Adrian: 0:34

Hello and welcome to Whose turn is it anyway podcast all about board gaming and our board game group. I'm Adrian, your current first player and I'm joined by the hardly working Davey. Hello. And the one that is hard work JP

Davey: 0:48

Yeah. Well it's I'm listening hardly working rather than hard work.

JP: 0:52

Yeah, least on me. Yeah. Called me lazy git and then he's called me a bastard, yeah

Adrian: 1:04

The episode will be all about worker placement. We're going to talk all about one of our favourite mechanisms in games, and some of the games that do it well and add a little bit of a twist. Yeah. Before we get into it, though. How are we doing?

JP: 1:17

Oh, good. How are you Davey?

Davey: 1:17

Yeah, not too bad. No complaints really good. I've been hardly working well hardly work now. In fact, I've been boardgaming less and probably doing more hard work by

JP: 1:28

You’ve been stepping up the game. He's actually invited me exercising. to a game of squash this Thursday. And which would be quite good because I haven‘t played for a while. So you know, everything's gonna ache on Friday. Maybe Saturday. It's always the day after the day. But I'm looking forward to playing squash again.

Davey: 1:46

Yeah it’s been a while. Yeah, it's been a while. I've been swimming twice a week since Expo. That's good. Yeah. So because I realised at Expo, oh I’m so unfit! And it didn't help I ended up having to leave early. So yeah, I just don't think it's so I've been knuckling down with the with the healthy lifestyle in Yeah, exactly. Exercise. So but I have done played some board games, which I'll talk about in a bit

JP: 2:10

Sweet. So yeah, I got a very quick message that I need to do before I forget because I will forget. And that's to you Pete who's giving a basically a promo for Port Royal. I don't know the which way around to Becky and Becky says a massive, massive thank you. So really appreciate you kind of putting that together and sending it across. She loves it. How about you, Adrian, how are you doing?

Adrian: 2:34

I'm doing okay. Yeah, not too bad at all. It's been very sunny out there. I'm very sunburned because I was working on the fence. Because my dog escaped recently. Only in to next door's garden but Okay. Didn't really come for a few seconds. Yeah, kind of stuff. So yeah,

JP: 2:47

It‘s that terror, isn't it when Yeah, animal escapes. My mind goes, Oh, my God. And once he ran away, and I didn't even notice. For an hour and a half. One of my neighbours came around and she goes, you got a like a golden Labrador said. Yeah. I think he's escaped, no he hasn’t, Rusty? Who was I think he has. Yeah, I don't even know. I was, I think I was setting up a board game. I just think one of the kids left the door open, which is a frequent thing in my house. But there we go.

Adrian: 3:22

Nice. So yes, I had to sort out the fence and it was Saturday when it was blazing hot. Took me five, six hours to chicken wire the fence. So now

Davey: 3:31

You’ve got quite a good balance

Adrian: 3:33

Good balance?

Davey: 3:34

Balance for working on the fence

Adrian: 3:36

I should just put the sting is here shall we? So now we're going to talk about you and me and all the good things and the bad things that have been as we talk about hex. So JP, what games have you been playing recently?

JP: 4:04

As always many many, many, many games. I was gonna talk about Redlands. Once I know that I have it's slowly creeping up to be one of my most played games because Josh and I have been playing it every day. And he loves it and he's very good

Davey: 4:18

So that sounds very different from a normal at it. But I'm not gonna we're going to talk about about Radlands even though I probably should. And maybe I don't under the very, very good. So yeah, I'm not going to talk about Radlands. I'm actually going to talk about Voidfall. Voidfall I got to play on the Gaming Rules. But a couple of weeks ago, actually, and it's basically a Mindclash like their latest kind of heavy big box game that's that's coming out. I think it's being delivered to backers in the next couple of months. But if anyone doesn't know what Voidfall is, Voidfall is kind of a very unified 4 X game. And it's very much a sci fi space thing. When you look at the kind of hexagons on the board you think oh, it's like Twilight Imperium or Eclipse or insert any space hexagon kind of thing gaming in the middle of it, but it plays massively different. It's, you know, as I said, it's more a Euro game than it is a 4X game, which you would expect. Coming from kind of Mindclash anyway. But yeah, it's it's kind of like setting a universe where you play different houses, there's this kind of threat called the Voidborn that's common infiltrated the galaxy and they come and basically corrupted various parts of the sectors and also certain houses as well. And they've got this kind of orangey kind of look about them, they're actually they're taken over some of the ships, and they'll put like voidstorms on the board, which are like, basically walls that you can't travel through, and all other nonsense and things that's kind of going on. But the game kind of itself revolves around these focus cards that you have, and you have around 9or 8 in your hand. And they all have kind of different themes that you would expect in kind of 4X, you have ones that are very militaristic, allows you to move ships around, and are ones that are around production, getting your resources going, and others that allow you to kind of manipulate the corruption on your board and move it around. Because that have negative impacts to kind of what you're doing. Some of them will help you advance civilization tracks on your board as well. And on the on your action, you're playing a focus card on this focus cards, you have three actions on them, and you play two different actions. And this you got trade tokens where you can play. So you can pay the token to do the third actions, you could do all three. And so yeah, you kind of work in our cards you want to play, what's your opponent's gonna play? And, and yeah, kind of following those actions, and it's quite a thought it'd be like, really kind of difficult to learn. Because being Mindclass games, are they but actually, they, we played the Tutorial scenario. And it limits the number of cards you have in the first round three, I thought was quite nice, because it is limiting decision space. And it's kind of teaching the game. So rather than going, you know, typical Mindclash, you know, what 30 actions do you want to do? You know, I don't know. So now it's like, Well, okay, you got three cards, you can do that, that will that, it just, it makes you, you can still have a bit of freedom, although the tutorial is a little bit on rails for the right reasons. But it means that you can kind of just get to grips with the mechanisms early in the game. But yeah, each each kind of hex in each sector has kind of areas where you'll have dice kind of placed on them. And that kind of represents population. So the population is kind of relative to the guilds that are placed. And he got different guilds that produce different resources in the game like food and science and money. And basically, it's the the number of population times how many guilds there are those types, which means how fire production will will tick up. So if you're increasing population in those sectors, you're increasing the yields out of Mindclash game, because usually you can kind of tell it's a your different resources there, there's got quite a nice resource wheel kind of dial thing where there's literally five dials kind of top to bottom or doing a different thing and Mineclash. Yeah, whereas that sounds quite out there. you kind of play around with it with all the resources, so it's quite dialled. Yeah, you know, you've got your own, but it's quite nearly done. So you're not like using loads of tokens, you're literally moving dials around, and they work really well.

JP: 8:41

And it's different. Yeah, it doesn't play like anything else because of what it is. And it doesn't feel like Eclipse. And it doesn't definitely not feel like Twilight Imperium, it feels like its own thing. And even the combat is very deterministic, not very, it is deterministic, you're not rolling dice and going, Oh, I got the higher number and I win it, you know, if you're gonna win the fight, right from the start. And you can get technology that can help you gain advantages in those fights, you know, getting certain hits off before there's, but the combat is very much you've got approached damage that you'll do, or defence depending on abilities and buffs. And then you go through this salvo phase where it just kind of loops around around around where you are do a hit, you do a hit, I'll do a hit you do it to the point where you know someone dies. So you might think, actually, that sounds a bit if you know you're gonna win, what's the point, but it's the threat of war. Yeah. So it's knowing that someone can come in and that happened in our playthrough where Paul who’s armed to the teeth, he had torpedoes this that and the other. And he was in the hex next to me. And I was like, he can absolutely take this if you want. And that influence what I was doing. I was thinking, how do I shaw this up? How do I build installations in that sector to put some more defence in place that you know, can anything can it be quite detrimental to your board?

Davey: 10:06

If you lose one of these battles? Is it quite swing in that sense

JP: 10:10

Well, I mean, we didn't get into it too much because we played the tutorial and the tutorial is there to, yeah, have a taste of everything, shall we say? I'd imagine it's not super detrimental. And actually, it's not always advantageous to go after the other players for victory points purposes. But again, it does depend on what you're trying to do.

Davey: 10:31

That's quite, it's quite different to a euros for the euro four times, usually you kind of you do have the other avenues to go down, you always need that. Yeah,

JP: 10:44

There‘s definitely other VP kind of routes like combat is one where you're going to earn glory kind of points from from having the combats, but it's not the only way, you can actually get a lot of victory points from going after agendas, and naturally not get into fights if you don't want to. And there are different scenarios in the books, which will lean towards very combat heavy scenarios and ones that where you won't even to be very war-y, if you have certain groups like all of that, and, you know, because it's Euro game through through, some people might not like the fact that you can interfere with other people's engines, and you know, getting involved. So, you know, there are scenarios that cater for that. If other groups, they bring it on, they want that threat of war, they want to make, you know, want to get in each other's faces, it's all that.

Davey: 11:43

So that allows for this building of scenarios, that probably means that you'll eventually get a lot of like home home made and you know, maybe external ones as well, or ones that they've made internally.

JP: 11:53

Can absolutely see people doing it. And actually, it's So I threw a little bit of peer pressure got Hamlet, and it very modular in the way it works. But it also plays Co Op. So it's not just competitive, you can actually play against arrived. Adrian bullied me until I bought it, He's good at this the game itself. Interesting, which I can see work working really well. And there's so many houses in the game we played isn't he? Peer pressure. like the bass for which are very similar. But all the other houses, I think there's another 12 Or so they are all asymmetric different civilization tracks, different focus cards, or a few Why aren't we playing this game? People in the group have got it? of the focus cards are different because they lean into the strengths. What kind of weight would you say? Where does it say it's in the 4's, but low 4's? From what I've played, I think once I play a proper scenario and have everything at my disposal, that's where it's gonna get like, Oh, my God, where do I go? What do I do, but you got to start somewhere with these games. And I'd encourage anyone to just, even if you play heavy games, play the tutorial, because it just guides you. You'll know what you're doing. You'll love the game down and off you go. But yeah, I really, really enjoyed it. Why? Why? Okay, well, here's a cheap copy of it, I've bought it. That's not peer pressure

Davey: 13:16

Basically, Adrian dictates what I buy and what I don't buy, because you're not allowed to buy The Gallerist. And that's still, that's still

JP: 13:23

Oh, this is concerning spoilers.

Davey: 13:28

But I'm glad he did. Because yeah, we've got that to the table in the weekend. Lighting. Finishing off, if you don't know what Hamlet is, basically the the goal is in Hamlet is to build finished building the church. And that's kind of the end game trigger. But what you do in it is you have tiles that you can place and build. And from these tiles to get these resources, you have to make a chain. And it's very similar to a game I think there's called boats and

JP: 13:55

Roads and boats,

Davey: 13:55

Roads and boats. But it's got a nice little twist. And a lot of these buildings have, which is similar to Carcassone like some of the VP scoring is like you have to have certain road length, or you have certain connectors that go in. And what's really nice about it is you're all using the resources that are on the board. So whatever's come down is it's something that you use, but you get rewards for making these resources. So there's always an incentive to actually make these resources. And yeah, okay, you might get a screwdriver in some way or another, you've used these resources first, because you eventually get quite big chains going off when you've got your villagers, but that's kind of the part and parcel of it. And it's kind of then you've got to start working out. And we started off with a tutorial game. My friends have only started getting into board games, and he's actually going to come around to the 24 hour which is good, nice. But he's he's suddenly loving them. And he's going that step further complexity. Yeah. So and he got really into it and he won in the end he did he played an amazing game and he had this like little section bail out here which none of us could really get to chained to and he had just had this like VP generator going on. It was just absolutely insane. But once we got used to it, I probably would have stopped him doing that. But it's one of those you have to kind of try and play your own game, whereas this is a game where you really He needs to be focusing on everyone else. Yes. So I think it's actually really gonna grow and grow, the more that we play. And the fact that I've enjoyed it the first time is a good indicator, because it was easy to teach, you've got like, so on your turn you have, you have to move, your donkeys, and you can move the donkey one space out one tile out from the centre. And that's where the church has everything built is built for business thought, yeah. And then your work your work because they can either activate a building, build a building, and that's it. And the buildings just have different effects, but it's pretty much is clearly indicated on the tiles. and off you go. It's really that simple to teach. But it there's a lot of added depth there, which is really nice. And I'm looking forward to the expansion because we did. One thing I didn't notice is you do end up with a you'd like gaps that you can't build anything in, which is where this expansion is going to come in with lakes, which David was talking to us about where you can put these lakes in and then you can then transport over, but only you could transport over if you put the boat in. So it adds in there's another little layer which is going to be really nice to this transport, train. Economy train. So as in train, as in obviously, choo, choo, choo choo carting upwards and downwards on your donkeys. Not to cheat.

JP: 16:39

But yeah,

Davey: 16:41

Definitely recommend it thoroughly enjoyed it. I've been excited. It looks amazing on the table as well. The only criticism, which is what the same thing everyone has is the tiles are a little bit too small.

JP: 16:51

Yeah, the the icons on the tiles quite small. And you end up with lots of bits. What's that doing?

Adrian: 16:59

When we walked passed it at the expo I was quite surprised, because up until that point, we hadn't really. I hadn't seen a copy of it. Like in the wild. No. So we walked past the demo table. And I was like, oh, it's tiny. Yeah, not tiny, tiny, but

Davey: 17:13

It's small. Yeah,

Adrian: 17:17

I mean, it might I don't know how big these things spread out. Because for games,

Davey: 17:22

It didn't I've taken quite a bit of the table. If you if you ended up building,

Adrian: 17:26

You imagined upping anything that might by 20, or 30%, make all those icons and that fit better, or words or whatever, that are suddenly suddenly starting to take up a lot more than it did sort of firsthand walk past it as like those are tiny pieces

Davey: 17:39

And costs. And because of all the little wood meeples are really cool. We got a little donkeys, you've got the little bridges that make the roads. And I'm guessing they're trying to keep the cost down as well. Making those tiles just that a little bit more probably would have added quite a lot because I mean, I got a good deal I think was about 35 pounds. So it's good price. Yeah, exactly. And the components and a really nice, nice little window

Adrian: 18:01

Good job someone pointed it out for you, that game, isn't it?

Davey: 18:05

Usually it's 42 Apparently, when it was 42, who knows? But yeah, definitely recommend it. Good. Good game.

JP: 18:12

Yeah, looking forward to playing it

Adrian: 18:14

The easy intro maybe reminded me of Viticulture and we've played recently where it was like that felt like it was always giving you too much in that first scenario to get there. But it's like, I reckon the next scenario will be a lot more vicious. Yes.

Davey: 18:26

Yeah. That that was amazing. That was good. Yeah, was a really good game, actually.

Adrian: 18:31

But that's not long and talk about No, well, you guys have talked about lots of hotness. So like, you've got JP spoke about pre-hotness?

JP: 18:38

It's the hotness before it seems to come out guys minds post hotness.

Adrian: 18:43

Right. So I'm going to talk about something equally hot and modern. Yeah. Paladins of the West kingdom? Yeah.

JP: 18:52

Yeah. Isn't that like to play that?

Davey: 18:55

But that was quite a while ago.

JP: 18:57

Phillips is five games ago game? Yeah, pretty much

Adrian: 19:00

Yeah. Because he's had five games go. We've had Viscounts, Wayfarers, we have the legacy of you was so low when he bought out the Raiders, I think since then, which was just rebranding of Raiders of the North Sea

Davey: 19:14

for not five.

JP: 19:16

So I shall leave this podcast.

Adrian: 19:17

But yes, yes, it was quite a while ago now. But it's sat on my shelf of shame for a little while. I really enjoy Architects of the West kingdom and Raiders of the North seas fantastic. So I bought Paladins. Knowing that I wanted to play it just sat there for nearly a year it's sat on the shelf. But it's a little bit, I went into it knowing that there was a bit more weight to it. It wasn't quite as simple as Architects or Raiders. And it was more of a sort of a two or three player game rather than a four or five player game which the other ones that like I really enjoyed it. I thought it was fantastic. Set up in sort of design. You've got three I'm gonna forget about that. There's three types of like honour or virtue ever. There's like military strength, something to do with the church and something to do something else that's like blue, red and black. And nearly every spot you go to, on the left hand side of what they've named the spot, it gives you a colour and on the right hand it gives you a colour and what's basically saying is If it requires a cost of this, so if the Red is on the left hand side, it requires you to have decent red, but it's gonna give you black out of it. And because all the spots are fairly well labelled, you kind of can chain it. And you can't just focus on one thing, you have to focus on everything. And there's just a lot of options on the board. But because it's mostly controlled by these six options, and only a couple will, you really have the option to do any one time, it means you got planned a little bit further ahead. But it also means you kind of got a limited pool of options amongst all the options available to your board, it was really good. One of the one of the key things that helps you decide that strategy is each turn, you look at three, you take the top three Paladins off the deck, and you take a look at them. And each of them gives you bonus strength to one or two colours gives you a handful of meeples. And they're all different colours. And so certain spots require certain colours only. And it will give you like one off abilities like doing this is cheaper or you get something for free or something like that. What you do is you take one of those Paladins and you put it in for play facedown until everyone's pick, do you put one on the bottom? I don't want that again. And you put one back on the top. So I'm going to sit next term. So it allows you to sort of load your deck a little bit. And again, first game, so I don't know. But one of the first hands I had, because of some of the stuff that was out there. I was like, I'm gonna go after this strategy. But I don't do it now. Because it makes stuff cheaper. And I can't afford it. Yeah. So I kept just putting it back on top of the deck. It was like, I think there's one say there's eight turns to the game, there might be seven somewhere around that. And I think it was like turn five, six before I actually use that palette. And I just kept sticking back on top of the deck every time. Because I was already not ready. I was working towards it. And I was like, right. Okay, I could play this turn. But I think if I complete next turn it will be worth two gold more to me. I'll save two gold more everyone just kept going and going and going. And yeah, it's just a, it's that heavier weight. It's got Jim Phillips and Garfield games printed all over it, you can tell exactly what it's like the first three terms you turn over goals, like public aims and goals. And then the rest of them become extra work placement spots that are randomised, there's only a little pool of nobody roughly sort of quite similar ish things. And they're slightly better versions for the most part of what you've already got on your board. But only one person can go their standard work placement stuff. And so it kind of grows a little bit and you get points for attacking people or converting people or building things or the amount of like military strength goes up or building walls or every it's that usual point salad thing that that Garfield games does quite a bit as well of, everything's worth a little bit of points. And you could do a specialising little bit but not too much, which is what I found is pretty standard of most Garfield games is you have to have a little bit of everything ideally. But you can go after a couple more things and and that really gives you the extra points. So it felt very familiar, but definitely that next level up of having to think and plan and yeah, really enjoyed. It can't say much more than that. So no, it's not the new hotness, it doesn't feel like there's too much point in going to your new hotness my new hotness to say I was really glad to get it off the shelf of shame. Now that my shelf shame And onto our main segment where we are going to talk all about has grown. worker placement games. So a worker placement game will give you normally several workers and you normally take an action or you gain a benefit by placing a worker on that space. There are then two types of worker placement. The main type is that that spot is now blocked, you can't go there or it will cost or like there's another space with it that might cost you more. Some worker placement games then increase the cost, you might have put twice as many workers or plus one worker to then go to that spot. Or, as I'm sure we'll talk about at some point you might have like a grande worker or like a big worker that you can place that ignores the rules of the work placement and you still gain that benefit. And that is ultimately what the very basis of a worker placement game is, is that you're placing something on a spot, you're gaining a benefit or reserving a card or something along those lines and blocking it or making it harder for someone else to go to that spot. So what is it that we like about worker placement games?

JP: 24:49

I think for me, I mean, they're probably one of my favourite kind of mechanics in board games. It's hard to explain why that is. But I think it's there's an immediate cause and effect with work placement. As you said, you've got you've got your meeples or you've got to work put on the board to get stuff and it's it's simple to kind of process in your brain. Like if I wanted to get clay. I know where to go to get clay because it's very obvious on the board where I need to put things to do it. And, and yeah, it's the simplicity of it. But as you say, what's been really great to see in kind of board games, how they've evolved over the years because it's quite an old mechanic and games has been around for donkey's years who know. Yeah. And yeah, work placement. Okay. There's donkeys donkeys, yeah, well, yeah, most of them never was what's good is how they twisted it, how they've taken the the age old, you know, put the worker down get stuff. That's how they evolved it and made it really, really interesting. But yeah, it's hard to say while I just do I just think it's a really good.

Davey: 26:00

I have a theory anyway. Well, Go on then, let's hear With Euro games, to create a kind of tension between players and create kind of conflict is really hard. Because if you do it in a war-y sense, you start messing up people's engines, people don't like that. But what work placements do is they do it in a way that's non confrontational. You take a spot, someone else can't use that spot. But there's other spots to do. So you then have to evolve your engine, you have to work out your puzzle. And that's why I think in its nature, people keep coming back to it is that the fact that it's contention, and there's actually player interaction in the euro, but without any animosity? And that's why in my eyes anyway, I think I really enjoy worker placement. And they have started to spin it on its head with some recent games, and there's definitely like a flavour of the month, isn't it? Or couple of years, there's been a lot of really tight work placement games coming out,

Adrian: 27:04

Certainly with a twist. It's been around for a little while. And they've done they've done some early twists on it as well. We'll get into that later on, I think but they've done some early twists on it. But really now they're kind of revisiting. Yes, those sort of different ways of implementing worker placement, I think you're totally right, Davey, I think it's confrontation without me pointing at someone and going you, it's you that I am deliberately going after. Indirect confrontation. Because you're blocking a spot and that spot didn't necessarily belong to someone, yes, you might have known that that person wanted that spot. But you're not saying you might, you wouldn't normally say our group might occasionally go and put going here just to stop you getting. For the most part, if people want to play it that way, they can put something on a spot and just let it sort of lie. And it's not saying this is to stop you or anything just I'm doing my thing, I'm blocking this spot here. And it means that you can have a strategy that you have to as you say, evolve your strategy and turn it tactical if some spots get blocked or if something goes off the table from a worker placement point of view. So I think yeah, I think you're spot on that was my thoughts of, of worker placement is it's it's is conflict and there is sort of that feeling of are they blocked me I need to think of something else. So that's going to take me now to more workers to get what I wanted out of it rather than one more worker. It's all of that kind of Nah, you rapscallion you!

Davey: 28:28

There's a nice amount of player interaction for a euro for most people. Some people don't like it. It's too much Barrage. And some people don't like too little. Yeah. Are you just sitting down and you're pretty much playing solitaire? Yeah.

JP: 28:42

But so just has a nice little medium of kind of the two ends I think. I mean, who most anyway, who hasn't enjoyed putting a worker down on the spot and everyone else swears. You know you've done the right thing to do. Feels good. You're like? Yes, yeah, that's exactly what we needed to do. Because usually that's causes fun and games. That's why it's fun. Yeah,

Davey: 29:07

Exactly. And that's this is just the right amount of contention, I think, for a lot of people anyway.

JP: 29:14

So

Adrian: 29:15

very, very quickly, before we go into Is there anything we don't like about work placements that comes around occasionally.

Davey: 29:22

Sometimes it can create a lot of AP because of it when you can't plan too much. Especially if you just had to go in there's three other people having a go and say it's a bit it's tight, tighter towards the end, usually at the start is a bit more free flowing, especially if you know the game. But towards those end rounds that last round especially Yeah, wherever there's, you know, maybe four spaces, and one of them goes now was the one you needed. And the last three have a lot more different options, but not the ones you wanted. You can kind of sit there sometimes or scratching your face and and think for a while. So I think that's the only real downside. Sometimes it can be too simple, but then that's in the game itself.

Adrian: 30:08

Choose a wait while

JP: 30:11

Because I was thinking that like the game, the worker placement games that I don't enjoy, it's not the mechanic that I don't enjoy the way the kind of fringes of the game interact with that. Yeah, to be honest. So it's like, you know certain ones I'm like, Yeah, I really did. That's really fun. Plus, because all of this stuff going on, that enables, whereas other games, I won't name them. But there's other games that I just find

Adrian: 30:34

I might in a second. One of the things that I found that a lot of designers have been very careful with now in work placement games is rubber banding or a catch up, someone doesn't go too far ahead, the early days of the work placements that I played, didn't have a lot of natural rubber banding. And I'll call it out because a workplace one game that is very popular that a lot of people like and I liked for a long time, has one thing in it that has made me not want to play it, which is Lords of Waterdeep and the minus the Mandatory Quests. That felt like one of the first real attempts to try and rubberband and create a catch up mechanic that is now for me, well, long dated, because it's, you can be ahead 50 points, and just two or three of them chucked on you.

Davey: 31:26

It kind of negates that whole conflict thing we were talking about. Yeah, one fell swoop. It then screws people's engines with one card, which isn't fun,

Adrian: 31:34

Which isn't fun. And it creates a weird position where I've been in it before where Yeah, I played a lot of Lords of Waterdeep when I first started, and I've been like quite a lot ahead. And you think to yourself, yeah, this game does need some rubber banding of some description most games do that aren't particularly like four and a half complexity, cutthroat, all that kind of stuff. Most of these kinds of what are considered entry level or next step up games need some kind of rubber banding, it's just all it takes is someone says, I've had three or four thrown on me in the last two turns. And that's it. I've gone from being miles ahead to last place by a longshot. And I think it's there are other games out there. I've heard Caylus the remake of Caylus had a bit of work done to it, because Caylus was very cutthroat and there was no rubber banding to that and stuff like that. So it's something that I've experienced and something I've heard a fair chunk about with some of those early work placement games, I think designers have had to be very mindful of these days. So should we talk about some games that have worker placement in it that we enjoy and what they do to twist or do differently to other games? Maybe? Yeah, yeah,

Davey: 32:38

Kind of the two flavours from last year, which are which were big, were Lost Ruins of Arnak and Dune:Imperium. And both of those put a little twist in and it's very similar twist. So I've come to lump them in together, even though the people always say they're really similar games. But I think they're different enough that they don't feel similar, no, but they have sort of, they have a similar mechanic with their work placement, which is your card. So the deck that you're building is how is what dictates where you go, or where you put your work, which was kind of the twist of it. So they're, they're in essence, that builders, you're buying cards from a shop and making your deck better and trying to get combos and do this. But you've also have to have the added caveat. And to do a lot of this stuff, you need to have the right symbol or the right. On Lost Ruins of Arnak a plane car for the right type of travel, to go to that space that you want to go to and do the action that you want to do. So it put a nice little twist on that. Because yeah, there's been deck builders. Yeah, there's been worker placement. But no one thought, well, we'll put the two together until something not successfully, right. Yeah. Definitely. With within such a short time of each other

JP: 33:56

Really works really well. Just you think it'd be all quite restrictive. And it is kind of restrictive in the way that it works. Because obviously, depending on your hand of cards will depend on what space basically you can go really like that. Yeah, I really like the fact that you know, from an AP point of view, you can't look at every spot on the board, because you can't go to 50% of them maybe even less depending on how you built.

Davey: 34:20

I've got a defo screwed myself before this kind of works with this card. Yeah, I've got I can't go anywhere. Now. I'm just like, No,

Adrian: 34:33

It felt like Dune had a bit more of the deck building side of it in there than Lost Ruins instead of Lost Ruins stuck more to the worker placement, sort of side of things and going up that temple track on the right, whatever it was called. But yeah, I agree.

Davey: 34:49

So that's that's the my little little twist on work placement.

JP: 34:53

Yeah, for me. I'm going to kind of pick a game that has variable workers and also variable placement and those Yeah, well, there's variable workers can go in other things that allow you to go to spaces, so I'm talking about Anachrony. So you've got different kinds of workers that you've got scientists, engineers, administrators, geniuses, and most of them can go anywhere. But the kind of big caveat here is on the mainboard, it's kind of like, it's unbelievable. So you need to go in these exosuits, to be able to go out into the world and use those spaces. So the whole thing, you've kind of got this management of workers which are exosuits, that you've got a power of, and as resources on its own right, and then you've got to control as exosuits by putting workers in literally slot on them. And if you've got the, the minis, and then you know, putting them onto the board. So early game, you've got your forever power and more exosuits, because you're going to need the base resources you need to get your engine's going to build the buildings and things like that. And then as the game progressed, your power less of those exosuits, because a lot of the engine you built on your main board, which is off the your player board, sorry, off the main board will do a lot of what you need. And what I quite like in that game was, again, quite unique is the fact that the workers come back, like asleep tired, and you have to wake them up, you have to motivate them to so that you can use them. So there's a whole like lifecycle of you getting workers, you're using them, you're putting them in exosuits, you're getting stuff, they come back tired, you got to you can motivate them, or you can motivate them in a good way or not in a good way. So you can motivate in a good way, which will help you get VPS or you can literally morale, just with with with submission, which will cost you anything, might cost you anything, but it's gonna punish you in VP's later down the line. So you have to kind of balance that as well. So yeah, I quite like the fact that there's the variety of workers, that certain workers can do certain things, or certain workers will get rewards for going to certain places. So the example is like engineer can go and construct buildings with discounts. But you can still go with anyone else. That's fine, you won't get a discount. So it's trying to balance your workforce and and get to as as your engine builds, you then have more spots when your own board potentially to be now you built it, which you then put your workers into instead. So yeah,

Davey: 37:25

It closes down the main board but opens up more on your own and it's definitely a unique get worker placement, isn't it? Yeah,

JP: 37:35

It's kind of layered, there's definitely layers. Yeah, yeah. It's not just simple. Go to the spot, get the thing. It's like, well, power this thing up to then, to get a worker to

Davey: 37:46

Start putting the expansions and yeah, I'm gonna bounce back through time and do this. I love it. What about yourself, Adrian? What, what kind of worker placements Do you like with the twist?

Adrian: 37:59

One of the ones that I thought was one of the earlier ones that I played, which I haven't seen, really any one attempt it since. And I feel like it's something that is quite got right in the game. It's very good, but isn't quite got right in the game. But it would get be right, I think if someone took a shot at it now. So the game is Pillars of the Earth, and it on the board, it's a standard kind of worker placement game, go here, get this number of resources, or you can go there and buy this sort of these cards are very similar to the market and allows you to do that. And so it's very simple worker placement game. But before that happens, your workers get placed into a bag, and they get drawn out. And so that same line gets drawn out first. It's Adrian, do you want to pay eight gold? To go first? Yes or no? All right. Okay. No, go to the back of the line. Next one comes out. JP JP, would you like to play seven? Pay seven to go first now? Yes, no, yes. Okay, that goes down, draw the next one out, right, JP, your next one's come out, would you like to pay six to go next? Or do you wanna go to the back of the queue or go to the back of the queue this one. And so he's got a variable order. That's yeah, it comes out in and it is a bit of luck of the draw of the bag. And I do find that having a couple come up early can be really bad because I do want to pay the eight and then the seven for your two. When money is that's like two rounds worth of money. So you go to the back of the queue essentially. So that is a bit awkward. But for the most part it works there's there's a few times with just a couple of things like if someone's two workers comes out very last or very first can feel a bit weird, but for the most part, it works really well. And you're paying for that ability to either go first or later on down the line. So yeah, I really enjoyed I enjoyed it was one of the probably, in fact I think it was my first work placement game that I played, enjoyed it thought it was great fun, and I just haven't seen that tried again. And I think there is some reasons cuz you can begin bidding placement because you can get that that little bit of awkwardness but I feel like designers these days are quite clever and I'm sure if they wanted to they could figure out a way to do a similar thing without it feeling broken. Someone's sort of meeples come out twice

Davey: 40:19

Secret auction

Adrian: 40:20

It's been quite cool. But yeah, it's it's if it's based on the books, I've never read the books. So not clue on that one. But the first people I played it with had read the books and like bought it because they read the books. But yeah, it's just a very nice simple midweight Euro worker placement in everything but that and that was one of those first ones where I, I then actually went from that to what I'd critical standard work placement, we don't really see much of a twist on it. And I was like, oh, okay, this was different. Yeah, it's actually had I've played around with a twist to do something, and then moved on to something a bit more generic, I suppose in that sense, but no really good game. hasn't quite stood the test of time, but it's still really good. Yeah, it's not like some games were sort of 15 years later, they're not worth putting back on the table anymore. It is still worth absolutely giving it a go.

JP: 41:09

Yeah, what else you got.

Davey: 41:12

Well, Architects was a different twist. It's more about kind of timings of when to put your workers in and how many you put in? Do you risk putting that many in? Otherwise someone might capture your workers, then if they've captured them and you then got to get them back and it's wasting an action doing that. And it's they're nice, it's got a real nice push pool for work placement, which is very different.

Adrian: 41:36

Yeah, cuz you slowly putting one down at a time so you start off with normally start off with a pool of like two or three again, don't again, goes on this is, here's your pool of 20. Yeah, and then it's, you're gonna slowly lose them over the game. Yeah, like you're getting them back. But you'll never have probably as many as Yeah, because they're tied up everywhere outside

Davey: 41:54

But then obviously putting more of them down as it goes through, like, you get better rewards. But then someone's gonna see you've got

Adrian: 42:03

Probably three, five at the lumber mill, yeah, round,

Davey: 42:07

Grinding those up, I'm sending those to jail. Lawyers, say Get a load of money. So that's kind of Yeah, is you've got to weigh up your risk or your options and being like, is it worth doing that? To lose them to then have to waste an action to go get them later? And you think, yeah, there's gonna get loads back from it. So I've put them in? Yeah, it's definitely not a game I've kind of I've not seen anything like it before. I know, you're saying there's probably a similar one to it. Or I don't

Adrian: 42:39

I don't think I've seen anything quite like that. Where you get such a large number of workers? Yeah,

Davey: 42:45

Definitely is worth a play. I really enjoy every game I've played of it.

Adrian: 42:49

I've seen like, where you have to have an action to pull stuff back. Yeah, the board fills up. And then you have to eventually do an action. Because it frees up either frees up a load of spaces, or just it's cost you to get them all back, you know, it takes you a turn. Whereas you could have been smarter and done things that get them back as they go. Now, I've had spent an entire turn getting them all back, which kind of happens in architects, right? But nothing where it's like, here's your 20 workers slowly lose them over the length of the game. The only thing

Davey: 43:16

I've probably say the thing I don't like, well I do really like it. But I also think I wouldn't, I would like to see a game done like Architects just in a different way. Because it's then got this whole light and dark thing isn't in a building with the church and then don't go into the black market as well

Adrian: 43:29

Yeah, that's pretty much standard in Shem's games,

Davey: 43:33

I like it in that game. But I wouldn't mind seeing that worker placement mechanic used in a different game in a different way and seeing how it works,

Adrian: 43:42

I think I think it could be redone something if you wanted to. But I really enjoyed that one here, just good.

JP: 43:50

Another one that kind of springs to my mind. It's an older work placement mechanic, but they're actually using it in some of the newer games that are coming out. And I don't know what the official name for it is, but I'm going to call it like snake work replacement. So Istanbul snake or play Snake replacement, okay to Istanbul is the first game I know that does it. And what I'm talking about is your your initially place your work it down wherever you like. But your next one has to be adjacent to the one you've placed previously greying a snake chain. So when it comes to this, where you go, and where you can go next and after that, and after that, it becomes more restrictive as as you put more workers down. And obviously you can kind of pull them back to plan ahead.

Adrian: 44:34

Stop other people going from there, or does it cost them more to put this I can't remember,

JP: 44:37

is the honest answer. I don't know if it stopped. There are certain spaces where it does, I think. But anyway, we're talking about the mechanics in general, right? Because I can't remember. Even I did play it about a year ago. Yes. But another game that implemented it and it's now being reimagined and evolved on is Andromeda's Edge which is the new and improved Dwellings of Eldervale, which has got a sci fi reskin and it's not just a reskin it's actually been heavily retuned and redone. But that uses a similar mechanic of you know, you're putting your chips down on sectors and your next one's gonna have to go next to that and they steal that And then you kind of pull them all back and obviously redeploy but in that game the pulling back of your workers or your ships is actually a fundamental part of get stuff we're doing really get a lot of stuff engine starts absolutely comboing and in Andromeda's Edge especially which is what they've leaned into more and probably my complaint of dwellings to be honest is is that that pulling back action combos or your engine off like you've put in these little tiles, these little modules on your board, like essentially taking all your chips returning home and you're activating chains of things and go wrong and do this and then do that and to do and and therefore this looks quite good. So yeah, just that whole kind of

Davey: 46:04

Dwellings it was just a bit well, that was just Yeah,

JP: 46:08

It wasn't Yeah, I was just an okay. I didn't know the theme of Dwellings at all. And I don't I don't mind the theme

Davey: 46:13

I don't mind if it's like Colossus or

JP: 46:16

Fancy stuff, but I don't know there's something about that. It didn't it didn't grab me before the tracks.

Davey: 46:21

It's got real cult following as well.

JP: 46:24

Yeah, but this this new one, which I I have backed actually and it surprised me because I thought maybe it's just like Dwellings back now. Too many I can't even blame lockdown anymore. Because that's gone.

Davey: 46:37

You talking about games and going, yeah, about that

Adrian: 46:41

Games you've never mentioned before either. In fact, right now

JP: 46:44

Surprise. Surprise. But yeah, I'll give it a go. Sci Fi and that's like,

Davey: 46:52

Means I get to play them. But anyway, yeah.

JP: 46:54

That's sneaky worker placement. It's interesting. I like it. Yeah.

Adrian: 47:01

So let's, shall we talk about big workers then?

JP: 47:04

Big work

Adrian: 47:04

big workers, big boys. Yeah, that's the one.

Davey: 47:07

So Grande.

Adrian: 47:08

I think Well, I think the one that everyone's going to think about is what I'm going to talk about, which is Tiny Epic Dinosaurs. When they hear grande worker, that's definitely the first thing they will think of right? Yeah,

JP: 47:17

Is that the dinosaur winemaking game? Yeah.

Adrian: 47:21

Viticulture or Tiny Epic Dinosaurs, they basically do the same thing, which is that you can place a worker down somewhere. And if a spot gets filled up, instead, you can place a grande worker, a big worker in there, and you get to do that spaces actions. Now in Tiny Epic, it counts as two workers because the point is you need to put two workers down but the Grande counts as two workers whereas in Viticulture, it's open, it just kind of says you just don't need to sit on a spot basically. But that is what it's doing is it's that, you know, we talked about it before, here's your blocked spot that is absolutely blocking off. It's not it's now costing you more, because that grande workers like that specialised Yeah, that extra sort of, you don't want to just waste him on doing anything, you want to wait until someone's blocked a spot you want to go to and then you're going to put that grande worker down. And both of those do an excellent job of making sure that in the cycle that you're playing so Tiny Epic Dinosaurs, what your your sort of few actions are improving your dinosaur pens, and sort of creating like little pretty much like Agricola, it's like putting your little pens down to put your animals in. Except for animals or dinosaurs. You've got catching dinosaurs, which if you accidentally catch one with an egg, you get two dinosaurs instead. And if two dinosaurs are together, they breed and if they breed too big for the pen, they either eat other dinosaurs when they escape or they knock down part of your park. And you're getting food as well. And so because it's such an you need food to feed your dinosaurs, otherwise they rampage as well. So it's kind of this interlocking, interlocking thing of you need to feed them you need to get them you need to not get too many of them or control them if they start and pair up.

Davey: 49:00

If it was on a farm, it sounds like a Uwe game.

Adrian: 49:02

Yeah, a little bit of that sort of Uwe sort of pens and put into a putting two together. I don't know that's what I've always heard as

JP: 49:13

I go with Uwe, outvoted. No, I think it is. Okay. I'm agree.

Adrian: 49:20

So yeah, that's how that overall Uwe. But yeah, so it's got that thing, but because you're also trying to feed them and just stop them rampaging. It does damage you'll end up on loads of minus points. You need that grande worker or some kind of get out because if someone blocks the wrong one, that's it. You're done. Someone blocks a couple, then that's the mistake you've made, but there's definitely always in most rounds, one that you absolutely have to get to and keeping back to that grande worker. And I don't know if it's in Viticulture, I'm pretty sure it's in Tiny Epic, but it might be in a different game. I think it's Tiny Epic. Where if you've already put one of your workers there, you can't put the Grande work there as well. So you can't kind of get double bubble of putting your own work in and putting a grande on top.

Davey: 50:03

I'm gonna throw one in there then dice worker placement. Yeah, so that was a nice little spin when that one came out. Bitoku that was the one from last year that was a good little dice placement. No actual rolling but it kind of indicated the very similar to You have to work on in the fact that it's more to do with like the level of your work, or going out of power them. And then they had a very similar thing with an ascension thing where they would kind of ascend and the go up and then you get more actions from going up and above. Whereas there's other ones where you obviously roll them, and then it's indicate value. Usually a lot of the midweight euros we play. Like, I'm so bad with names Lorenzo, we've played I've played it loads. Yeah, I played it, I can't remember. But, yeah, it's really, it's really cool little mechanic, because these games usually give you a lot of options. But then they the way that they reduce these options isn't actually through, kind of, is limiting it through your dice instead, or what your role and your level and that's how they balance instead. So adds another little puzzle on top of

Adrian: 51:18

Just the actual blocking placement. Yeah,

JP: 51:20

That's variability without changing the board. Yeah. Because the dice pool is going to give you the variability. I mean, Perseverance is the same. Because obviously, you're rolling a load of symbols, right? Yeah. No symbols can only go in certain spots or, or have restrictions for those spots. But in Perseverance especially Episode One, depending on what space you go, we'll also see specific dinosaurs in and so that adds another layer in not only what dice Do you want to pick and where do you want to put it? Even in the action space? What space within the action you want to put it and again, Mindlash? More than three layers of decision. So I like it. Yeah, yeah.

Davey: 52:00

Definitely got a nice depth. Yeah. Cool. I just like the puzzle for to to work on. Yes. Every time I play that, I think such a good game.

JP: 52:10

It is we played it not so long back. Right. And it's been a long time since we we've got two games of it. And because you've got it to table and actually, I really enjoy this game. And really quickly. It's a very good game is Yeah, solid. Needs to be played more.

Adrian: 52:25

Yeah. Have you got the deluxe version on its way?

JP: 52:27

I haven't. But I have every I've got all the expansions. In the base box. Nice. So now I'm like, I don't need that. And I've actually taught myself I don't need the deluxe version. It looks nice. I don't need it. They actually add anything to it. Then nice artwork and just meeples. Okay, you know, it's a deluxe. Yeah, the deluxe vacation as you would expect. Yeah.

Adrian: 52:50

Just coming from you. Just a nicer stuff. Nice components. That's all it is. No one cares about that stuff.

JP: 52:56

It shows I've grown up a little bit.

Davey: 52:58

You've got so many Kickstarters on the way you've had to limit yourself in some kind of way or another. Otherwise, this house would just be boardgames

JP: 53:06

Shut your filthy mouth.

Davey: 53:11

Oh, this isn't my chair. This is a stack of board game.

JP: 53:13

Board game chairs around the table, or games on a platter. No sat on one. Whatever twists, you have the twist. I'm going to talk about a game that I haven't played yet. But we've got coming on Friday, which is Ora et Labora which is an Uwe game an old one from 2011.

Davey: 53:29

You're on a bit of an Uwe hike at the moment

JP: 53:33

Ever since you did that episode. Yeah. And then discovered, there's still another seven, eight games that we haven't even played in the group. Well, what are these all about? Right? This is the one that I'm really excited about. And the reason why I bring it up for this episode is that traditionally have your three workers, you're building a tableau of buildings on your board that you can extend by buying landscapes and things like that. And you can issue work contracts to other players, you can pay them a coin, and then use their workers on their board to get the stuff that you need. And in the game, there's, this might sound like a negative thing. There's no variability in the buildings that come out always the same. They come out in phases in the game, but who buys what and what, which buildings go to which players and the way that they're split up and broken down is what's going to vary the the interactions. And I'm not seeing that before this probably in lots of games, but the fact that you can pay other players to use their workers, which I thought was interesting, rather than I'm gonna use my work on your board support your space, I'm actually using your worker on your board to

Adrian: 54:43

So actually they don't get to use that worker?

JP: 54:45

I think still. Yeah. So the kind of mechanic is anyone ever has their three workers on the board, regardless of whose player turn is they all come off. So it's like you're cycling the workers on and then they will come off. But yeah, if I put one your first worker three down onto that board, he's stuck there until you play your other two

Adrian: 55:05

Bonus out of a building that I want with my own worker. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

JP: 55:11

Interesting. contentious. Yeah. Because you know, you're not blocking a communal board. You're blocking somebody's private board. But then they can do it to you. And it's not like it's so restrictive, like I've blocked a building that's going to produce bread, for example. There'll be other ways of doing it because it's in its heart. It's a resource conversion game, that you're converting the crap resources to high quality resources that are worth VPs at the end, and it's just the root of how you take all of that got a wheat, and we make the flour made the bread, it's very well rounded like that. Yeah. but done in a very different way to your farming Agricola, Caverna's and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I've just not seen that before. I thought that was quite interesting. I mean, it is or how not mean it is? I don't know. Yeah, because at least you're getting something and money in that game is not playing solo ones. But on a money site like it is in most games.

Davey: 56:11

That man loves worker placement.

JP: 56:13

Yeah. Well, one of the originators not the but yeah, exactly. Took the took the mechanic and ran home with it. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I thought I'd mentioned that one. That was a twist that I've not seen.

Adrian: 56:28

For my one. So I think you've mentioned Perseverance, which is the dice placement, which isn't, but I think otherwise, all the work placements we talked about, everyone has their own coloured workers. Yeah, are the ones we've spoken about so far, I think as in your player colours. Yeah, that's it. So Raiders of the North Sea is, say my favourite Garfield game, I think at the moment, and of the ones I've played. And with that, you have a black worker, a grey worker and a white worker and the black workers tend to be lower powered on certain space, but higher powered on the others, the greys tend to sort of do us a sort of a mixture of the black and the white, but to a mid power. And the white workers tend to go only to like the spots that unlock later, basically, but quite often, they're lower powered on earlier spots. And the twist that comes on top of that is that everyone puts down a worker and picks a worker up and gets the bonuses of both. So I might put down a worker somewhere, gain the provisions or whatever. And then if someone else has pre, on previous turn, put down a worker, I don't know, on where you get the gold from, I can pick up that worker. So now I've got wherever that colour worker is, and gain the gold from picking up that work. Now later on, as you go raiding, you just put work down and as part of the raid, you get a worker back, you don't get too bent bonuses, but you're always cycling one worker out on one worker in Yeah. And it sounds quite simple to start with. But then you soon realise that I want to put down workers in two spots. Because no one's put a worker on the spots, I actually any the spots I actually want to go to. They're all on spots that I don't want to go to. But I've got to put one down, and I'll gain the benefit of that. And then I've got to work out of what's left. What I want back, yeah, so the people before especially if your engines are kind of not in sync with each other, quite often you get left with it. Okay, I've had to plan for picking up someone else's work or on a space that I don't care about very much. It's not too bad, because the spots are fairly simple. It's like recruit someone get provisions get gold. You know, that kind of stuff is not there's nothing too crazy to but the number of times in one game, that I find myself either wanting to put down two workers in spaces that there's nothing or pick up two workers. And I don't always have to put one down and pick up a different one. And again, it can be I put down a worker that's black. So it's powerful for getting provisions, but then I'll pick up worker, that's why that's good for going raiding. Now, it's only useful if I pick up from the spot that I want. And if I want to go raiding otherwise, that white worker in the starting spaces is not very powerful. So I think got to put that back down. So it becomes much more of a puzzle. And I've just not seen anything like placement where you put one down and you pick one up but then they're worth different powers in different spaces

Davey: 59:25

Multilayered on the placement part of it, isn't it? Yeah, it's where the puzzle comes in is not just where you're placing is then also kind of what colour and what the then pick up and because

Adrian: 59:35

Again, we'll talk about Lorenzo, Lorenzo kind of that number decides roughly where you're likely to go. Like what's the strength of spots you can go to so it's kind of similar in that respect, but it's the put one down, pick one up that really adds to that because the number of times you might want to go riding to go riding all the way up in the nice juicy sections. I've got loads of provisions to go reading in I need a white worker or I'm taking this white worker back I've got to take the action. I'm going to do something that is worth nothing to me at all just to get back Yeah, so yeah, really interesting. It's probably why it's made it up to the top of my golf list. Is because of that that decision space.

Davey: 1:00:12

Yeah, yeah,

JP: 1:00:13

We talked about on a previous episode and it sounded sounded interesting then because I've not heard any kind of worker placement game do that. No. Seems very, very unique so I was like ooh a game I probably wasn't even remotely interested in and that was actually I should probably give it a look

Adrian: 1:00:38

So now we want to ask would you rather section and as I mentioned near the beginning, unless you edit it out,

JP: 1:00:43

I, I wouldn't do that to you.

Adrian: 1:00:47

I have a bit of a sunburn. So the question is, would you rather play a game in the sun with a sunburn? Or would you rather play a game with a cold in a fridge?

Davey: 1:01:00

Cold in the fridge? Yes,

JP: 1:01:01

Quick, yeah,

Davey: 1:01:03

It was really quick. I don't deal with the heat very well. I get grumpy and I get I get sweaty and I get like really shaken and share. Cold. I'm fairly insulated. I'm alright. I deal with a cold so much better. Like just put me on a mountain somewhere and I'll be fine. You know, snowboarding and all of the love in the decision making.

JP: 1:01:25

Bit different being on a mountain snowboarding than being in a fridge. You can't move in a fridge. Yeah, I mean, this fridge is I'm assuming this fridge. Yeah, like one at a supermarket where you could actually sit down your fridge. I might be able to get a love letter in that.

Davey: 1:01:43

Little like travel game. Travel chess anyone.

Adrian: 1:01:47

I'm thinking like, yeah, one those big like supermarkets.

JP: 1:01:50

Like a walk-in fridge?

Davey: 1:01:52

Fridge. Yeah, still fridge I think

Adrian: 1:01:55

Like surrounded by like, big slabs of meat on hook.

JP: 1:01:58

Are we saying fridge or freezer.

Adrian: 1:02:02

Fridge. Fridge, fridge and cold is still pretty good freezer hold for it. Yeah. Freezer, you're gonna be like

JP: 1:02:12

Yeah, after a couple of hours, you probably fall asleep.

Davey: 1:02:14

I don't mind playing around with the slabs of meat. It's fine. I'm hungry. You can have a little portable cooker, cut us a bit off

JP: 1:02:22

I've got an answer. And I'm gonna join you in this fridge, you're gonna trick me because right? Just we've done this. We've done? No, no. So just for the context, current like during lockdown, obviously to remain safe. Like we could bubble up and go outside. And we have to keep distance and all that kind of thing. Kerley has a carport. So it's basically a garage with no doors, right? It's like a shelter. So we would play outside in his carport. And in the summer it was fine. Absolutely fine. We it was quite nice. Outside a couple of beers or whatever, playing some games. We thought this is great. We've socialising we're getting the group back together. And that was okay until it got to about October and there was a Can anyone feel their fingers? Because like it got really cold it was

Davey: 1:03:10

The heater would pass around to the first, to indicate the first player. There's a little portable heater. One Oh, you're passing it around the table

Adrian: 1:03:19

That won't help with COVID will it. I mean lick the fire.

JP: 1:03:23

We were getting cranky with turns, like come and get on with your turn. But no, I think because we've done it. And we pretty well that was like a fridge more like a freezer at some point. I'm gonna go with that because I, like you in the heat. I get sweaty. I get hot. I'll be dripping all over the board. The cards will just melt in front of me. And I think having sunburn where you just can't move and I go oh,

Davey: 1:03:52

Yeah, fridge fridge. See. Now you want to go fridge don't you?

Adrian: 1:03:59

I'm struggling with this because I'm not good in the heat at all. Like fairly, very fair skinned, I burn almost instantly. But if I'm out in it, I can stay out in it. I probably complain but I'll probably complain if I've sat in a fridge as well right? complain that I'm sat in the sun for a few hours, but I won't feel the sunburn for 24 hours, right? Whereas if I've even if I've got sunburn, I'm getting more sunburn on top of it. The likelihood is I probably won't feel it as much until later.

Davey: 1:04:26

I become accustomed to it.

Adrian: 1:04:30

Isn't it whereas I would deal better with being in the fridge but I'm a grouchy fucker when I've got a cold, if you think I'm grumpy when I'm not having a good time playing a board game you wait and see me when I've got a cold

JP: 1:04:42

Adrian, you're in a fridge. There's like yoghurts everywhere and fruit and chocolate. If you put that in the fridge, like the fridge habit, it'd be stocked up with food

Adrian: 1:04:52

Well as opposed to being able to have cold ciders out in the sun. Yeah,

Davey: 1:04:56

Maybe. Yes, it sounds nice. But the sunburn doesn't and I'll be sweating and I'll be... the can would be against my face. It's true.

Adrian: 1:05:03

Yeah. So I think I do have to join you guys in the fridge.

JP: 1:05:07

Let's shut the door, because we're letting the cold out

Adrian: 1:05:11

You have to realise I'm going to be one grouchy, that's fine.

Davey: 1:05:16

We're used to it

Adrian: 1:05:17

Waiting for that. Set up And with that we're on to our Penultimate turn, where we talk about what we're looking forward to what we've got coming up, et cetera, et cetera. The next thing we have coming up is the 24 hour board game event. Yeah. So is it the Friday, I think it's two days after this is released is actually this Friday. So we some of us did it last year. Not all of us did it last year. But a good portion of us did last year, did various degrees of number of hours, like I'm sure we will this year. And really enjoyed it before you get to the point of the fact that it's for a good cause. And it is a bit of a challenge. That's a bit of a chance to game and all that kind of stuff. And there's a fantastic raffle that's even bigger this year

JP: 1:06:07

It was mad Looked crazy. Looks crazy.

Davey: 1:06:09

Dan's done a good job.

Adrian: 1:06:10

Last year, they had it on like the school stage or whatever it was, like, I'm not quite sure what it was. But it wasn't there's like a bit of a stage or whatever. And they had it sort of littered across and it did a decent job of making that look full. Are you seeing his videos? Looks even crazier this year?

JP: 1:06:26

Some really, really great. Yeah, donations have been awesome. And yeah, I think the sheer volume of this raffle is hopefully is going to raise lots of money. Right? That's the purpose.

Adrian: 1:06:39

And you can buy them remotely as well. And Dan, the other day, so even if you're not there, if you're trying to get involved in the raffle, you can buy tickets online and still be part of it. Yeah. So it's a it's for Cots for Tots. Yep. Which is I know, it's very close to Dan's heart personally as a charity. And it's a great charity. That hopefully they raised a good portion of money for last year. Looks like we're set to beat it this year. Hopefully.

JP: 1:07:02

Yeah, they're trying to get over the 20 Grand raised since the basically the event started five, six odd years ago. So trying to smash that 20 grand. Yeah, not limit. It's not that I don't want to... target target. That's the word smash the target. And I think he's well on track. And it's really great to kind of hear I think ticket sales have been going well for him as well. A larger event this year. Yeah, a larger event is obviously a bit different in terms of the fact its at a hotel, and people can stay over if they want to.

Adrian: 1:07:35

Although the the offers now gone right. But yeah, you can still still book but you don't get the

JP: 1:07:41

You might not get a room because they might be fully booked. But who knows.

Adrian: 1:07:44

So yeah, so all of that going on. It's from 9am till 9am. This is a 24 hour event. And most of us will be there. Happy to chat, happy to play games. And from our point of view, that's all we really need to talk about is no, no,

JP: 1:07:58

No, no.

Adrian: 1:08:00

What do you mean no?

JP: 1:08:00

There's a special thing we need to talk about. Is there a special thing to talk about and you should not talk about that? Oh, sorry, not that thing. Oh, the other thing. So the other thing is, I've said it before I'm hosting the live stream playing lots of games. Hopefully we've got different people kind of jumping on so it's going to be a good you know, nice mix of various different games from Midweights, lightweight. I think as the hours will go on, they'll get lighter. I'll be like, a light light, basically, but the final three hours that we're going to be the lightest games like Noughts and Crosses. Anything that I could

Adrian: 1:08:32

Kluster. Definitely.

JP: 1:08:36

Definitely. The main thing I wanted to kind of mention is that on the basically the Saturday at 10 till midnight, we are running a Live episode for the podcast. So I think most of us are going to be on it. I think seven of us I think roughly and we're going to we're gonna play a lovely game, a nice kindhearted game of the resistance Avalon,

Davey: 1:09:03

Which I've just I'm literally going to have to filter myself so badly. Well, I can still shout at people after substitute Sugar Yeah, straining. You've seen the veins

Adrian: 1:09:19

Lots of sugars? Lots of fudges. Yeah.

JP: 1:09:21

I think yeah, I'm a little nervous about the game, but we've not really done anything live. And like even recording this episode is you know, I'm just looking at the clock is way longer than what the timer wouldn't be when you're listening to this in your cars or whatever. But yeah, just the fact that we're going to be running live and we can't kind of press pause or or cut stuff out. So we got to be very mindful about how

Davey: 1:09:48

So tune in for the mayhem.

JP: 1:09:52

Like watching car crashes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be a good day. I would encourage you if anyone listens to this show. Come and join us 10 o'clock.

Davey: 1:10:01

I filter myself for work. I can filter myself.

JP: 1:10:05

It'd be fun and we're past watershed, thank God. But still, it's a charity stream. So we've got to be good. But yeah, please join us it's gonna be awesome, What are you looking forward to Davey

Davey: 1:10:15

Going to The Crown for a meal, which is meant to be owned by Banksy in Pilton. Okay. It's rumoured to, dunno if it actually is and has been reopened and a lot of rumours floating around Bristol that's owned by Banksy. So there you go. That's something I'm looking forward to seeing out there something different. Yeah,

JP: 1:10:33

There you go. You're a foodie.

Davey: 1:10:35

I am a foodie food like going out for for goodness, why then now I need to do my exercise because I like my food. Yeah. I have to do the exercise so I can enjoy my food, which means I can't gain as much. So it's like a weird equilibrium of food gaming

JP: 1:10:52

Food game of life. Yeah, that's fine. And then we go again,

Davey: 1:10:56

How about you, Adrian? We've spoke about what you're looking forward to? Yeah, from the expo,

Adrian: 1:11:00

I came back with essentially three Kallax cubes worth of shelf of shame. Nice. So between the handful I already had nearly dwindled the shelf of shame down to like three boxes, I think it was. And I've now got three and a half, three or three and a half Kallax cubes worth a shelf of shame. So I am working my way through that. And so other people I play with are knowledgeable in the idea that every time they come over, they can learn a new game just so I can get it to play wherever else they want, as long as we play one that we haven't played before, so I can sort of get it through and see. So I think there's a couple of games on there that are kind of intriguing to me at the moment, one of which I didn't actually get the Expo arrived afterwards, which was Isle of Trains. So little sort of engine building, not route management, but you're sort of taking certain spaces up with your cards and getting your passengers on board and stuff that looks really interesting. Looks like a nice light to midweight game. So that arrived, but also I managed to nab a secondhand copy of the 51st state Ultimate Collection. So several years ago, I was asking around do people think 51st state is better or Imperial settlers are better. They're both by Ignacy. however you pronounce his surname, but so yeah, they're both by Portal Games by Ignacy. And they have a similar idea, which is that there's kind of three levels of cards that you can play out. And then you play them left to right. And you build an engine and some other bits and pieces kind of in it to make. It's a an engine, sort of Tableau builder that builds you an engine to getting more points. And reaching when I asked everyone said well, Imperial settlers has its own each Empire has its own deck. The graphics were quite cute. See, they reminded me like cartoony real RTS style graphics. But it's a bit of a meaner game. And I thought, well, I don't have that many mean games in there, the idea of having a nation all to its own, where you have to kind of learn the nation seem great. But when I played it, I realised that I was never going to get around to learning all these nations enough. So as much as I enjoyed the gameplay, I didn't really enjoy having the separate nations that will have their own play style and will do different things. So I sold that off and I bought 51st state instead, which is a lot less mean people can find it much harder to muck up your tableau that you're building your engine that you're building, and it's a shared pool of cards to play with instead. And with that, our final turn is wrapping up. Thanks everyone for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and review on your podcast player of choice. If you know someone who you think might enjoy this podcast, please let them know so they can have their turn of listening to and that was the last episode in my run where I've been first player. I'm handing over to Becky who will take first player for the next few episodes. If you want to get in contact with the show. We are on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and BoardGameGeek or via email all of which details are in the show notes. We'll be back again in two weeks with another episode. So until then, whose turn is anyway