Adrian: 0:32

Welcome to Whose turn is it anyway podcast all about our gaming group and of course the board games we play. I am Adrian, your returning first player and I'm joined by other players I am joined by JP Hello, he will rock a mic like a vandal Chris. He will wax a chump like a candle Tambo. Hello, he serves others up like a pound of bacon. And with that introduction out of the way, we will get to the point to the point no faking as we talk about DICE DICE, baby. So yeah, in our main topic, today, we will be talking all about those magical chance clicky clicky cubes, and whether we love them hate them, how we feel about them, all that kind of stuff. Nice. So before that, how we were doing

JP: 1:18

Really good. Yeah, good. It's good to have you back as first player Adrian, it's been thanks been a while now I can't remember exactly when when you handed the baton over.

Adrian: 1:28

See, I was due to be first player before Davey, but I got a new job. It kind of got in the way of recording a podcast. So yeah. So thank you, Davey for for picking up the slack on that one and taking my spot. And now I'm back for a few more episodes. Welcome back. Welcome back. It's now time to talk about you and me and all the good things and the bad things that have been as we talk about hex. So what great games have we been playing recently?

JP: 2:00

So many games

Tambo: 2:02

Lots and lots of games? Oh, yeah.

JP: 2:05

Mines, the stock answer is loads, isn't it? Because that's all I do. Just loads of game loads. And lots of games started.

Adrian: 2:14

As you've played lots of games, lots of games,

JP: 2:17

So it was the coronation not long ago. And what better way to celebrate the crowning of our new king is by playing a game of board games and not watching anything on the telly. Think that's

Tambo: 2:31

A great priority, though.

JP: 2:31

So it's kind of like had a rare weekend where I think my son was out doing ninja warrior for a birthday, and my daughter was out visiting friends. And my wife's out on hen do Hindu. So literally, it's just me the house and the dog and lots of board games. So yeah, we played loads of games. The dog wasn't invited but I invited friends over, which was a lot better. For us. Poor Rusty, it's not the game we want to talk about actually, is Agricola. And Agricola is a game designed by Uwe Rosenberg who we actually did a an episode not too long ago. And I think I had the lovely kind of spot of explaining Agricola during the episode. And it had been six years since I played it. And I didn't do a great job, I'm going to be completely honest. Because I was trying to remember the game and how it worked. And I thought, You know what I'm gonna do in this, let's talk about hex segment, I'm going to redo it, because I've actually played it a lot more times, because I bought it. And one of the reasons why I purchased Agricola was actually to play with my family. And I'm glad because like my son, Josh, he absolutely loves it. He's completely, you know, he keeps I want to, you know, get all the wood and the clay and the reeds and all the things and stuff like and he's completely like obsessed to the point where he's asked me to play solo, which I then have to be offended or proud. I don't quite work that out

Adrian: 4:05

He takes afteryou. Yeah, you play that a lot of times.

JP: 4:08

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, so Agricola for those who kind of don't know what it is, it is a mediaeval 17th century farming game. I know. It's exciting, okay, exciting themes. And it's basically setting in the time when farming was bloody hard work. And it's bleak and, and essentially, keeping your family members fed and alive is a chore, and it's tough. And the game kind of portrays that quite well, because you've always got this threat of keeping basically your family fed at each harvest so that every harvest time you have to kind of make sure that you have enough provisions to keep everyone going otherwise you have to beg for food I think I called it shame last time was actually begging and you get a few but in terms of the game, it's a worker placement game structured over 14 rounds of which you kind of left side of the board you've got your basic actions up like you know get the wood and get the clay get the reeds or play occupation cards or minor improvements to your farms and all the stuff you'd probably typically find in any kind of worker placement games. But the the kind of unique twist in it is that the game is broken over six stages. And each stage has a series of cards. And every round one of those cards gets revealed. And it reveals a new worker placement spot. So it's kind of like, in stage one, you'll have the ability to build like fences and basically renovate your house from from its wooden structures to clay to stone. And basically then sheep start appearing to the sheep markets and, and again, it kind of progresses and progresses all the way through and to the point where you can actually get new family members. So you can kind of breed and exchange them for farming. No, no, not exchanged for farm animals, but get new workers that you instantly, you know, give birth to a baby, and then it turns into work and you put it to work. Yeah, like you've now a fully grown adult, six months old. Yeah, get out there. Go. And so yeah, and it's, it kind of plays out slightly differently in each time you play because of that kind of random order of the cards, but they're obviously seeded into stages. So they're not fully randomised, but they each stage is randomised, if that makes sense. So yeah, it's, it's, you know, you can kind of do different things in there, you can kind of build pastures to get animals in there and you can breed them. And you can obviously build your house up and extend your house to get more workers because you need to have rooms for each worker that you have. And you can also grow vegetables and grain and you can bake bread and do all sorts of funky cool stuff. But what I really like about it, is that like the the improvement cards in the game are like really basic stuff. So it's like yes, I've got a pulley system thing or I've got a ladder and this ladder is now going to make my farm amazing by doing this X Y and Z and it's really kind of quaint cute, you know typically very Rosenberg style kind of game I think you guys on Tambo's you've played Caverna so you know, a lot of this probably sounds quite familiar. Because it's it blends in a lot of the systems. I mean, Agricola came out in 2008. Right, so it kind of predates Caverna. A little bit. But yeah, I I'm enjoying it a lot. And yeah, the family's enjoying, I say the family Josh is. I need to inflict this, this farming pain onto my wife at some point, but But yeah, it's really, I think, since that episode is really scratching an itch. And I'm actually starting to look into even more Uwe games, which I even I didn't even think I even would do. And there's two that I've got my eye on is Ora et Labora. Yeah. And, and again, that's all about monasteries and building. Basically settlements and cities. And it just looks really cool and Euro-y for me.

Chris P: 8:08

Thought you were trying to summon a spel

JP: 8:09

No. And yes, that one I've got my eye on. And I've probably nearly bought it three times but haven't yet. And the other one is Hallertau, which is one of his newest newer ones. Not newest one, but on the newer ones, which is about crop rotation and farming again, so yeah, exciting time. And yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Adrian: 8:33

I've been looking at a few of the Uwe ones. So I've got Nusfjord, which I mentioned a few times. Yeah, it's on the shelf of shame. But you own that. Don't you do own that. Atiwa went on sale today, and again, I nearly bought that three times today. I like it going. Do I need it though?

Chris P: 8:49

Like added to your basket and just leave it there for a minute then I'll take it.

JP: 8:53

Shame. No,

Adrian: 8:54

no. And then the other one that I quite like the look of is Glass Road.

JP: 8:59

Yes. There's gonna be sort of wheel the wheel

Adrian: 9:02

So yeah, I think we want to it's fair to say we are in a bit of an Uwe bubble. We has Lacerda a few months ago. Yeah, now we've got Uwe, who's next? Probably maybe the Delux Kickstarter I've seen hopefully.

JP: 9:15

Noise. Nice, bro. And that's me

Adrian: 9:18

How aboutyourself, Chris.

Chris P: 9:19

So yeah, with the coronation, that was another just excuse for fun, get the family together and play some silly games. So I'm going to mention sushi roll was a game that we played. Part of the game where you have to develop the your best sushi dish, including puddings, I say including puddings, because I always forgot puttings. Played two times that one day, and I forgot puddings both times. And it's like the bonus points were at the end of the meal. And I ended up losing every time because I didn't have any bonus points. Sounds like thanks a lot. But yeah, it's kind of like a round robin trading game where you each character, each person gets sort of, I think seven cards, eight or seven cards. And then you pick one card out of that out of that eight to sort of be part of your menu. And then you give the rest of the person to your left and then it goes round and round and round until you're left with basically at the end of the chapter that no one else wants like the bit of tiramisu or something that is that all this is all a pair of chopsticks that you can't use because you haven't done your turn properly and then at the end of the just careful the point somebody you get sort of each dish gives you the modifiers like times three if you've got X like X number of these types of cards and if you have wasabi but followed on by another card, I can remember they were you get an extra bonus points and yeah, it was really good fun. But yeah, I lost every time because I forgot my puddings. So don't forget your puddings people, never ever again I will never forget to pudding so long as I live Sushi Go. Is it a sushi roll? It

JP: 10:50

I was at the one with the dice. Because that's what I thought Sushi. Sushi was Yeah.

Chris P: 10:57

No, I didn't have ducks in it might be Sushi Go then.

JP: 11:00

Yeah, there's a version sushi rolls. It's the same game right rolling dice and they go on a conveyor belt around.

Chris P: 11:07

Oh, no, it wasn't. It wasn't that one. That must have been the Sushi Go then. Yes, one. So my apologies.

JP: 11:12

No, no, it's it's it's fine. I'd

Chris P: 11:14

It had Sushi in the name. It's not mine. It was my cousin who bought it before. Great guy. Great. Well,

Adrian: 11:22

What about yourself?

Tambo: 11:24

Well, I played a couple of games , played TM, Terraforming Mars at Dan's with Kerley the other day, which was good, but I won't go into that I've mentioned a lot of times.

JP: 11:33

What's Terraforming Mars?

Tambo: And played Clank : 11:33

catacombs at Kerley's the other day which is new for me. And I played it, I know Becky's mentioned it a few times in the podcast. I won't give too much details but

JP: 11:48

She hasn't you know, I was thinking about doing

Tambo: 11:49

She did, she explained it to me in one of the podcasts

JP: 11:51

Yeah, she has then, Yeah, I only cut the episodes I know not explaining that anyway.

Tambo: 11:59

But yeah, so basically the dungeon crawler game the catacombs gives you the characters I believe so you got you have all different characters. I was an orc big, big chunky orc goes round about fighting and killing the monsters I think Jay was the wizard it was about card drafting, Kerley was a cat which is like I think he's like the dragons like partner or something. Yeah, because every time that the Dragon attacks Kerley just seems to be okay with it and then he just stitches us up a bit more

Adrian: 12:35

Have you not seen Shrek? You can have a donkey and a dragon, you can have a cat and a dragon

JP: 12:40

You can have whatever you like

Tambo: 12:42

Was like an inside spy that's what it was like, he was all about movement knows he can move around the teams really well. I can't move back he was so I can't go into that one. But yeah, that was really good fun. I mean you go across the board you bring the, go deeper you go you know the scary is to get out, you die if you do not get out on time. Yeah, yeah. So it's about your clanking make a lot of noise and all these tokens go into the tray then it goes into the bag and if you draw out your colours when a Dragon attacks you get damage. So I was doing really well at beginning of course and I went really deep and I forgot after one more artefact because I could carry to Yeah, got a backpack and I didn't realise how bad it is because he didn't want me to go okay right and then out and then yeah, I've died really deep down

JP: 13:28

That's every Clanc is it started off well yet but then a series events ensued where I ended up dying

Tambo: 13:38

Dying in the low levels you get rescued currently so you're not officially dead you just get rescued but you lose 20 VPS at the end Yeah, I died at the bottom nothing nothing's I paid two and a half hours of nothing. But I still enjoyed it. So that sounds good. That's the main thing. Yeah,

JP: 13:50

That is the main thing with Clank. So yeah, so the the characters are actually part of the Adventuring Party expansion. The asymmetrical decks that you played with Yeah, I know because Kerley was like I really want to get hold of it, and you're struggling to get hold of that expansion but I think they've just recently reprinted or has come into stock so yeah, it's been key for them and it just it makes the game a little bit different because just leads into a bit of asymmetry rather than Yeah, everyone's the same and everyone's there but it's still great game like even Space Clank is just fun rather than

Tambo: 14:22

I've never played base Clank I've just played with the characters now so yeah, yeah, very good. I'd be tempted to buy if I can afford it? I think it'd be a family fun game that for

JP: 14:32

It was one of my Christmas Eve purchases for the family as I buy a game every Christmas Eve to play. Clank was one

Adrian: 14:40

I've not heard anyone really say anything bad like they might have overplayed it or whatever but I've never heard anyone go I didn't really enjoy that at all so I'm intrigued to try it so

Tambo: 14:48

It's literally Christ, a bigger version of your little dungeon oh the bigger version. Oh, you love it. Yeah

Adrian: 15:01

Yeah, so got invited over to yours on the coronation weekend. Along with Rusty and a few of the other players, and we played a bunch of games that day. Was it five? Yeah, fair

JP: 15:14

Adrian enough. That's a long day. There's quite a few games. I remember it being quite a few games for sure. And I think, I The Glenmoring is what you said. think Glenmoor Which one to talk about was the first one we played of the day. So maybe I just enjoyed it's had a lot of energy at that point. I don't know. But yeah, we've played Glen More. Two Chronicles Glen More Chronicles two whichever way round is So, essentially for Glen More, you are building up your little Scottish town. And it's got sort of three systems in play, you've got this moving sort of along a journey. And you can take a tile as long as far along the sort of the journey as you want, and then take that tile to add to your town. But turns go from the back. So if you jump way too far ahead, everyone will get two or three more goes potentially than you. And if people can even kind of slow down the game will speed up the game by sort of going round the track quick all along the track quicker. But it's also kind of got a counter productive thing of if you take too many titles, you get minus points at the end, because all the scoring is done relative to the weakest person. So like, if I've got the least whiskey, everyone's scores against me. And so if if everyone's got hundreds of tiles, then it's not too bad. But if someone's got like a little tight, sort of six or seven tile town, and someone's got 10, or 11 tiles, they're getting loads of minus points for having specialty walked along and take picked up every tile along the way. So it balances quite nicely with that. And then so you've got like this, the typical city builder, tile placement, have you put something down, you can only put it in certain areas, but perhaps for what for what you've got Klansmen next to and then you activate the tile you put down and all the tiles around it. And so you're kind of trying to place things next to things that work with it, or that give you the right actions. And then you've got a little journey board as well, which if you take certain things, it allows you to move around that journey board and pick up one off bonuses and extra scoring. And I found it really nice mesh of those things. And I think what I realised is how underrated I've kind of understood my love of tile placement. When I look back at all my favourite games, not all of them but a good portion of my favourite games have tile placement in them. So Carcassonne, suburbia, Quadropolis, Castles of Burgundy. Now Glen More was really good. I've really enjoyed it. I really want to get it to the table again. And hopefully we are well said good. And yeah, I think there's something about building up a nice little city and playing that putting something next to something else and getting the bonuses and working out that little puzzle that really sort of speaks to me, and I just didn't. I kind of knew it was there. But it wasn't until we played Glen More and I thought, oh, right, okay, this is definitely a thing that I enjoy in games. And quite often when I'm looking at games, if it has that city building all sorts of tile placement. Yeah, normally I take an extra look at it. So it's kind of a bit of a Oh, that is a thing for me. Yeah, the spatial puzzle. And I enjoy and what I got completely wrong on my game, which is, you know, you want to, like you said, Get the right tiles for the right resources to be next to the other ones. So you're changing. And like, it's so easy to get it wrong. You think, Oh, I'll go over there. Or I forgot to move my Klansmen the turn before to get them in the right place. And you're like, No. So yeah, it's just, it's quite crunchy in the play time is rapid, fast. I mean, yeah, we were teaching and stuff. But you can get a game and under 90 minutes. That's not bad.

Adrian: 18:57

Yeah. Yeah. It's a nice is that nice sort of mid weight Euro time, I think about hour and a half, maybe a little bit longer. And as you say, is crunchy. It's not, it's not difficult to learn. It's not really mean yes, for you can go and grab the tile that someone wants. But quite often, if you're going around far enough to get it quite often you're losing out elsewhere. So you've kind of quite often been given the opportunity to get it or the person who takes it off. You've gone so far around the track that they're losing out on other bits and pieces. And then yeah, just that spatial puzzle. But as you said, you kind of forgot to move one Klansmen once, and that was your game like, yeah, not horrificly, didn't exactly bomb it. But it certainly held you back for a couple of times. So it's a nice crunchiness of

JP: 19:40

There's a bit of planning involved in it, which I do enjoy. And I should know better for playing heavier games. But yeah, it's been ages since I got Glen More to the table. In fairness, I've owned it for a good few years. And when I got it, I played loads of it. And then like most games, thank you very much. I'll put you on the shelf for a while. And I would really been itching to play it again. And another thing you haven't obviously played the Chronicles, little mini expansions. Yeah, so the game comes with, I think seven eight little tick boxes. And then they're basically modules that you can throw in and just twist the game up a little bit just as a lot of variations. So one adds a dragon boat race, randomly ito the mix where you actually have drag a dragon boat, kind of meeple races around all of this for cities that are in play. Yeah, and you've got like the race going on, and you're building the town at the same time. And it's just really interesting. Another one is a simple one, it adds a hill to the the Rondelle track, where you can stop on it collect coins, like a toll that you pay, or you can land on it and get all the resources. And again, it adds up. It's not much not actually loads of rules, just a little bit of flavour, a little flavour, a little salty. It's called the Highlander. Because when I got off all the Highlander module, oh is the hill. Otherwise,

Adrian: 21:02

You go to the top of the hill and collect coins as its natural, as we always do,

JP: 21:06

My bounty. But yeah, there's ones that does like haggis festival thing, or, or very stereotypical Scottish themed whiskey production, which leans into that, or the there's one called the penny mobs where you can kind of get criminals in, but I don't know, like, there's loads of stuff I've not played. And I'm just keen to like, try them. Yeah, I kind of have a few gaming nights where we can just kind of blitz through them, and just see what they're all about. Yeah,

Adrian: 21:33

It's my perfect sort of weight and length of gain from it. It's kind of what I like I say, just kind of, sort of turn that light bulb on to say, I like tile placement games. I do like them. So yes, I'm really looking forward to that, hopefully get a few few of the expansions done, we will grow. Now we move on to our main event where we'll be talking all about dice. In my experience, dice can be quite divisive. Some people seem to love and some people seem to hate them. So it'd be good to talk about it. We'll go through all the categories, we've categorised like what dice are quite often used for in board games. We'll go through that in a second. But first I thought I'd just get a general opinion of do we love dice? Do we hate dice? Sometimes like the What's everyone's sort of headline of how they feel about dice?

Tambo: 22:25

I think you hit it spot on there. For me. It's a love hate relationship with dice. When they don't last isn't it? So? Yeah. I love the little dice games I've got but most of them are just if you roll, if you roll well, they're good. But if you don't roll well. Never said a fine example. Yeah. So yeah, I just Yeah, it's a love hate thing for me. Nice. Definitely. It's all up based on the luckiest person that comes in. Now. Most of most,

Adrian: 22:53

I feel that Yeah, sure.

Chris P: 22:56

I am. I'm a bit of a dice goblin. I love to. I've got loads of dice at home, I thought you know that I have any games that played them with I just like to have them. Back in the old d&d days where you just everyone used to have like seven no one used to bring dice. So I'm like, I'll just buy loads and I was like, all these ones were blue, or these ones are like iridescent colour. Oh, give me all the day. So yeah, well, no, no. But yeah, I love I love games with dice in 'em. But those are the risks, the chance, most likely is going to terribly as it normally does. But it's right. So part of the fun.

JP: 23:30

I mean, yeah, I love I love a custom dice there anything that's kind of custom dice with with unique faces on and anything like that. I'm just really good. So aesthetically, they're really pleasing. I love chucking them, like the dice, dice around. It's just a fun thing to do.

Tambo: 23:48

You've got to have a dice tray, right?

JP: 23:50

You can do a tower, but I like a dice tray. Because you get that feeling of like throwing them in the noise and bouncing around and go, Oh, is it good a bit and then you swear, you don't lose. But then I do like my Euro game. So I'm kind of like, kind of where you are today as well. So dice are random things. So I like to have ways that they can be mitigated. The ways that it can be manipulated, rather than just a rolled Oh no, I've rolled badly. That's what I have to accept. I like that

Chris P: 24:21

ability to manipulate or change the change of faces, etc.

JP: 24:25

But yeah, I mean, there's so many great games that include them and do some really funky unique things with dice. And this you can say it what no no I've been banned from saying some that one particular game and I'm going to try and get through this episode without mentioning the game you'll know what I'm talking about. So I don't need to mention it right now because I'm sure so yeah, it's difficult with a so called DICE DICE, but he bet that there were

Adrian: 24:57

Yeah, I think I kind of got a similar experience to Chris to some extent of my first sort of two experiences for dice were d&d, which is if you roll well or bad, it doesn't really matter because it can it does because your character could die for a bad dice roll sort of thing, but mainly it becomes part of the story. You know, for barbarian fluffs, four rolls in a row, and a wizard just happens to shank the god laying on like natural 20, it becomes part of that story. Another was Wargaming, where you chuck so many dice in a game that you Yeah, you can get rough rolls of the dice, but you tend to get a nice average over again, because you chuck so many dice. You know, when each squad is rolling 30 to 40 dice, sometimes you're like, Well, I'm unlikely to get averages. And then when I sort of moved into board gaming, I really didn't like them to start with. And then I sort of think I'm coming back round to liking them a little bit more in certain instances. But yeah, for sure, I've been on a little journey. But yeah, it's because I started off in that role game, that role game, that role player and Wargaming sort of thing, which is slightly different. Or in board game. Yeah, for sure. So let's, let's go through the categories. So the first one I thought, which I think you've already alluded to T, and I think is probably most people's main experience of dice in board games, what I'm gonna call target number dice, ie, roll a four plus, or a five plus, or as JP mentioned, with custom dice, it'll have three sides with a hitmarker, or something like that on it, and you roll them and you're just hoping to see the hitmarker I feel like this is the most common. I think there's a host of games, we could go on forever, like a long list of games this is in? How do we feel about that? Have we seen some particularly good examples, or particularly bad examples?

Tambo: 26:40

I think we've seen some easier examples and some harsh examples.

Chris P: 26:43

And really harsh is

JP: 26:45

What's an example of a harsh example.

Tambo: 26:47

So when you've got like one major hit on and you're like, so every other side, one blank, and then the other sides are all misses as well, you got to hit 106. Yeah, one of the six traffic analysis you can do when you have to hear criticism,

Chris P: 27:00

and Resident Evil, whereas one hits got a double hit on it. And that's it. So sometimes there's zombies the big zombies, you need at least a double hit. Especially if using like a knife or a pistol, and it's just like, you've got one in six chance you're gonna miss it. It's gonna happen. Yeah, yeah.

Tambo: 27:17

Yeah. Yeah. So that's it as I'm trying to think of more. Star Wars.

Adrian: 27:26

So yeah, my thought with the custom dice was pretty much anything by FFG. But Imperial assault first came to mind because that's got a tonne of custom dice, rolling to hit, or not to hit. And then because it's custom dice, they've also put things that give you special abilities urges that essentially it could be a it essentially manifests itself into like a four plus as a hit. But a five plus is a hit with an extra ability on it, because of the way the dice work. But yeah, because they're nice custom dice. And they were probably one of the first companies to be really putting out lots of custom dice. Yeah, that was my first thought of those to hit numbers.

JP: 28:01

Yeah, the one that sprung to my mind is Eclipse and Eclipse dice are very straightforward. You've got a blank which is your one you've got your here which is your six and then you've literally got the numbers of 2345 but the dice themselves aren't that special because I've literally could just be the six and I think in the first edition they were literally just a standard of the six dice but it's the way the game kind of plays the rules around that and the fact that you can you know you can have like spaceships with shields on which will mitigate computers that will modify the results of what you roll and things like that which makes it a bit more unique rather than haha we have a fight well the dice Oh shit I've missed. And you know, kind of the way the game works is you roll a hit, it's always a hit regardless. And if you roll a miss, it's always a mess. Regardless of you know, you can't modify those two results for anything in the middle you can kind of up or reduce depending on obviously technology and things like that. But yeah, I like about those. It's like the way games kind of put the mechanics in place to twist the general I'm rolling the dice and I've hit or I've missed, you know, some like you say some dice I've really like the odds aren't on your favour at all. Sometimes they're a bit more forgiving but yeah, it's just the way the games play around with that simple dice chucking Am I killed something or not killed? Something can be quite interesting.

Adrian: 29:29

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think dice modification is going to be a bit of a theme for me certainly through this episode because I quite like dice modification or again, just buckets of dice. When it's here's your one little bucket, when it's here's your one dice, die, whatever you want to use on no dice now common sort of replacement for the singular but you know you roll one dice and it's a two in two in three chance one in three chance one in six chance that can feel rubbish when you miss a couple of those when you roll in five or six dice the chances of you missing all of them is gets a lot the odds get a lot steeper against you don't they so

Chris P: 30:05

Yeah, and going back to when you're playing the war game for your dice in one go and you just go right that squads rolled like 50 these one numbers I can calculate how fast

Adrian: 30:17

I would even even like Axis and Allies or Twilight Imperium Yeah, or anything like that you tend to roll quite a few dice once they can mitigate that. I also don't like it when they make dice rolls, and then they add a random thing to the dice rolls. Because I find that that's just adding random on random and I can't. There's not, there's no get on with

JP: 30:37

The chaos theory. And then that is there's mad,

Adrian: 30:39

to add around target numbers?

JP: 30:43

It's quite a straightforward thing, isn't it? It's like, like you say it's a common, it's a common use of dice. That's what you tend to gravitate towards when you say, you know, dice in games is rolling in hitting getting a hit? Yes. Yeah,

Adrian: 31:01

Pretty much. But I mean, it's used for a tonne of things, whether it's, I think you mentioned Dead of winter, where you know, you're looking to roll over a certain number, it doesn't have to be a hit dice or anything like that. It's just you're looking to roll over that certain number. And you've got a whatever in whatever chance whether it's a big D six, or six sided dice, or D eight sided dice, or D 10s, D twelves. Whatever it is, you're essentially giving yourself a chance to,

Tambo: 31:28

It's a roll of dice games like zombies. Like for instance, you roll a lot of dice, yeah, and the second edition, but then when we put them all out dice into this equation, you have a decision to roll over six dice, and then you either or you in one roll. You have your 60s, a chainsaw, right? Okay. And then you get the will read all out dice, but there's a breakage symbol on it. So if you roll the brakes, and you break your weapon, just it hits. So yeah, it kind of makes it a gamble. Yeah.

JP: 31:51

Do you want to push the button getting more hits? Are there the risk of it breaking off?

Tambo: 31:56

And actually completely change the game from your fall? So great. Yeah.

Adrian: 31:59

Yeah, I haven't played Zombicide since I want to say Rue Morgue was the last fall might have been

JP: 32:04

That's first editions. Yeah, it

Adrian: 32:07

Might be the second not the Black Plague, whatever it's called. Yeah, the fantasy fantasy one. I think I played a couple of games for that. So I'm sure they've come up with loads of innovation since then. Yeah, my my memory of it is just chucking a handful of dice. Yeah, repeatedly.

Tambo: 32:24

Get yourself to make it even riskier, but obviously might get more hits. So

Adrian: 32:29

Yeah, and I think I think designers and developers have got sort of into the habit of putting these target number dice more into sort of more thematic games and less Euro games. Because I think a lot of people do have that a version in Euro games of adding too much chance and luck into it. And therefore they're kind of these target number dice seem to have been held a little bit more towards. I always hate using the term but Ameri trash. So those kinds of roll buckets of dice, and, you know, thematic dungeon crawlers and that kind of stuff. So they seem to have found their spot in there. Because it gives you the love of I've just rolled six sixes or whatever, have that horrible alien. You know, all that. Oh, no, I'm probably going to die in this dungeon right now, because I've just rolled a handful of trash. Yeah. So yeah, they do seem to have, they do seem to be sitting in that category a lot more. So moving on to the next category. So the next one I've got down is action dice. So you roll a dice or a handful of dice, and it determines what actions you can do on that turn. So it might be every time you have five dice, you roll them quite often they're symbol dice, rather than numbers, but sometimes they are numbers. And then that kind of helps decide what you can do in your turn. And then next time, you might roll them again, for instance. So any, any opening thoughts on action dice,

JP: 33:51

For me, Cubitos springs out of my mind. So that's a game of you rolling very cute tiny little dice, like the smallest dice I've ever rolled, like, it's like the shrunk them and and you end up having 10 of them, but they're still fit in the palm of your hand. It's very cool. But that's the same similar thing. You're rolling lots of those dice you're getting, I'm calling them hits, because that's what the game calls them hits. But it just means there's a symbol on them. And then, depending on what kind of dice you're rolling, depending on what symbols or depending on what actions you can do to trigger certain effects in the game, like some will just give you straight up cash. Some will give you the ability to move around on the race track. Some will give you the ability to do all the crazy combos and things like that. So yeah, it is determined on what you roll and what you can do or what you can't do. And

Adrian: 34:43

It's I mean, you I know you love this game, right. You've fallen in love with Cubitos for sure. So does it work here? Why does it work?

JP: 34:55

I think it works in the sense of I think you're working you're throwing so many of those dice. I mean, the chances of them even getting any actions on them are quite slim, but because of the volume of your framing goes to your earlier point. There's always something that you can do. Yeah. You'd never really, I mean it has mechanics of if you actually crap out then then you know there are ways for that again to kind of help catch you if you bust and things like that. So it's, it's a, I wouldn't say it's probably a straight or pure action dice mechanism, but it's the one that just jumped out at me. But yeah, it definitely works. It's fun. I think that's for that particular game. It just makes it a lot of fun.

Adrian: 35:35

Yeah, one of the first ones that came to mind for me was King of Tokyo. Yes. And that's a similar thing for for most of the dice, some of them are just basically match these up for number of victory points. But you've got the hearts to heal, you've got the claws to do damage, got lightning bolts for energy. It is a bit more of a resource, but it is also an action and because you get to again, roll handful of them. I think it works because of how like the game is. It's just a like quick game, it doesn't last too long. I think if that game was somehow put into like a two hour game, I wouldn't enjoy, roll having to roll those dice and push that luck in those. But yeah, that was one of the first ones that sort of came to my mind.

JP: 36:12

That makes sense. Definitely you guys, for me,

Chris P: 36:15

I was gonna lead it back to the Dead of Winter. So I think each player when he started turning, Rob, like, I think like five or six D sixes. And then whatever the number of results you get, that defines kind of what you can do on your turn. So if your character for instance, has an attack rating by five or six, only the five or six hits on the day you can use for attacking, everything else is kind of trash really where you can use it to sort of tear away waste attract zombies barricade up doors, and they're just sort of like the waste die that you can't really use. So if you roll a really bad set of dice straightaway, like, well, this turn looks like I'm just going to be tidying up. Leave me to it, guys.

JP: 36:54

I just can't I don't really feel like

Chris P: 36:57

today, I'm just gonna just do some DIY, I think today, cleaning up around the house. But yeah, that's, that's one of the ones that sprung to mind for me for that.

JP: 37:07

Yeah. So because subject I completely forgot that game had that mechanism. And I just remembered zombies in that that horrible dice you roll? Was it cool? Again? The the exposure, the exposure? Yes,

Chris P: 37:16

I think a DA with six sides of absolute traction, two sides of you're fine.

JP: 37:21

You could do we could do an episode just on the dice that you hate in games? Yeah,

Chris P: 37:24

We could make a note

JP: 37:28

Quite a lot, we'll come back to that.

Adrian: 37:30

I mean, I thought of you just mentioned there about, you know, you get to roll the dice. And that number decides sort of what your actions can be. For me, one of my favourite games certainly of last year, and this year is Castles of Burgundy. And that's the same thing, you roll the dice. And you can like a two can be used to place a thing in a two squared pick a thing up from A to sell an item that, too. So it gives you plenty of options. But then it also gives you workers and workers allow you to plus or minus one, I think and you can go hard into that strategy. My first ever game, I think I ended up with a stack of like 20 workers. So whatever I rolled, I could just spend them to get the dice I wanted and other games I've played where I've had maybe three workers or game. And I'm really going on the luck of the dice and trying to make sure that I leave myself open enough. And I like that dice mitigation in that game. If it wasn't there. They probably wouldn't even be close to my sort of top. But it turns to randomness. Yeah, absolutely. Is having three to four actions potentially on each role. And also having a thing that allows you to plus or minus one to really get the most out of it. Yeah, it's it's become a favourite of mine. And I didn't think that kind of dice would would ever sort of be in my top 10 as or top 20. As this is a favourite game of mine in that but chain those little changes have really like elevated it for me. What about yourself? T?

Tambo: 38:53

I'm pretty much against them. But I want to remember War of the Ring? Yes. That's a big one of the actions. Yeah.

JP: 38:59

A solid answer that one? Yeah.

Tambo: 39:01

So I was playing obviously, the hobbits. And so you roll the dice, and you got one action you can do with the hobbits they can simply move, isn't it? You could draw without action. You can draw cards, combat cards, isn't it? I think is

Adrian: 39:12

Yeah, see, that. One's just great.

Chris P: 39:16

Sounds good, though. Anything all there is I should be playing really.

Adrian: 39:19

So some of the dice only do one thing. And it's kind of forcing you down that road. Some of them allow you, for instance, one of them is you can move an army or play a card with the Army symbol on it. So it does give you too if you don't want to move an army or create an army or whatever it is. I can't remember. I'm sure it's moving on me. Then. You could play or if you don't want to move a hero. You can play hero card using that dice. But yeah, again, it was

Tambo: 39:42

A production symbol as well. Isn't it like so? Yeah. Build your army. Yeah. Then move. Yeah. That's that's a very simple, great game.

Adrian: 39:48

Yeah. And the evil, a lot more dice. They've also tend to have more dice, but also they roll them. And if it comes up with the eye of Sauron, you put it in a box. And now it makes it harder for the hobbits to move. That's right. Yeah. You can't spend them in any way shape or form. And that was an interesting mechanic in that game

JP: 40:05

They make them not useless to the shadows player, but it gives you more limiting choice locked out. Yeah, the choice is made for you. You're like, that's what's happening with those. Yeah.

Adrian: 40:14

And it kind of controls the good player a little bit because you roll it before the good player decides what they're going to do and if you roll if they if that person rolls a tonne of eyes of Sauron, and it's gonna be a three plus you're gonna get swatted. You're not You're not moving anywhere. Whereas if they've not decided to put any dice into that pool, and they don't roll any, I just walk around as you fancy, like, just so good,

JP: 40:39

Enjoy some second breakfast game.

Adrian: 40:42

So one of the games that came out for this that I'll be honest I didn't particularly enjoy is actually one that a couple of members of this group are really in love with at the moment, which is Ashes. Okay, so Ashes has the same thing, you all handful of dice, it tells you what actions and abilities you can do on that turn. There isn't a lot of mitigation in it, which I think put me off a little bit. And cuz you're also dealing with a deck of cards, which are also randomised. It was just, I loved my first game of that I genuinely did. And then after a while, I was like, Man, this is random on random and I can't for a game that feels like it's competitive. To some extent, I should really struggled with it after a few days. I think if you play it for fun, and just laugh and can try this character this time, which I think is what you guys are doing at the moment. I think it actually probably sits well, because it offers a lot of randomness that you have to work with. Tactically, yeah. Whereas I was trying to use it to replace more competitive magic. Yeah, like Magic, or, you know, Star Wars Destiny, or any of those kinds of trading card style games. And it's just too much randomness totally threw me off of it, I'll be honest, but it was one of the first games as well as so when we thought about this action dice, I thought of King of Tokyo. And then I immediately thought of Ashes because they were kind of the two opposite ends of the spectrum of here's a light game that I enjoy with loads of randomness, because it's also got cards that come out each by randomly for stupid powers. And then here's one where I've treated it slightly differently. And therefore it didn't work for me with those action dice.

JP: 42:18

Yeah. Yes. Your I definitely approach, the more casual and because I think whenever card games gets too competitive, or just lose interest, you know, I did the same. We'd go into KeyForge. And then we started to play a lot and a lot online is like now, you know, keep it casual, guys keep it casual. But yeah, the same calm, mitigate them. But you can obviously meditate and off your decks to filter adjust the spell dice essentially that you can change to whatever symbol you want in order to enact but obviously it's a cost is the cost of you milling your deck to do it. So, and obviously you could mill a card that you really want.

Adrian: 43:01

it was like double the size milling wouldn't feel, but obviously that's part of the balancing act. Yes. Yeah. Having to mill a couple of cards off the top of the deck. She got a rubbish roll felt quite penalising. I remember that doesn't mean it, Rob. Yeah. As I say, I my first couple of plays with it. I fell in love with it. Because I was like this could all of my friends that play commander and sort of like more competitive trading card games and stuff like that, I was like, I'm gonna show this to them. And then after a handful of plays, I was like, I can't show this to them. So yeah, brill. So that is the action dice. And next, we're on to strength dice, where you roll dice. And each side is essentially worth a strength of something. So six will be stronger than a five. And quite often, you're either drafting these dice, or sort of putting them in an order. And sometimes you can use the weaker ones for certain actions and the stronger ones for other actions. But it tends to be that you need to rather than action dice where it specifically tells you a five or four can only go here, it tends to be the six and better at doing this. Or, you know, ones are better at doing that, for instance. And the two that came off the top of my head, I think purely because we've played them recently were Coimbra. Yeah. And Lorenzo, and they're quite different takes on that category.

JP: 44:25

Because Euro games, yeah, yeah.

Adrian: 44:27

But one is, here's your workers, they're all worth this value rolled by a dice. And the other is, here's a big pile of dice. Some you want to pick the low ones for and some you want to pick the high numbers for. Yeah. I've enjoyed both of those. Actually. I think they're both pretty good takes on that as anyone else had other games or other thoughts on this kind of dice.

JP: 44:50

I think we were talking before the recording to what we're about to Bitoku Yeah, but is it's probably a blend isn't it? I'm trying to remember I've only played the game once. So this is now calling into the echelons of my my brain. But I know that it kind of has a ageing kind of mechanic that the dice kind of age and power and level up and then they can do things and take more actions on the board but I think this is their limited slots on the number like what it's like for

Tambo: 45:19

For slots, and it's yeah, it's get less and less people places you have this right and it's five or six push up halfway at the board, but then you reduce it back to number two or one. Yeah. puts you at the top of the board, which you can do the bigger Yeah, powers, basically

JP: 45:35

Yeah, and I can't ... do you ever roll those dice and no, never asked the thing, you don't really have a role in the setting. And then they kind of age and get better to the point where they can ascend

Tambo: 45:48

And that's it. And when you asend it goes back down to one.

JP: 45:50

And now I've said ascend, I've just instantly thought of another game that does this, which is Teotihuacan, which is I've set it right, but yeah, nice. Yeah. On the first trial as well. So it was one of those games, I have to look into what I'm saying it correctly. But yeah, that has uses dice that you never roll as workers that go round, basically have one down. So based on an Aztec theme. And every time you use certain actions on the board, then they they age, and they level up to the point where they are six, and then they will essentially die. And you get an ascension bonus from when they die. And then they'll spawn new workers, obviously, not babies, but the younger generation. And yes, that's another kind of strength, because depending on what action you land on, the stronger they are, the older they are, the more wiser, they are more powerful, the action becomes nice, whereas if they're like ones or twos, they're they're generally weaker, but they're cheaper to pay for.

Tambo: 46:48

It's the numbers you move as well. Remember, it's how many spaces you move, isn't it the Dice as well, they can only move as two?

JP: 46:55

No you move up to two, regardless of the dice value. And then where you land, there's like a table like an Excel spreadsheet, but it's kind of like if it's a one or two. If it's a one, then you get like one wood. If it's, you know, three or four, you might get two bits of wood or whatever. But then if you've got two dice that are this level, then you get more like a combination of number of dice and the number on the dice, if that makes sense. So yeah, kind of adds another interesting thing. Yeah, just thought about that when he said strength. Yes.

Adrian: 47:27

I think I've just thought two more as well, to be honest with this because I struggled originally when I think right now we're talking I'm like, oh,

JP: 47:34

There's loads of options. So dice hospital. Yes. So

Adrian: 47:37

You roll the patient dice. Put them in the relevant. So you then basically rank them from most sick, which is a one I believe, if I remember correctly to most healthy, which is a six, and you put them in ambulances in order. And then the draft, you draft the ambulances into your hospital at that point, they pretty much become a counting dice, as we're about to call them, which we'll talk about in a second, where they just tick up and down and they become essentially counters but start with you roll them. And the ones similar to that is roleplayer. So in roleplay, you're designing a d&d character. It's not d&d, but it's a role playing character. And so you roll the dice, and you put them in order again. And what you might be looking for is eventually you're going to end up with a like, each row has three dice, and your character because they're a barbarian will want 18 in their strength. So you're then having to draft the best dice to put there, right? Yeah, but you'll then get, oh, it doesn't matter what your constitution is, or That'd be terrible for a barbarian but your, your charisma, your charisma or something like that for a barbarian. So then if you end up drafting low dice, because you've rolled that lower strength, you can put it in there. And there's loads of dice manipulation in that depending upon which way you put it. But again, that's another one where you're rolling dice. You they start off as strength dice, and then they turn basically just into accounting dice, because it just you're just adding up the number of pips. But yeah, both games I really enjoyed. Something I thought about this was that these seem to sit in Euro games a lot more than I sort of gave sort of thought to you look at the games we've just talked about Bitoku, Lorenzo, Dice hospital. They're all inside that Euro frame, right? Whereas we've had target numbers, which are mostly in sort of fluffy Ameri trash, that kind of genre. We've just talked about action dice where we had a nice mix, and now we're talking about strength dice, where, unless I'm forgetting something, or sort of missing some games, which I probably am right, we're looking more at the Euro game style. They seem to have found them their home in that. Yeah,

JP: 49:42

I mean, if you we talk about Lorenzo very quickly, if the mechanic was we all had our own set of worker dice that we rolled your strength, then it wouldn't work. Like the game just would fall apart. Because if I roll a one, one and a two and Chris rolls, you know, five, five and a six, I'll just be swearing at Chris. And we just obviously got all the power, like all powerful, but because they're shared. Yeah. If you Oh, crap. We're all crap. If we're all good, we're all good. So it kind of levels the playing field in that sense. So yeah, obviously the designers are very aware of what dice can do in Euro games. And I think when dice are involved, people can get nervous but If the kind of utilised in a unique and clever way, a lot of fun as well, yeah, definitely had a lot of value to the game.

Adrian: 50:29

Yeah, for sure. And I think yeah, to kind of, to kind of your point of the designs are getting very clever designers getting very clever with the use of the dice, I'm going to quickly mention, roll and move. Yes. And also roll, roll for a number of action points, which I think it's fair to say is not loved anymore. Again, for that very reason, if I keep rolling ones, yeah, and can't move anywhere. And you keep rolling sixes and get everywhere you want to go include Oh, for instance, or something like that. They seem to be quite device now have had a few good games where they've done it really well. But for the most part, I don't know about you guys, but I can't think of many games that are modern that do it or any games that are sort of loved in the modern board game era of style games,

JP: 51:17

I've played roll and move games, because Burncycle is a is essentially a roll and move, in essence, but you are rolling action dice, but you're committing certain action points to move. But again, it's so mitigated and they're not one to six values. They're a mix of ones ones, ones, ones and two or whatever. So you can average it out and be quite sure what you're going to get and plan around it. Rather than I'm moving 23 spaces

Chris P: 51:52

I couldn't think of anything modern when I saw that subject. I was like, it was literally Cluedo, and it shall not be named monopoly.

Tambo: 52:01

Taliman Batman. It's the latest one it's not new is it? It's not, the whole Talisman thing goes back for ages, isn't it? But yes, that was a frustrating roll and move game

Adrian: 52:09

Same with HeroQuest. So HeroQuest, has been reprinted. They didn't change a thing about it, which I think was the right thing to do from a marketing point of view. But yeah, it aged like milk to me. Again, it's roll dice. Wait, hold on a second. Why is the dwarf move faster than the elf every turn? Six times because like because the dwarf has just managed to roll crazy numbers

JP: 52:32

Because the dwarfs had his Ready Brek. That's why Paul gives you the best

Chris P: 52:40

Sprinters for marathons. Cross Country. Yeah,

JP: 52:46

Absolutely,

Adrian: 52:47

And so I think we might talk about others. I've got a couple of others in my head. But yeah, I have now we've been talking about this in the next category, that the main category that I came, we came up with was the board game accounting. This is essentially where a dice is used, instead of tokens or as a counter or something like that. So, you know, we just talked about the likes of Dice Hospital, where it starts off being a strength dice, but then quickly becomes a case of a oK every turn, they get one worse. So you turn a six into a five, or five into a four, you could essentially just have a stack of tokens and start and take them on. And so dice become used for accounting. How do we all feel about that?

JP: 53:28

Yeah, I mean, one of my kind of games that I'm really enjoying at the moment is Beyond the sun. And that uses dice in a way that you think why did he use why why did these dice they didn't need to use dice, it could have just used like you say tokens or resources because the dice are kind of multi use in the fact that they can be like caches, or they can be population or chips. And there's other kinds of use as a resource that you cannot take and downtick depending on what you're doing, and but yeah, but I quite like that the fact that they are dice and it gives it a realistic kind of aesthetic look and feel to the book and yeah, it's it's quite nice because I think if it was just a lack of tokens for this stuff it probably other than I wouldn't, it wouldn't have the same feel to it. So but yeah, I the game that should not be named. Too Many Bones.

Chris P: 54:21

I was gonna mention it.

Tambo: 54:24

That's the only game I think I've played like that sort of

Chris P: 54:27

Does it really well.

JP: 54:27

Yeah. Dice in obviously, everything.

Tambo: 54:30

Dice Forge. That's another one.

Adrian: 54:34

That's more action.

JP: 54:35

So that's action selection. Because you've Yahtzee style and you're rolling resources,

Adrian: 54:41

Essentially, aren't you out of it, and then you're using that to buy stuff. So somewhere between strength and action selection, I suppose.

JP: 54:47

Yeah, I mean, the dice that instantly just came to my mind off the game that's not been named by me was one of the gear locks tantrum when he has a body count dice. So every one he kills you add one to the dice you literally rotating around in the mat. And so when you kind of kill like five buddies, you can instantly then heal up five health. I'm not sure what he does with them against them. I don't know what he does. But yeah, so again, it just has that kind of clever mechanics of how you use dice for resources or All counting stuff, which is quite cool.

Adrian: 55:23

Yeah, I think to that point, I think I quite like so dice like punch boards are not too different in value in my, sort of when I, when I've looked at sort of, I've not looked at actually producing a board game, but when I've looked at what you can buy, yeah, the price between buying dice and a punch board doesn't seem too radically different. And if you can say to me, you've got cardboard counters, and you can stack quite a few of them up, or you can have a few dice, I would absolutely go for the dice. Yeah, you can tell me I'm gonna get gorgeous counters and all that kind of stuff instead, then maybe I want the counters, but it's certainly a nice way and a clean way of producing counters. I was kind of my thought on it.

Tambo: 56:03

Less components. And if we use dice, suppose we achieved a production rate isn't already. Yeah, raise little wooden tokens if a word and and you just want brown dice, it's kind of a money saver in a way. Yes,

JP: 56:13

This depends like say the just the unique opportunities of putting it into a cube or some form of shape. They, you know, you don't just have to use it for accounting, you can use it for an accounting and something else that you might want to roll it or there might be an instance of an event that makes you roll it, you know, so it kind of just gives more flexibility. I think in how that works. If you have a stack of tokens, you can't really roll them and you can't really randomly determine a number from having five tokens, you and unless you start doing some weird kind of magic tricks.

Adrian: 56:48

I don't know sleight of hand. Yeah. Oh,

JP: 56:52

Interesting. Well,

Adrian: 56:53

if that's our sort of final thoughts on accounting, then let's just JP you mentioned you have an other in your head. Yeah, it

JP: 56:59

I don't think it's a category in its own right. But I'm thinking of like where dice are used as workers themselves. So like, Perseverance just comes to my mind. Yeah, dice drafting and its core. But depending on the symbol that has been enrolled at the start of the round, and as Coimbra has the similar thing is, you know, you're literally using as a worker to put on the space to do a particular thing, which is action selection, I suppose. It's cool. But yeah, I quite like dice used as workers. And that way that the kind of the mechanics revolve around that, especially from a pool that you draft from, I think there's just a really interesting space, because it just varies the game up every time. Depending on what you roll. That's what we got boys and girls, and that's what we got to play with. And just it's just an interesting decision. Suppose

Tambo: 57:47

One of my favourite games was Taverns, that's exactly the same thing, isn't it? Taverns of Tiefenthal. Then you use them as their workers and you can slightly pull them up one or down? One? If you get the right members of staff? Yes, they go in your bar and the certain tables, sway numbers? Yeah, so my favourite games, Taverns

JP: 58:03

You need to play with Oompah music in the background. So you need that for varying theme. You don't really, you do absolutely makes the game.

Tambo: 58:14

I played it with Dog Park. There's an AI mechanics and places can do AI stuff. So Dog Park is like for the bidding. If you play two player, there's an AI dice for the bidding. So you roll the dice. And it there's a bit of so so what the AI is bidding on that dog for two player?

Adrian: 58:29

Yeah, I mean, I suppose that's just general randomization, isn't it? Is it's a case of does it really do any of those actions, selection or whatever? No, you're just saying it goes here. Again, from a AI solo point of view Furnace, if you play that two player that does exactly the same thing, which is, once you've both had your go, or I think you both had your go for that round, you roll a dice, and then you count on that many cards and you put a big chip on that card. Yeah, so that then influences the game. So yes, I think that's a fair

Tambo: 59:00

But yeah, that's another reason those are used, isn't it? shout.

JP: 59:09

Yeah, to simulate randomness in a few games so that it doesn't break the game, or it adds a challenge that you have to work and mitigate or or plan around, right? Yep. Which is also important.

Adrian: 59:22

So the one I thought of just now, which I don't know if it does fit into other categories or not, but it kind of does a similar thing to Lorenzo in the fact that it gives you a common goal, which is Gugong. So in Gugong, you roll three dice,

JP: 59:37

But you're right Destiny Dice

Adrian: 59:39

You roll three dice. And if you end up with those in your pile or your your the cards you bought back into your hand, they're worth more victory points. So it just gives you a random set of extra goals. Just roll these dice, whatever numbers they say on them, they're the ones you've kind of got to go after. And again, it's kind of used in that Lorenzo way. If we all rolled separately, it wouldn't work. But because it's a common goal for everyone. It does work here and it just totally randomises It doesn't really care about the state of the board, or anything like that.

JP: 1:00:11

Has anyone else got any other ideas or any other honourable mentions? Just another one. You are literally grinning from ear to ear. Yeah. Talking about going from my collections going games I've got Dice Forge, right? You have dice that you can physically customise as you play. So they're like Lego dice. So all the faces are like Lego faces you ping off and you buy better faces for your dice to improve them. So again, that I think it's not the only game to do that, but there's not many out there that allow you to fully kind of customise your dice as you play. So yeah, that I just wanted to mention that so Dice Forge, it's, yeah, so on the lighter end, it's quite random because he literally just chucking dice all the time, but it's got some really clever mechanisms and definitely, so there we go

Adrian: 1:01:06

Throw some dice. We love some dice. We hate some dice. We hate because we don't roll them well. Some dice we hate because maybe they're not used the best. But I think it's fair to say that we've all got mixed opinions on on dice when they used well when they're not. And yet, I think one of the things I've learned now is don't discount a game because at one point I was discounting games just because they are dicing really,

JP: 1:01:28

yeah, like a hard.

Adrian: 1:01:30

Not too hard, because there was still some games that I really did enjoy. But for the most part, if it had dice, I probably got lowered. Yeah, so straight away. It was like maybe, unless it's got a really good theme, or I've heard good things from it, maybe not. Whereas Yeah, you'll soon if you play a few games if you're sort of new to the hobby or maybe you're not you'll either no way you feel about dice some short or you'll quickly learn about it if you start and play quite a few games as to what you like and what you don't but definitely that's our thoughts on it anyway So onto our Turn 4 and we're going to change our turn for so we were doing just to just three whatever. Again, whatever we wanted to call it there. But we recently had an episode which was Would You Rather and you guys out there basically told us that you thought it was amazing because we had so much engagement on those posts loads of people getting involved and we thought wouldn't it be great if we could put a little bit of that into every episode where you guys can have an opinion or just a laugh with that and get involved so we are now changing turn four into a would you rather section

JP: 1:02:41

Big thanks to Davey because Davey came up with this this episode and you're right we we just had so many comments we've actually had so many would you rather as prepared for the episode that we just couldn't use that are in the storage container. And who knows now we've got a segment might come out with we're trying to theme these to the the episodes right? I believe we are Oh come on. I've

Adrian: 1:03:02

I've tried to do episodes like that. It's good. So why would you rather is every time you have to play a dice game? You have to listen on a loop to Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby. Oh, or every time you have to play a game with cards in it. You have to listen on a loop to Lady Gaga has Pokerface

JP: 1:03:23

Okay, okay. I'm not Oh, I'm going oh, gosh, shit.

Adrian: 1:03:33

Because do you play more dice? I know your card game. I mean, you'd be stuffed either way because Too many bones has got both

JP: 1:03:39

I'm listening to Vanilla ice, I think that's that's a given. So

Adrian: 1:03:43

It's got cards in it. So you listening to one Ice Ice Baby followed by Pokerface followed by Ice Ice Baby followed by Pokerface

Chris P: 1:03:50

Cut and pause and swap between both

JP: 1:03:51

Both together as one soundtrack. Like one headphone like earphone in each and I have to simultaneously digest these songs. They will sound dreadful so we'll let you I will probably go with vanilla ice. Even though probably after the fourth time Ice me I pick Ice Ice Baby. I've listened to it I will probably start to melt my brain and go then at least I'll know the lyrics it's true. Yeah, and maybe quote them all the time in episode I'm gonna go with vanilla ice because of the fact that the game I can't talk about has a lot of them in. Yeah, you're like

Chris P: 1:04:32

I listened to it every day anyway. And you're rolling dice? Oh my playlist It's fine. I'll be on there somewhere we'll come around

JP: 1:04:39

Chris the dice goblin listening to vanilla ice. Yeah. week

Chris P: 1:04:43

Sometimes sit there on my desk working just rolling dice in your hand like an evil genius just walking through with this

JP: 1:04:51

What is Vanilla Ice's is real name. Pass. No, no, no. No. I think it's Rob Van Winkle or something. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's a pop quiz. There you go. If you've got another pop quiz coming up, you're welcome.

Adrian: 1:05:12

His his two kids pot and see

Tambo: 1:05:13

oh, I think Oh, Okay, I hate lady gaga, I think. But um, yeah, um, when it comes to games with dice and Card games, I'm a bit of a mix, so it has to be a mix, I suppose if it goes towards the board game and so we've got dice and cards in your hand. Yeah.

Chris P: 1:05:35

Ice face.

Tambo: 1:05:36

Yeah, Ice Ice face. Do you guys know how to annoy Lady Gaga? Poke her face

JP: 1:05:53

Step the quality of the jokes up last year. terrible jokes. Oh. No, no.

Adrian: 1:06:01

Seems legit. I'll be honest, I settled on Poker face and card games because I Ice Ice Baby as funny as it is would irritate me 30 seconds. And I don't actually mind Lady Gaga. So as much as I think Pokerface on repeat forever, do my head in. I think I'd rather do that and play card games rather than be stuck with playing a dice game and having to listen to Ice Ice Baby is how I went with that one. Less No. Would you rather play dice games forever with Ice Ice Baby or card games forever with poker face?

Tambo: 1:06:41

We want to know this forever. You want to make some right otherwise you just same some old ice ice baby. Yeah,

JP: 1:06:51

Begrudgingly grudgingly.

Adrian: 1:07:01

And now we are on to our penultimate turn, where we like to look into the future and tell you what we're excited about in the near future a little bit further away, maybe. But yeah, well, we're excited about what we got coming up. And I'm just gonna launch straight into it because what we have coming up is the UK games Expo. Woohoo. So as this episode gets released, releases on the Wednesday, hopefully the expo starts kind of on the Thursday coming weekend and the Friday so this episode will be coming out hopefully a couple of days before the UK games Expo so normally comes out on the Wednesday. Expo kind of starts on the Thursday probably starts on the Friday after it comes out. Many of us will be there

JP: 1:07:36

We are

Tambo: 1:07:37

Yeah, my first one my first

Adrian: 1:07:39

Well, yeah,

JP: 1:07:40

Is it Yeah, no. Yeah. I know teaser is gonna be your first one T but yeah, I didn't realise this was your first Expo as

Adrian: 1:07:47

Yeah, I had like three previous chances to go. Yeah, well. Yeah, and for one reason or another, the stars conspired against me or whatever, so that I knew I never ended up going so it's gonna be awesome to me first one, but there's gonna be plenty of us there will likely to look like a terrible biker gang, decked out in hoodies with logos on and T shirts with logos on. So all we'd say is please come up, come and say hello. Let us know how the Expo is going for you let us know if there's anything we need to visit or that was particularly good that we should check out or anything like that. Be great to talk to some of you. And just Yeah, find out what we're missing potentially at the expo, we'll do our best to get around as much as possible. But it's quite a big, big place haul from all the pictures. So I'm guessing that it's, it's gonna be fairly full on and fairly big.

JP: 1:08:37

It's sensory overload, that's for sure. It's massive. And even though you're around the halls, like three times, every time you look around that you've seen new things, you're just constantly seeing new things. Do you think they just sprouted this store? This place out of nowhere? No, it's always been a just just so much going on. What I would say though, is for any listeners, we we will tend to do a lot the open gaming in Hall three which is I think they'll do all the open gaming there this year. And if anyone's like fantasies or gamers Yeah, come and say hello come and game with us. We will be bringing some, no doubt Becky will have bought the entire bringing by section.

Adrian: 1:09:17

To be fair, I'll probably be there a fair chunk because we're gonna

JP: 1:09:19

You're gonna lead her in there, Go Becky Come on. It's time for the bring and buy perusal.

Adrian: 1:09:24

What happened is I'll go in there. And I'll be looking through games and then Becky would like sidle up and be like Oh, what's this one? Oh yeah, that's good. You'll like that one. You think? Yeah. Oh, no, don't say that.

JP: 1:09:35

Sounds pretty, nice pieces. I'll be having both of those.£350 pound down in a bring a buyer so she's got like literally 150 games. Yeah, we will look forward to it. Yeah, please. Come say hello. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:09:49

When we went last time, we'd only had like six episodes out five or so. Yeah, hopefully a few more listeners now and people can come and say hello. We're really looking forward to having spoken to anyone who's like Oh, not another expo. Everyone's like super excited for it. Yeah, it's I mean to us first

JP: 1:10:07

What's the thing you're looking forward to the most then? Both of you like having never been what's the

Tambo: 1:10:11

The whole experience of I think, looking at all the new stuff coming out and yeah, trying out things and just seeing what it's like actually. And obviously open game will be great fun as well. So go

Chris P: 1:10:20

Yeah, the loads of games you've never played before been open ready for you just to hop in and have a quick run of it. So yeah,

JP: 1:10:28

What about you Adrian

Adrian: 1:10:29

Apart from the Bring and Buy. I'm kind of interest. So I go to Salute nearly every year, I didn't go this year, because it clashed with some other bits and pieces. But I normally go to Salute every year. And okay, it's smaller, but it looks like it's got a lot of similar things, lots of demo tables, lots of stalls, some smaller people that you might not see. Normally, in some smaller games, it's much more war games for salute than it is board games. But yeah, quite often, you'll see a little company producing these wonderful miniatures, or this great theme for a war game that you've not seen. And as much as I like to think I'm kind of immersed in the board game sort of scene, and I get to see a lot of new Kickstarters and new games that are coming out. I'm kind of interested to see the mix between big production like big companies and smaller companies and just what everyone's offering. But yeah, it's just an experience that I've heard every year Pete, so many people talk about it. And yeah, I'm just kind of pumped to go and see what the whole experience is like.

JP: 1:11:26

Yeah. Now you'll have a blast, I'm sure. Nice Expo Expo.

Adrian: 1:11:30

So we'll be there. Apart from the expo. What else is everyone else looking forward to?

Chris P: 1:11:37

I was hoping this weekend to get a cheeky game of HeroQuest or Ashes with Rob, but he's going off is not even in the country, even around pulling it off. So probably maybe next week when he's back. I can probably sneak a little cheeky one in Yeah, and get some, you know, some wine in a couple of candles. Me and him have a little cheeky little Tete a Tete. Yeah, so we'll see how it goes, that's it for me at the moment, I'm going to be editing I've already planned

Adrian: 1:12:04

You can borrow Fog of Love if you'd like that, as well as go with your campaign.

Chris P: 1:12:08

So I was looking at date, because me and you pretty

JP: 1:12:11

I played it within once that was an experience, it would be much with Ian Yeah, because he really lent into the role playing this was an expo as well. He lent it to the role playing and I was like, I'm not sure how I feel about this, I'm in the middle of this massive hall. I've got someone demoing the game, Ian's like oh, you never take me anywhere. So what's going on? So

Adrian: 1:12:35

I've played I've only played it once. It saton my collection for ages never like I'm not playing this with you. On a day to day whenever we're not role playing ask I got a date and then we put it out at the table or we both roleplay with our narcissistic horrible people, basically. And we just led into it really hard. We were just horrible to each other.

Chris P: 1:12:59

Will you stop eating so loud. So your mouth.

JP: 1:13:03

Yeah. So we'll line that up for you and Rob for you. For your romantic night.

Chris P: 1:13:06

Yeah, sounds good. So we try and put something in the diary. Nice. Nice. T?

Tambo: 1:13:11

Not much really. I got Nemesis coming up Sunday which will be good fun with the group, look forward to my gaming table, is end of July. Oh, yeah. Talking about if it's going on time and July is looking okay at the moment.

JP: 1:13:24

This is the the metal one is that is, that right? Yeah, the Ironside

Adrian: 1:13:30

This is the one where you can bolt several of them together if you want. I was so close to back because you can turn into Wargaming table if you buy two. Yeah, get the extra. But yeah, I just didn't have space for it and didn't really have the money. But man that looks good.

Tambo: 1:13:42

Yeah, it's gonna be good fun. Yeah, I

Adrian: 1:13:42

I didn't realise it was that one you backed.

Tambo: 1:13:44

Yeah. And you got the wooden planks, new tournament coffee tables, or put on planks on top, I believe. So it was another level if you wanted to,

JP: 1:13:50

You know, all the two tear effects, the board up higher and things on the nice line, you

Tambo: 1:13:56

Got different coloured mats that go on the basis. So it's not set like yours. It's a couple of different like one in space once water one. Stuff like that. Yeah, so that's like before that I just had the shipping bill, but we knew that's gonna be expensive anyway, but yeah, those hopefully gonna be there. That's what I've got look forward to.

JP: 1:14:11

I'm actually looking forward, I haven't been round to you house. Long time that I'm actually coming to your game of Caverna. So I can't remember when it is. But I'm sure your table probably won't be ready by then. But I know you've extended your house. Yeah.

Tambo: 1:14:26

And my new driveway by the way.

JP: 1:14:28

Oh, yeah. Nice. So yeah, I look forward to seeing that right now. Should be good.

Adrian: 1:14:31

You don't leave your house to play games.

JP: 1:14:33

I do if I can escape. It's not a choice. Like, yeah, it's not that I don't want to. It's just that my family and kids keep me here. Because I can't leave them on their own. It's frowned upon. It's true.

Tambo: 1:14:47

If you book a game, like two months in advance, you might get JP. Yeah.

JP: 1:14:51

Yeah. Which is what you did. Oh, I can make that.

Adrian: 1:14:55

Just through me when you turned up at someone else's house. Basically,

JP: 1:14:58

Yeah, what you're doing at Kerley's. You never leave home. There we go. So for me, I've got a few in the roster. As you can imagine that what I'm actually looking forward to is Viticulture World, which is the cooperative expansion for Viticulture. So for those that don't know viticulture is the winemaking game, published by Stonemaier And, and I played the co op expansion once with Shell, I managed to get a game of it on our anniversary one one year, which was fun, and she played it. But my wife's not a big gamer and she'll only do it to kind of keep me happy. So I'm actually just looking forward to getting out more ready. I love Viticulture as a game, I think it's good fun for kind of what it is. The co op expansion just adds different regions around the world. So you've kind of got like South America, Europe and different things. And they all work and twist the game up in different ways, probably similar. So what he's talking about earlier about Glen More Chronicles. But yeah, you kind of play through a series of events slash stages. And you're working together on your own farms, farms. vineyards, not farms, that's Agricola in my head, isn't it vineyards to make the wine and you can kind of trade resources with each other. And you can upgrade the worker placement spots on the board. And you can kind of chain if I go to this space on the left, and I'll get the resource bonus on to the space to the right. And you can kind of manipulate the board in different ways, which is quite an interesting thing. So yeah, I'm just looking forward to getting that to the table because it's been sat on the shelf for far too long.

Adrian: 1:16:41

Yes. Got it. I couldn't make that one. Yeah, really. I nearly bought it myself and then ummed and ahhed on it a little bit. Yeah, unfortunately, couldn't make the night you'd put up for it. So maybe another time

JP: 1:16:51

I'll do more because there's a lot of regions in the pack. So I'm sure we'll do more, unless I really hate it. But I enjoyed the first player just like many things just need to get it. Get it to the table more like every game I own

Chris P: 1:17:04

Yeah, that's me.

Adrian: 1:17:04

And that's the episode pretty much over with so if you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and review on your podcast player of choice. If you know someone who might enjoy this episode, please share it with them make it their turn. Yeah. In the Whose turn is it Anyway, please do. And if you want to get in contact with us, please do you've probably heard it a few times before but we are contactable via Facebook Instagram TikTok BoardGameGeek or via email. All of the details for that will be in the show notes. We'll be back in a couple of weeks time with a another episode. Until then, whose turn is it anyway? Let's get out of here. Word to your mother