Becky: 0:33

Hello and welcome to Whose turn is it anyway podcast all about board games and board gaming. This is a special expansion pack episode where we're going to talk all about our experiences of the UKGE 2023. I'm joined at the table by a lot of incredibly tired people. We've got JP

JP: 0:51

Hello,

Becky: 0:52

Adrian,

Adrian: 0:53

hello,

Becky: 0:53

Tambo Kerley.

Kerley: 0:55

Hello.

Becky: 0:56

And of course myself, Becky. So everyone, how are we all knackered, but smiling? Yes, I thoroughly agree with that one.

Kerley: 1:06

My feet bloody hurt my feet today.

Becky: 1:11

Lucky most of today, when my alarm went off at six o'clock, I was just like, ah, yeah, yeah. And I thought that it was bank holiday Monday and I thought I've got Monday off, it's fine. And then realised I didn't, which was upsetting.

JP: 1:29

But we had a great time we did. It was absolutely worth it. It always is. I think you say the same every year, right? Which is, oh, it's tiring. You're on your feet. But you kind of come back smiling. It's having a blast. Hanging out with your mates. All weekend.

Adrian: 1:46

I booked the hotel for next year already.

JP: 1:48

So you're coming back.

Adrian: 1:48

I think that tells you everything you need to know.

JP: 1:51

We're gonna do it. You're gonna absolutely do it. We obviously met a few listeners.

Becky: 1:54

We did. It was really, really great. I mean, one time they realised that we were there because they heard my laugh. Yes. Yeah. I don't know whether to be flattered. Or like, oh, no, my geezer laugh outed us.

JP: 2:08

Yeah, it was quite nice just to get people to come on and say hi. So sort of might just mentioned a few shout outs for you all. And so who should we start with?

Becky: 2:18

It was Ben, that came and said, Oh, I thought it was you guys could hear Becky laughs I've been really nice to meet you and your friend. Nice to have a little chat about Yeah, boardgame bling, as is my specialist subject.

JP: 2:30

Going down some rabbit holes. And

Becky: 2:31

yeah, we're playing Earth at the time

JP: 2:34

It makes sense. I also want to say thank you to Neil. So I was literally just finishing a chat with David Turczi. I was literally fanboying he was fumbling five or 10 minutes, because I'm like, Oh, my God isn't that funny designer and had a really great, great chat with him. And then Neil came and tapped me on the shoulder and said hello, and wants to introduce himself because we've been speaking on socials and things Neil's actually been encouraged to set up his own gaming group based on kind of listening to us chat. Awesome. So I was asking him pretty much all about that and how he's getting on and yeah, he's growing is starting to get a lot more games. And so that was quite nice. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Becky: 3:16

And we saw Nicole as well, though, I was really sad. I didn't get to see Nicole. I wasn't there.

JP: 3:22

game which will reveal soon. In the conversation, he actually came and said hello, which again, awesome to meet you. Again. It's just really nice, isn't it? He gets people speaking online for the socials and then put faces to name you know, DeGaulle faces and profiles. But it's just,

Becky: 3:38

it's nice to meet people in real life, IRL. And at the end of the just one special event that Paul Grogan run for charity. Pete came and introduced himself, which was really, really nice to see him. He came over and said, hi to me, and Adrian, that was really nice. And he mentioned that he was, you know, really upset when you heard about Chris, which was real really touching thing. He hadn't been listening long and yeah. Really sweet. Really competent. Yeah, it was so high to lie to Pete. Yeah.

Adrian: 4:06

So also on Saturday, in Hall one I was there was a big crush that there was a busy day. Yeah, I was going in one direction someone else was coming in the other direction. Just as we sort of got to the point of passing, I think they'd sit notice the logo on the shirt, instead of listen to your podcast, but we were pretty much going in opposite directions. So I said, thank you and kind of we got sort of forced away from each other a little bit. So whoever you are random person. I think about two o'clock on Saturday. Thanks for saying hello. Sorry, I didn't get to talk to you.

JP: 4:35

Yeah. And we encourage that right? So whenever we're at conventions expos soon to be asked, and later in the year, like, if you kind of listen to the podcast, and you think oh, they look busy playing a game, like just come and interrupt us honestly, we

Becky: 4:50

won't affect my train of thought whether or not and I could maybe use that as a reason why I didn't wind up I would have won but I was distracted by that really nice, you know, podcast listener. Come on, give me some more reasons why I can before I can lose, please.

JP: 5:04

Thank you all. Thank you on the hope to meet many more of you soon.

Becky: 5:17

So our whole weekend really started on A Thursday didn't we all had a sort of? I don't know. Not quite convoy, but we were all trying to get to the convention Adrian B's got that really super early you were giving your friend Marcus a lift when

Adrian: 5:34

he was setting up a tournament for the Friday so he had to be there for like bid day. So yeah, it wouldn't have been my interest to get there for midday but making sure to run him up in time so yeah, I got there early.

JP: 5:45

You were first on scene had a wander round

Becky: 5:47

was good. Yeah. And then tomorrow you were there with your brother when he got there next I

Tambo: 5:51

think yeah, about about three o'clock I was I think just just back to three. Yeah, come all the way from Jersey. Yeah, I drove into the airport and I hear what's hotel Besam So yeah,

Becky: 6:01

that's one really good thing about the location isn't it at the NEC you're right next to the airport Train Station Train Station is Yeah, great. Great. So me and you JP we were in one car having a karaoke so we just basically so the entire

JP: 6:17

thing started for about five minutes yeah and considering our journeys about two hours and

Becky: 6:22

it was good we had good fun

JP: 6:24

we went for what was it cheap cheesy hit? Yeah, was it called cheesy bangers on spotty cheesy slightly cheesy bangers

Adrian: 6:32

mash and gravy to be

Kerley: 6:35

cheesy bangers, it's gonna be

JP: 6:41

so cheesy bangers.

Becky: 6:47

Maybe it was cheesy hits, I don't know. And clearly you were in the car with them. What you

Kerley: 6:56

just want to point out I would have hated being in your car. That's why I held to me karaoke the whole way up. Well, my God, well,

Becky: 7:02

me and JP had a great time. So yeah, well, I'm glad you

Kerley: 7:05

did, but in my opinion, leave it to the professionals. You know,

Becky: 7:08

speaking of professionals, you ended up seeing the car down of course, from the 24 Hour Board Game Marathon. Um, yeah, so you guys, were in Dan's car. So you, you drove up?

Kerley: 7:19

Yeah. Yeah, we had a nice drive. Thank you. It was all good.

JP: 7:23

Did you have a cheesy bangers? No. Well, no, actually.

Kerley: 7:26

I mean, he said that I could have control of the music, you know, I mean to at synthwave at the moment, so he got subjected to that. But most of the way I listened to the midnight Did you the midnight gunship. What else was it? A few others of similar type, and also a few, you know, early 90s Corkers in that nice. I think we have the Beastie Boys.

Becky: 7:55

We had a bit of overlap. And because we have some early 90s Dolly Parton island in the stream was our I think that was our PSA.

JP: 8:04

Pinnacle wasn't we hit the peak. Yeah, that was good. dueting Yeah. We had good fun.

Kerley: 8:10

Enough about cheese. But yeah, we talked most of the way that music was a bit background. We just

Becky: 8:16

Yeah, we all got there. We stayed just outside the Birmingham centre, study hall. So yeah, we got to go to the press event on the first day. So that was

JP: 8:28

very exciting. Yeah, I think for us, it's our first year, going as press normally we go as attendees and just kind of experience the expo. Like, like it should do rarely. But this this year, we've got, I don't know how we manage it, but we managed to get press passes. So good. And but now we're chuffed with that. Because we got to go to that press event and kind of get a little sneak preview of the show and meet a lot of the kind of publishers and designers and people that were there and some friendly faces as well that we've spoken to and actually done episodes, but first time meeting them in real life, which was awesome. So Chris Priscott, signer of Zuuli and got to kind of meet and say hi, which was great.

Becky: 9:11

Yeah, that was really, really nice to kind of, yeah, he's just as nice in persons I expected.

JP: 9:16

Yeah, yeah. It's lovely.

Kerley: 9:17

Absolutely. I nearly kind of wasted their time really, because I really wanted to sit down and be there score. They had low scoreboard physically games. I shouldn't really sit down there, but I'm not playing. I don't need it. demoing. I just wanted to score. No, no, I mustn't. mustn't do that.

Becky: 9:36

Yeah, we, as we were sort of wandering up and down the aisles. There was a really interesting looking game called Stron Point. By Strong Point Games limited, nice and easy to remember, which is like a quiz game, basically, sort of a take on, I don't know, Trivial Pursuit but better. There's no board, you haven't got to go around trying to land on the right thing. You're basically betting on whether your friends knowledge is any good or not, which is always fun. Because, you know, I absolutely embarrassed myself when I got around on something like medicines and something medical, yeah, medical medicine and medical or something. And everyone bettered me on five to get that and I got some like to I was embarrassed. It's awful. But yeah, great. Shout out to the one Yeah, strong point. Strong point games limited, really. really great game,

JP: 10:21

I think it says into the expo. Because like we finished the press event or to comment what time it was the half, eight, nine. We're all kind of wanted to get an early ish night ready for the main day on Friday. And so it's not like we didn't want to crap over kind of a really heavy board game. So you just want this quiz Guy, Matt Miller just sat down and played, it was

Becky: 10:42

pretty fun. Yeah, it was really great fun. Very good, good. So you get points if you answer the questions correctly, but you also get points if you guess how many the person's gonna get that was really good. Another card game that we gave him was by a company called the Alphabet Runner on the game called MaxxRas. So that was just like a little alphabet kind of game. I liked the solo mode of that, which is be really good way of no killing some time when you say at an airport or somewhere, they haven't got a lot of space. So you just matching letters and trying to make words out with a card, you've got the card on the table,

Adrian: 11:14

I spent a bit of time actually watching the awards ceremony. So they gave a lot of the awards out on that Thursday night. And you can see like, everyone's gathered around level, sort of seeing who's gonna get what awards, and then they proudly, understandably displayed them around the hall during the rest of the weekend. But they even made a big deal out of the warzone like Cosmo Swan with dodo keep our cutting board they want, but they walked a dodo bloke in a dodo costume to collect the board and stuff like that. So they were making it good fun, even though you know, it's just for the press there. There was it wasn't sort of open to the public. At that point. They made a good sort of showing of it and made it good fun. And then yeah, everyone walked away with a nice little sort of crystal trophies to put on their pods for the weekend. It was good to watch and see all the designers and the publishers there.

Becky: 11:57

Yeah. So that kind of wraps up our Thursday. Really, yeah, went in, kind of got a self settled down, checked into the various hotels we stayed in. And yeah, got to that press event. And then played strongpoint went to bed nice early night for everyone or not

JP: 12:11

supposed to be but I kind of like in my first night of being away on a school trip, because then I've never got to shared a room with Dan. And we were just like to giggling pretty silly boys. Were just chatting for about two and a half hours. They could publish and get asleep. Very tired on a Friday. It's all good. It's what it's about. So from here, we're just gonna chat about our main Expo exploits and the games. The many many many games we've demoed played boxers ball all of that lovely stuff. Who wants to go first.

Kerley: 12:47

I'm happy to go

JP: 12:48

Go on Kerls

Kerley: 12:48

Well, as far as board games go I made it my mission this weekend to pick up Dice Realms, which I'm really looking forward to playing I saw it in the bring it by it was way too expensive in there, which actually is a bit of a scene in that place. Apparently, way too expensive in the bringing by I look really fancy they're in the right, right. Okay, I'm going to make it my mission to find it. So I told all you guys about it and try and get you guys to try and find it for me. And yeah, eventually found it. Through Adrian keeping a sharp eye on on Facebook. Yeah, and picked it up. And he kind of grabbed it for me as well when he saw the guy randomly on one of the days. So are you ready, please? Yeah, dice ROMs. Yeah. So it's dice rounds off a guy on Facebook that Adrian pointed him out. And yeah, he and randomly bought something off him earlier on.

Adrian: 13:35

Yeah, it just sounds to be someone I agreed to pick up a game from on a Thursday evening. So I bought a steak from them. And then I noticed they're selling it. And so yeah, when I saw them picking up the stuff in the bring & buy to take out of it. I just sort of said, Oh, well. It's my friend. Pick up the game for him.

Kerley: 13:52

40 pounds. I'm very delighted with that. I'm looking forward to play it. And so it looks like and I don't know whether this is right. I didn't do a lot of research into it or anything, but you change the as the game progresses, you change the sides of the dice. Yeah. So it kind of looks a little bit like dice forced to me, but with just a lot more to it. So I'm really looking forward to giving that go because that mechanic in dice forges for me a really enjoyable one. So yeah, really looking forward to playing that one. As far as I didn't really demo many games per se because I tried not to do that as much this time. But we did get Earth to the table, which was thoroughly enjoyable. I bought that on the I was meant to be buying on the Friday, but they'd run out copies even though they said they put one back for me. But nevermind. They were really

Becky: 14:42

friendly. But they were a real family affair. The littlest girl who I believe was called Dahlia. She was like, she seemed to be running the show. She had the iPad. She was like, yeah, she was all over it. Yeah, they just seemed really, really friendly. Nice sort of family. Yeah. Actually, yeah.

Kerley: 14:59

I felt very you know, Andy, from whose time is it anyway because I rocked up to the use your privilege. I brought it up to the they've been sold out every day immediately. Basically, this probably nothing is happening. So yeah, exactly. And there was a queue of about 30 people on Saturday morning I rocked up I bid and they kind of said look, you know everyone probably At this point, there won't be any to sell. And I sort of said actually, I should have won but back then oh, okay, skip the queue and go, you know, go and collect your copy though. So I felt very, you know, rock and roll.

Becky: 15:31

didn't even need to name drop or do they

Kerley: 15:35

just had it but back in May, you know, it felt better than actually. So yeah, we got to play that later on a day. That was really good fun. I got picked to the post by young JP who seemed to be on a roll that day, apparently, on fire. Yeah, be me all the games. So never let it be said. Games. Adrian quite often beats me and JP was on the flip and roll that upsets me.

Becky: 15:56

And he beat me on Flamecraft as well. He bought me the game for my birthday. And I was winning right near the end. I was starting to think like, you know what, I think I actually might have won this game. Oh, combo curly, right at the end pulls out all the end game scoring? Oh, five for that. Or one of the three for oh, yeah, too. We beat me by maybe one or two points. Really good game, though. fairly lightweight, I would say. Easy to understand. And very beautiful. So it's ticks all my boxes, quite frankly. Yeah. Really nice. Really nice little kind of. I don't know, you don't collect? You have a few of the cards in your hand, I guess. But you're not really set collecting. You're kind of changing things with other things on the board. And yeah, collecting new resources, and upgrading stuff. Yeah, I'm upgrading stuff and then getting points for it. Yeah, it's really, really sweet little game. The guy from lucky duck games showed us basically how to play very, very briefly on the Thursday. And yeah, I had my eye on it. Cannington the third? What if you didn't Yeah.

Kerley: 17:01

Did my B live but it makes me feel better. Just

JP: 17:03

wrap it in a bit. Yeah. And then you bought us.

Kerley: 17:09

20 points. Funnily enough, though. My score, I'd beat my last score by over 26 But you

JP: 17:16

smashed it because I was cheating I enjoyed it. Yes, my first play

Kerley: 17:24

my I really like it. I think it's a really solid game. I think he's got good aesthetics. I think it's good mechanically. Chill. Yeah, it's just chilled, chilled. I don't think you know, if I'm being honest, it's never gonna push out Terraforming Mars map, but it's a really good game really thoroughly enjoyed it. And I think the theme is quite accessible. So yeah,

Tambo: 17:51

one thing I should have never bought either, because we're always doing something on everyone's turn love.

JP: 17:57

Yeah, you're right, is, I suppose the only negative is that it's not negative, because you need to pay attention because you just get out of sync. On that read action got more than one reduction. But it's actually a good thing. Because you write you're constantly keeping your eye on the ball again, please pick red, please pick. A damn now you went to or whatever the colour was, but But yeah, it's cool. I like the tableau. Kind of the same manipulation with the fact you can kind of slide around up or down or fry. Although I don't think I did much of that in my game. I was lucky. Or I kind of just,

Kerley: 18:34

I if you plan it properly, you don't always

JP: 18:36

need to Yeah, well, because you activate the whatever action you select right as a colour, and then you activate like reading left to right, from top to bottom. I kind of thought, well, if we're doing that, you kind of want to gain stuff higher up for the tableau, and you want to be spending it lower down is what my brain was telling me to do. So I kind of naturally placed the cards are planted, because in those areas, but yeah,

Becky: 19:01

I was more thinking into it that that would make more sense. If I had done that. Put the collection at the top and they'd spend at the bottom. I'm seeing flaws in my flaws in my

JP: 19:09

game. Now it doesn't like terrain cards that will say put things in a row or column and you'll get bonuses or victory points or whatever. So yeah, it just depends on it, I think called routes really paid off for you do I sprouted all over the show?

Becky: 19:24

I've already bought some bling sprouts by the way. Yeah. Yeah, I found some really beautiful little brussels sprouts. No, no little glass leaves. Very beautiful. And I've already dumped yeah, I've already bought them. I think he's got a lot of capacity for expansion as well. Hasn't it? Like new cards? And I think he's got a really yeah. How about you too? What was your favourite highlights?

Tambo: 19:44

The whole thing was my favourites my first experience. So it was that the first day was quite overwhelming. So I didn't do any much demoing. I was just a lot of wandering and just getting your bearings ready. Because it's all a bit of a bit overwhelming the first day so I wasn't sure how things work but they did. But I'm just watching what other people were doing and just sent them games and I think I did about three laps the whole whole I think until I met you guys then and we were brother but ya know, highlight that one favourite game. I were one of my friends. I was like so many was Fire Tower. Yeah, I sat down and we got on the last day on Sunday funday oh six was always quite busy. There's only two little tables for it so you can easily walk past it. Yeah, it was really, really good. So just a boring table and forest, and in the middle was the eternal flame. And you spin a compass wind compass, which was from western north, south east, whichever the wind was facing and begin to return, they put his little fire markers on the board, from the start from the tunnel flame. And the idea is you have a tower each and you try and burn down each tower each other's tower.

JP: 20:46

Oh, you're literally gonna set fire. Yeah, so trying to

Tambo: 20:50

tie on fire. And the last one wins, basically. Yeah. So you, you put your fire currents and weather within. So that's the first thing actually doing you got cards in your hand, you got cars up, make more fire, you've got cars that put out fires, you got cars be like defensive barriers down the tower. And you got these Hawk cars, which is an expansion for everybody that will fly hawks which actually apparently are a real thing in Australia, which denotes the flight down and pick up it's a foreigner to bring up. Oh, really? Yeah, bring up little their food, you know. So a little rodents run out when they start setting a fire so they move fighter the parent is the real thing. I think Google it but the guy Ryan, who was the publisher of said it's actually a real thing. Wow. So fast. Quite interesting. So you put his fire hawks in and you can move one fire by the way you'd like to fire to like really? So I remember

Becky: 21:38

seeing the actual stall in the hall and it had like, it's a there's a fire tower in like kind of flickering. Yeah, I remember seeing that.

Adrian: 21:47

Like almost they looked almost glowing as every time I was walked past I thought No wonder they no wonder they're busy all day, because it really popped off the table. Okay.

Tambo: 21:55

Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. And it's not an elimination game. Yes. When you find bugs, you didn't realise at the end. You do a bit like you do Nemesis you get evil dice. And then you roll it and you haven't actually cards and then you do what it says in the cards, you make more fire and you become the fire, you become the fire basically. And then, um, if the other person goes out, those two got work together. And to win it to the bag. I swear they've got to eliminate the last two at the same time at the same time. And there's one winner at the end of the whole time. The win.

JP: 22:22

Sounds fun. Interesting. Yeah. I've seen it. Yeah, you've explained it. But I'm actually more excited to kind of play it and give it a go. Because I'll be honest, it's not something I thought

Kerley: 22:33

it looked a bit gimmicky to me. So to hear it actually has a little bit of kind of context.

Tambo: 22:37

I'm not sure how Opie is when you when you become a biker, because it seemed to end very quickly once that happened, and they want it but ya know, there's a cohort version where you you protect the long life trees or something or protect them from fire. And there's a solo version as well. So it sounds really good. Yeah, it's not a long play. It's about 40-50 minutes working on tables. Yeah. That was one of my favourite games. Nice. One of the measure. They are available now. I know they've run out of time and will print but I've they're gonna send me an even when they get it back in print in the in Europe. So they reckon. I think it was a Canon but July, late in the year or maybe the next year. It's quite well, unfortunately, they sold out on the first day for their books. Wow.

Adrian: 23:20

Yeah. heard that from a few different vendors that they sold out on day one of stuff. So

Becky: 23:25

I think it was like, what has customers been really bad this time? Or?

Adrian: 23:32

You mentioned customers, but it just is busier than last year. All around, it seemed. So a lot of people were talking that especially the Saturday was a lot busier than they were expecting. Or

Kerley: 23:42

they actually certainly was 16%. Higher than the record attendance.

JP: 23:45

Yeah. Wow. Like 50 by 50,000. Visitors and 32,000 were unique over the weekend. So 32,000 Different people then HorseFace over the three days. And I think most of them, though, on the Saturday. So there was a big day. Yeah, definitely.

Becky: 24:03

I suppose companies aren't maybe in this kind of financial climate going to sink. Absolutely loads of money into something if it isn't 100% Sure. Fire.

Adrian: 24:13

Yeah, with last year not being being a bit quieter. I think a lot of might have been a bit more cautious. But hey, if you can sell through your games and still have people interested and know that you're going to get more random. Yeah, that's in the future. It's good for the publishers. Definitely.

Becky: 24:29

How about you then Adrian, what is your highlight game?

Adrian: 24:32

I did a lot of sort of sit down demos and trying stuff, especially with JP so I'm gonna talk about the one that I didn't actually sit down with JP for which was the Lorcana. So Lorcana is the trading card game that's coming from Disney. And I sat down and I played with with Marcus who's a big trading card game fan. And I played against the Timelord which was really interesting. So he's got some he's got some card games skills as well. For those who didn't see it, there's a lot of videos over the weekend but they had some dialects and some time lords walking around with them doing a bit of sort of cross play stuff, which was good, but yeah, still in a queue. And there's, I've got a time last plot. I'm playing the game of Locarna with an interesting mix. The game has some really sort of solid mechanics, you have your normal hand of cards and they've got Strength and defence. And they've also got something called Le Karna points. At the start of each turn, you pick a card, you show it to your opponent and you place it facedown. And that becomes your coming or they call them now that I think they called an ink points or something like that. So the idea is you're drawing these characters into life, so that becomes your ink points. And so because you're placing them facedown on the on the table, like you get, you will have to place one face down so they stay in play constantly. So you're slowly getting an increase of these ink points over the game. And then you play the characters using those points or items or actions. And you've got kind of two things you can do, you can use them to sort of turn them sideways, and some exhaust them whatever term you want to use to gain Locarna points, which is how you win the game. So many other kind of points when I think it was 20 Locarno points wins you the game, they definitely avoided certain words because it's Disney, right? So they've avoided certain words, but you can then challenge I think, was the Word, another character who is exhausted. So if they've been to the point either to game mechanic cards, or because they've challenged someone else, you can then challenge that, and then you can knock them out. And they go into the discard pile. There's some really solid stuff in there, we did see only like a handful of cards. And as always, with these trading card games, they're built around what cards are in the deck and what cards become available expansions become available. So we play with two demo decks that only there are 60 cards there. But they look like I think they look like very basic versions of cards. But they may tell me it's different. I don't know. But certainly the cards I hand in hand are very basic things we scrape because it's a family game. But also I'm intrigued from a trading card game to see what other mechanics now they put in the game. But yeah, really enjoyable. Glad that I managed to get into that, because that had a long queue all weekend.

Becky: 27:04

Yeah, I wanted to check it out. And I just thought you know what, there's always a cute there's always, like, almost three sides of the square little area was cute. And I just thought Yeah. Yeah, I think

Adrian: 27:15

and props to the demo as they were going, like, we were there on Sunday morning. And she could barely talk, bless them for demoing. But she did, she did her best job. And you know, again, they use they use languages like say you when you first bring a card in, you can't use it that turn. And it's called wet ink. So you've just drawn so you can't use it. Yeah, and all those like that that language that's in there is just brilliant and very sort of thematic to Disney. Yeah. So yeah, so I'm intrigued. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

JP: 27:46

It does look pretty good. I like the cards. I've seen the announced the cards for months ago didn't coming and who knows topics that can play the ones you've got.

Kerley: 27:59

Like Adrian says though, that kind of thing is, it's great to have a good look and a good aesthetic bashley is all about the game. So we don't know enough yet about the game to know 100% about it. So you like wait and see what the overall kind of you know,

Adrian: 28:13

I think it's probably fair to say that it will be solid enough strong and families, it's whether it makes it to more competitive thing. But I've seen some family orientated trading card games that are not well built. And this one actually for me felt like it was gonna be well built enough that families can get into it just to where then the sort of adults you know, the tournament scene or competitive scene kicks off with it that will be dependent upon the cards that come into the game. Yeah, it was good.

Becky: 28:41

Then JP, what was your best game?

JP: 28:43

Well, best game. It's quite hard to answer the best game I've enjoyed so much. But I think the one that kind of stuck in my mind. I'm actually going to talk about Mycelia. Oh, yeah, that looks beautiful. So Myceliais a mushroom strategic mushroom game, which is you know thing mais is different. Yeah. And the designer, Jack Neville. We, I've been in conversations with actually for a few weeks, and we managed to organise a game on a Friday evening after the kind of halls have certainly gone into the open gaming area, which was great for the head to do considering he spent eight nine hours demoing and talking about his own game for the day. You know, what I'm gonna do in the evening on my on the night off isn't going to play the game with us. So thank you, Jack for doing that. But yeah, what is it my son Leo is a kind of a an area control, kind of resource kind of collecting management game, I suppose. And it's got quite a unique theme in the fact that you control your mycelium network of basically the mushrooms. And you start with what's called a mother mushroom, which I think we all have different nicknames for the course of the game, which you can kind of move around on these triangle tiles and just try and get the tiles there be you try and get a time so they're really pretty and kind of coloured differently because of the different resources that you need to collect. And so essentially, you're sending annual spores from from your mushroom and the wind can carry your spores across. The board in various different directions, not always the directions you want.

Becky: 30:26

With you never direction

JP: 30:28

off the board. Here we go. And then you can use those, those spores to to kind of spend them and fruit, the actual mushrooms, which are these cards. And I have to say the artwork and in this game is all done by Jack is beautiful, like hand drawn, and the mushrooms or various different shapes and sizes like even I was like, how many how many times so many and they all have kind of various different effects and powers when you decay them. And that's kind of the point you're scoring from the fruit of mushrooms to get to a point where they decay. When they decay, you kind of take the cards and you swap them on the player board. And then they might have an ongoing game effect. Or there might be an instant effect where you can eradicate spores from the board from your opponents or whatever different things that can happen. So builds your engine. What surprised me about the game was kind of how kind of interface you get with your opponents. So I thought were quite a pleasant game, just the you know, being mushrooms. Were doing this doing that. And actually what we found in our game, and maybe it's because you know me, Kerley, and Jack we're playing, we just kind of guide each other as grills went for it. And, yeah, it was just great fun. And the kind of crux of it is that you have to kind of have a continuous network of your spores and mushrooms. And they will have to be joined together for you to be able to spend resources halfway across the board and back so people can kind of just cut your network in half and take a spool off and suddenly the whole thing collapses because you need the red from the left side of the board and maybe some greens on the right. But even if you're relying on that single connection you're you're knackered so

Becky: 32:08

yeah, I was speaking to him and he's a graphic designer by trade and that just absolutely comes across in his cards. Everything you know from the font to the kind of colour palette he's chosen. It's it's incredibly beautiful.

JP: 32:22

Yeah, it's kind of on a part of me like with that you know how gorgeous the wingspan car yeah.

Becky: 32:28

Oh 100%

JP: 32:31

Plus mushrooms. Yeah. Yeah, it's done an excellent job there. I really enjoyed the game

Becky: 32:35

and it kind of it makes it very easy. I know that you said it's you guys ended up being quite not combative but sort of bit Aggie Yeah, but the the game is very kind of Zen looking. And and yeah, really, really good.

Kerley: 32:51

My problem was for that game is that I got a bit obsessed with getting a jack shape designer scalp as a you know, but then JP snuck up and flipped into wet the victory from no where. Yeah, great.

JP: 33:05

Honestly, didn't think I had it. I was just doing my thing. And I'll just shoot it you

Kerley: 33:10

started so slowly, I kind of like no offence I kind of knew off it was because I'm concentrating on Jack. And then yeah, I'm done with Jack and then JP ran in and you know, you're welcome. Great, it's good fun. Yeah, really was good.

Becky: 33:28

It's interesting talking to Japanese saying that. People play it in different ways. Like you said, we were talking about how many times he played the game. And he said he really likes playing games with groups of people to see the kind of the dynamic of the group so said something. I mean, he can kick off the dynamic of our group pretty quickly. You know, you know, some people sort of they stay on their little half of the board and they're doing their little thing and they occasionally Yes, might sort of almost accidentally, sort of affect someone else's play. Whereas our group is kind of like right, take that. I'm moving that sport over there. Like that's nadji for that and it was yeah, it was fun. It did look I didn't play I was a bystander I was absolutely you were here. I'd gone by about eight o'clock Yeah, I'd had my dinner and was basically done really?

JP: 34:20

Yeah. It's fair. It's fair. Now check out my studio it's coming to crowdfunding or Kickstarter I think later in the year I think September I believe I might Yeah, kind of around that time so yes want to keep an eye out for definitely

Kerley: 34:33

had some they had some good talk going on about it actually there's quite a few groups on Facebook it was was saying it was

JP: 34:40

probably stole was rammed weekend. Yeah. I caught him on the Sunday and on the way out and said Are you going on on the site? I

Kerley: 34:49

genuinely think it's my my tip for the hot game of next year.

Becky: 34:52

Yeah, it's gonna be in the hotness along with Hegemony. However, that's meant to be said Hegemony.

Adrian: 34:59

Hegemony Google says cuz I thought it was hetero hegemonic, but apparently again, Hegemony

Becky: 35:04

again. Well,

JP: 35:05

I think the US call it hegemony. Europe is hegemony. Oh, wow. Whichever,

Becky: 35:10

whichever side of the pond you're on that I reckon is gonna be a big okay.

Adrian: 35:14

It is. Already it's already Yeah, it's we got demo that we did. I was right Ready to be done with asymmetric games, I think, quite frankly. Because when I've played them, I've normally just felt like I there's one side that's doing something really specific. And it always seems to get the rub of the green early on and then steamroll as everyone else. This was definitely more interesting. And there was the ecosystem of playing. So for those who don't know, it's kind of representing, you've got one person represents the state, and then you've got one person representing capitalists. And then middle class and working class buildings are coming out like so different companies are coming out and workers are being placed as taxes to pay, and you get to vote on different whether, you know, health care goes up or down. And it affects every player. And every player will have a different feeling about sort of how the different ones interact. And we only played a couple of turns and bless him the guy, the guy who showed us was on my lunch now I'll hand you over to someone and then whoever was looking after them came over when you're not on those. We have a mix up. We've got your product breaks mixed up. Can you sit down with someone else that game? Oh, bless. Yeah. And he did a great job of still putting together a really interactive sort of experience and showing showing, you know, being enthusiastic, did a great job of it. And sort of he sided with the state a little bit with JP, I didn't mind and showed him how it was played. Because he needed help less. No, he didn't. I did J paid really well out of it. I didn't know what I was doing. And yeah, I was really impressed. They'd already sold out by the time we got a demo midday on Saturday. Wow. But yeah, I was really impressed with that as an asymmetric game. And as I say, I'm I was about ready to sort of hang up my asymmetric game playing time, because I've just not always had the best experiences with them recently. And that has kind of sort of corrected the course back to maybe there are certainly symmetric games out there that will do well.

JP: 37:18

I really enjoyed it. It's a theme I couldn't care less about. If I'm being honest. Like for me, oh, great politics, and let's let's vote on policies and just doesn't interest me. But for some reason in this game, you can't help but roleplay it. You can't help laws, the state. And then the agent is the, as you say, working class, and you were just like no part of the people were like, We need to make sure we're protecting people get the trade unions, or worker unions or set up and I'm like, Hey, let's just let's just make sure everyone gets a piece of the pie. And let's get taxes risen, so I can get lots of money, which is what I was doing and literally just spamming taxation on all the other players, which they loved, absolutely loved that, especially debut as a character as money for cattle, all of his profits domain. But yeah, you just can't help but get into it. And you have all these cars don't you that you play, as well as doing like your basic actions. And yeah, it's just really dramatic. And, like, say, for me the theme, it's not my favourite, but it only works if it were worst. And you don't need to have an in depth knowledge of like social economics or anything or economy. It just kind of get made sense.

Adrian: 38:33

And it felt like when we sat down, and he was originally talking about it, the person who demoed it, it felt like it was gonna be sort of the working class versus the capitalists and the state and middle class in the middle. And that was true to some extent, but the middle class and the state had enough push and pull. But actually, there was quite often times when I still felt like I was fighting against them as the working class. And I could see it on TV as well. So it wasn't necessarily just here's your middle ground. It was definitely the sort of the ecosystem sort of pulling in different directions, I was really impressed.

JP: 39:06

Yeah, I think depending on player count, if you just do to your be working class versus the capitalists, and then the player will be the middle middle class in the fourth player plays a space. So I think you kind of have to place an order for that player account, possibly, that you can do a two player with the state versus working class.

Adrian: 39:24

And there's a I think they were saying those Yeah, automata decks that sort of show. Replace the other people if you haven't before,

JP: 39:31

which maybe allows you to play some of those kind of other factions. Don't really want to call them factions, but you know what I mean? Yeah,

Adrian: 39:39

we also on Saturday stopped by Molinarious Games, they are producing a game at the moment called Ocean Pods. It's a beautiful game, again, you talked about sort of my cilia, those white cards with a lovely image on them exactly the same but with pods of whales, and different sea creatures. And it's also got these beautiful, sort of screen printed dice that have different food types on it. What you're doing is you're rolling a handful of dice, and some of them will come up with pollution. And some of them will come up with food. The food types you're trying to collect points essentially by feeding these different animals but there's also if you try and get too far ahead people spam pollution into the ocean so that no one can win it. So you're kind of trying to play that game of making sure that you're building up your pods, as well as making sure there's not enough pollution in there. It's coming to Kickstarter soon what they're also doing is they're giving a certain amount of the money they make away to different I can't remember the specific name of the charity but I don't

JP: 40:47

think it was named I think it was just basically environmental

Adrian: 40:51

charities about keeping the oceans clean and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, so great cause as well, that didn't say it's coming to Kickstarter, they had a few to sell they looked like they were nearly sold out when I went around on a Saturday evening so I don't know how many games they had left. But a great game and we're going to hopefully get a game of it to the table soon because they were kind enough to give us a copy to preview

JP: 41:10

you said this looks like BECKY Yeah. series you

Becky: 41:13

bought the little box out on the table when we all kind of gathered together in horse race. I think I probably made the noise which is my famous grandma noise speaking about grandma's I took my grandma trolley my little the show that was brilliant Not gonna lie. Absolutely taking that next year so it's not a paisley you know, proper grammar one it's quite a funky

JP: 41:37

you get a photo of this grandma Charlene get it on

Becky: 41:41

its own Instagram account. Granny love it it it was very useful. I mean, you know, you saw people walking around with those big giant like, I don't know little dumper truck looking like almost thing that you'd have in the back of your car for like your little what are they called? Trailer trailers. That's right, like a little handheld pull along trailer that you might put a very large child in or something. People weren't bringing them around. I thought Blimey, taking people's legs out with that my little granny trolley nippy, as long

Kerley: 42:13

as you want one of those areas for the big square bags on that.

Becky: 42:19

Bank. So I for me, because I'm sure

Adrian: 42:23

I do have to apologise, I definitely took out one person. So for the most of it, I put all of my stuff in the shop and drop through three pounds a day, drop all your stuff off all that. So I did most of that on the Sunday. I didn't wanna do that. So I wore it on my front so that I could control it better. But on the Saturday,

Kerley: 42:40

baby,

Adrian: 42:41

I did, because I was really aware. And I'd been caught a couple of times where people swinging bags over their shoulder, I felt really aware of it. So I did my best. On Saturday, as we were leaving the expo, we're walking along and my feet were killing me. And I had my backpack on and I turned to say something to think was Marcus and dad about how much my feet hurt. And I took out this woman walking in the other direction with it. She squealed.

JP: 43:05

with it. There's a lot of weight behind those. And

Adrian: 43:08

yeah, so if that was you, I'm really sorry. But yeah, it was there was a lot of sort of bumping into things with, with bags from various people and all that like it was a bit of a problem

JP: 43:16

as far as age. And if she was a listener, she probably stopped being a listener.

Becky: 43:23

Adrian from Hooters, you know, really

Adrian: 43:25

sorry. I was tired and whatnot. All day, I'd been thinking about the bags I've been carrying. Yeah. Especially on the Sunday when I had the big. The big board game tables board game bang. And yeah, Saturday, just my brain wasn't engaged. We were going for food, my feet hurt. And I just turned say something and didn't even think about and just wiped some some poor person. And

Kerley: 43:46

all I did I wanted to abuse Adrian a little bit with a snarky comment. And it turned out to be true.

JP: 43:53

Yeah, I was I do not know this happened. No, no, I didn't either. But

Adrian: 43:57

I really wouldn't say sorry. Because there was I felt really bad about it. And I'd seen other people doing it and not to say sorry, or anything. And I also didn't say sorry to say normally you're doing the time, right? Yeah, I also didn't because I told me, they were gone. They'd mentioned some sort of write themselves and get off before I even realised what had happened. And I was just like, Oh, no.

JP: 44:19

Don't do that. Yeah, in large bags for that reason. What about granny trolleys fit your arrival. I think there'll be a specific bias and we're gonna hit 1000 followers for the granny trolley that's all good.

Tambo: 44:36

Yeah, that's right. So I played Apex Legends as a demo. I think Davey for that that was very interesting. I haven't really played a board game professional shooter so people don't know Apex Legends is it's a first person shooter. I've never played the computer game but I've seen it I've heard about it. I've played it once. Yeah, and I was crap. Right now what I'll be grappling with the reactions for first person shooters but now I'm just rubbish but um yeah, so it was me Marcus, my brother Chris and we actually while he goes random joined us because we couldn't get fourth So one guy was lucky he got his name so I'm sorry if you're listening. Yeah, it was really good. My favourite part of the whole thing was the buildup of the weapons I think it was really really clever when you buddy pick out all your rare token you got Malta rare rare is it and then you got no Move tokens, you bring out a bag, I think. And you pick out one ultra rare two reds and about four normals. So the beginning setup, I think is and then you pick up the four weapons choose two. And then you do a pan down and you try and match the symbols, which is quite a bit time scheduled work rushing around, and the guards can explain everything. And it makes sense near the end, but it was, it was really well demoed. I'm not saying it wasn't, it was just quite a lot going on. I'm not seeing very quickly. But yeah, that was a really interesting part of it. And then obviously, everything visually looks good. The 3d model, there's a 3d table of the levels and the cardboards buildings and the characters in the bombs, everything. It's stunning. It really, really, really, really good. My favourite part of the whole thing was the combat part of the firing and doing the damage. Yeah, it's very, very 100%. Clever. Yeah. Either had really expensive imagine, like you got zero in the middle of a row of one to six, I think it was. And then before they got five, four plus fives, and then when on your weapon, it says you draw four cards, so and you're gonna hit 65. So that's the number you got to hit for, you're going to hit or make do seven damage, for instance. And then you draw a random card. And if it's got 60, you're under, but you can book modules plus five it Yeah. And if you go to another cargos apps, you get minus 10. Already on the board on your number because of the stability of the gun, because you'd like shooting up in the air because it's just going crazy. Yeah, the longer you're firing. And that's really really this this again, well minuses on your number. But if you put upgrades in your gun, you can start in the plus fives, which means you've got plus five and a number to begin with. And then again, keep drawing from that point, and it takes longer to get a long number and you get the hit and the track. Yeah, it was really, really clever. That was I mean, that that didn't impress me, I didn't quite get the one week because you can actually stack up your numbers as well.

Adrian: 47:09

So if you've got a shotgun, essentially, it's two cards that you put on the same slot. So if you draw a 45 and 65, and you need a 55, you've still got one hit, so that they're both getting the plus five or the zero. So rather than going down the track zero minus five minus 10, one minus five minus 10, whatever it is, you're essentially putting two cards on one so that your accuracy depletes less quickly and if you've got a stability stabiliser on there it stays better for longer Yeah, I used to I played a demo of it as well. Not at the expo we'll talk about it in a second but I took a shot going and one of them deliberately to see how that worked and it is a good mechanic because it allows you or it's a good option to have because it allows you to not get those minuses as quickly and with the deck of cards the way it's set up it means that you stay sort of yeah more accurate for longer which is really useful

Tambo: 48:03

for an upgrade was fun as well. And now let's say when you're doing damage cars there's little arrows on the cards so you put point the grenades on the land and the draw the card and these little arrows away grenades gonna roll. And that was very clever. Yeah, yeah. So if I'm wanting here, but then I don't know it's actually coming back towards me. There's a chance it could happen, which is actually what can happen you actually when you're playing a computer game for or against a wall, it comes back to us like okay, what's happened to me video games? Yeah, that was really cool. Yeah, it was really good fun. I've had to remember Marcus coming up to have a big arch coming up and he put a massive shield around him and we can hurt him and he was like an expert. Then he ran up at me smashed against the wall in the shopping effects pretty much and killed me. Yeah.

Adrian: 48:44

I played as well when I played a very good character

Tambo: 48:46

the character the smoker thing I never got. Yeah, yeah, the more cool really cool a special abilities as well, which was good. And each character has their individual thing, doesn't it? Yeah, the

JP: 48:54

way you need they've got their own light feat cards that you can play that just really leads into the asymmetry of what the character does. And, and it's just I think when you play your first game, it's probably not gonna be fast paced, but when you know what you're doing, you're gonna get round just you know, move move, shoot, bang button, boom, jump up here, do this do that and it's going to feel very kind of battle royale deathmatch if you like, that sort of thing. So yeah,

Adrian: 49:17

yeah, if someone's got a couple of shots on your the whole team can get shots on you, you feel doomed in that moment, which is exactly how it should feel. Yeah, you might not make many shots over again, again, you'll I think you'll build up that speed as you're playing. But as soon as if a couple of people from one team have got eyes on you, and they can shoot you you feel in danger that you really do feel like this could be done but you do come back so if you get shot, you lose a victory point as everyone starts with a victory point in the in the base, Battle Royale sort of version, you lose that victory but you do get to come back you just don't respond you respond you're just not worth any victory points and the one with the most victory points at the end when so you're kind of trying to take out both of the opposing players so they can take out one person as many times as they like they're only getting one victory point out of it.

JP: 50:01

So you end up getting you know killed you've got nothing to lose. You've got nothing to lose. Right and that's it that's it I'm getting over your face now. And yeah, unleash hell yeah, we, we kind of were fortunate when we Adrian because me and you got to play it on the Gaming Rules channel quite a few weeks ago. We will only to mention on this even though, you know, we did play Expo, we purposely said no, we're not going to play Expo because we played it and wanted others to kind of experience and I was really keen for you to try it take some thought this is going to be your stream. Definitely. And other kind of group members like Rob, I think they'll they'll dig it up a little of absolutely dig it and probably Chris as well. And I it was a game that I was kind of looking forward to it's not really my bag, you know, I didn't play the computer game, the IP doesn't really interest me, per se. And then I started playing, I think, as you say to the loadout I love that. Just sitting there with Adrian, we was on the same team, I played Wraith you were Gibraltar. And we were just like, right what we're gonna do, we're just working together, swapping bits, moving bits around, making sure we have the right kind of loadout. So the guns and then yeah, just got stuck into it was just so much fun. And it really surprised me. And it's one of those games that is stuck with me. And I got a real buzzer applying it for you know, for days and days afterwards and still thinking about it. As I was like, and then the Kickstarter campaign is literally live as we speak, and I'm in. I'm in. So hold on glass cannon. Yeah. You know what you're doing with these IPs? I think it's their second game. Right? They did. Frostpunk. Yeah. And their first game, they're listening

Adrian: 51:42

to the backers as well. So yeah, they've given a diorama and seeing them in person I wasn't sure about them seeing in person, they are absolutely beautiful and useful as well. They hold all the bits you need, and the cards. But they have done because a few quite a few backers were saying I don't know about the diagram as they've now done versions of each box with like more characters in but less of the diagram as Yeah, I'm kind of not sure. Now whether I want to be honest, it's kind of put me so I've backed the game of pledge at the moment, which gives you six players, six characters in the core box. But there is an option with four but with the dire armors. And I'm now not sure which way to go on that in all honesty, because the diagrams were actually really useful when you saw them in person. Yeah, but yeah, it's on Kickstarter. Right.

JP: 52:24

Nice to have the option, right, because it is a deluxe component. So you know, people don't want to have to pay all of that they don't have to and that's good.

Adrian: 52:32

Yeah, they're definitely listening to the polls over what, what stretch goals you want. Next, they list a few different ones, you get to vote on it. So they're, they're making it really interactive, which is nice to see. Because not all Kickstarters are in that respect. So yeah, as you said, we weren't gaming rules. So if you want to see a playthrough for yourself, if you couldn't make it to the expo, feel free. I think it's even linked on the Kickstarter page. So feel free to, to watch us playing and winning.

Becky: 53:01

That's always the cherry on the top, isn't it? Oh, um, we want, right? Well, I mean, I say that I don't know.

JP: 53:06

Bloody great. There's a moment I'm not gonna spoil the moment. But there's a moment in that playthrough it was a chef's kiss. Adrian and me was like a hive mind. You just worked. And okay, maybe not all of it was premeditated and planned for my side anyway. But it worked. It was great. And we had a blast. So

Becky: 53:26

nice. So it's not a new game. I had heard of it, but I not really kind of had anything to do with it up to now walk past an empty table, we all thought, oh, let's just sit down for me and Kerley. Tambo and his brother, Chris, we play Port Royal, it was only the basic game, although we were playing the big box version, it was only the base sort of cards that we used. And it's kind of a like a card, push your luck kind of very, very, very easy to understand the cards both double as money. If you turn them on, they're sort of the back upwards or whatever card they are. They're either ships or passengers. And you're basically you're on your turn, you're creating a harbour of cards. So you basically keep turning cards over until you decide you don't want to push your luck anymore. And basically you go bust if you have more than one ship of the same colour. So you might have one red ship two passengers, and you think I'm still gonna go for it, and you get another blue ship. And you're like, all right now do I do I keep pushing my luck? Do I get another? Or could get another yellow? Oh, no, he's a blue ship. Everything's got done. And then yeah, you're not going to get any points at that time. When you decide to stop, you then can cash in one of the ships for points for coins. And then everybody who then decides to buy one of the cards from your harbour, you get a point. So it's just a continual kind of cycle run around. Some of the passengers kind of, you end up keeping, if you buy that passenger you end up keeping so the colours of the ships that you get either live or just turn into money, they actually turn into VPS at the end of the game and it's it's the first two was it nine VP? It was a fairly quick game, isn't it? What do you say?

Kerley: 55:06

Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's really cool mechanic with cards. I did enjoy that side of it. Last, which you know, it's always upsetting but but no, it was really good fun. It's really quick and it was really nice to kind of chill out and not be like surrounded. It was a really nice kind of, I forget what people were beside now she was out shopping the whole time left as you went up on Halti. Oh. So, yeah, we sat down on that the guy gave us a really good talk through we've thoroughly enjoyed it. But so much so that you ended up buying it.

Becky: 55:42

I did buy the big box edition. So I'm yeah, having spoken to the guy that was demoing he said on you know, the base games fine, but it really does kind of get more more interesting. Kind of the other people said that to not just the guy who was trying to flog me the game. And funnily enough, I actually didn't. I didn't buy it from publishers feel sorry. I bought it from

JP: 56:06

I think they're fine. They still get

Becky: 56:08

some money. Yeah. They get top and take performances. But yeah, really good guy really liked it just for a quick kind of filler. Not quite party game. It's not really.

Tambo: 56:23

I'm not sure what the modules bring when you put them in. Don't mix it

Kerley: 56:27

up collection for cash flow. Very quick, without being a pipe game. Yeah.

Tambo: 56:32

I'm glad you guys work through them for work or ask for her skin as well. Yeah.

JP: 56:37

Apparently it's 2014. It came out. But the big box was last year. Oh, well, I'm currently I'm current with the current Yes. Why they were probably because it's fairly recent.

Becky: 56:47

But I think the base version was maybe I want to say like 12 pounds or something. Yeah. And the big box was something like 22 pounds of that. Well, actually. Yeah, I thought a big box. Yeah. It's not a massive box. Yeah, I'm really glad I bought that. I think it's gonna sit in our collection really nicely. Yeah. Awesome. You guys anymore.

JP: 57:11

Selling is another four hours of content. Now we're talking about the Old Kings Crown. And if Davey was here, he would be shouting about this one, I think is probably one of his highlights. So like a hidden game, Davey game, what does that actually mean? It means the spice, the spice in this game, there's player interaction. For the wazoo, that's a word, I'm gonna use it, it's all good and tired. So the Old Kings crown is essentially the, like, the king is dead. And you're like players as to the throne. Yeah, you'll have different fashion abilities. You it's not, I don't know how to explain this on a podcast, it's quite difficult. But you have like, kind of the realm which is like three rows, and has six sections on this mainboard. And you've got this like a card shop at the bottom called the road. And as this other port at the top can't remember what it's called. But it does, has like some really powerful cars that are stuck there.

Adrian: 58:10

Like questing acid or something like that.

JP: 58:13

Yeah. So you kind of have your deck of cards, and you'll draw like five or whatever in your hand. And on the cards, you've got like an influence number, or initiative number that sits on the top left. And, you know, all the cards can have different symbols on there or do different things we've we've kind of key words that you'd expect to see in like a magic game or any game that uses key words. And you kind of at the start of the round you we kind of go through seasons that you go for like spring, summer, autumn winter, and then there's various different Solstice like, pre phases that kind of happen. But the the core crux of the games, you're playing these cards face down, across these realms, and all is secret, and you reveal them. And based everyone swears because you kind of arrived from control of various different areas. And if you win, then you get to trigger the effect of one of the two spaces that kind of happens there. And you'll get influenced. And the whole point of the game is to get up to 15. And comment, something like that wasn't it? And yeah, but there are ways that certain cards are revealed, they can kind of manipulate the cards played on on the board. So you can kind of think I've got this great plan, I'm going to use this car which will like an agent, which will kill them sabotage the other players, characters that are on the board, but then someone else plays this and it moves them around you like past it. And there's a lot of like swearing and back and forth and things like that. And yeah, it's it's an interesting game, I have to say like, we had a demo with Pablo, who's the artist and he also designed it or CO designed and the art work on this game is phenomenal. Like it I kind of like an add on if you've got a comparison, but it kind of reminds me of like Studio Ghibli kind of. It's that it's beautifully hand drawn. It's

Adrian: 1:00:04

very painterly, yeah. Sort of hand drawn, and it's all a little bit accentuated. Yeah, it's hard to describe isn't awesome, is gorgeous. And you get these big tokens as well. I'm assuming they're gonna stay roughly that size. So before you pay the cards,

JP: 1:00:19

oh the Herald Yeah.

Adrian: 1:00:20

Hold in a location. And if someone else also puts they're held in that location and they beat, they beat you, they get to take influence. So kind of upped the ante of it kind of shows people, maybe you can bluff. And so I'm gonna go over here and you don't go there at all. But if you do that and someone else goes there, then they're going to make influence off you. Is that the bet you want to make? Or do you want to put something down and show your intention and put your cards out for it? As you said, there's quite a few key words, which takes a little bit getting used to but actually didn't take too long. And the decks are roughly the same. There's like one card or two cards different in each person's deck. But the ability you get the little abilities that gets turned over once a game I think it was. And the abilities and the cards you get from going questing. Yes, the things that make each faction different. And so the asymmetry was there. But it wasn't, it was big enough to make a difference, but not massive. And yeah, I enjoyed, I enjoyed our playthrough and shout out again to Pablo, because he said sat down and said I'm not great at teaching, and then probably gave one of the teachers of the Expo for me, he did the perfect thing of I'm gonna teach you a small set of rules that have turned one. Now going to add some more rules during turn to now I'm gonna add some more rules during 10. Three, I think we just have the three turns, or I think maybe, but each turn he made sure to give you what you needed to learn a little bit more of the game. And he did a fantastic job considering he sat down and went I'm not very good at this teaching sort of thing. And we took the mick out of him for a little bit. And all that looks we were having having a good laugh. But he did a great job of doing something I didn't see a lot of which was teaching a little bit each turn. And we didn't necessarily see that every every table where we did a demo.

JP: 1:02:05

Yeah. And that I think to approach that demo with everything in play. Would it be it would? Yeah,

Adrian: 1:02:10

either just sat there being talked for 20 minutes in the morning, what was due to happen next. So he did a fantastic job of the demo there. Yeah. And that's coming to Kickstarter soon as well.

JP: 1:02:19

Not sure when but yeah, keep an eye on and I know the other content creators that we know have been talking about this one as well. They've got their eyes on it. So sounds interesting. Yeah, I've

Kerley: 1:02:30

just had a little look where you guys were talking just to see when it releases. And they all got a free? Yeah, but they've got a pre pre launch page where they're going to notify people. So just keep an eye on that. It just says coming 2023

Adrian: 1:02:41

Yeah, it's all of their artwork as well. Yes. If you ever look at their page and look at the other day, and yeah, just flew out if that's what you're interested in, because maybe like the backstabbing sort of bluffing game isn't really your thing. And it was a good version of that. Just have a look at the artwork. It's fantastic. Just for that thing. It really is the

Becky: 1:02:59

old king's crown.com And you right, Studio Ghibli artwork style, very beautiful dance on that one for me sounds a bit Stabby stabby, kind of very thinkI. But that's a very beautiful game. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:03:12

it wasn't that hidden mechanic, which I quite often with that hidden mechanic, you can bring out people like David, who will just shout at you and tell you all the lighting and all that there is the option to have that in the game, but because they're giving you a fair chunk of information, because what people have played and you know, because the decks very similar, you can kind of get a feel for it, there was a lot more of that sort of Euro feel of guessing what people have done rather than trying to, like you can bluff and you can do sort of I'll swap these two of your cards around because I reckon this is what you've done. But there was enough information in there to kind of to give you that feel that you had control and it wasn't just shouting at someone across the table that they're the they're the Cylon or whatever you

Becky: 1:03:55

know, speaking about silent and unfathomable I want to give a shout out to an amazing painting company. I think it's exit 23 games, and their paint was called turbo turbo dork. Wow, what a shiny paint. Oh. Oh, it's like crushed up diamonds. It's so shiny. Yeah, it's lovely. Yeah, I've bought a colour that I decided to turn manky green it's a great colour but it's it's perfect manky green colour to paint the the deep ones in awesome mother Hydra and father Dagon daikon and the little funny deep one fishy mutant yeah especially ones but it's gonna look good

JP: 1:04:49

to see if you remember our Christmas all the big bomb

Becky: 1:04:59

Yeah, they were they were really nice company. They were really chatty and friendly. And yeah, I would definitely be back on their website buying some lovely, lovely paying.

Kerley: 1:05:11

The only thing the only other thing I wanted to say is I spent way too much money. When I found ares games had a stall that

Adrian: 1:05:17

they did. Oh my god, I

Kerley: 1:05:19

was on my mind. If the

Adrian: 1:05:23

promo card

Kerley: 1:05:25

they got all the promos I put what I did just get all of that but I got the gun expansion for the main game I bought War of the Ring card game I bought the metal boxes to go with it and all of the promos so nice I didn't even look at the price I just put it there and then I'll deal with it with the with the resulting asshole later. Yeah,

Becky: 1:05:49

I was made sad when I looked at my bank account and realised I only got paid last week.

Adrian: 1:05:56

Oh, by the end of the month did it

Becky: 1:05:59

for the rest of the month employee

Kerley: 1:06:01

of mine and it was it was looking rough. Oh, that's not too bad. And then it's all pinned covering like 400 pounds

Becky: 1:06:14

right even I didn't go that bad they

Kerley: 1:06:23

gotta get the cardboard to write.

JP: 1:06:27

And the other games.

Tambo: 1:06:27

I'm a quack, quack. Well, definitely one. We put on demos. And it's good for family game I think of like Josh and like feudal younger generation. Yeah, Kung Fu Panda. Ah, yeah, we sat down, we thought we'd like to live it and we sat down in the miniatures are so detailed, they're just brilliant for a start, and the board is great. And it is literally a combat dice rolling Game Critic go for it, it's very simple. You have the characters will come through panda form, currency on the borders, those, the three of us are when we pay for this foreign players. And then all it is is time based combat, which is something I've never seen before. It's very manic, you literally got to turn the timer on. And we all just didn't they start rolling that dice. And then the match the symbols, and then you have too much symbols to move because the boards are the symbols on the boards to move to the next tile. And then you get in the combat. So if you get hit, you kill one or they spawn and everyone's kind of simultaneous, but you can also use each other's dice to help. So you got to really communicate at the same time. And it's just really fun. Because it's like fantex It's like Kung Fu Panda is when they go into fighting it so and that's what you're doing. And yes, you're doing move on when the time was out. You just take a deep breath and then go again. The board and it's really quite good. Really interesting, the fun. I don't know if it's too manic. I don't know if we can get quite frustrating I don't know. But when we did the demo we did the whole mission in about five minutes I think just one scenario so that's how I see your your team

JP: 1:07:53

your team battling

Tambo: 1:07:54

yeah and you've got to get from one destination pick up the objectives on the way see Yeah, okay, and then you got to get to the exit Yeah, Wi Fi and all that and they got spawn points then you roll some dice Do you have a board in front of your spins? So when you want a certain symbol like a damaged symbol you put the front it could be damaged or it could be a spawn from the enemy on a certain tile and you keep going around or and if you didn't the campaign when you pass the grater or something happens in the campaign when you put the campaign mode because it is really a campaign game. But you can do everything individual as well. Yeah, it was just we came out of thinking that was really fun manic and I was quite tempted by it but I don't think he'll get any time. But visually the details on the miniatures and everything looked really good. I think it was quite good faithful minister 40 quid I think for what you get for all the dice all the miniatures, everything that's good via thought

Becky: 1:08:42

you guys both seemed really enthused, so we bumped into you just after Yeah. Yeah, it's

Tambo: 1:08:49

just like, just like it was so theoretical to the movie. It's really clever.

JP: 1:08:53

Imagine kids aren't a great time

Tambo: 1:08:58

together Yeah, it's really good fun,

JP: 1:09:00

nice. Sticking with the the kind of kung fu ish theme so on the Sunday I asked him to do my little one around the expo. And the thing is the first time I actually kind of was by myself and it was nice think it's nice to do that every now and then just have a little bit of time to yourself and just go and just look around shops and around stores and I managed to bump into I think it was a lucky store and they had a copy of

Senjustsu: 1:09:30

Battle for Japan which was a game on heard about very very lightly and I've seen kind of pictures of it but it's a like samurai sword fighting game arena battles where I think up to four people maybe more with expansion can kind of duke it out to the death and it's all called play. And I thought I'd just try out because I bumped into Mark dainty for not board gaming and the home and he was telling me about it. And he said well you got player said right. I'm off try and find it and we did. So yeah, it's kind of your play. You've got the hammer cards, you kind of play them simultaneously face down, reveal them you have initiative order on the cards and a lot the cards can I work through procedurally their steps. And some of the cards actually have multiple Ernest have numbers on them. So you might do the top half of your card first. And they might go to a different player do theirs, and comes back to yours to finish the card off. And sometimes, your initiative numbers will range from like two to six. So you can actually choose what that number is to see if you're going first or behind a player on the board is all about hexagons as every board game ever. But you actually have positioning. And where you're facing is very important. There's a little arrow on your miniature that says you're facing a certain direction. And even turning is key. So that you're playing your attack cause you're kind of area of effect and damage is going in the right way. But just like in kind of saw samurai sword fighting that you'd expect, there's a lot of movement that you might kind of move past slip past your your opponent's start backwards, spin around, spin them around. And yeah, I just found it really interesting, really fun. And it plays pretty quick, like you're gonna do a match in probably 30 minutes. And you're like, did it did and, you know, off you go, and I think is like first of five wounds. And then you're dead. And you just literally eliminated all the other players on the board until it's done. But I think if you get eliminated, you're not waiting that long to get back in for the next map, if that makes sense. But I really enjoyed it.

Adrian: 1:11:38

I followed this quite closely on Kickstarter. But at the time, I was also looking at other Kickstarter, and I decided that another arena battler was kind of adding to what I already had. But yeah, looking at the miniatures on the board, they were gorgeous. The I don't know quite how much of the board game is like this. But everything had that sort of just slightly off white with the cherry blossom effect on it, which is just very feel very thematic and put you in that sort of that mindset for yeah, as you say, sort of Samurais and feudal sort of systems and stuff like that. Yeah, and it looks gorgeous. So I'm glad to hear that the sort of the gameplay stood up because it looked good in the Kickstarter, I just decided to position my funds elsewhere. So yeah, glad you got the game. And yeah,

JP: 1:12:23

you know, you kind of get the impact of like slashing you saw the lava area of effects and damage that will go from left to right or right to left. And if there's obstacles in the way or block the sun. So you got kind of like a side position is key. Yeah, I really loved it. Enjoyed it. I think a lot of people in the group would have a good time.

Kerley: 1:12:45

Actually, you're doing a good job on the podcast of selling me games. Oh, that sounds interesting. More interesting than than I initially gave it credit for. Yeah, sounds really good now. So stop it. All the money?

JP: 1:13:01

No, buy them

Becky: 1:13:01

normally. That's me when Adrian's talking about something.

Adrian: 1:13:05

I don't think I sold you anything at this expo I felt very restrained in

JP: 1:13:09

wondering, okay, well, that looks good. Or you know that you just one word, I just bought it, you did enough

Adrian: 1:13:14

of a good job of buying stuff without

Becky: 1:13:16

I didn't go as mad as I did last time.

Kerley: 1:13:19

The last game I wanted to talk about was getting called our Fate Forge, which is being released by Might Boards to the same people who do Hamlet and God vengeance and things like that. They're releasing a new game, it's already Kickstarter, but it's in late pledge. The idea behind the game. It's a classic kind of dungeon crawler II type game. But he's heavily narrative driven, completely Co Op. And their big kind of selling point of it is that he kind of sets up plays, does a story of finishes just over an hour. So quite a time for that kind of guy. Yeah, there's a real niche. I think, especially with a lot of the games going around at the moment, we're not going to name names, but a lot of them take a hefty mouse up time. So I think there's certainly a lot of people out there who are like, right, I just want the light aside for the minute, you know, what? Haven Yeah, dissent, the Haven decided to send Haven last night and you know, tonight, I want to chill, I want to play a bit of this, you know, so, but they did a really good job selling it, you know, they they said things are there are some things in there almost like hidden eggs that you won't, you know, there's for an example the way they were telling it, you move around the board, you do attacks, damage, some characters block you some do damage fees to others do different things, you go around this map. But the idea is you've got to go and rescue your friend in this example, who's being you know, tried to be picked on by the guards and you know, taken advantage of, but over on the other side of this town square. The other side of town square is a merchant who and you have to try and take the gem off him. I can't remember the narrative. Exactly. But if you didn't bother to go and get the gym, no problem, you probably never hear anything about it. But if you did this one specific side event in 30 scenarios time and you did take that, then it would play out slightly differently than if you didn't, you know, say it was, you know, quite interesting going on that route is totally app driven. So you don't have to remember that stuff, which I really like, you know, the descent havens of these worlds, although they do have apps, their companion apps and helpers, but the actual maintenance and the admin is well yeah We know yeah it's painful it's a lot it's a lot we do love the game but it's so yeah that that whole the whole idea of it really interested me. I'm not going to click on this late pledges now available because frankly I'm skin and I'm just concerned about if I do click on it

Adrian: 1:15:37

APEX, Apex legends all in yeah so just Senjutsu and this

Kerley: 1:15:47

well what I was gonna say is I don't know whether your APEX legends who's ordered it me and Adrian, you both of you do you need to say are you just buying it for your friend group? Yeah, I see that betrayal group. Yes,

Adrian: 1:15:59

yes, somebody it's my betrayal but you don't

Kerley: 1:16:01

you don't need a difference. So now you've got to JP, I don't need that awesome. You saved me a lot of money. Good sir. Oh, Sasha were mine class games. Brilliant. I don't own a single mine class game. And it's my favourite game. So yeah, just a shout out to them really, cuz you know that you love your

Becky: 1:16:21

designer guy. And he, you know, when someone's so passionate about something, it's really even though I've got not an awful lot of interest in dungeon crawlers. He made me want to see what it's about, because he was so passionate. And you could tell he'd spent so much time and really loved what he was doing. And that really came across it was it was really, really nice. That was I think, the benefit of going to the press event. Yeah, you can totally do that on the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but there's just a lot more people around. So you might be able to catch five minutes with the designer or whatever. But it was just nice that we had the you know, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to do that a little bit more freely, I suppose. Yeah, you know, for a couple of hours on the first day. And he was just Yeah, and it was just really lovely. They weren't trying to sell us anything. It didn't feel like that to me. They just wanted to explain their their babies, which was which was really really nice. Yeah, it was

JP: 1:17:15

really get to this point expo where they're like, I'm showing it off.

Becky: 1:17:19

Yeah. Yeah.

Adrian: 1:17:21

couldn't imagine parents. Yeah.

Becky: 1:17:26

Normally, you know, when you're wandering around like a marketplace, people are trying to hawk their wares at you, you know, oh, come and look at this game. But you didn't feel like that with these designers. They just wanted to they just wanted to show off their creations which was just really really

JP: 1:17:41

lovely. As an aside, and it's completely off topic, but similar. I don't know I didn't see the hand warming gel guys that were there last year. And you remember I remember they remember like the most random is product to be at the UK games Expo is like some people just you know crack this gel stuff and then suddenly you can put it into your gloves and keep your hands up. I didn't see any of them. Exactly. But yeah, games X why not? Go and keeping your hands warm and like I'm good

Becky: 1:18:16

don't go outside very often.

JP: 1:18:18

I just found it really odd. Anyway, as an aside, I didn't see them this year.

Kerley: 1:18:22

I have just remembered something really really quickly because they didn't have much detail on it but also next to the next to the faithful stand was the Lost Ruins of Arnak expansion. So that really is in prototype is nowhere near ready but they got two new characters bunch of new cards. So new mechanics co op in looks really interesting. So yeah, shout out for them really just to say that it looks like if they I imagine is going to release before next year that is going to be the absolute I

JP: 1:18:57

think it's gonna be really tough for Gen Con. I think they said yeah,

Kerley: 1:19:02

we're gonna look at it for us and was was one will be hoping to get it anyway. But yeah, that looks really really good. And anything I absolutely love most friends of all night. So anything that has to do that is a winner for me. But yeah, the last expedition,

Adrian: 1:19:13

I'm gonna really quickly run through a handful of demos that I saw, and had a very quick chat with and didn't get to play but they all sort of caught my eyes. So there was undaunted Battle of Britain by Osprey games Qawale, which is an abstract by Ganic at eugenic games, I don't know they do a lot of the white box abstract games that I had a quick playthrough of that that was really good tribes of the wind, which was a Euro game where a lot of the cards whether you could play them or how powerful they were dependent upon. The other cards are in people's hands. So what colours they had so I had a really quick look at that. That looks fantastic. Tiwanaku by Sit Down Games I think that might be a Becky game you work together to work out a puzzle and where and there's like loads of the different potluck likes Sudoku there's like loads of different puzzles, what was it called Tiwanaku. I think that was the way it was that looked fantastic and completely different to a lot of the other stuff. So but what I've got from my last one what I'm actually going to talk about is board game adjacent. Yeah, let's call it board game adjacent. That was All On Board VR gaming. So I'm sure you've seen it, put the VR headset on, you got the two controllers. It was my first proper VR experience, I'd stood on the spot and looked around with a VR headset on before but I've never really used a controller. It's something I've looked at buying before, because it quite interests me for playing like computer games at VR. And yeah, we walked over, they sort of gave us a little bit of a talk about their aims. So they're aiming to use as few buttons as possible so that it is intuitive to use and spoiler alert it is. And they were talking about that they're making it as adaptable and as modular and some of the stuff that they're looking at bringing out and I'm sure to talk about it in another episode down the line, they've mentioned that they want to make this platform easy to programme and build on so that when someone's looking to load a game onto it, or put a game into the environment that they can as easily as possible. Obviously, these things are not very, like not the easiest things to do. But they've made a code. Yeah, they've made it, they've, they've tried to make a platform where people can code easily into it. And they showed us like that they've got different environments, if you're playing a space game, you're playing a VR space area, or in a mediaeval Castle, we played a demo version of Istanbul, or not played, but we'd like navigated around with it. Yeah. And that was sort of round a nice big board game looking table with sort of stone walls and alone TV. It was. And yeah, there was some really put the headsets on they gave us a quick tour, how you could sort of set the height, you're out at the table. So when we first sat down, I felt like a kid. And I was like, I'm not gonna be able to play lists like this. And what you do is you grab a handle, and then you sort of pull back on the stick, and it raises you up or down to the level that you're comfortable at. So you can see the table probably as you would in real life. So you know, Becky might be a bit close to the table, if she set herself up for on it being a little shorter than the rest of us, you might find that more natural where as I was kind of quite high up. And then they showed you how you can grab things you can like actually use your hand almost to grab it, you can reach out and grab it or you can sort of select a pointer, and then pull the button to bring it towards

JP: 1:22:32

you using your force powers. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:22:35

it is a bit like a spider man putting some stuff across the web. You can throw them across the room, if you want to, I had a good laugh of two, three minutes, just chucking coins at JP virtually. And the brilliant thing about it, as they said is you know, if I did that in real life, you'd be right annoyed because the component was gone off the table. So we'll have to collect it. Remember where it was, if you throw something accidentally away, it pings back on the table where it was nice little thoughts like that was just fantastic for, you know, sort of showing you what this virtual environment can do. And there was one of the great things was that you could kind of click on an interactive piece and make it sort of larger right in front of you. So it brought up as if you were holding the card up to your face. So you could read like with Istanbul, obviously, there's little symbols. And if it's the furthest point of the board getting normally you might stand up and loom over it a little bit note, click Like point A click on it, bring it towards you, it would bring up right in front of you the tile so you could see exactly what it was. And then there was a few options down the right and you could click and it would tell you a little bit of info about what that item did or how you interacted explained it properly in game, and then you could just put the title back down basically, not only

JP: 1:23:49

is it kind of magnify the title, but it also shows you that the game state on that particular tile so in Istanbul, you'll know that you have the rubies uncertainty, I'm gonna show you how many of them are left in a to d kind of magnified view. So you don't have to because you know any board game that that you play diagonally opposite us always like the worst luck, isn't it?

Adrian: 1:24:13

It was really intuitive, which is one of the games they said they've got a load of ideas whether because we played in a sandbox mode where you could do whatever you wanted, essentially, but they were talking about having two options potentially at something they were looking at for the future was having a sandbox mode and a scripted mode where you couldn't make illegal moves on the board, or ones where you could so that if you if you wanted as a designer to allow your board game to use house rules, then you wouldn't use it scripted. So there was no illegal moves. So if you have learned the game, possibly slightly wrong, and you want to keep playing that way, there was the potential that someone could code for a sandbox mode where you could keep playing it wrong. And if that's what you're happy with, you would still be happy with it. There was they were really again, passionate and excited about this project. It's in late pledge at the moment. They've had the Kickstarter already, which is funded and they're in late pledge. I think they said August, something like that it closes so we're hoping to talk about it a little bit more in a future episode. It was really, for someone who's not used to VR before it was surprisingly intuitive. And I felt like had the hang of it within the five minutes that we'd win paid for. Yeah, it'll be something I'll be keeping an eye on. As I've said I was already considering VR anyway, that possibly might be the most expensive demo I had, because it'll cost me three on the headset. Plus,

JP: 1:25:28

it's still less than one clearly,

Kerley: 1:25:31

the price point 350.

Adrian: 1:25:32

So it uses I don't know if they've confirmed, but they're using several different VR headset types that will be compatible, and it'll be cross platform. So if you're using, it doesn't matter, if you're using like, yeah, meta mask, software for PlayStation VR, you can still cross over, you just buy the software, and then each game that comes out will have a cost related to it as well. And see, but they were saying that hopefully, the plan is that only one person needs to buy the board game like he would normally we don't all have to buy the board game, one person brings the board game to the table. And then you play on it that way. But that's a

Kerley: 1:26:10

similar thing they did with like, BGA. And a lot of these websites ism is only one person needs to be the subscriber.

JP: 1:26:17

And that's the thing. So that's really good. Yeah, like, I liken it to Tabletop Simulator in the way that it's been presented. Obviously, it's nothing like TTS, because that's not virtual reality. But I think they're trying to go down that road of how can we make this a platform for publishers and partners to, you know, to kind of help put their games out even crowdfunding, you know, imagine, you know, crowdfunding campaign and want to try it and actually jump into the virtual environment, where you pick up a card, like in Istanbul, with symbols in it, redo the textile, literally, so this is what it does, you know, and it just bypasses all of the, the barriers to learn and, and yeah, just puts you straight into the game as close as you know, a physical environment, they acknowledge that physically is going to be the best way of, of playing board games. But the other minute, but the you know, it's a close second, you know,

Adrian: 1:27:14

it's yeah, it's the most immersive you can probably be at the moment with the technology we have at the moment without being physically they're

JP: 1:27:21

both big Becker, you can have your avatar was a pirate.

Becky: 1:27:25

Excellent. Anytime when you get to where a pirate hat

JP: 1:27:27

you down? Yeah. I wonder

Kerley: 1:27:29

whether they'll make you open to customization? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Interesting, because that's what TTS really is. A lot of the TTS content is,

JP: 1:27:39

and that's what we're speaking to him about is like these products and platforms live and die by the communities. Yeah. And they're allowed modding for that reason. So that, you know, we can encourage the community to build their own games. So it kind of takes, you know, takes on board similar to TTS then then you can kind of see it working. But obviously, you need to have the hardware you need to have the headset you need to invest in, you know, virtual reality in general. But yeah, damn, it was interesting. I was so glad to try out.

Adrian: 1:28:10

Yeah, definitely.

JP: 1:28:12

I think I just want to finish off by saying I played on Friday, again, from Board & Dice called Books of Time, and never even heard of this game at all. I think it just got released for for UK Games Expo. And it kind of caught my eye. Because yeah, every player has three little mini ring binders. I think this is another one you want to keep your eye on. I think it's it's light to mid weight game, it kind of reminds me of a similar game to like gizmos, that kind of wait, if you've ever played gizmos, but it's that, you know, little engine billary kind of game. So yeah, each player's got three ring binders, a red, yellow, and a green one. And they're all kind of themed in different ways. And you've got this main kind of book that sits and drives the game forward through various different events when the court chronicle events. And on your go, you can either take the Chronicle event before or after you go. Now love symbols on it gives you resources like pens and paper. And you're literally like buying pages of a shop and you're putting them into your book, you're like writing the pages into the book, and seems crazy. Yeah, and you can spend actions to activate your book in your do all the actions and benefits of it and then you turn the page over. So then you've obviously got a new action set for the next one. And all the pages have got like symbols in trying to get certain sets in your books, because then that helped you end game scoring. And there's a little tech tree, which is quite interesting allows you to get more and more kind of efficiencies off of your actions if you're doing certain things. You know, it's it's fun. It was a fun game. It's I don't think it's something I was like, wowed by, like I didn't think is the most amazing game. And I've never seen it. Yeah, we played in many games. So I'd like to play a full game of it just to see how kind of explosive it kind of feels as you go through because sometimes in demos, you just get going like well, we're ending it here because, you know, there's 50,000 people that want to try the game. So you know, that's fair. That I bought a copy. So I think you'll be no doubt playing it soon anyway.

Becky: 1:30:25

Yeah. Yeah, it's

JP: 1:30:27

a nice kind of mid lightweight game. Aesthetically, you know, if you like station stations, Oh, yes. You know, Romans, or any other absolutely stations. We want to just mess around your little ring binders and book pages. It's great fun.

Becky: 1:30:42

Yeah. Sounds really good. I wish I'd have known what the I sold the box. I wish I'd have known what it was about, I think I would have talked about a bit more. Anyway. So how about our actual experiences, my my top experience, I think is just again, like it was last year. You just look around, and everyone is happy and smiling and having fun. No one feels out of place. Everyone is all there for the collective fun of the hobby. And I didn't see anyone having an argument or having nothing. It was just fun. Nice. It's me. It's a sensory overload. It's noisy. It's it's crammed, but it was it was just really fun. Just really fun. So from a, from a first first visit, Adrian, what was your?

Adrian: 1:31:27

Yes, it was my first Expo, I didn't know what to expect. I kind of did the opposite of curling, because as you mentioned, you didn't really stop to do much demoing. I wanted to do all of the demoing and see all the stands or that kind of stuff. So quite often, I'd break off from the group and go find sort of my myself around and had a bit of a wander around on my own. There was a lot of people in forums beforehand, asking about what's the if I go on my own, what's the solo experience? What's a solo play of the UK games Expo like, and there are some challenges. As you've mentioned, sensory overload for for me was a big one special on that Friday, I felt a little bit lost to start with. And it got to me a little bit. And then sensory overload now to kind of come scurrying back to the group a little bit and just get a bit of comfort zone five minutes before. Yeah, little cuddle. Is it a huge great for couples over the weekend. And as was Marcus Thumbs up for Marcus cuddles as well. But yeah, there was a fair chunk of that what I'll say is IQ quite a lot of talk about bringing by in a second acute quite a lot. Entrances waiting for demos at the bringing by. In every single queue, someone just chatted to me, like at random. And whether it was Friday morning, where I spoke to a family where they'd all sort of grown up like the kids had grown up around board gaming. And I think dad was the competitive one by the sounds of things. But you know, they would all sort of grown up around it and the games they liking, playing and all that kind of stuff. Saturday morning, I spoke to some people who told me about stores that sold out and what they were enjoying. And even Sunday, I spoke to some spoke to some people who've been involved in various tournaments and competitions. And I've got that sort of level of sort of tournament, talk about the games they were playing and all that kind of stuff. At any point, everyone wanted to talk to me. If I was queuing up on my own sort of thing, which was fantastic. And there was a couple of times I walked around, and sort of had a place to be but as long as I'm quick watch five minutes of that game, and twice people were just like, join us join us like There's three of us around the table, you can get involved as well. I never took them up on the offer, not because they didn't want to but purely because I was normally like I'm gonna be 1015 mins because we've agreed to meet this publisher or whatever. But thank you very much to anyone who didn't by invite, because it sort of reinforced the fact that it is a friendly Expo and that if you are going on your own. Yeah, you might have to wait five minutes for someone else to turn up for demo. But for the most part, someone will invite you if you sort of hover quite often if they're about to have a game and you're sort of Oh, that looks interesting. Oh, yeah, just come and join. It's all good. So yes, all that was really fun from a an expo, like from a solo experience at the Expo. I wasn't there so low. But I spent, I'd say half of my time going around the hall on my own. And I was happy to do it. And it was really friendly and welcoming. People just wanted to talk to you about their game or about their experience if they were sort of a customer as well. But yeah, from an anxiety point of view, there was quite a lot of stimulus and just sort of background noise and the drone that cons there's a constant sort of drone and people sometimes you know, some some people sort of lean out at you as you're going past cold come and have a demo sort of thing. And if you're not in the right mindset, that can be a bit much but for the most part if I kind of went off sorry. They just allowed you to keep on walking they didn't push the point or anything like that. So yes, that is there. There are quite areas of the expo hall and outside of the NEC and that you can go to if you need to decompress a little bit, but anyone who's sort of worried about that, do anything you need to for self care, but I wouldn't let it put you off too much it is there are that it's good for solo for people going on their own it is okay for people with anxiety. In my experience, it might be too much for you, but I found that there was enough downtime, especially on the Friday in the Sunday, the Saturday was heaving, absolutely heaving, but the Friday and the Sunday especially were really good for just having a bit of a wander around and getting to talk to people and, uh, not as much of that sensory overload.

JP: 1:35:34

Now, I'm glad to hear that you had a good experience because I know you've talked about this on various other conventions, like, you know, grid con, and other things. And obviously, this is the biggest one the UK has to offer. To my knowledge, I'm sure I'm sure it is. And even I feel like I need to get out of here for a minute because it's just so many people the seas people, it's the zombie Shambler as you walk around as shuffles only we feel we're especially on

Adrian: 1:35:59

that Sunday. I don't think I moved more than sort of maybe like a six inch pace each time almost like my feet just couldn't move quick enough. Because the press on all sides. Sorry, on Saturday. Yeah.

Kerley: 1:36:13

A little bit differently. This time I on the Saturday, I didn't really go around the expert all I do did nine to 11. When it got too busy. I just went again for the rest of the day.

JP: 1:36:21

Same as me.

Adrian: 1:36:23

My problem was that the the overload was so much that I couldn't sit down enjoy the game. So we tried to play runes or runes of our neck on Friday, I think it was and I was so overwhelmed at that point that I couldn't get my head into having a sit down game I wasn't I saw everyone that I couldn't go and do a bit more wandering around and looking at things but to then sit on play a game and concentrate and enjoy. I was overloaded at that point. So I couldn't do it. Sunday was slightly better because we started off playing games had a little wander it was really quiet came back played kapow, which is a great little dice chucking comic book game, and then was able to go back out. And I looked for bargains I'll be honest, because everyone had said there was bargains this year, everyone was just sold out. I found like two bargains around the entire hole. And they neither of them really interested me. And I'd already spent quite a bit of money. So I didn't didn't purchase that point. But most of the places where I thought, Oh, they might have some bargains just sold out signs everywhere because they just sold through their stock. But yeah, I can understand those people who maybe aren't, don't get the sensory overload in that sense going and having a sit down on the Saturday and just chill out because it was a press. Yeah, it was definitely that feeling of being pressed in

Becky: 1:37:35

to you. How about you from a first time Expo attendee,

Tambo: 1:37:39

just like everyone. So I think the first day was quite overwhelming. It was fine for me. But it was like, I just need to get our bearings. I spent all like last semester before just just walking around looking at things, see how things work. And then I literally like you said, excuse my choir, I went to begin with tables. And we just played games and had some lunch, had coffee and tea and stayed there. And then just popped in now and then but Saturday was really busy. And again, I got a couple of demos in the apex and stuff but generally great fun. I mean, one thing that always affects me on the phone was just wandering around or just walking. So looking around everywhere pay attention, who prime is saying please move away from sprayer being and turn around and the dial. It looks so realistic. It was so cool. I was like, This is great. This is brilliant. Yeah. So that was on the Friday. It was the first Yeah. And then yeah, it was really good. Generally really fantastic. time we were any bad boy to say about it to honest. I mean, it was very busy. But that's we expect it to be that Yeah. Yeah, that's why I thought but there was always places you can get out. Just just can't do anything. Anyway. So yeah, really pretty good. already booked up go next year.

Becky: 1:38:43

Tell me what about you was your highlight.

Kerley: 1:38:47

I'd learned a little bit from last year I think where I did do a lot of demoing and I went a lot out there on the busiest days and I just didn't enjoy it as much. This time around. I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to do. Friday I did spend a fair amount of time just wandering around but with no real goal just to kind of take it all in and then started a little bit of gaming, which is what I wanted to focus a bit more on Saturday. Yeah, had a quick look around and then spend the rest of the day gaming which was absolutely awesome till we had a marvellous dinner. Well how do you pronounce it? Yeah, that was really good.

JP: 1:39:21

I think we just indulged ourselves on our meal anyway.

Becky: 1:39:25

It was good. It was good. Tasty, tasty.

JP: 1:39:28

Sure. The churros as decadent

Adrian: 1:39:32

gorgeous they work

Kerley: 1:39:34

well over really loved the words in the truck or kind of sauce

Adrian: 1:39:39

didn't work for me at least favourite

Becky: 1:39:41

cinnamon sugar and then mango dips, not just not. It's not

Kerley: 1:39:47

but yeah, so the Sunday was the biggest day for me actually. I know that sounds ridiculous because I've gone by one, but I just literally wandered around the whole Expo. It's out every single while so everything I wanted to see picked up a couple of bargains. You know I got those games from Aries me and Becky spent most of that morning just wandering around together. Really nice. So really chilled, really nice. felt no pressure, no timescales no nothing. So yeah, really pleasant day.

Tambo: 1:40:16

I just like to say I think I'm looking for one that I know what to expect the next year so I'm gonna have much more fun next as well, so definitely I know God sit tables I know what to do next year, isn't it? Like first time you go, you're not going to do everything?

JP: 1:40:27

What's the social contract that you enter in? Do you like force yourself say, Can I play? Or is that going to piss people off? Or are you trying to find your feet? That's accepted? What isn't accepted?

Adrian: 1:40:40

Even things? Like how did the chop shop and drop work? How does the brain and bio work and the website was okay to a certain extent, but didn't quite tell you everything. And so you kind of for someone like me who can get a bit like how does this work? The Friday was my navigate everything day and look for bargains basically to buy which I did nearly all of my purchasing on the Friday and very little on the Saturday and I think I only bought one item for the bring a buyer on the Sunday. Because I was as I was walking around. I was like a bargain. That was like, you know, but yeah, I totally agree. What about yourself, Becky?

Becky: 1:41:12

Um, yeah, I think the Sunday when you're just wandering around looking at I think probably not games. So game adjacent stuff, looking at all the cool dice looking at all the artwork that's there. All that yeah, all the tasty bling. Because yeah, if you wait till Sunday to buy your games, you possibly aren't going to get what you want. Because a lot of stuff was sold out this time, wasn't it? I think I probably did most of my actual purchasing on Friday, probably. And then the top, you know, pink bling, little nice, Jazzy bits on the Saturday and Sunday because that's when you wandering around. The I just, it's just so friendly. And I really like chatting to the stall owners and but then I'm that person that when you have in a taxi ride, I sit in the front and chit chat with the driver. So, you know, it's not a surprise that I might go in and wandering around. And yeah, it's just you bump into friends. And they Oh, what have you seen over there? Oh, I've seen this and then you toggle off and find it. It's really good. JP was his dad, isn't it? We've done

JP: 1:42:11

tonnes my new best friend. No, I, for me, I'm I'm a social animal. And what I've really enjoyed this year is actually catching up with loads of people. As I said earlier, I really enjoyed meeting David Tosi that was probably the highlight for me. Yeah. So amazing. But also just catching up with people on you know, the ball games of Instagram. And the various social media kind of accounts that came to me we saw again, Jimmy came and starts with his family. And that was quite nice to catch up with him for a bit. As I said earlier met Mark dainty from not boardgaming you saw Johnny from the hexi beast trying to think of others that we potentially saw but loads of people were just you know, really friendly, really nice to stop and chat to and I think going to like the the press or preview event on the first day you just helped you network a little bit more with other people. And I really enjoyed that. Because as I say it was our first time kind of experience doing it we still feel like going to the Expo for the first time we didn't quite know how everything worked what you're supposed to do. We're supposed to interview people there. He's supposed to meet up with them later. And you know, there's no hard and fast rules with these things. But we know now you can see a

Adrian: 1:43:29

general trend in that certain people getting interviews but for the most part seem to be rearranged like arranging for for later on in the weekend is actually out with people so so that

JP: 1:43:39

for me was just spot on and I think it's the same as it is. Every year is socialising, hanging around with me mates. And just I'm gonna laugh and just being silly to me, which I did plenty of and I enjoyed it.

Adrian: 1:43:54

Just going to the gaming rules event. Yeah, so we went to the show in the afternoon on a Saturday played just one with Paul. Yeah, we weren't quite defenestration.

JP: 1:44:03

defenestration. Thank you. Whoever threw that one in made us look really intelligent.

Adrian: 1:44:09

It was funny. Funny, but yeah, never heard of that word before. I had to do it afterwards to make sure that people weren't just winding me up. Yeah,

Becky: 1:44:16

I had heard about it. And I was sort of sitting thinking about it afterwards. And I think the only word that you could have given us a clue would have been window side. Yeah, it wouldn't work but I would if I'd have been on the Get in someone's window side. I didn't know that word.

JP: 1:44:29

He was in the audience. I was in the shouting. Oh, it would have been cheating. Yeah,

Kerley: 1:44:33

but but in all honesty, like Yeah, it is. It is a lot but yeah, but defenestration. No one was ever gay.

JP: 1:44:41

I think that was the point I

Adrian: 1:44:44

just got set up by Paul do to want to guess this next.

JP: 1:44:46

Yeah. Thanks.

Adrian: 1:44:50

But again, just met people there that I'd spoken to on Paul's Slack channel. Yes. On the patron Slack channel and just, Oh, you're such and such, you know, and putting a name to a face and all that kind of stuff was just yeah, just great part of that networking and talking to people who you'd sort of knew a bit remotely and actually getting to say hello to them properly was fantastic.

JP: 1:45:10

Yeah, I think it's kind of like expos a good time to catch up with your old friends and people that we've met along the way through this this hobby and industry, and also a great place to meet new people. equal so like we've met some new designers that we've not really spoken to before now, you know next year we'll be checking them out just like we did this year we popped to see Jack and Paul from Eurydice Games who do FlickFleet, just to kind of say hi and how's it going and things like that and, and think yeah, it's again, Chris Priscott from you know, Unfringed, and just nice to catch up with people see what's happening in kind of their lives and how their games are going. And

Becky: 1:45:47

Adams from Punchboard. Yeah,

JP: 1:45:49

yeah, absolutely.

Adrian: 1:45:51

Yeah. We will have forgotten to say people were apologising, because it was just a crazy weekend. We've all taken as many notes as we could remember to take but we will have forgotten someone if we have sorry.

Becky: 1:46:01

He was laughing at my granny trolley. I don't blame it. Well, he wasn't laughing at it. He

Adrian: 1:46:04

was it was Yeah, mildly impressed. Yeah,

Becky: 1:46:06

pointing it out. Is it? Yeah.

Kerley: 1:46:08

If I'm honest, that granny trolley looked awful. don't even

Becky: 1:46:12

care. It was so useful. Style is not as important as board game acquisition iron granny trolley. Style is not the goal. Style is definitely not

JP: 1:46:22

functional. It was incredibly functional. One of my favourite moments is like because we had to switch hotels from the Thursday to Friday. We, me and Becky had the fun job of basically transporting the games, clothes, bags and everything to the hotel, the ibis, so we had to get the Air Rail Link thing either Monroe, and Becky had a rucksack on her back. She had a rucksack on her front, she had a bag and each of the Qurani trolley was attached to a bag somewhere. And

Becky: 1:46:54

I looked like a pack mule.

JP: 1:46:55

Did you ever rest but we did. We did.

Kerley: 1:47:01

30 To do the take the

Becky: 1:47:04

stuff on the shop and drop. Yeah. Shopping drops. Great. My advice for that would be get there as soon as you can in the morning. Pay you three pounds, which is not returnable, but it's three quid it's totally worth it. Basically, that kind of entitles you to fill a box with your bags. You get a number. Yeah, you get like a little like a cloakroom ticket. And you could just keep going back. And I you know, it felt like a little bit like a lending library. So I'd go in with Clank and whatever, oh, can I swap this for? It's in the box, and she just takes that away and then brings us to it's great, really good.

Adrian: 1:47:34

I would agree though. Try and get there early. Just put a bag in a box again, on its own just one game in there, get your ticket because on the Saturday morning, I was trying to take a game out of the shop and drop. And the people behind me were turned away because they was no more available spaces. So they had to go to and there's a truck and drop. I think every hole there certainly wasn't two or three, it's 123 a year. And so they had to kind of toggle off and try and find a different shop and drop.

Kerley: 1:47:59

I love from last year straight away. But last year, they all filled up. You just couldn't do it just didn't have the capacity to guess the up till this year, I guess. Because I didn't hear about people being turned away quite so much.

Adrian: 1:48:14

I bumped into people who'd been moved on. And they didn't have their bags on them anymore. So I'm guessing that they managed to get a bus.

Becky: 1:48:22

So leading on to that nicely. I guess it's the bring and buy sale. I didn't I didn't really, you know, engage with it much. I went in once and came out. That was my whole I think I bought it for you. Yeah, yeah, I was a lot more strangeness time. A lot more restraint. I've been couple of three games. I've been carrying them in one hand. I mean, that was

Kerley: 1:48:42

11 last year back here. Can you even sit?

Becky: 1:48:48

I think it might have been 10 because I think one of the games we've bought from Ben, I don't know, you sat down and went through every one of them became maybe it was

JP: 1:48:57

just so excited. I was excited

Kerley: 1:48:59

to even yourself out.

Becky: 1:49:01

I was a weebles wobble. Don't push me too much in the wrong direction. I'll be tipped over. But your experience is quite different. That wasn't.

Adrian: 1:49:10

So I was trying to sell through the Brigham by so we did the press bit. I said, I'm going to get away early so I can get my stuff in the bringing by I've seen most of the publishers that I wanted to see and spoken to a few people and I'm now going to head off and so did Davey ran back to the car loaded ourselves up with bags. Again, I feel like one of those little trailer things was because people have done it before and know that lugging those bags about is not comfortable

Becky: 1:49:36

granny trolley,

Adrian: 1:49:38

I had my shopping drive, not my shopping train me and my suitcase at one point and even that with another bag over the shoulder. It's just not enough. We'd nearly get to the queue. And we're not going to get through the queue now by 11 o'clock on the Thursday evening. Go away. Basically like they were a bit nicer than that. But essentially they turned us away and just said you're probably not going to get in now it turned out they did open it again slightly later on. They've got through them a bit quicker. So did that. Then Friday morning came back and queued for about 40 minutes. I was lucky because I'd already got my ticket so I was able to get there early. I got there pretty much for quarter past eight I think it was 20 pounds. Steak got in the queue. Queue opened at nine o'clock a queue for about 4045 minutes. About an hour later, they put out a note saying that the bringing buyers now full, they're turning more people away. And then they reopened on Saturday. Now I went into the bringing by on Saturday afternoon to have a bit of a look at what I wanted to purchase, if there's anything in there. And the shelves were two thirds empty by that point as they were on Sunday as well, Sunday, by the time I got in there to go and get the money out basically in a couple of games that didn't sell, which again, most of my games sold at price than Well, there was some, as Kelly alluded to earlier, there's there's some crazy pricing in the bringing buy. But they were still sat there on Sunday afternoon. So right so it's down to it's down to you to kind of price what you think is appropriate. If you're happy fun to not sell it, then it won't sell. But yeah, went and collected my things and the shelves were like two thirds empty, half empty at that point. And yet they turned away people earlier in the Friday. Earlier in the Thursday, Davey never went back in with his it was one of those where it felt like they'd either just not scoped for the fact that people are going to cut turn up with 100 games plus at a time roll cages with roll cages for the games, which a bit crazy. And there's been a lot of discussion about that online and what how to deal with it or not or whatever. But I'm not gonna it's not for us to it's not for us to discuss really, I don't think but yeah, it just seemed crazy that they were having to repeatedly turn people away and I queued up outside walk to the car and back that was half hour, then walk to the car the next day and back, another half hour plus or 40 minutes in queue for bringing by bring them by took me two and a half hours, in my opinion to put Games in. If it

JP: 1:51:58

was my choice, I would say Don't ever bring them by and open it up for more open gaming. But it's not my choice.

Adrian: 1:52:04

I like the idea of bringing them by, I'd put games into smaller conventions that hadn't sold and that did sell at the Expo. So I got rid of nearly all of my games that I'd had. So I was grateful to put it in. There's just something a day you say broken. There's something that didn't work for the bring and buy in and again talk online suggests that I'm not the only one with those feelings. And it was a small blot on what was otherwise a wonderful Expo. So it didn't ruin my weekend or anything crazy. Not going to blow out of proportion. It was just an annoyance of the expo.

Kerley: 1:52:38

I mean, the thing is that I guess we need to consider is the fact that this was probably quite an unknown year for that. Yeah. Because of COVID. It was kind of the first year back after COVID last year, wasn't

Adrian: 1:52:47

it? Absolutely.

Kerley: 1:52:49

Yeah, it was a little bit smaller. And they probably didn't know what to expect this year. So I'm guessing if they were going to invest in a in an extra hallway, it might be next year.

Adrian: 1:52:59

Yeah. I was saying I don't know the logistics of it or anything. No, I totally appreciate that. It was a smaller Expo last year. And you know, certain companies are talking about that they had a lot of stock left at the end of last year and then the same companies this year is saying that they sold out. So I think that tells you the difference between the two years and how underprepared through no fault of their own. The expo could be for things like this is just as saying I just wanted to mention it because it's getting a lot of discussion online. And it was something that personally had affected my expert experience. But not enough to say don't have go to the expert, but I still absolutely loved it but yeah, just just a talking point. I suppose.

Becky: 1:53:37

My only gripe is the price of the ice cream. I don't have any other cripes till but I think eight pounds for two scoops of small ice cream and it was quite nice ice cream. It was alright. But you know it was like the supermarket brand tasting ice cream which is fine, but I think a panel made a bit sad.

Adrian: 1:54:00

But they weren't there were Expo price.

Becky: 1:54:03

Nobody forced me to buy ice cream. We buy ice cream it's like but this year we were more prepared. We took food with us then we kind of packed some snacks and stuff rather than relying on buying snacks somewhere else.

Kerley: 1:54:17

I'll gladly dig considering I bought me and down a burger and chips each and the fries for like six pound each.

Becky: 1:54:23

They look nice fries, but it was good but not six pound.

Kerley: 1:54:26

I believe you said I knew it was going to be like whether it's acceptable or not. It's a totally different question. But it is just the way

Adrian: 1:54:33

they add a hue most of the food standards so it must be accepted.

Becky: 1:54:38

There is there is free water you can get I mean, I think that had sort of it wasn't working on the Saturday afternoon. But it was working and on Friday on this on the Sunday. And you are right now like there's like a long list in the area so it's not like you have to buy

JP: 1:54:55

the lawn this wasn't too bad.

Becky: 1:54:58

Yeah, it's a lot cheaper in the market for

JP: 1:55:02

a shop in the village.

Becky: 1:55:03

Exactly. Exactly. I

Kerley: 1:55:05

bought three pounds 60 bottle of two litre Pepsi Max which is ridiculous right? But the way I figured it they were charging about two pound 22 pound fee for a 500 mil bolt. So it's like well might as well might as well because that's that will be like flipping eight quid or something you know, so it was still Much better. To do that. It was just you had to bite the bullet and do it.

JP: 1:55:25

I still maintain like we started last year and we did it. Definitely this is like make make a point of having a meal, like make a point of try not to make food, this functional thing that you're just shoving if you max for 20 minutes, so you can carry on gaming it take time for it.

Becky: 1:55:43

Yeah. And that was really nice. You get away for a bit, you know, sitting together, you do have to pick it other bands. But because we've all experienced last year, we knew to do that. So we'd booked stuff that we could book. And yeah, it was really lovely. Wasn't it?

JP: 1:55:55

Nice to look forward to chat and do the things that we'll chat about things you don't normally do? Because you're playing games all day?

Adrian: 1:56:04

You guys went back to game Haftar most meals and I was like nope, I'm done. Yeah, no, again, that sort of, you know, things like that over stimulus and all that kind of stuff. Next moment that I knew I need to get the sleep. And so that was the choice I made to go and get sleep and be happy the next day meant well, they're just, you know, recharge the batteries and all that kind of stuff. But there was plenty of people there that were gaming till 11 Whatever, whatever.

Becky: 1:56:30

Well, we got shooed out. Well. It was after midnight on a Saturday night. We were getting chewed out.

JP: 1:56:40

The whole thing is gonna be finished in about five minutes. Okay, we're about finished cleaning. And then literally, you had to get some stuff from the car, didn't you?

Kerley: 1:56:49

Well, I must say that. Oh, wouldn't say it annoyed me because it didn't but it's like the shuttled back to the hotel round till half 12 Right. Yeah. So we left the expo called 12 finger right when it back to the car. 10 minutes, get back and come 12 They were trying to kick us out. It's like, well, no, the monorail over there. Which is in your NEC runs for another flippin 25 minutes. It's because

JP: 1:57:13

it trains the train station not

Kerley: 1:57:18

to I access

Adrian: 1:57:21

the train station. Great.

JP: 1:57:24

To be fair to you with me and Becky had a chat to the security guard. And we

Becky: 1:57:28

Yeah, it was really really lovely. Yeah, you just wanted to make sure we didn't lock anyone in or not lock something. So he was just

Kerley: 1:57:37

I just think if the Expos closed at 12 and the monorail closed off, they just kick everyone out but then can make it available in 1212. Yeah,

JP: 1:57:45

we got it. It was fine.

Kerley: 1:57:47

I know but it was way more hassle than it needed to be. I think me and Dan were nearly up to a mile jog at one point

Becky: 1:58:08

think that just about wraps up our expo exploits. Great Year was had by all again and we'll definitely be there next year as much as we can. And we'd love to see some of you there as well. So come and say hi if you see is if you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and review on your podcast player of choice. They're available on all of them. If you know someone who might enjoy the podcast, we'd like to ask you to share us with at least one person you know so that they can also take a turn with us. If you want to get in contact with the show. We're on Facebook Instagram, Tik Tok and BoardGameGeek or via email with details or in the show notes as per usual, we're back again in a week with another one of our regular episodes. So until then, whose turn is it

JP: 1:59:04

hi