2 to see if there's a 2v2 mode Yeah, exactly. It adds to the experience adds to the value in the box

JP: 1:08:17

you can come up certain things you can go against Titans as well so you can kind of go right me and curly will take faction eats and take on these titans or immortals which is about horde mode to kind of go wave after wave

Adrian: 1:08:28

my speed be honest is fully Co Op yeah then work together

JP: 1:08:32

and puzzle it through. Anyway I could talk about this for another hour but best

Kerley: 1:08:37

definitely sounds interest loved it yeah try Oh my

JP: 1:08:39

Oh yeah.

Adrian: 1:08:44

on Kickstarter and was a bit like maybe not but not quite like a tribe.

Davey: 1:08:49

It sounds right up my alley. I spent hours and hours on Pox Nora and this sounds exactly like you but the ballgame so just chips

Adrian: 1:09:02

so yeah, I think that was our day two. So we move on to day 3

JP: 1:09:05

Yeah, definitely was a packed day day two. I know. Yeah.

Davey: 1:09:08

Yeah, it was.

Adrian: 1:09:09

Yeah, I only got two games in on day three and after five or six on day one and five or six on day two is like oh, this is a bit more

JP: 1:09:17

Felt like I kind of missed out on Friday so I just wanted to get right games for the day. It's going mad and yeah, I was done by 11 I think it's like someone said should we play in the bar would have run away I think

Adrian: 1:09:29

yeah, yeah, you guys you guys and also Kerley and your lot when you played on Sunday you guys went quite early

Kerley: 1:09:37

Yeah, I mean we finished the game and I think you guys will mid mid another boardgame we would like to wait around to them to finish for a lot. Yeah, I'll play but

JP: 1:09:48

it wasn't anything that I do anything to say. Yes.

Davey: 1:09:52

Okay Yes, I said Yeah, that's true.

JP: 1:09:59

Yeah. So Sunday

Adrian: 1:10:01

Sunday morning you guys played a game yeah, we

Davey: 1:10:04

Played Gollum. Did you want to talk about Gollum or join us with Revive

JP: 1:10:07

Lets talk about Gollum first so we just randomly picked a game. And we could have just stared at that library for about 40 minutes be like trying to pick a film on Netflix. Yeah. I hate doing it. So to say that I'll do I don't really know much about the game, but it's kind of set up, then why the hell is it set? I don't know. It's

Davey: 1:10:27

Yeah, so it's over, like basically about building columns. And it's all about kind of Jewish, religious, Jewish kind of synagogue about then controlling your columns with the knowledge and trying to not let the Gollums run rampant around Prague. So

JP: 1:10:44

Yeah, so it's kind of a, you know, the board's gonna set them in these kind of streets. And there were kind of three core streets that signify 3 colours. As far as much theme as I know, in this game, as I'm sure my, my explanation will unravel very quickly. But yeah, it's, we had a bit of a rough start with it, because none of us have learned the game. And to be fair to Joel, who happened to just come by. And so they want me as a teacher, I've literally got 10 minutes off. Thank God for that. So yeah, yeah, we had a little bit of a headstart. Yeah, I think without that, we probably would have been really lost, it would have been a bit of a bit of a struggle, but so yeah, it's kind of got this gizmos, kind of mechanic with marbles, which is quite fun. To kind of throw a load of marbles in this car body tower thing, they will roll out into these lanes, and those lanes kind of signify the different actions that you can kind of take. So typically, on your turn, you'll take coloured marble that you want to kind of sync up with the nobles, or higher up people, or whoever these people are our cards on top of the ball. See, they're like red, blue, yellow, black, and white, and white are kinda like wild to appease those nobles, but they don't really advance the students, which are these little meeples, they're selling into the streets. And that helps you get income throughout the game. Whereas if you picked like a red marble, you'd move the red student along one, etc. So all the different actions you can do, you can kind of activate your columns that are on those streets as well, which allow you to do these supplementary actions on the board. You can kind of get knowledge and kind of purchase books, we'll use that knowledge to purchase books or upgrades on your player board, the books kind of slot in at the top of your board. And that's a bit of a set collection and kind of action engine building kind of thing that's going on there.

Davey: 1:12:33

Which actually, I didn't realise had a similar thing to It's kind of similar. A slot book. Revive as well. Yeah. Yeah. Does anything down the line? Yeah.

JP: 1:12:41

You kind of activate the chain don't you? Yeah. And, and the kind of whole premise is that you're going to build these columns, and they're gonna run rampant. Like every round.

Davey: 1:12:50

You have control of where they run. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Obviously, the more columns you have the you can split your movement. Yeah, they just go there

JP: 1:12:58

Just like I want to run down the street and you think it is okay. Because all the call actions at the end of the street that kind of, the rub of the game is that at the end of the round is where your student is, and where the Golem is. If the golems ever in front of the student, you have to pay knowledge as the difference in spaces. Can't you pay victory points? So you kind of live in peace? I suppose. Space? Yeah. Shit, because what your Golems just gone a bit... Doing horrible stuff. So yeah, it's kind of got this I've really need to watch what I'm doing. And, and it started every round the movement points as Davey said that you allocate to those columns. And then you kind of go actually, I don't mind the blue tracking running down one because I want the action. But to I'm planning on moving my student, three spaces, and I won't have to pay that much difference. But yeah, it's I think, like, say we had a rough start with it.

Davey: 1:13:48

I think it's a good solid game. Yeah. But I don't think it does anything too unique for me to want to play it again. I would play again, some light but to buy it. No. It doesn't it doesn't do anything unique. No, I

JP: 1:14:04

Yeah. I'd like to say I don't hate it. Oh, I don't think it's average. I think it's good. But yeah, I'd say there's nothing new in it. No,

Kerley: 1:14:13

You guys finished playing it. I thought it would be it sounded like a load of rubbish. Because you guys come away. And you've you've really quite like sick of playing it by the end of it.

JP: 1:14:21

Yeah, I think just because like we cocked up, and it took 2 rounds to play, and I still read the rulebook around passing about four times. And again, I think I've watched videos and done preparation, it would have sunk in just one of those. I just still didn't understand it passing because it just got to the point where it really doesn't matter now.

Davey: 1:14:38

It was like Sarah passes. And Dave and it just and Dave does this. And then it was just like Jane and mentioned Jane. Jane gets to put the marbles and it was like 'yeah but who is that? Like,

JP: 1:14:54

I'm sure? Sure is mentioned, if I sat and read the rulebook, cover to cover, you just don't have time. You scan reading you kind of work it out.

Davey: 1:15:04

Or it might just be a bad rule book. But

Adrian: 1:15:07

yeah, I mean, apart from the rulebook it might have been you didn't give it a fair shake. But yeah, you both sort of looked like yeah, again, like cool. I played a game. Fine. Yes.

JP: 1:15:17

Didn't blow me away but yeah I play again yeah

Davey: 1:15:23

just yeah my I think my it just took a long time to get through as well so

JP: 1:15:30

it was two hours Yeah

Davey: 1:15:33

it felt longer

JP: 1:15:34

yeah you know even with this side of the good game I felt like six hours and it was only two but ya know I can't sit here and say it was bad like that because I don't think that's true at all

Davey: 1:15:46

not anything as bad as I said I just didn't have anything to know and I think I made the right choice and not getting that and getting Furnace in my opinion even a furnace doesn't

JP: 1:15:56

it's not it's not really comparable is it?

Davey: 1:15:59

No, I just meant even though it's not like it doesn't bring anything really unique to the table the it's just more frantic.

JP: 1:16:05

It would have to staying presence now. I think you'll probably get a few plays or best out of it and then people might go on shelf with

Davey: 1:16:11

my barrage gets the table. Well, I love that.

JP: 1:16:15

I really like it. But anyway, yeah.

Davey: 1:16:16

So to me what is also the same kind of the same design as Barrage Yeah, and My thought was more.

JP: 1:16:23

Lorenzo il magnifico, so it's kind of that Italian board game designer looking. Looking forward to Lorenzo on Wednesday is better isn't it. I love Lorenzo. So if you asked me do you want to play Golum or Lorenzo, like, Lorenzo any time. Yeah. Now I still like it. But it's nothing like this.

Adrian: 1:16:47

Okay, what was your morning?

Kerley: 1:16:49

Well, the most important part Sunday morning was the fry-up that I had

JP: 1:16:54

How many sausages did you have?

Davey: 1:16:55

think had three I did.

Kerley: 1:16:58

Quite restrained for me, normally, it would have been four or more. 20 quid . it wasn't. But it was super expensive. Yeah, I must say it was 17 pound. Which for breakfast, which was like I gotta be honest with you. Like, I don't know whether you plan to go as planned to talk about it. But I did feel like the food for the money was really good quality in general. The hotel but I would say it was a definite exception. That breakfast. It was tasty, but 17

JP: 1:17:24

his hotel holiday inn breakfast. pound for

Adrian: 1:17:28

This is it so that the food was 11 quid. It wasn't nothing exciting. You know, it wasn't, you know, for Michelin stars, or how many Michelin stars at the top. You know, it wasn't anything like that. But it was solid food a little bit more than you'd normally pay at a restaurant because you're stuck in a hotel sort of thing. So

Davey: 1:17:43

I think it was a bit cheaper than a restaurant

Kerley: 1:17:47

for a pizza or 10 pound for a burger. And

Davey: 1:17:49

you know, you mentioned

Adrian: 1:17:51

12 quid for chicken burger and chips was a bit kind of standard now on the much side but

Kerley: 1:17:57

either way, I didn't I didn't think it was so bad. I thought was good for the money. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:18:02

I didn't I wasn't paying it.

JP: 1:18:05

It wasn't £8 quid for a sausage roll the expo was it? No.

Kerley: 1:18:10

But But yeah, so yeah, apart from that I'm going to be quite boring and just say I have a lovely game and Terraforming Mars on a Sunday. You got robbed the place first game I did. That was quite involved Terraforming Mars. Euro game you know a teach game that you always takes quite a long time and it was like that. But we all had a really good game I think Rob enjoyed it. Yeah.

JP: 1:18:32

I've asked him Did you enjoy that He said yeah, yeah, he did I think once he got his engine built Yeah, and kind of figured out how obviously the game works I think he started to like enjoy the satisfaction of like you're doing most engine building so he's

Adrian: 1:18:44

saying Concordia almost when we pay Concordia is that once I've got once I've worked out how to build the engine and what order to do things he seemed to quite enjoy himself

Kerley: 1:18:52

Yeah, I just never picked him for for an engine build up. But yeah, I was happy to teach him and he seemed to enjoy it. And it was a good game. So yeah, really good fun. As always with Terraforming Mars, my favourite game, probably.

JP: 1:19:03

You can't go wrong with it. No,

Davey: 1:19:04

no, you can't.

JP: 1:19:05

I would have happily joined you a bit busy. We seem like say we seem to be out of sync with our game. Throughout pretty much the whole convention. The whole convention. Yeah. And then obviously, I wasn't there. So definitely. So good.

Kerley: 1:19:19

We didn't play enough bloody game.

JP: 1:19:23

About you, you did a game first thing.

Adrian: 1:19:24

I did Castles of Burgundy, which is a very close second, like very close. So I can't remember if I've mentioned it or not. This year, I decided I was going to cross off my list. A lot of designers who I hadn't played and a lot of them are very famous, well known designers. I seem to have picked up a lot of games that are by either first time designers or sort of not prolific. So earlier in the year I played with Great Western Trail off signed off Pfister I played Lacerda on the Saturday that signed off and other designer and I finally got Castles of Burgundy to the table and managed to sign off my first filled and just such a strong I can understand why it's still going like these years later on. There's a big glorified deluxe version on gaming found at the moment is because it's just such a strong mix of a bit of engine building a little bit of sort of that puzzle of what goes where, essentially, you roll two dice. And you can either spend one to two, just get two workers which allow you to increase or decrease shuffle your work your dice by one, or you can spend a dice to grab something off of the table that's in that number space, all the spaces are one to six. So you roll, you can roll, you roll your two dice at the start of the turn, you pick a tile out of the one section, if you spend a one that goes into your little pile of you're allowed three things together. And then you can spend another dice to then put that from your board into that numbered space, but it has to be touching other tiles. So you start with a tile in the middle of the board, and it has to touch another tile. So you know, you kind of dictated by the dice a little bit, you can't strategize too much it is that nice mix of a bit of strategy, but probably more on the tactical side of things. And then the other thing you can do is you can sell goods. So one of the one of the tiles, the ship allows you to pick up goods that again randomise, where they come out, and they've all gotten number one to six and you can spend a dice of that corresponding colour to gain victory points and a silver. And when you get to silver, you can pit you can pay it on top of you have turned to gain a hex from the middle of the board. So a little extra turn. And then there's like a whole load of points saladness of okay, if you complete a pasture

Davey: 1:21:40

There's a theme thing, like, well, point salad.

Adrian: 1:21:42

I've not normally the biggest fan of point salad, but I played a nice mix of points salad games that this week is not normally my like, I wouldn't say it's a defining feature of games that I like. Because quite often I do like to sort of head down a route a little bit or you know, play a little bit of stuff but have a main purpose. But there's enough point salad in this that you know, our completed patch, just therefore, because I did that in the first turn, I get more points. But the bigger the section of like greens, green hexes, the more points you gain. So do you go after the little hex and get early points? Or do you go after the big hex and try and do it earlier and get a nice mix of big, big section points and earlier turn points. And it just flowed really nicely and played it for the first time. With Marcus. It's one of his good favourite games, and I played with it. And again, I'm terrible with names I believe it was Caroline and Jason, whose surname were castle. So I played Castle with the Castles. Good laugh and a few bits and pieces in there. And it's got a little bit of sort of beating people to the punch and all that kind of stuff in the order you do things in. It's just it was just a really nice solid game game. Again, clean. A nice mix a bit more on the tactical side. Yeah, but really nice mix of bits and pieces.

Davey: 1:22:55

Yeah, looks that deluxe version and it does look. Yeah, good. The cost was like

Adrian: 1:23:02

the gallerist or the deluxe version of Castles of Burgundy. And I'm kind of still not quite sure that you can add

JP: 1:23:10

Obviously the cheaper I would.

Adrian: 1:23:12

I do but the production quality is pretty

JP: 1:23:15

You already have the game

Davey: 1:23:17

and The Gallerist you're smiling and you don't have it

Adrian: 1:23:23

I'm still torn on which one I want to get because I do think that it's not the prettiest of games and it is a bit of an off put. But yeah, absolutely. And then halfway through that we had the raffle draw.

JP: 1:23:33

Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did.

Adrian: 1:23:36

And Paul's reading through the list of names and it sounds like everyone's like that right. And he went and finally Adrian and I was like oh my gosh, I never win anything this will be great. And then the pessimist side of me when that's the bottom of the list. It's gonna be a chunk of small games that they can't get rid of

Kerley: 1:23:54

Or the other way round off like you might have been frosthaven you know,

JP: 1:23:59

you had a running joke with me and said uh, you know, knowing my luck, I bet I win Cloudspire by because he really hates cloudspire.

Adrian: 1:24:04

Yeah, I genuinely that's what I'm gonna win but honestly, I thought I had no chance I bought five tickets I thought like I do with all these kind of raffle things because I never win in my thoughts 25 quid charity right like Yeah, happy bunnies and a one Weather Machine like Vital Lacerda's new thing before it's even really hit people and yeah, I he bought the game over and I went this is a joke right I thought it was gonna pick it over go oh and then put it back and go this part you know in my head has a side of me was out it was like I'm gonna win the little section. Oh my gosh, I'm so made up so happy.

Davey: 1:24:40

And yeah, He came over, we're just like smiling again it

JP: 1:24:44

Adrians just had the best weekend ever.

Adrian: 1:24:47

So So yes, I've got that there's Carcassonne on there as well the new version of Carcassonne Dobro

JP: 1:24:53

Which if you don't want...

Adrian: 1:24:55

I've got the big box version but it's Miss cup big box version. So I was kind of thinking as to what I need to do with I need to buy the new expansions and get a nice new version which is

Davey: 1:25:05

why I actually do enjoy that I'm not played in ages either.

Adrian: 1:25:08

I played a few times this year but really enjoy it. So yeah, so was really made up with that and totally unexpected. So yeah, signed by Vital himself. And I've opened opened that up when I got back on Sunday. And just sort of nailed it look, yeah. Really nice components in the dual layer player board and was like,

JP: 1:25:26

oh, it looks good. It looks good. And yeah, I was kind of like, because I backed this thing already. And then as I got to

Adrian: 1:25:37

I've got that cut. Is he happy or not?

JP: 1:25:41

I'm so happy for you. Oh, like, I shouldn't have got that. I could have got something else.

Adrian: 1:25:48

One of those things, isn't it? But yeah, no, absolutely made up to have played a Lacerda on the Saturday my first Lacera and loved it so much and to win one in the raffle just Yeah, yeah, absolutely crazy. So, but like the raffle was what, for £4500 pounds? Yeah. Absolutely crazy. And every single like, they divided it into 35 Lots, which was more than just one game. And I think that was the sensible thing to do with all of the games that they had there. Otherwise, it would take them hours to draw it all and done all that lot. And the prizes were Frosthaven, there was Cloudspire, there was Perseverance, there was Cerebria, there was Hopolomachus. Weater machine

JP: 1:26:27

I mean, you probably be happy with any of those. Maybe some of the lots you might not have been as happy with. But again, that's not the reason why. Now it's kind of easy. People wanted to win, but

Adrian: 1:26:39

I think they'd have all been over £80 quid. Yeah, each lot would have been a feast. It was a good balance. It was a good balance, the person who got Fosthaven and got like a couple of little diddy games on top of it. And so I got I got like, Carcassonne that. And then like there was

JP: 1:26:52

always gonna say the person got Frosthaven got monopoly just to balance the yin yang of it just like, Oh, no joke.

Adrian: 1:27:02

It was it was there was no lot that was like, oh, that's probably less than, you know, the value of a strip of tickets sort of thing. And

Davey: 1:27:10

it was a it was a good run for it was really good raffle. So and that's why obviously, it got so much money as well. And not only just because of the charity side,

JP: 1:27:19

but I think it just felt good though. Like, even though, you know, the majority of people didn't win. I don't think anyone was like really salty about it. You can sometimes find that they haven't been able to win. Yeah,

Davey: 1:27:32

some people do. Yeah, kind of

Kerley: 1:27:36

It's like It's like one of those things that when I spend money on a raffle. That's why it's fun. Yeah. It There we go.

Adrian: 1:27:46

Yeah. I think as I said, it's kind of smart to divide it into what 35 lots or whatever it was, because if they'd been like 200 drawn, because there was I reckon about 200 games, there's over 100 At least games, and now I can if they'd been drawn and you didn't you'd put 40 quid in hadn't won anything. I think people would have been more sour about that than his 35 Lots but you know, because of the 4000 that there's like a one in 20/20/30 chance of winning if you bought like a strip, some some weird odds. But so, so yeah, so that was that was my game of the morning. You guys went home at that point, I think.

Kerley: 1:28:20

Yeah, I think we got to like to say three o'clock. And we were like,

Adrian: 1:28:23

Yeah, we were playing a game and then we

Davey: 1:28:28

Revive which is what JP wants to play and booked out. Yeah,

JP: 1:28:32

The current games list.

Davey: 1:28:34

I think I ended up enjoying it more than everyone else and say, We will be winning games when we play and you know, Food Chain Magnate?

JP: 1:28:46

No, no, no, no, I didn't enjoy that. No. But um, what is Revive first?

Davey: 1:28:50

So Revive's kind of a bit of a new hotness, it's kind of like a deck builder, area control, with a bit of kind of engine building as well. So you've got this beautiful player board. So JP was really excited. To be honest, once I saw it, it looks cool. It's meant to be like this machine, I guess. So you, the whole theme of it is it's it's an apocalyptic world, you pay these tribes which are coming up to the surface and realising that the the worlds revived and you can now start building out and you have these these player boards, which when you eventually build out will go around and give you other abilities. You slot cards in which double actions on them the top two, usually a resource, and the bottom is usually do something either like upgrade your engine or sometimes it's like do something at a reduced cost or do your special ability which is on your property. You have a player board, which has its own technology tree on it. And yeah, this area of control has a little like once you put building down no one else can build there. You've got cities when where you place your people, which is your technology tree, which when a person is there a cost other people more resources to go there, and it's very open, and there's lots of different strategies you can take. And it's kind of Yeah, it's got lots of little combos in there as well. Yeah. And the rest is massive. But yeah, so you've also got these artefacts which link up to what points you score because at the start, you get a, a gold card, which has purple, orange or white of these major artefacts and at the bottom, it has the condition. And by you getting these artefacts, you get multipliers on to that condition. So if you've got four purples, that would be four times whatever numbers on the, on the card. And then at the each edge of each of the map, there's large city, large cities that also have victory point multipliers. And the caveat is everyone starts in the middle. And then you have to start building out and you've once you've built you have your ranges from that building from there on. And so I was quite lucky. No one contened where I went. So I just went off on my own direction,

JP: 1:31:17

Let Davey just play the game without anything. Yeah,

Davey: 1:31:21

I got a multiplier, which linked up with my goal card, and I ended up at 104 points, which when I looked online, the highest at the moment is 124 on there at the moment, so it was a good score, I guess for my first 100

JP: 1:31:37

Shares about 46

Adrian: 1:31:39

Just made it around the 50 mark. Yeah, so there's a long it wasn't like, you know, a bit close. It was a long run away

JP: 1:31:47

My filming, I felt lost. And if I come back to that,

Davey: 1:31:50

and yeah, and it's kind of all kind of like joy it was, it was kind of lucky as well. Like, I had something they linked up on my gold card to what was on the table. So I got a massive multiplayer. No one contends me with my major artefact. So I had all the purples. So I just had to multiply or multiply really. And it just my point is just when

Kerley: 1:32:10

I do feel this kind of like a drawback of area control games in general, actually, just kind of specially when you're playing like three player is like, two people probably going to go at it. And the third player wins. You know, I mean, we didn't we yeah, we added. We added Northguard really did yeah. Like Jake jumped me. And then I had to fight him off. And then you try to jump me and then obviously it was like, you know, you weaken each other out? Yeah.

Davey: 1:32:33

So yeah. And I think from what I've seen online about Revive was because I really enjoyed it, and it has this it's really crunchy, and there's lots of lots of different combo elements, then the campaign is going to be really good this little campaign where you go through and unlock more abilities,

JP: 1:32:51

Call it a campaign. But really, it's it's modules that you are locking in as you go out as you go,

Davey: 1:32:58

But it does add lore to it as well, apparently, and people like that about the whole it does add a lot of school now.

JP: 1:33:04

I think it's lighter than that. I think the lore is on what a couple of cards. So yeah, it's not in the book, right? So you literally have a deck of cards, and on there, there'd be a little bit of lore. And then you play your base game and you'll read the next one and then another modules and I think it's that from what I've read

Adrian: 1:33:22

Made no sense to me what would relate it to the board and the theme and all that that I just didn't

Davey: 1:33:28

It's gonna be like an engine that you've got this building through, you're helping you build your towns and

Adrian: 1:33:33

There was no part of that between the cards, that engine on the board, the actual theme on the board. I was like it this could have been anything

JP: 1:33:40

As far as I was concerned. Worked out, Adrian, enjoy it.

Adrian: 1:33:45

So I was waiting for you guys. And you were midway through TM in a teaching game. And I was like they're not going to be done in the next hour or so. Go on and join. I wasn't interested in watch playthroughs I didn't think it was for me. And it was even worse than I expected.

Davey: 1:33:59

And we had someone join us came over and player before he was lovely chap. And yeah, nice guy

Adrian: 1:34:04

Did a good bit of teaching and yeah, it did a bit of teaching. Tim did teach it was good.

JP: 1:34:08

Maybe we complemented each other because I watched some videos in the morning. He'd played it the day before. So it's kind of like I say something I was looking at Tim and get right to him. Right then a certain things that he was playing, that he was getting wrong that I remember from the video that contradicted it. Those are probably number upon the few roles. And anyway, it was really the first time maybe Yeah, exactly. He wasn't like an expert by any stretch. So I think between us we kind of covered it. But no, I think what it's been making me think this game, I kind of came away I was disappointed. But I think I was disappointed at my performance of the game. Not the game is so yourself to be honest. And I think I kind of figured out as you usually do on your first play with some of these things that the I have made no attempt to get in anybody's way. I tried to kind of figure my own little puzzle. First game. Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think it was just more like and I didn't know I felt a bit lost in the mechanics of what I was trying to do and what my faction was leading me in to do and basically I was playing the faction that allowed me to recruit so basically get cards easier and then get resources for getting those cards and and maybe He didn't do enough of it. But even so just because I got these cards, I needed to get the right cards to fuel strategy. And I kind of didn't know what the hell to go after I did a bit of population has done a bit of buildings. I was doing a bit of this and again, that just comes with experience as a game. I actually really enjoyed it.

Davey: 1:35:34

I enjoyed I know when you came away from it didn't seem

JP: 1:35:37

It was because I in my head. No one I wanted it to kind of like blow me away. No, no, no, I wanted to like give me the feeling going like Oh God, I want this because I felt on the outs you were so excited. Yeah, I was really excited to play and I thought this is gonna be right. Sometimes when you've got such a big expectations Yeah, thing you can and I think that's probably what we're further away from. Yeah, and that's what it was. So when I kind of finished Yeah, okay, maybe it wasn't what I thought it was gonna be but I don't know I still I still enjoyed it. I was what I play again. Massively. Yeah.

Kerley: 1:36:11

I'd like it. Yeah.

Davey: 1:36:11

I think it's really good. But it's the, from what people have said online is there's massive there's people throwing out there's like, played 20 games or something. And some people are saying, Oh, this faction is unbalanced. Some other people then saying this faction and they're completely different. And it's I think it's because certain if you play in a certain way so some characters can counter other characters and and that will make them feel weaker. And I think it's one of those you need a couple of games under your belt

JP: 1:36:43

Show me a game that has asymmetrical factions that match someone faction is imbalanced. You cannot get perfect symmetry or asymmetry with with those guys.

Davey: 1:36:54

But and I think it's one of those that once you've got your head around, because there's so many bits with moving parts to it, once you put your head around it fully is only when you then going to see that actually, it's probably a lot more balanced than you think it's just because you've not been playing it right. And you've not been contending certain people, you know, but it's wherever you want to put our time and learn that, like probably Terra Mystica when when we have our first playthrough that we fought one one faction was a lot stronger than you looked up online and we're just like, Oh no, they're meant to be like the weakest and from because people have paid X amount of terrible Yeah, you know, and it's just because of what happened there's so many variables that is quite good. It's quite similar to say

JP: 1:37:37

It's not that those are similar in a way I've understand what you say yeah, yeah. Now you said Terra Mystica that's what got me into some of that Yeah,

Kerley: 1:37:48

Yeah, it's on my brain but I've covered a lot

Davey: 1:37:52

Well or Gaia Project is just Terra Mystica because of the theme seemed more on Terra Mystica in my head for some reason, but

JP: 1:37:59

It's space, I suppose. Yeah. But now the player board itself is duel layered... I thought it was a lovely look cool. And and it kind of has these the circles on it. And it looks like it's really hard to explain, like you have to go on to our socials and look at the pictures. Yes, the easiest thing to do, but it kind of looks like the spiral of these blue disks that sit in there. And like whenever you build these buildings next to these development areas, or terrains, you move tokens around this circuits. And then when you pass a node on this circuit, you unlock this machine that you can activate using these little power bolts or surges. And then as free actions, you can kind of charge these machines up and do additional actions. And I thought that was quite cool.

Davey: 1:38:44

It's quite some cool combo.

JP: 1:38:46

Increase my range. And then I'm going to go and do this action do that. And, and again, what made me laugh like the start the game, it comes with these two wooden cubes. And I looked at the robots, what do these do? And they basically go Yeah, that's the track. What the first action is that you're done. And then the second action that you done was like, Yeah, we don't need those. And then like, near the end of the game, that's like, the one action is just chaining. like there's no tomorrow doing like six things. comboing go by. I don't want to Yeah, thats what theses cubes are for. Yeah. Yeah.

Davey: 1:39:18

Last turn. And I was like, racking my brain just thinking, can I get this last person out? And then I was like, oh, yeah, I could do this. And then maybe I could do this and then do this. And then they'd get my last person out. But I think it was just I was very, yeah,

JP: 1:39:32

I think it's kind of concluded though, but I yeah, I thought in my head, I'm gonna buy this before. I don't know. I just thought I'm gonna buy this. And then afterwards, I thought, maybe I'm not. And but what now kind of going well, maybe I'll just wait. Maybe see what happened.

Davey: 1:39:48

I think it's one on I will wait and then see what people say about it after X amount of playthroughs. Because I really enjoyed it, but I don't know if it will have the staying power. And that's one of the things I would want to see and see what other people saying it in a year's time. So people say about it. And then if people are still loving it, then it's definitely it's gonna be an instead of by.

JP: 1:40:12

It's a double edged sword because I want to know what the extra modules that are on lobbed bring into the game, but then I don't want to spoil it.

Davey: 1:40:21

If it's not really a big campaign, then is Yeah, I think it really is.

Adrian: 1:40:26

And I think some of what you've talked about is kind of some of the problems I quite often have with these sort of big, like, I could probably go on for quite a while about why I didn't like it, because there was a lot of stuff you've just talked about. And I felt the complete opposite, like, no, like, but a lot of these games, you know, you know, routes on my list to play. And I'm very aware that I don't know if I'm going to enjoy that game, because you have to play it so many times to get so much out of it. And there are so many games that I'll never play more than three times. So if I have to take six games to learn it, why bother? That's twice as many games as then I will have played nearly every other game that I've I've played and therefore I think to myself, well, why bother putting the effort in in the first place almost like, you know, if I play in the first couple, and I was like, Oh, this is going to be get better over time, I would probably stick with it. But the fact that I was like,

Davey: 1:41:16

But I do think sometimes you need to give games that chance to get it to come into their own as well though, because we we are a bit like this play loads of new games. And we enjoy that. Yeah, but sometimes, it's quite nice to let a game mature and play it quite a few times.

Adrian: 1:41:35

Some of the games I've looked at and gone or you know, I think I'd want to give it a second or third chance and then quite often, I think to myself, but if I'm gonna give it a second or third chances, you know, how much is there really going to enjoy it

Davey: 1:41:49

Let's first understand if you just don't like it, then why would you want to play again, in the Great view really that put off?

Adrian: 1:41:58

Could get a lot more better and better over time, but I just don't feel like I'm gonna get

JP: 1:42:02

I don't feel it's worth the effort. Yes. When it comes down to retention I've

Adrian: 1:42:07

I think this is gonna be a big game.

Kerley: 1:42:09

Or at least go... I'm not sure yet. I'm gonna give it another play and you've probably be able to tell by that.

Davey: 1:42:14

So that's why Northguard's the same as far as Yeah, definitely.

JP: 1:42:18

Yeah. So yeah, like, I've come to the conclusion that I really liked it, did shit at it. But yeah, I'll play it again. I think someone else bought it like Yes.

Davey: 1:42:30

I think you guys even did shittier so to me, was the problem. Guys, it was tight, isn't it? Oh, well, we will get into it

Adrian: 1:42:40

Me and Tim were tight. Yeah, we had about five points between us flagging and then you were about what 15 points behind that. I think somewhere around that.

JP: 1:42:48

I think I ended up like 46/47 Yeah,

Adrian: 1:42:53

I think it was but yeah, so we ended up sort of fairly close together. I don't think I did badly at the game. No, I just didn't like the game. Therefore it was one of those things of I thought to myself well, but I saw I went in with a low expectation and the fact that it was even lower that said to me then okay, fine. This just isn't for you.

JP: 1:43:11

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.

Davey: 1:43:13

No games for everyone. No,

Adrian: 1:43:14

That's the point isn't it as I played it, we'd be bored if we'd be where we should we will play the same game. Yeah.

JP: 1:43:20

And who knows? Who knows what the future may bring?

Davey: 1:43:23

Yeah, well I'm I still watch it's definitely um it's on my watch list and rather than buy lists but I probably will buy I keep looking at Deal with the Devil

Kerley: 1:43:34

I'd be interested but rather than just saying Revive it sounds interesting. Yeah. But yeah,

Adrian: 1:43:40

I think I think the only other bits to mention is I picked up a couple of bits at the bring and by so there are my to play soon lists. So one was I managed to pick up a £30 quid copy of spirit Island played once I was very happy with that so that'd be making the table with my other group soon hopefully and then After the Empire I managed to get that for a decent amount so I think I'll try and get that to the table soon as well but the bring and buy certainly had some bargains in it if you were willing to do the hunting and spending a bit of time in and out and I managed to sell a few myself I worked out I was money neutral at the end of everything I'd spent on food and raffle tickets and other games sold came out that weekend money neutral which was nice because that includes a raffle yet not not the most gonna say I came away money neutral with some games

JP: 1:44:27

With the Weather Machine yeah that literally paid for his con, but now I think a tip from me on the whole bring and buy situation is try and get your items on the Google Sheets before the convention because actually I had about nine games to sell and I sold most of them before we even started Gridcon. Which is brilliant because I spent the first day on Saturday just hunting people down Why are you doing your job at your job right cool. We're gonna gonna get the games from my car boot and off we go and I think I ended up taking three into the bring and buy and I sold one of them and I think I don't know when I walked into the bring and buy I was quite overwhelmed by it.

Adrian: 1:45:10

It's a bit like TK Maxx when it yeah

JP: 1:45:14

Good analogy right analogy Yeah, and I was like oh my god like so I like that

Kerley: 1:45:20

See I quite like that, rummaging and like I

Davey: 1:45:23

Becky back with like five We don't discuss bring and buys around wife

Adrian: 1:45:28

Every time I mentioned I'm going off to the Bring and buy, I'm coming to really just in case someone else dropped off and then she'd pick up a box and I'd go I think you'll like that okay, so no no that's

JP: 1:45:42

Basically what caused

Davey: 1:45:43

Kerley's just made a load of room in the Kallax so yeah,

Kerley: 1:45:47

She actually got home on Saturday or Sunday. I forgot what day was. I think we might need new Kallax. I don't think we need a new kallax.

JP: 1:45:55

You need a new kallax

Adrian: 1:45:57

I was good. So I think I took about 20 games and I sold about 10 Because you only allowed 10 at a time in there. Yeah, and I think I've like came away with my 10 So I went in with 20 and just had them in the car every time a couple sold or took a couple more out the car and put them in to bring them by

JP: 1:46:13

I had two games left which was Mysterium which some might just burn and

Adrian: 1:46:20

Don't do that you can throw in a bin

JP: 1:46:23

If you want it you can have it or we might raffle it off or we might raffle it off listeners if it's a great game is good if you like that kind of stuff. I'm done with it. I'm like I've played with the kids and to the point now I'm like yeah, it's one of those and the other one actually is Polis and I was I was kind of like I enjoy Polis art I want to get rid of it and then now we've got it back and now haven't sold it might I'll make that just hang on.

Kerley: 1:46:54

I saw it in there and I'll find it once with you. Yeah, and I didn't really

Davey: 1:46:59

I really enjoyed it as well

JP: 1:47:00

I think it's because I'm crap at it so we both gave him a shoeing Yeah I think I'll just keep it

Kerley: 1:47:11

I do feel like with Polis is really good game but I don't know like it scratches the same itch as War of the Ring does buy probably rather play War of the Ring. Yeah,

Davey: 1:47:20

I see. Much more to War of the ring.

JP: 1:47:28

You're the Lord of the Rings. Well, the ring. Yeah, we need to get another one. There we go. That's bring and by tips. JP is bringand buy tips on Gridcon. Yeah.

Adrian: 1:47:42

And the other mentions or anything that before we sign off.

Kerley: 1:47:45

I really enjoyed gaming with Marcus and Joel, two people that I'd be interested in gaming in the future.

JP: 1:47:50

So yeah, I just wanted to say a big thank you to boardgame.Jimmy. James McCann, who came and saw us on Sunday, he made his way to say hello name. Strong name, James. Yeah. And yeah, really nice to put face to the name. Yeah, and yeah, and add a good like 10/15 minute chat with him. Which is brilliant. Give us Yeah, just just great to see people you speak online with,

Davey: 1:48:17

You know, force him to come on the show at some point. Yeah.

JP: 1:48:22

We get to talk about games. I did the hard sell on him. Yeah, yeah, we gave him no choice. So. So no, that was great to meet him. And like I say, I think everyone has been there that we met. Just brilliant. Yeah.

Davey: 1:48:37

Really great atmosphere. It was. Yeah, I think part of me preferred it. It was more personal than UKGE. It was really nice. Yes. No, yeah, Everyone's got friendly faces and yeah, it kind of felt like you've known some some people for ages even though you've just met them.

Adrian: 1:48:59

Board game with them. And suddenly you felt like oh, yeah, no,

JP: 1:49:02

Yes. It's a feels like a community and I think a lot of that is kind of revolved around obviously the gaming rules, patreon supporters as well and they make up quite a lot of that community. I can't remember the percentage, but it's quite high percentage. So there's a lot of people that got to know each other anyway, and you just feel part of that family a little bit and, and very inclusive on Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Adrian: 1:49:24

Really widespread of board games, considering you know, that way like when you look at the patron supporters quite often so handle that Euro game, you feel like for a lot of love but yeah, you could tell that they would just love games across the board. Like there was all sorts of different board games being played. And everyone's really enthusiastic about it

Davey: 1:49:43

I think the selection to play there was actually better than UKGE as well, like for games that we can actually get to the table. I was more interested in a lot more there then what we could play.

Adrian: 1:49:54

Remember, people are trying to sell the new the new hotness, aren't they? And we're willing to play whatever people will put in front of us quite often or you know, whatever tickles our fancy. Like I say, I've played the Gallerist, several years old, Castles of Burgundy thats several years old. It's not the latest hotness that they're trying to sell you on Games Expo.

Davey: 1:50:12

I mean, suddenly, there was still the latest hotness there though.

Kerley: 1:50:15

A library as well when they're in the game now. Suppose what you meant the

Davey: 1:50:19

Yeah, I'll just meant all the I just meant known as the games to set the games expert this this there was a bit because we said that before it was a bit lacklustre and kind of whereas I guess it was just before Essen as well, isn't it whereas we've got to play a lot of the guessing game.

JP: 1:50:33

That's why Gridcons time when it is because it's basically Paul Grogans Essen releases game party weekend I used to do when he came back from Essen so we could get all the Essen releases out. Yeah. And it's only hear about in talk, talk about it on on the episode we did with him. And he literally used to cram for the people playing games on the floor, on tables, there's people everywhere falling over each other and then they'll all crash like sleeping bags, on sofas, floors, and everything. Like carnage. And Vicki who's Paul's partner and fiance is like I think we kind of joked on the episode saying you got a good one there. Right. So with you and all your your mates coming around and and yeah, and they've kind of converted into Gridcon. But three years ago, I think they first first did it. Well, this is the Gridcom through. This is the third one. Yeah, so before pandemic was the first one. Yeah. I tend to grip on to so I've got that comparison. And as I say that was done at the Best Western in Tiverton and I think the venue. I mean, I am biassed, right. Because the venue is better. And it's literally 10 minutes away from my house. So you know, it is what it is. But it's just a felt the way that the convention was laid out was a lot better because it you had the bar area, but because people are gaming in there. It felt connected. You walked down the main room into the bar, you felt like still part of the convention. Yeah, getting drinks into. And then yeah, the restaurants literally hanging off the side. Yeah, the other rooms literally the other end of the food to your table, which is now that I mean, that is such a lovely thing. Because you think oh, I'm gonna go out and get something to eat. You don't want to spend two hours away from the convention. Point. Yeah, and you can Did you order the food? Literally as you're setting the game up? Yeah.

Davey: 1:52:24

And I didn't expect that, to go in the bar. Yes. It's the table.

Kerley: 1:52:28

It's that direct comparison to the expo again, isn't it? Yeah. You know, if you had something to eat there, it was like, rubbish food really in line

Davey: 1:52:36

And yeah, that's about 12 quid for a sandwich and you get it? Yeah.

JP: 1:52:41

Yeah, you can't I can't fault it. I think Yeah. Had the feedback forms been released literally today online and

Davey: 1:52:49

Just like there was enough parking as well. Which I was surprised. Yeah.

JP: 1:52:52

Yeah. Just all around. Great. Please do it again there next year. well organised

Adrian: 1:52:57

So a massive thank you to Paul and Vicki and all those that helped run it myself often had people that I didn't know hadn't seen before running the desk, but they obviously have lots of help to produce such a great event. So a big thank you for everyone involved in running Gridcon this year went really smoothly I think we can all say that. And just a big thank you and a big thank you to anyone we stopped and talk to you stopped and talk to us played games with it was such a friendly welcoming environment. As I said, I jumped on just several people mid game and we How is it I really want to know because I might buy this game. Everyone was super friendly and didn't mind or anything. That's a massive thank you for all of us. And with that, our final turn is wrapping up and victory points are about to be scored. Thank you everyone for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and review on your podcast player of choice. If you'd like to get in contact with us you can do you can email us at players@whoseturn.co.uk You can check us out on our Facebook page Whose turn is it anyway podcast on Instagram@whoseturnpodcast or on Tik Tok@whoseturnisitanyway We'll be back again shortly because this is an expansion episode so who knows probably a week's time. But until then, whose turn is it anyway? Baby!!! I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grave ooooo