JP: 0:33

Welcome to Whose Turn Is It Anyway, a board game podcast where we talk about board games and invite you into our gaming group. We are full of stroopwaffles schnitzels and bratwurst. As we've come back from our very first Essent trip. I'm joined by Adrian. Hello, Becky. Oh, Hi, Rob. Hi. And the Bad Boy of board gaming Davey

Davey: 0:53

Booyakasha.

JP: 0:56

Thanks Mate.

Davey: 1:01

well, you said it. I had to follow. I had to follow through. So I left your last. Yeah. What is what I said? Hi. You introduce me normally.

JP: 1:08

Well, how are we doing guys?

Becky: 1:13

I'm super tired. I was really really stupid and did not book today off work.

JP: 1:18

Bad news.

Rob: 1:18

You're not the only one on that front. Becky. I also happens to work today. And I would much rather have not

JP: 1:25

bad news squared. That's not good.

Rob: 1:28

You guys are all good. Yeah, yeah. I

Davey: 1:30

had I wish I actually work today. Um, the other boat. I had nothing to do

JP: 1:34

so that to the two people that had to work who wish they hadn't? Yeah. Oh, just

Davey: 1:37

wandering around the house last like thinking that I should be looking a board game right now. But I can't. So why is it so quiet? And yeah, exactly. Just kind of got my board games out. Most of them do unpacked it all did the same. Put it all back in the box, put it away, then move around the house a little.

JP: 1:54

It didn't take me as long as my holes not as big when that's finished. It's now half nine. We're gonna do now. So now we've just literally come back from our very first Essen experience. And this episode is devoted to that really is to give you a bit of an insight into how we found it, what we did, what we played, how we got there, what songs we sang, or butchered.

Davey: 2:17

There's a lot. There's a lot a lot. So

JP: 2:19

I thought we'd just start off with some of the logistics and just kind of how we got there. And kind of where we stayed and yeah, just some of those things. Because some funny stories around that as always. So yeah, we set off on the Wednesday, guys a long time. Yeah, it was. Was it Wednesday? Yeah. On the Wednesday beforehand. And Wednesday morning, we'd always planned to drive over mainly because it's probably the most cost efficient way of getting lots of people over to a different country. And I have a seven seater car. And we plan to obviously, obviously have six people in me, Becky?

Becky: 2:55

We did. We did. Unfortunately, Carly couldn't make it. But we did use his space for board games on the way back, which he's benefiting from. Yeah, absolutely.

JP: 3:04

Yeah, we ended up going the lovely free or free range. was nice to see the henge. Is it?

Becky: 3:10

No, no. Very disappointing. I was expecting

JP: 3:15

a lot the road has said everyone slows down it's though like oh Stonehenge and it's always a traffic jam. Although there wasn't that that was two

Adrian: 3:25

o'clock in the morning. People were in bed.

JP: 3:29

So yeah, so we call the channel tunnel. And, and then yeah, hot towel over the side and drove through four country countries later. Yeah.

Rob: 3:38

drove through France, Belgium,

Becky: 3:42

Netherlands. Germany, five countries one day.

JP: 3:46

Yeah. The SN in the SMA. And then we kind of arrived about eight then we ate a night and everyone's hungry, got a hotel, went out, got mackers got some mackers played some love letter. We did play some games. Yeah.

Davey: 4:03

That was the very first game. Yeah, it was the first game we played. Oh, scow, I forgot scout.

JP: 4:08

Scout and love letter. Yeah, what an evening. Yeah,

Davey: 4:12

I remember that. Because you came. I came out from the ashes when Scout I think he

JP: 4:17

played the best game of Scout I've ever seen. And of what 10 You played? Oh, yeah, it was.

Adrian: 4:24

It was three to 10 seven cards in a row, which is

JP: 4:28

like that

Becky: 4:31

beat that sent me to you know, give props to JP for his very, very good driving. It was very it was very easy for the rest of us, but it looked like a pretty good journey. And he did magnificently for getting all that way. Thank you.

Davey: 4:43

And we came up the other side.

JP: 4:44

Yeah. Still alive. Yeah, exactly.

Davey: 4:46

Fall asleep or anything. Or at least if you did, we didn't know. It's fine.

JP: 4:51

Okay, pinch them. No, no, is the drive actually wasn't too bad. I think I was saying this to rob the other day. I think because you all kind of entertained me.

Becky: 5:02

I sang a lot. I don't know. Meaning we sang a lot. Yeah. What else to

JP: 5:05

do with the really kind of shitty playlist that

Becky: 5:11

wasn't the cheesy bangers playlist. So I mean, no, no, but it was good,

JP: 5:14

but it had its own place. Mostly. As the top of my head a lot of years

Davey: 5:22

there wasn't a lot of euro pop and there was about an hour yeah. That's a lot of euro pop.

JP: 5:35

He said there should be more your euro pop.

Rob: 5:35

The highlight of the journey for me was when we got on the on the train, and Vengaboys Come on. Volume went up and bouncing. I mean, the people that unfortunately in the same sort of, you know, carriage with us must have just oh no.

Becky: 6:01

company with those. Where are

Davey: 6:03

they off to? But it was red light district and

JP: 6:07

full of excitement.

Rob: 6:09

We were bouncing for the majority of the trip, which was quite cool.

Becky: 6:12

Yeah. So if anyone's if anyone's thinking of driving across, I would strongly recommend get your playlist sorted get your car snack sorted. Yeah, you'll have a great time.

Rob: 6:20

I messed up on the whole car snack thing. You guys were outstanding. Your game was on point.

Becky: 6:26

I'm good at anything. It's Kasner

Rob: 6:27

I was the weak link in in that sort of in that side of the journey. And for that, I humbly apologise. But you guys are outstanding. We got

JP: 6:35

your freedom. We really did. So we stayed at the Ibis I'm not gonna pronounce it but it's near the Hbf train station. Because I'm literally butcher the name of I attempt to pronounce just do it anyway.

Becky: 6:51

Half Bahnhof how far I mean,

JP: 6:53

your German is better than mine. In fairness, so you stay there it was pretty cool.

Rob: 7:01

Base of Operations

JP: 7:02

it was fine like it was literally what three minutes walked on the premiere and and the train station yes that it was literally just up the road. plenty of places to eat and chill afterwards and yeah space for gaming in the evening as well with all that free night. Yeah.

Becky: 7:19

Well lovely. What they actually yeah, pretty

Adrian: 7:20

good. For games returning up we went set up in like the little sort of the four years. I think there wasn't much else option there like no through into the restaurant. And then you went there and there's like 40 other people

JP: 7:33

got Yeah, we now know what to do.

Davey: 7:36

Seemed like quiet and a little point. No one's here playing board games. Then you went to the restaurant. You're like, oh, no, we're just in the wrong area. Absolutely.

JP: 7:44

But I think in terms of getting to the convention and back you're about 40 minutes walk maybe a bit under or over depending on your speed. But we're right next to the the underground, which is about 6 minutes. Six, seven minutes. Yeah. A few even cooler theres scooters everywhere bad boys. Yeah. The line scooters now they were so good. My fault you're absolutely insane going on one of them. Until I joined you did yeah, yeah I'm an idiot. I want to go on one. And so what did the next day? Yeah,

Davey: 8:17

I think I think that's yeah, I think that's how I'm gonna get about so it was

Rob: 8:23

absolutely the right decision. Yes, we got we we got up a little bit late on the side on the second day. a little bit late still in plenty of time. We got we got to

Davey: 8:31

where we left the train. Well the tube station what's nice about that yeah, it's just before but yeah, and the queue was horrendous so we decided to walk because Adrian walked home the night before yeah and said about what a lovely walk it was so if we walk it and it was great and David come across this parked up scooter in the middle of the road and his eyes went big like it was Christmas morning and it was I'm gonna get a scooter

Adrian: 9:04

15 minutes from work out how to get that

Davey: 9:05

yeah, it was a scooter that was already booked. But it took me a while to download the app get it all sorted and then it was like booked so I was like what I need to get the scooter near now because I can't go past you guys without a scooter They're going to pick me up yeah so as I need to find one couldn't find one so I thought I just walk with you guys for a bit longer and then saw another one just off the beaten path and I said right Keep going guys don't wait for me this time just keep going I'm definitely getting a scooter and then got one and then off I went

Rob: 9:37

I don't know why they when you went by all I could hear was P Diddy but boy I don't know I don't know whether that says more about me or you but

JP: 9:50

thing about Davey is that we kind of decipher this on this trip that you're kind of chaotic neutral persona Yeah, but with a high looks

Rob: 10:02

ridiculously high.

JP: 10:04

So that just means that you just go man who cares? Just try anything and do anything without really having any consequences.

Davey: 10:12

It's the hi looks that this made me chaotic. I guess that's probably why because if you didn't do that Yeah. Choices.

JP: 10:19

You get rewarded by not dying yourself and why wouldn't you? Yeah.

Davey: 10:23

Was it was good fun.

Rob: 10:24

I think looking back I should've scooted to it rather than

JP: 10:27

it's, I recommend it. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. Probably the funnest way to travel to the main convention

Rob: 10:35

at about six euros?, not even that

Davey: 10:37

there was for women our way back when we went from the restaurant, it's four euros something wasn't it? It was like, three quid I think the first time I found I like, because you get 10 minutes free to start with, I think the start, I'd already paid and then I was fumbling around with it, trying to get it going. So it's not working, trying to twist it like yeah, and accelerate. And then eventually, I realise you have to be moving, then put the thumb stick down, and then it goes. But first of all, don't bloody. Let me walk around with this. Yeah,

JP: 11:10

certainly. And I just learned from your mistakes, and you just don't notice their nose. So

Davey: 11:14

you got to be moving. It's all good.

Becky: 11:15

The tubes really easy to do. I think buying a ticket can be slightly tricky deciding, am I buying a single mob I return for one day, or buying a single return for four people because you could do that. But that four journeys. Yeah, so wouldn't even get it in English, though. So and there's signs everywhere, you just clicked the button on the front that said, essen. They make it easy for you. So that was quite good. We didn't ever get our tickets checked. However you get a big fine, if you are found to be travelling without your ticket being stamped with a little stamps are actually on the train.

JP: 11:47

Yeah, we're confused as that star was on, right. We know we have to stamp the tickets, you know, we thought they'd be on the platform. Nope, they're not on the platform. And actually on the trains, which I found a bit odd.

Adrian: 11:57

In the Czech Republic, they have them on the train. When you take the tram anywhere you like the things the boxes are all on the trams. But you can't buy a ticket on the tram you have to buy the station when you use on the tram.

JP: 12:08

It's just placed kind of thing is like, right on the door as well. Which wasn't. Yeah, so Well, if it's a busy train trying to you know, everyone's getting out if you imagine like the underground in London and trying to get through a busy tube to try and get something stamped 39 and get it stamped, oh, find it to be a massive problem. And no one ever checked them. But But yeah, it was all good. Yeah, easy when it really Yeah, be honest. Yeah, of

Becky: 12:32

the train station, the South or the West and the building is literally right there. You can't miss it. It is giant, it's huge. It's the biggest building ever, you could probably see it from space,

JP: 12:43

my advice from getting in is the south entrance. Like we did both. And it could have been a day thing. But getting in from the south entrance was a hell of a lot faster, less people.

Davey: 12:56

I think they just organised it better. So you had to get your ticket checked, there was about six people checking tickets, you had to get it checked before you even got in the building, which meant that there was a flow. And then the queue for the doors being open was actually in the building instead was the other side, you pretty much all filtered into a bottleneck. So they let you in the building first. And then you filtered into a bottleneck to get your tickets checked. And it became and so they didn't even let you in till 10. So your tickets didn't even get checked till 10. So then you then had to queue after that. So

JP: 13:31

we the davey you scooted off, we went in the entrance, which I think is the main one. And we was after 10. So it was already open. And it still took quite a fair amount of time for him.

Davey: 13:42

And I was quite open towards the front of the queue at 10 when they opened and it still took me about 20 minutes, I think, yeah, to get 10 or 15 minutes to get to the mindclash stand to queue up and get us booked for

Adrian: 13:57

mindclash was right at the other end for that one. So like the South entrance, mindclash, basically. So that was it. That was part of the walk. Because if you're going into all three, you go south, you go south, obviously, if you're gonna be the other end, I think it's probably about the same as if you'd gone all the way south and then walked to the other. Yeah. So yeah, kind of, I think it worked out just about, we we've pretty much started everyday wanting to be in Hall three at the start of every day. And it worked out for us. So

Becky: 14:22

it's quite helpful. But they've got the app or this year, at least they had the app. So you could download that. Check out the halls that you wanted to be in. So you kind of maybe give yourself a little mind map of where I want to start here. So therefore I'll go to, you know, the south entrance first or whatever. So if you kind of play your cards right and make a plan, if that's your jam, then you can easily do that. It did

Davey: 14:41

feel like on a Thursday, the whole three was really busy. But I have them kind of compacted into that hall to start with. And because it wasn't one of the busier days it got busier and busier. But it seemed like a all three everyone was trying to see all the new hotness I feel like they come back to that a lot of it into that one or

Adrian: 14:59

I thought of it slightly differently in the fact that I felt like whole three started busy and stayed busy whereas all the other halls got busier as the weekend went on for like all of the numbers that extra that you got spread out amongst all the others, whereas Hall three just stayed packed. Yeah, from Thursday night. Obviously we didn't do Sunday but a Thursday all the way through Saturday was just absolutely jam packed in Hall three at all times of the day. Whereas the other Hall seems sort of ebb and flow a little bit more across different times and different days. But yeah, you're right, Hall three was rough.

Davey: 15:31

Spread our mornings,

JP: 15:32

I think square well, the I was a popular but the DTU AMITA euros, publishers that most people would know or have heard of, mainly in that hall, and just seemed to be where everyone wanted to be. Which was great. But Christ it was busy. Yeah, it was. Yeah, can

Rob: 15:50

I just say that from a tourist point? Waterplace s&s? It's lovely. It's beautiful. The people were lovely. You know, and the place was lovely. Like we felt I'm a very nervous tourists very nervous traveller felt completely safe at all times. You know, it was clean it was it was friendly, it was everything you'd want it to be for that type of event.

Adrian: 16:17

Back at what 9/10 o'clock was it, I think it was like it was dark outside at least, or back on my own through an area I'd never been before. And again, I wouldn't normally do that kind of thing. But it just felt so safe. And you've pretty much had the exception of about a two minute bit of walk from where we were doing like the restaurants and where Essen was to the hotel was shops and people are like eating outside a lot and all that little part of them and then you get to the train station apart from about a two minute gap in between. It's actually felt quite safe to walk between Yeah, so and that even sort of like the night Yeah, lovely place.

Rob: 16:50

Yeah. And I'd happily without the convention it was it was lovely. To the point where I got home as I said to my wife, like we need to go to Germany's if the rest of Germany Germany, sorry, is anything like essen and yeah we are happy to go back from scratch. It was quite good as

Davey: 17:06

well. Food was lovely. Yes. Nice places

JP: 17:08

it Yes, we did. We did the traditional let's have a German now in an Irish Pub. Five minutes. Five minutes was all around

Becky: 17:21

it so yeah, shout out to Fitzpatricks It was very nice wasn't it.

Davey: 17:27

it was amazing. It was nice.

JP: 17:29

I mean, you'd expect it to be

Becky: 17:32

that beer the hop house 14 I have drank that over this in this country. So it's not a German beer. Just saying but it was very nice. It was lovely.

Davey: 17:39

Yeah, the other ones Bit bigger. And the last one I remember the pizza place one as well. It was nice, but

JP: 17:47

we have to give a shout out to Joel from the Devon dice podcast player who joined us on that that fateful pizza night evening. And I just remember Joe's face going or reading crying. The spice of the Jesus. I think he was the first that's okay.

Becky: 18:06

I did not have that pizza. Although I liked spice I could have had I had a really nice. What's it called parma ham. Nice, really delicious. I mean, Claire was at one of the table and we had different pizzas. You will we're just copying each other and having one pizza. Yeah. And yeah, it did look really nice. So I

JP: 18:22

have to say it was amazing. It was amazing. But yeah, anything else on logistics food the place more should we talk about games? Let's

Rob: 18:32

get to what she was talking about again.

JP: 18:35

Talk about the games right, like first

Davey: 18:49

gone and it seems so excited.

JP: 18:51

It's just the first one first game that

Becky: 18:55

we get 10 metres

JP: 18:58

10 losses or we shuffle through like you know the sheet that you are going to look in Why'd I that everything. I'm really excited. We're about to experience our first day at Essen and then I spot the chip theory games booth. Literally. It was drama for with it. So I made a beeline for chip theory games. And then instantly saw a person I recognise, which is Andrew Santoro, who runs or he's on a lot of the live streams that I watch, because my you know, watch them all. Yeah, and I thought we're gonna just display basically say really like your streams, all that kind of stuff, then a bit of fanboying and just introduce myself and then I don't know what happened the next time you know, we're all playing Elder Scrolls.

Rob: 19:42

I was at the front trying to get an eye off the board. Yeah. He came over and he said, Are you interested? I said, I cannot wait to play this bloody game. And he said, You guys are media, aren't you? And I said, Well, we do a podcast. And he went, Yeah, your media, aren't you? Yes, yes, we are. We're really good at this. We're not demoing to the public. So your media are new. Yes, definitely media. Who's awesome. Come on in. And I can't even talk about it. Was that excited? I was I sat down was that I can't believe we've been in Essen for 10 minutes

Davey: 20:16

that I But I didn't even think it was 10 minutes. I think it was like two minutes. The doors open

Rob: 20:21

then bang, that I know it's coming next year. I'm a massive Elder Scrolls fan. I love the Elder Scrolls Online Skyrim, oblivion and Morrowind and all that everything. So the fact that I'm sat down playing this game, and it was a prototype, yeah, well, so the artwork wasn't anything. But somehow better because they took some screenshots of characters from oblivion. Yeah, which is the next Xbox 360. Game. But potato. So yeah, and it was brilliant, and it somehow enhanced the experience. But if the finalised game is anything like what we played, I can't wait, there was a really good game, the combination of characters, classes and skills, there's so much real replayability in that game. Yeah, I cannot wait to get my hands on it. It was brilliant. And I loved every second of it.

Davey: 21:12

Yeah, if you imagine, they've basically taken all the bits from too many bones that you like and love, and then slapped on all you for more people's criticisms of saying the maps too restrictive from saying that sometimes they couldn't, you know, you're locked in, sometimes you're locked in with a character and the set combos to their character. And they've kind of went away from that. So now you've got this free flowing class system, you've got these abilities that slots into whatever class he wants, you can mix and match your different like abilities and dice, you've got a nice little contention with your skills. So you've got a lot of skills, and you there pretty much said, Go crazy as many as you want. But the limiting factor is going to be if you if you go into one, and you've slot one perpendicular to it, you can only you only ever be able to fill up because you fill out from each side, you're gonna be able to get three or four dice. Six blocks, you'd only have three each side rather than six. And

Rob: 22:13

six and none or four and two depending on how you want to that's do it. Which was cool, but I think I'm going necromantic Archer Good night necromantic Archer just because why the hell not? Yeah, it was it was great. And

Davey: 22:31

they've they've opened up the map as well, the exploration side. So yeah, there's

JP: 22:37

three tiers of maps, because you've got like the main regions, so you could have like Skyrim or insert any of the readings on that one word they go. We played before we played. So you've got the reason that you kind of travel from town to town and things will happen. And it kind of uses the too many bones day system, you kind of ratchet up and then you have what's called clashes. And clashes are like a zoomed in kind of area of the map where you will have fights and you can move around pretty much not as you would expect on a hexagon battle map. But then you kind of have delves where you're in a specific dungeon, which will either be kind of procedurally generated or from cards or whatever, and you don't quite know what you're walking into. You don't know what treasure chests might be there and things like that. So it kind of got that three tiered hierarchy of exploration, which is really

Davey: 23:22

interesting. They've, it kind of feels like they're taking a little segment of some gloomhaven event style. Because they had that obviously the events and yes, too many bones anyway, but they've expanded on a little bit more I feel and then interlink that with a day system, and your events can overlap into your encounters you've got, like sequencing things where if you've made a decision beforehand, then you either have to make a decision later in this event or certain things will happen. Yeah, it's just it feels feels like ironed out experience already. So yeah, I was really surprised.

JP: 23:57

Yeah, and for me is that too many bones fan, You can tell the DNA is in it doesn't feel like too many bones feels completely feels like a different game.

Rob: 24:07

How many people came up and asked us is it just totally bones? Everyone? Yeah, yeah, six or seven people like either what's it like? Or is it just too many bones? Yeah. So you can go in like you said, the DNA is there you can see where it's heritage it's coming from. But it did not feel like bones if not at least the combat system. And I also just know all the chip theory guys were great. They came over they really took care of us. Our Andrew was great. To the point where he was like, just kind of do whatever you want. I don't care since asking, like, well have as much fun with this as you want.

Becky: 24:40

They had lots of fun. They had three

Davey: 24:42

hours. Yeah, he was very interactive. We did pretty much a whole start of a scenario as well. So we got a good taste of the game. And he was used such a good sport, real good sense of humour. We had loads of fun playing brilliant. People were like, you know, crowding around to have a look and then trying to demo it themselves when they so

JP: 25:02

we're very lucky. I just can't help you to even just get to play because you're rolling with me. Because that's what it is. That's

Rob: 25:10

the only thing that that's the only thing you need to take to somebody with a ridiculously high Lux

Davey: 25:15

like a rabbit's foot to you. Now you and

Rob: 25:18

getting him over as well than the job itself. Yeah, another chip theory person who really genuinely took the time to get our thoughts on the game and as if you've listened to our previous podcast on more on why the hell are you asking me you're a professional game maker like don't take don't listen to anything I have to say Just do what you do a bloody brilliant at it, but he genuinely sort of cared about what our thoughts of the game and everything else and which was really, really sweet because like I say he doesn't know us he didn't have to take the time and eat you know, we had a good five minute chat

JP: 25:55

with I was just fanboying you like big time because like Gilly he designed one of the new gear logs, carcass. He's got design credits on Cloud spy, he's got you know, he's he's, he's the Chief Marketing Officer for the company. But he's obviously been there for eight, nine years has been no one knows more than a bit of everything. Like so. Yeah, just great. Just in terms of it just

Rob: 26:19

came over time. You know, talk to us. Because, obviously, day one, you know, everything was a bit panicky, I think there the stock delivery problems and all sorts of stuff going on. Like he didn't have to speak to us at all. So the fact that he did, you know, really set the tone. For me, it set the tone for the next sort of three or four days where everyone was, everyone was just coming speak to you.

JP: 26:42

Again, Elder Scrolls.

Rob: 26:44

So fantastic back it is bloody brilliant.

JP: 26:48

about you guys.

Adrian: 26:49

You got your seat, Elder Scrolls, and I thought well, they're gonna be there for something. Yeah, as much as I love too many bones I kind of had my list and was hoping I would crack through this list. And as you'll find out, I got I barely scratched the surface of it. But one of the top ones was Art Society mid decade and wandered off and came across outside sounds like this one Becky's gonna like as well do my usual thing of selling games to Becky basic,

Becky: 27:14

good job of it.

JP: 27:16

I can't talk about carry on

Adrian: 27:18

suicide is the game by mighty board. And I think it's Mitch Wallace no relation to Martin. But Mitch was designed it, it's a very, I would say simple. It's sort of that like midway kind of tile placement, you're trying to decorate your wall with as much nice art as possible. And at the beginning of each round, you select to a number of different size tiles, and whoever's first player gets to doesn't get to see the art, but gets to see the size of the art. And they can select what they want out of it. And it's all turned over. And you've got a very basic sort of bidding mechanical, you've got one to 20. And throughout the game, you never get that those numbers back in your hand. So you've got 120 to bid on everything. So you're kind of trying to work out whether it's but bid loads start

Becky: 28:05

How much do you really need that particular size piece? Or what or whatever,

Adrian: 28:09

all that kind? Yeah, absolutely. And then the basic rules are, you don't want two types of art next to each other. So you don't want to portray next to a portrait because that's not interesting on the eye you want to portray next to a landscape or something like that. But at the same time, they've all got there's like four or five different types of frame. And you want to put types of frame next to each other. And if you do you get little bonuses, which kind of give you filler pieces don't know they're tiny little filler pieces that will also worth victory points. You also have will have one painting leftover each round. And whichever painting type is leftover makes all of those paintings more valuable. So if you leave a portrait at the end of the round, it goes to one side and it means that portraits are times two times three value, whatever it is, and you're just trying to fill up your wall full of paintings. Can you just kind of repeat that round after round? We only played two rounds. This game works now. Nice and sort of Medium, Low, Medium sort of tile placement really enjoyed it. Yeah, you bought it.

Becky: 29:07

No surprise there listeners no surprise. But yeah, I had heard of it. I recognise the kind of one of their main images for Art Society is this kind of rhinoceros with a with a Cardinal Wolsey hat on. Okay. And it reminded me I've just I've just realised what it reminded me of in Robin Hood, the animated film. Oh, yeah. You've got those rhinos with hats on? That's what it looks like. Maybe that's where they took the inspiration. Yeah,

Davey: 29:34

that's good film.

Becky: 29:35

I did manage to get the promo titles, obviously. So that's quite I

JP: 29:39

mean, if they're gonna offer you the promo tiles I'm gonna

Adrian: 29:39

on it's gonna make you work for it. You got to put get hashtags in social media posts BGG and all that lot. So we're they're trying to how many are there for right? Okay, let's do four of these things. For the promo.

Becky: 29:55

Really collectible, gotta collect them all

Rob: 29:58

games tiles.

Becky: 30:01

And I think I was very restrained this year. Yeah. I

JP: 30:04

was because there was no bring and buy that you wanted to think I go into that was the reason the

Becky: 30:09

only thing that was like, uh, even vaguely similar was like a secondhand store. But it was all in there. On my German is not to a level yet war prepared to play game in German so I was I was spared that you will all spend that the petrol usage of the car was

JP: 30:29

inefficient fuel usage of the weight of the vehicle

Rob: 30:33

to fill up three times

JP: 30:35

in the roof box

Rob: 30:37

we'll say it's Becky's Yeah.

Becky: 30:39

So yeah, that was my first purchase of the of the of the essen. Yeah, it really liked it.

Adrian: 30:47

But yeah, that was kind of it and then we met back up again and had a bit of a look out we around to awaken realms didn't wait to look at Nemesis retaliation. We did. They were we got so we got there. What I think about half two is just after you tried to look into the packs. Yeah, demo. We went straight to that afterwards. And we're like, right quick. We've all played Nemesis will love nemesis. Most of us it's obviously the new one out. And it's like right there. See if we can get booked into play this now like, No, it's all gone. Yeah. And that was like on the first day, but I forget his name, Martin Martin asset. Talk gave us a pretty solid talk through sort of that they were looking to keep a lot of the field there is that still out, you know, being a selfish bastard as we call it part of the game. And there's still sort of pulling bits out of the bag, but there's just a lot more aliens and you should feel a lot more prepared. But there's still like, you might need to go off and do something on your own or do something that hinders someone else. It had great board presence. It's kind of a modular board, isn't it rather than the static board? Yeah, it's uh, build it as you go. Because you are sort of right, we're gonna go into the nest now and clear out now that we know what we're facing. Right? We

Davey: 31:58

have Space Hulk has that kind of board where you like lots of corridors, kind of like slightly claustrophobic but it's quite modular by the look of it as well. So these quarters can be built out in different ways. And the rooms kind of also went from the corner end as well. And

Adrian: 32:13

it looks great. It's certainly kept my attention. It was one that I'd already had on the radar for when it sort of gets game founded next month, next month that was already there, but this having the talk through it and sort of because it is it when they announced its own its Marines going to a nest sort of thing it sort of what how they're going to do that. But watching people play it a little bit and having a bit of a talk through sort of kept that alive for me that actually this should hopefully still feel a bit like nemesis. But with a twist, it

Davey: 32:42

reminded me more of Starship Troopers where they're going through all of the highs and the nests rather than any. Because you've got they've got there's going to be a lot of white aliens coming down and it's that claustrophobic feel, and better. You've got to fight them off, you're going to be given more ammo. And it's still going to be horror as what they said. Yes.

Adrian: 33:06

Isn't it Yeah, alien vs predator that first move that terrible first movie of AVP where they're going into that

JP: 33:13

we've enjoyed it.

Davey: 33:15

That's why I started Chivas cuz I think it's better films. But

Rob: 33:22

can I just say as well, what, what? How cool is that designer in the game is willing to talk through?

JP: 33:28

Well, that's not the designer. And that's the the owner of awaken realms,

Rob: 33:32

but still a big deal. And like willing to chat because he gave you a thorough

Adrian: 33:41

amount of time. He talked through with a lot of the stands had that a lot of yeah, go and meet designers and publishers or

Rob: 33:48

what cool thing,

Adrian: 33:49

anything like that. Yeah, absolutely.

JP: 33:51

All accessible in fairness. They're very good in the industry like that,

Becky: 33:54

are the biggest difference between Essen and the UKGE. I think. In the UKGE there is lots of people that maybe if they're going to pick one big event to go to, it'll be awesome. It'll be so Essen, absolutely. I felt really terrible because I accidentally jumped a massive queue. I really, I really dislike it when people cute I find it really offensive.

JP: 34:19

I don't even know you did this.

Becky: 34:23

terrible about it. I felt really terrible. So wandering round when you guys were playing chip theory game forever. No, I don't mean that when you were wondering where they were, me and age, we're having a nice time wandering around. And I saw I didn't even know it was out because this is how much I hadn't researched it. wingspan had got this amazing fan art sort of card pack, which basically replaces the kind of very first base game cards. And it's just all artwork made by fans of the game. So replace each original, like, you know, artist card drawn thing. And they're really cool ones. Oh, wow, this is amazing. So I opened it up and had a little look. Oh, I definitely want that. And there's no prices on anything. So I kind of wandered over to the main like hub bit of the cash point thing. And I said oh, how much is this? And she said, I think it was 36 Yours might have been 30 to 30 something anyway. And I said Oh, can I take this then please? And should all you have to go there and she pointed to a specific part of the floor right next to the till. So I'd been a good girl I stood there, where she had pointed, which was right next to the person already paying for the thing. So I stood there do you really just pay there? the other person paid, either. He then looked at me, he didn't look at me in like astonishment as if to say you queue jumping cow. He just looked at me. I handed him the game. Have you paid by 32 or six euros, and then wandered off, then wandered past loads of people? And I was like, Well, what are they doing for? realise they were queuing for the queue. I had just utterly jumped. So if anyone saw me queuing for that, I can only apologise I absolutely. Totally did it innocently had no idea.

Davey: 36:06

The podcast, Becky was sharing.

Becky: 36:10

I felt so bad I honestly I was thinking about it for the rest of the day thinking. That's so awful. How many people saw how does she think she's doing just waltzing on in going to the front? Oh, how awful. That was me. And I hate it when people do that.

Adrian: 36:25

Let me tell you how this looked like from an outsider's perspective. She sort of handed it over and went, Hi, how much is this? You heard them saying she went okay. And then just turn she because she was kind of she'd kind of pushed into the queue almost had to ask how much it was, but I was expecting her to come back out again, walk around. And instead, all she did was turn in the same direction as the rest of the queue.

Becky: 36:45

Where the lady was it lady was where she pointed. She didn't say you have to queue what she just pointed to a place. I stood there and paid and just walked off happy as Larry. It was brilliant.

Davey: 36:57

So I've got a queue jumping story as well, which I don't think I've actually I didn't actually tell anyone because I completely forgot because so much happened in between it. But Mineclash had run out of the metal tokens for voidfall. And they suddenly got this like stealth delivery because they said it wasn't a bit of a 16th they got them back. So we thought we're gonna have to order them. But suddenly, we sat down to play perseverance, three on Saturday. So Sunday, we sat down to play perseverance on the Saturday. And the person doing the demo told us Oh, they've got them back in because someone else said something about it. So I quickly jumped up bolted like I've seen him run to the tail from the scooter. So yeah, ran to the tail, because there's no one at that bit of the tiller ran to and then went to get served. And I didn't see this queue either, which was going off down the other side. And she just queue it. No, there's a queue. So I was like, Oh, I'm really sorry, where's the queue, and then it was basically to the side. So I went into the queue. And when I went into the queue, there was a big group of them. They're all together. So then you go got served together. So I literally it was about 20 seconds later, I had to walk back to her. And then I was just like, I did queue that group of people all together. I did go into the queue. But really Yeah, I know she served me and I thought oh, this is awful.

Becky: 38:25

You got your tokens right?

Rob: 38:29

so how did you make yourself feel better about here about this queue jumping instant? Well, I

Becky: 38:33

bought more games.

Davey: 38:37

Jumping more queues

Rob: 38:40

why you guys were getting the getting the demo. I mean, you went into all five so have a little wander around, where a lot of the younger games were placed. Family games in the younger games, and we saw a game the menu played on holiday which was quite cool. Chicken not dog chicken hot. Chicken versus hot

JP: 39:02

dog. Yeah. Which was

Rob: 39:03

cool. But Becky made a beeline for a specific stand that I had no idea why we were going to this stand. But What games did you pick up

Becky: 39:12

Kabuto Sumo,

Rob: 39:14

which I thought district ways is just

Becky: 39:18

amazing. It's just great, isn't it? So Joel from Devon dice, played this. I think it was in the Fox and Hound event. What was it called? Well, the difference? Yeah, and it's all it is very simple premise is like a little stand that looks like a trunk of a tree. You put wooden tokens on it and you put your wooden beetles on it in colours. You've got nice and pink, you might be a purple bug. That's for the little sumo little sumo pans on the box here which is really cool. And they are really beautiful wooden pieces, I have to say just really spectacularly made it looks really really beautiful. Funny that I don't normally look at the looks of games. So anyway, you've got this like little stamp that you put your piece that you're going to push on its butt like those two P machines that you have at the fair or whatever. So you're allowed to poke your piece onto the board and any pieces that fall off are then your pieces for the next you know you collect them. And the idea is to push off the other person's bug before they can put yours off. Very simple. And when I was telling Rob about it, it didn't seem

Rob: 40:21

that interested. I was like, This sounds this sounds ridiculous. And I bought the

Becky: 40:24

base game which actually the reason I've been put off buying it was his is quite expensive for for just like a small box game board and that's how I justified it in the end. It's a small box game and it's like 39 euros, which all right, it's not. It's not 139 euros

Davey: 40:42

each one piece and there's how much that's worse is it? Really?

Becky: 40:46

It's like you're living in mind that justify it to myself. How many games? How many plays am I gonna get for that? And it Yeah, each piece is worth top and take me in it after

Rob: 40:56

we played it that night. Yeah. And it was bloody

Becky: 40:58

It was so much so Rob, what happened? brilliant.

Rob: 41:01

I bought it On the last day.

Becky: 41:02

Yeah, see? Oh, they all they're mocking me for buying stuff

Rob: 41:06

so it turns out is so but you were paying for the game. I turned around was looking at other things. Just you know, waiting for Becky to pay

Davey: 41:14

making sure we didn't go into full fire

Rob: 41:16

And make sure she didn't queue jump, she didn't play properly. And she just came bouncing over. And I was like, You're right. Yeah, I've got the expansion.

Becky: 41:30

Okay, well, there was two expansions and two special cards that I could have bought. I only bought one expansion. I think that shows restraint.

JP: 41:37

I think I couldn't have done that. Well, it would have had both expansion all of it. Yeah.

Rob: 41:44

Because it goes down a wrestling route so you get bugs named after wrestling. Just start going down the wrestling route. And the other expansion is little wooden chairs, and little wooden table. little wooden, amazing wrestling paraphernalia, which is amazing. But it was quite expensive. I'm buying this game to play with my children. They're not gonna get why a steel chair is a thing with a bug

Davey: 42:10

throwing some thumbtacks down.

Rob: 42:13

So I passed on that and I got the same expansion with with additional bugs. Yeah, sounds ridiculous. Loved it.

Becky: 42:21

And my other big thing for the day was seeing the folded space stuff again. You will know how much I love the folded space stuff. I almost almost on the night that we got home as knackered as I was knowing as much as how we should get to bed right now. I almost almost opened the earth folded space pocket but I managed to stop myself. I've got a clue. I would have I would have done the whole thing I wouldn't have. I wouldn't

Davey: 42:47

be doing it. Yeah, use your power as well at that time, didn't you?

JP: 42:50

Well, you did. Yeah. You did. Well,

Becky: 42:53

I did. Yeah.

Davey: 42:54

Yeah. didn't jump the queue though.

Becky: 42:56

No, I did not jump the queue. I didn't do it. Yeah, so I got the earth insert and lost rooms of Arnak talking about lost rooms of Arnak, those guys are so nice. Min and Owen, really lovely.

Rob: 43:14

Really humble. Just so sweet. Just lovely. been quite surprised when you said How much you love their game. It was a genuine reaction, wasn't it? Really, really, but just really appreciative. And, you know, the game has been, as far as I'm aware. It's been a massive success. I love that game. I think it's fantastic. Yeah. Again, and you guys obviously went over and said hi. And kind of chatted to them and they just genuinely seem really pleased. Really happy that people saying how, you know, the game. Again, when obviously the sales figures show how much the game was love. But obviously for them it was you know, stayed humble.

Davey: 43:52

Yeah. Really,

Rob: 43:53

really nice couple. Yeah.

Becky: 43:55

I got the promo card for

JP: 43:56

that. No.

Becky: 44:00

Yeah, it was unfortunate because we've already got an order. It's like about to turn up whenever that happens. What the expansion? Yeah. So I couldn't buy it there. Although that didn't stop me with the Ark Nova expansion. No. But that was because I wanted to bring Kerley something back. I was like, Do you want the expansion now? And we know so well, Dan, I can't say we know. Everyone knows Dan. So he's gonna have the preorder one. Yeah, we bought the one.

JP: 44:25

No, absolutely not. Both of them are got events up for our Ark Nova with Expansion. Yeah.

Becky: 44:30

Good. Yeah. Kerley was in there. He was very pleased to see me come home all the rest of it. I gave him the October expansion. sat on the chair was unpacking it all when all the cards

Davey: 44:38

what I did in the car as well. So yeah, very interesting cards and

Becky: 44:44

gonna change the game up, I think. Yeah, it

Davey: 44:46

made me excited to play Ark Nova again. Yeah. Good. Yeah.

Becky: 44:52

Yeah. That was, Well, I

Adrian: 44:53

think the last thing we had on Thursday was Anunnaki. Yes. So we kind of, oh, God, we've kind of wandered around a little bit. And I think everyone's feet were just, basically we were like, well, we've got find a demo table. No matter what it is, doesn't matter what it is. Let's just go to a demo table and you want to interact with star star but those tables round and that was like every game I wanted to go to like all the tables were just just so hot. There's like this one table left of Anunnaki, JP already played it was like, I just need a bit of a refresh, which is good. Because the teacher was not the best as awful in all honesty, but me and

Davey: 45:26

Rob are falling asleep. I kept getting told off by him even though I was trying to pay attention.

Rob: 45:32

I would ask Dave, your question. They would respond. Did you get get very sternly told off?

Davey: 45:37

He didn't like me, anyone?

JP: 45:40

I think it was just get it. I get it.

Adrian: 45:42

So I didn't I didn't think it I think it was there was a bit

Davey: 45:45

of a language barrier, which I think I think he would just be quite blunt. And I think I think he

Adrian: 45:50

was asking, have you finished doing the teaching bit, but yeah, but he was just very blunt with it with it. Yeah, yeah. We played it. And we say you've already played it for JP, we kind of picked it up from the teacher and then a little bit, you filled in between

JP: 46:06

gaps. Yeah, well, I played on gaming rules last year, like, probably a year and a half ago. Now. Something like I can't remember it. What I remember is the the player boards with a kind of pentagram, and the circles, remember all of that and how that works. Just to me, it was the best part of the game actually just kind of sequencing those answers and unlocking your gods and powers and stuff and, and then playing it I was like, awful. Yeah, really like this.

Davey: 46:33

I wish we could have played through the whole thing because I felt like with my faction, and I was building up to this nice, big one thing about three turns away. And then obviously, we couldn't finish it with his demo. We were hungry. We had to go I

Rob: 46:46

don't think I've ever been so happy to sit down as what I was down to that game.

Davey: 46:50

So angry at the start as well.

Rob: 46:51

I was tired. I was literally I used to work nights and you always used to get to about four o'clock in the morning and your eyes heavy. And you're just trying to stay awake. That's what that was like at that. That exact moment. Yeah, well, you know, obviously he's teaching us how to play this game. Now. I'm not heavy board game player. And there's three boards on this. There's lots of figurines

Davey: 47:15

it's not too bad.

Rob: 47:17

I absolutely loved it. I thought it was fantastic. The premise was cool you know and the minis and the art of the structures was was great once we kind of got into it I mean it's not a game I'm never ever going to be very good at but I love playing it was great and like you said it was just starting to get going and then we kind of we had to leave because dinner reservations and everything else but I surprised me how much I enjoyed it to the point where I was thinking about that game quite a lot like what I would have done differently I'd love to play that game again.

Adrian: 47:50

I'm really fussy for 4X but like person I don't generally get with most but some of my really love and yeah that was that one we meet was one of the few ones I thought actually I need to play this two or three more times to see what this does and really sort of understand if I as soon as you would have figured

Rob: 48:05

out your factions your factions sort of interesting we stood up on

Davey: 48:15

the side cheering

Becky: 48:15

he had a victory lap round the table

Adrian: 48:22

because some of the some of the power sounded really Yeah, powerful some of it and I thought mine's a bit meh like the unlockable one but I'm unlocking your big God as well all of you were eating out and I was like they sound really good and then I realised quite how powerful my the Egyptians were unlocking their gods like their mini Gods skulls you can move these little cubes around a lot quicker and yeah, then I was just neater if I can get to this turn then I'll have had a couple of Gods out and I'll have invaded because you've each got your own planet which the different gods can invade and then you've got Earth which makes fighting over isn't it it's

Davey: 48:56

Lantis right in the middle which is this

Adrian: 48:58

which is the kind of the hub of it all I mean, the theme

JP: 49:02

of Federalist thinking what what the hell is this game the theme is that your alien races which are all themed after our mythological gods, ufology. Yeah, mythology got Egyptians and who are you the stars?

Davey: 49:13

I was the Mesopotamians

JP: 49:17

and then yeah, you had like the the Greek Norse Yeah, and then

Rob: 49:22

the Egyptian gods are cool as hell yeah, you could build pyramids was just illogical got little chips you can move around the board. Pyramid is

Davey: 49:31

I did like your

Rob: 49:33

ability was fantastic. Yeah. But yeah, so again, that I looked at it was like yeah, this isn't for me. And as soon as we got like two or three rounds in and kind of realised what was going on. It was brilliant. Yeah.

JP: 49:46

Physical game.

Davey: 49:47

At one point you were you were very much how can I do this? Can I put

Rob: 49:52

because there was so much stuff and honestly, my head was bobbing. I honestly think I did fall asleep for about Oh, shit. So that that was that but once we started playing it got into it. And just for about three rounds, you're good. I'm gonna do something really cool. And I'm in Asia and you just like, can we just play it until I can do this really cool.

Adrian: 50:16

No, it was about in time with Yeah. Because after we had that initial teach, it was it's a cranio creation. Yes, board game. One of the other people on hand kept coming around and kind of going Is everything okay, and sort of making a bit of jokes about the fact that had our elbows on the corner and was pulling the tablecloth off and stuff. But she kept coming around and making sure we were okay and all that lot and having a joke with us and sort of made it a bit more. It's just a rough start, wasn't it? After that once we got into it, and so I think it was just

Davey: 50:50

how busy and loud it was. You couldn't hear him, he realised that so he was just pretty much teaching JP because JP had his full attention there. And you're sitting next to him as well, just nodding. So it was it was just it was definitely a rough start. My only downside for this game was the board. The double layered boards really nice, but mine looked literally like a boomerang look. But it's curved so much, which after use and playing it will probably flatten out and you could probably flat out in the box and stuff but for the demoing it was just like I was like a seesaw or , long ship. Yeah. But don't put other than that. It was a good game. It was a good game. I would like to get a few more plays in before. Yeah, exactly. Literally

JP: 51:36

delivered.

Becky: 51:37

Arrived. It had arrived when we were on hold. Yeah. So when we got in from holiday, we open the boxes, and it was there it is got away. Also, one last thing that I did was by Forest shuffle. Yes. Yeah, very popular. A lot of people. Yeah. So I was buying a copy for Stu in the game group because he kind of put a little shout out request. And as I was stood in the queue, cuz it was a little bit of a cue to get in the booth. And then rang Kerley was like, Well, I like this. He was like, Well, I don't know, why don't you look on BoardGameGeek out hold, see how, you know, see what the happiness rating is. And I think it was something like in certain number here that I have literally a 2.5 and a three. It wasn't Yeah, it wasn't heavy. I was like, I got a little fox on the front. Stewart really likes it. And he you know, some of the games he likes. Oh, go on. Why not? I'm gonna wait. It's a small box. I thought they won't tell me off too much. I just buy a small box game. So I bought small box game.

Davey: 52:35

Yeah, so it's game, if you haven't heard about it, it's basically you end up playing animals which have abilities. It's kind of like a deck builder, his card game. But then you also have the way your animals slot into a different and you have trees that you're placed down, or caves and you walk trees that you're placed down. And then you can slot your animals over and you have like dual labelled animals. And they will like slot over from either the right side, the left side above or underneath. And that sort of similar to the enclosures in Zuuli and you have to slide these animals in, you'll get modifiers depending on what certain animals you've got in, you'll get certain benefits or obviously playing them. And then you've got like a little row. And you have to spend your cards to play another card. But there's cards you spend and going into the middle of the row so that other people can get them. So you've got to really think about what other people's can't like, do they want these cards in my hand or they're not played them? Yeah. So it looked like a really tight lightish card game so I can see why the fuss was there. I didn't actually play I just read the rules. TradeStation

Becky: 53:42

TradeStation, which is what got us talking to the really nice people. Yeah, the guys from

JP: 53:49

Texas, Texas and

Davey: 53:51

Glenn and crew. Yeah, yeah, they were really nice because we never got to play with at the end. So if you're listening to this, we are sorry, but we just ended up being so busy. It was it was hard to fit it all in. But they were they were lovely.

Becky: 54:03

He runs a board game convention in Alaska called platypuscon. Yes,

Davey: 54:09

he does. Yeah. And he also he programmed some of the games on Board Game Arena.

JP: 54:14

He did. you quizzed I'm on that didn't you?

Davey: 54:17

And we're just having a chat. But yeah, we will. Oh, yeah.

JP: 54:21

You're basically geeking out talking Cody language. I'll leave you to it.

Becky: 54:31

They were really nice guys aren't nice.

Davey: 54:33

Nice. So it would have been nice play forest shuffle with them. But we never got around to it.

Becky: 54:37

I think that's why maybe next year, one thing about the con, everybody's there for the same reason, and people seem to be so friendly. I think if you'd gone there on your own, you would have no problem at all. Finding people to play games with or you know, there's no pressure. It just seems that Yeah, everybody in the hotel is pretty much, and has come for board games?

JP: 55:02

And you fill in a player slot? Yeah, great. Yeah.

Adrian: 55:04

Yeah, there's a game called trio, which got a bit of a shout on a few people's like YouTube channels and all that luscious little card game. You asked for the highest and lowest of the person next year. and you're trying to collect sets, basically. And I walked past that twice. And both times I've got a Oh, could you join? Because there was two people that took place. So yeah, I had that a couple of times and a few other places, invited me on my own. But normally it was for bigger games, or I was just about I just had to be somewhere because I hadn't we had time booked in or whatever. Where's all the games actually wanted to go to add a queue mile long couldn't get to it. But yeah.

JP: 55:41

Cool. So now that the game that I kind of want to talk about next is actually what we played on the Friday, which is I didn't even know it was at Essen. And it was thanks to rob, who kind of pointed out was on fire. I went over there.

Rob: 55:57

I went a Reccy Well, luckily, you guys didn't spend too much time in one did you?

Adrian: 56:01

Yeah. Times. Oh, really? Yeah. I'd seen I didn't know you would, because it's trading card game. And I didn't know that you guys were up for trading cards. I didn't mention it. Cuz it was like, Well, you guys don't normally talk about trading card games.

Rob: 56:15

I had to basically run back to you guys, because I don't think I quite said it like that.

JP: 56:24

Now as soon as you told me I did the same and we ran off together to round off to one. Star Wars unlimited. So is their next kind of trading card game coming out next year? March. Yeah, March. And we thought I was gonna check it out thinking we're not gonna be able to play this. Again, very lucky. Spare table just sat there open, jump. Get in it

Rob: 56:45

because they had a lot of German, obviously, the German speaking tables. Not as many sort of English speaking. But luckily a couple got up and walked off. And he said, we've got two seats available. So we managed to play a full game.

JP: 57:02

But yeah, we just yeah, for game end to end. And I played Darth Vader, because you're an evil get class that you played as Luke Skywalker. Legend. Whatever true. What happened?

Rob: 57:18

I got my ass kicked. Yeah. I've never played trading card games before

JP: 57:23

I don't think I have. Netrunner? I've played a trading card game before.

Davey: 57:31

But then they're very different

JP: 57:34

classes of trading? Because he

Davey: 57:36

net runner? Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, then keyforge? Was?

JP: 57:41

Is it a trading card game when you bind the deck? Yes. Yeah.

Davey: 57:45

This is trying to work out any

JP: 57:47

sort of JP. For those that don't know what it is, I mean, I can't really compare it to any like magic or anything I've never played,

Davey: 57:55

I can say what it is. Basically, they've taken some of the elements from commander, if you have no commander is, is basically you have a leader, or your commander, and that leader sits out on the board. In this unlimited, you have a passive power, which will sit there. But then to get your commander out or your leader out onto the board, you have to spend some mana, or some what are they called a resource, discuss, call it resource, some resources. What they particularly do well is they deal and the same as the Lorcana. Yeah, they deal with the resource issue with you can spend the card from your hand, put it face down, that's now your bit of resource to spend to get a card out, you'll never get that back into your hand. And while at the moment anyway, the annex where you might be able to switch those don't know, it might come out it might not. But that's now your resource and you have slowly build it up. So you have to really think about joining this card later. Can I put this down? How powerful is this card? So the more you know your deck current, the better it is. And then it has what's unique to this and it doesn't have, like in Lorcana was the fact that you've got a ground side and then a space combat side. They can't ever kind of you can't ever have one over on

JP: 59:08

can't have a stormtrooper that does damage to an X Wing. one side. One the over the other has to be troops and then you grant your forces but there are some abilities that do transfer over Yeah, you Yes, because well, space Yeah, things. SPACE!, but Darth Vader, Darth Vader is a different animal altogether. He can do whatever he likes. He can crush an X Wing. Yeah. And murder everyone else. Yeah, lovely. was brilliant. Yeah.

Davey: 59:40

So yeah,

JP: 59:42

thanks for that because I would have butchered the comparison to magic would have said and it's card

Adrian: 59:48

interesting how with Lorcana and that have exactly the same sort of mana system if you like, of producing resources all manaq and come out within like nine months of each other or a year of each other. Yeah, probably been designed fairly separately. And yet they've both come to the same conclusion. I think they must

Davey: 1:00:04

have dipped into each other's like team a little bit with their designing of it, because it works. So mine was so if and they probably looked at Lorcana and they might have even had their own resource system on point and just Oh, you know what that works so 10 times better lets use that

Adrian: 1:00:20

fair has kind of been used in some other card games

Davey: 1:00:25

was Warcraft was an

Adrian: 1:00:27

interesting that they've launched to the major IP trading card games with a very old with the exact same system in it yeah with very close together

Davey: 1:00:35

yeah but it's also the success of locana No it's like the crazy not to have the Star Wars now. And to be fair, the Lorcana didn't really draw to me I love trading card games but it hasn't drawn to me magics and awful states are sold on one magic and then suddenly the Star Wars thing comes out and it's like hello was taken parts and Amanda my favourite format and it's got the basically plays like magic because why they're not reinventing the wheel and it's starting off so it means there's not going to be a lot of convoluted cards in there. I'm in what I will so I'm in

Adrian: 1:01:06

the queue for lorcana was a lot lot bigger

Davey: 1:01:10

it's established now isn't it

Adrian: 1:01:12

was bigger UK and Gen Con and all that like it's been? It's been going on for sure. But

Rob: 1:01:19

really enjoyed Star Wars, really really enjoyed it. Yeah, fast paced really quick. Because it first to 40? it was a 30.8 damage to the moment the first couple of rounds was at Jesus is gonna take forever. It really didn't scale up scaled up quite quite rapidly. And it was great really really enjoyed it. And we we you were looking at videos of this on holiday Yeah, and we both said yeah, we're kind of in already after playing it I'm 100% and it was it was a lot of fun really really enjoyed it The

Davey: 1:01:52

only danger will be popularity hopefully it will

Adrian: 1:01:55

were butchered the launch of Destiny when that came out so hopefully they don't do the same because destiny i loved and they just didn't the first one they so under printed

Davey: 1:02:06

worse that's what it all swings on all swings on how they handle with TCGs hopefully do a good job we're watching

JP: 1:02:14

yeah

Rob: 1:02:16

yeah

Davey: 1:02:18

yeah

Becky: 1:02:22

on his little lime scooter

Davey: 1:02:26

about rolling

JP: 1:02:28

the water anyway, that was that was the big highlight from our man Yeah, also

Rob: 1:02:33

the guy who kind of showed us the game yeah, kept coming back check in once you kind of realised that we knew what we were doing he just left us alone to kind of figure it out. Came back checked out made sure everything was alright went away again. Like he was brilliant with us. And I gotta get JP to absolutely butcher ya know, about we apologise

JP: 1:02:57

I've written is that I don't think it's his name or his his instagram handle Domokos and check out his socials I'll tag it into the the show notes. Lovely chap. Yeah, really, really, really tight time was like like everyone and genuinely interested asked about pod and kind of what we did and what he did is great.

Becky: 1:03:15

Why you lot were playing that we managed to play Was it garden guest? We played that.

Davey: 1:03:21

Game? Yeah,

Becky: 1:03:22

very beautiful.

Adrian: 1:03:24

Quaint was the word that I came up with. You kind of sort of passively, colours and all hand painted. Like, it's like a little garden scene. little flowers painting. They all look like they're all hand painted. sort of thing.

Becky: 1:03:37

Yeah, it was nice. It was like a it reminded me of that game. Was it Chinese checkers that you play when you're a kid when you're trying to get from one side to the other? Basically, is that a little bit more than that? Yeah. I did like it. I didn't buy it. So that was impressive. It

JP: 1:03:56

didn't quite reach the why me now

Becky: 1:03:59

what I was thinking what I was thinking was we played it with, there was a third person that just jumped in, which was really nice. And he was chatty and lovely. I think it would play well at two players because then the contention is even. But because you're sort of sitting around a six sided board, that third person is going to be sitting nearer to one person because like you automatically start from you get trying to get from one side of the board to the other, you're automatically going to start the side nearest to you because that's just where you're where you're looking at. So the person that is next to you on that kind of next side. You're both clashing for that bit, and that's what happens. I think he was sat next to Adrian's who was on your sort of side. You both had more skirmishes straightaway, I think because you both went together,

Adrian: 1:04:40

I just didn't want him controlling the centre of the board. See put. So the general idea is as you said, You've got one, you've got sides opposite each other on a hex. So the two white sides are each opposite each other to yellow sides are opposite each other and two black sides are opposite each other. And you can you have these little cards that have a 123 and a four and and you turn them over to draw that many cards. So the two are on the three is on the backs. If you draw three one turn, you turn it over and it's got the two on it and you can draw two and the others got one and four. So all adds up to five. So that was a bit odd, but you're drawing these cards and these cards have the colours of the flowers that you want. have, you can put down a little tower of however many of these like beetle like the bigger chips if you like, and that becomes your tower. And you, you can, once you've got two towers, you can link them both by showing a number of flowers. That's the number of spaces if you've got two roses and Lily wasn't really like a dance. Yeah, so you need to have two cards of one and one of the other. And then you can link them over and they become your towers until you've linked them, they're not your towers, they're just your colour. And you can by spending an opponent by spending more of the cost of the type of card that this tower is, you can take it. And I sort of started doing a couple of bits. And then this guy who joined us didn't get you know, he built quite near the centre. And my thought was, well, I can't let him take this Center box, it cuts down my options too much. So we immediately went into a bit of a battle and I just happened to win. So he really quickly got cut off going one way to the other. And it does, it says in there quite clearly that there is player elimination, it plays two to six, because it's two or three teams with either just one person on the team or two people on the team. And yeah, two player, I think you're right, I think it works really nice. It's a lovely little abstract puzzle of trying to get from one side to the other, deciding what you want to block deciding what you want to take for your own, trying to build up hand sort of sizes and when to do it and all of that kind of stuff. But the third player, whoever it is, will get eliminated first. And then it's not the longest games player elimination isn't too bad. But I'm always against player elimination, pop a few games

Becky: 1:07:01

out very quickly with Absolutely. almost zero chance of getting back in again. An hour, if that? Yeah, about 45 I'd say which is a long time just you know, to to realise you're on the absent

Adrian: 1:07:16

from the end, they were out. And I won because it didn't allow you any weed filled up the board so much that there was no way of Becky getting around me rather than because I got to the other side. Yeah. Which was a bit odd as well. Yeah,

Becky: 1:07:30

I think it was a nice,

Davey: 1:07:31

I don't think sounds interesting, but needs a little bit of ironing out or Well, I

Becky: 1:07:35

just think once you've got to play yeah,

Adrian: 1:07:37

we watched a couple of there was a three player table got up over the we sat down. And then there was another two player table. And every time I went past where there was to play, they look like a really getting into it and the abstractness it's just the third path that you have to know what you're getting into a little bit wherever and

Davey: 1:07:54

so on to I guess, work as well. Because even if you want to your teammates gets eliminated, they can still be in the running, giving, you know, once the team is eliminated a team's limit Oh, is it not? You wouldn't have one player out and the other player still

Adrian: 1:08:08

would be out. It's like Two vs two. Once a team's out. It's out there. Exactly. That's that's why it's that's why I think a two player or two team works much better. Yeah. And it was lovely. And actually from an abstract puzzle, it was pretty good. It's just that I thought bad for this random person who joined us. And I think we eliminated halfway through the game

Becky: 1:08:28

you probably couldn't do

Davey: 1:08:29

Adrian actually loved it. And secretly he was

Becky: 1:08:34

awkward. Yeah, it was a nice guy. And so then basically, you could either just decide to sabotage a person. Yeah. Which then it's kind of beat you're being ganged up on, which is not really nice in that kind of game. Yeah,

Davey: 1:08:45

the standard problem of a lot of three players. Yes, this game.

Becky: 1:08:48

Yeah. So I do wonder how much like you could play it lots of times. But it all it does, it does depend on the cards you pull. So there is quite quite a luck element. And there is like a wild card. So you know, there is like a card that counts for all the flowers. But I can't imagine you could learn many great strategies and or you learn how you basically like to play. And then you can't do anything different. Yeah. But he was very pretty. And it was it looks amazing.

Davey: 1:09:16

Yeah, we'll pass it did like the look of it. And I did look up my stream. Yeah. In some aspects. Yes. You know, of course, a slight chess aspect. Yeah. With the way that your moves are being made and your contention that it looks good. I like those kind of games, because especially one on one. Yeah. Then you then have to try and think what are they going to be doing in the next mile turns ahead, and it becomes bit more of like, a mind battle? Yeah,

Becky: 1:09:38

I think Kerley would've liked it. That probably would have persuaded me to buy it. But I know it's absolutely not his cup of tea. And it would be a game that you'd have to sit down, but I think it won't be one it will probably take a bit longer because you'd probably be doing a lot more. No, that's mine. No, no, it's mine. No, it's

Adrian: 1:09:54

my it's hard to it's hard to say. But yeah, it was definitely around that 45 minute mark. And it's it's it's it's a nice abstract puzzle. Yeah, definitely. It was popular.

Rob: 1:10:06

Yeah. Back he showed it to me on when we were walking. Blockbusters advanced

Davey: 1:10:17

So there's a game on my radar that I really liked the look of it, which was packs aluminatum. So it's not like, it's not like your other packed games, in that you're actually this one set, and you're playing as parts of Illuminati. And your goal is to come the top archipelago. And you have these cards you have. So you have five cards each down on the board, you've got a diamond shape of cards, it kind of goes 123, and then 4543 again, and then you've got your, your you play either end of the three and four on down the corner, what you have to do is you've got a segment, you've got these actions that you can do, you can scout, which usually is drawing the card that's next to one of your cards and look at it, and you can put one of the cards then from your hand, after you've drawn it back down, you can influence which is you pay the resource on the card, and you put one of your little influence markers on there. So now you started to build up kind of like a guild or a collection of cards that are down. And then you can extort on one of your influence cards, you get the resources that are on the card. And then you can also then also attack, which is spending influence to try and get other people's influence or cards out of them. And then there was another one where you can move your influence around. So you pay what's on the cards that you've got the influence on, and you can move it to another card, which may be down the road resources, etc. Then what was really interesting on these cards down at the bottom had abilities, what you could do is you could do a little sneaky sneaky. What was the word they used for scheme scheme, you can make it do a little sneaky scheme. And basically that would you'd pay cards in your hand. And it had a similar mechanics which has where on the card, there's colours. And those colours, not only what kind of resources you get, they have a link in colour that and it means that when you scheme, you can play a card, and then you can play another card that links to the same colour that's in your hand. All of the cards have levels, which the ACES kind of have to go first. But they're always about gaining resources. But you can always break your chain up to two actions. So you could scheme you can play your card, do some of your actions, Scab, etc. And then scheme continued playing your cards. And you have this real nice because did you want some of the cards in your hands? Because you want to put them down to scout into that area? Or did you want to have it into your hands so you could scheme of same things. It has four box that is probably what is same as citizen Yeah, four inches by five inches or four, square five by five. There was so much depth to this game, it was crazy. And when I saw the box, I was a bit like, oh, that's tiny, like, put me off a little bit. But I'm glad I got to play it because there's loads of depth. There's if you play an ace or a king, you've then got event cards, you can pick and pick into your hand at different things happen. You've got certain plot cards, where you've got to get a shape on the board and take over shape on the board. And then you can reveal a plot card. And that's one of the endgame goals. If you've got a run of three cards that are the same colour, you're now in the most influence of that guild, as long as you have more influence tokens than anyone else. And you get another little power that sits in front of you until someone else takes over which you can. And there was this cool little things that you'd put a card out and I came over and swapped it out because I might the one I put down was really expensive. So I was like haha, you're gonna have to pay for that one instead. I don't really need this one I didn't mind. And it was just like, because you you were able to use it. So he actually ended up you know, good for you. But it was just it was so crunchy. And for just a little card game that you could literally if I was going away, and I was like, Oh, I really want to take a game with me. But I don't have much space that I but I want a game that's got some meat to it. That would be instantly in my bag. So hopefully I can have Oliver Kili Kili. Sorry if I said your name wrong, but we'll get that right for your episode on the podcast and we will talk about just coming out on Kickstarter soon. So end of the month at the end of the month. Yeah, definitely. One is straight in my basket. You looked at it. I loved it.

JP: 1:14:45

Yeah, surprise. Surprise. Davey, I know actually, there's a lot going on here. Yeah. And yeah, I really love that scheme and combo. Kind of decision points that you make. And he reminded me of a 4X game. Yeah, but with cards. Yeah. And just the way that it worked. I mean, you could have seen that to be space ships and but I really like I really Yeah, I really dug it. Yeah, good.

Davey: 1:15:14

It's there's something that is unique. as well, I don't think there's a game I've played this like it. You can like it to a 4X, but it's not 4X, and there's just nothing else is like it. So I'm really looking forward to coming out and speaking about it further. Nice. Yeah. Last week.

Becky: 1:15:31

I bought my first big boy game. Yeah, I've been really feeling left out of the old Mindflash group. I mean, Astra. Yes. But it doesn't really count does it? I think we're all Yeah, we're all agreeing that it is doesn't really count. So yeah. JP, you were telling me about septima ages get when you got to play with Paul. on it? Yeah, the thing was it kind of piqued my interest a little bit, which Yeah, and the more you were telling me about it, and the more I sing as well, they've got the deluxe or near release.

JP: 1:16:07

You've got your copy. Before I've got

Becky: 1:16:09

my you've been waiting for it for ages. So yeah, I was looking at it. And I was looking at it. I thought, well, what I'll do I know. Because one of the downsides I think of Essen is there's nowhere to escape to. Yeah. So it is constant over time. They've they've made an active decision, I think, to not have tables around. For whatever reason. I either want people sitting around playing games, you want people looking at games totally get it or people buying Yeah, it does mean that it's very full on. So I thought what I'm going to do on the Saturday is I'm going to know it was a Friday. Yeah, I'm going to take myself off. And then I'm going to watch some videos about how to play Septima because we couldn't get on the demo because it was literally full in like a second wasn't it? So we did try but we couldn't get you

JP: 1:16:50

to book the demos for the day and mineclash. So running down the crazy instantly doors open that queue is off.

Becky: 1:17:02

Do you know what I could do? I could, you know, watch a couple of videos and that might give me a flavour of whether it's for me or not. And considering that everybody else was telling me to stop buying board games, they will change their tune when I was talking about Septima they all changed their tune.

JP: 1:17:22

I feel like

Becky: 1:17:23

make sure you don't buy too much. We can't buy too much, oh wait Septima?. So in most giant boxes, I

JP: 1:17:28

would say no. So I only said that when I thought Kurley was coming. Okay. All right, well, and then all bets are off what? The whole seat you can put games on

Becky: 1:17:38

So I did sit down when you guys are either demoing or doing whatever you're doing. So I sat down quietly and put noise cancelling earphones and that will be my top tip of Essen take noise cancelling like any or even not in ear headphones. Don't necessarily connect them to anything. But walk around that hall with noise cancelling earphones was so nice. That kind of constant sort of rumble of it's very echoey it's very tall. But a lot of people in there so it's not like it's echoing is just constantly noise reflecting.

Davey: 1:18:11

Like yeah, just noise. Yeah.

Rob: 1:18:14

How loud it was.

Becky: 1:18:17

Until I put those earphones in also, oh, blimey, that's so much more quiet. So I sat and watched the play through what's the official playthrough was like and then watched Paul Grogans bit for a bit the one that you're in actually GP and I didn't even get five minutes in. I was like, Yes, I think I will know. Oh, well.

Rob: 1:18:39

Maybe I didn't as soon as you started watching videos on how to play it as I bet you're in. Yeah, when you're doing

JP: 1:18:46

that you already there.

Becky: 1:18:47

Yeah. So and then I then got the fear then. As soon as I thought no, no, no fear of missing out. Yeah. So as soon as I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna buy this. I then legged it to the stand in case they sold out case because if I'd have made the decision, I was wanting it and then I couldn't have it. Oh my god, that would have been awful.

Davey: 1:19:06

to slip into the front quite easily

Becky: 1:19:14

know, I spoke to a so yeah, we spoken to Dorka the day before. She was really nice. And she wasn't there this time. So I couldn't pick it up from her. But there was another equally lovely guy behind the counter. So yeah, so I bought the game. I requested the game. And then the person said Oh, and there's also these picked up this big bag of metal coins. And I was like you don't even need to ask. So yeah, yeah, so yeah, walked away with the septima with the deluxe edition and the shiny gold. Wisdom. Yeah, tokens

Davey: 1:19:47

just getting into it and someone that's a guy.

Unknown: 1:19:50

Yeah, well,

Rob: 1:19:52

me as somebody who doesn't play Minecraft games because they hurt my brain. Yeah. Loved it.

Becky: 1:19:57

that me and Rob felt like we were actually in the lobby. We were really excited growing up. We decided to play it that evening in the lobby of the Premier Inn. Even though that wasn't our hotel, but it's just the vibe is just like it's okay. That's cool.

JP: 1:20:12

It don't matter. That's where a lot of people stay. Yeah. And it's quite open and friendly. So you You can literally just walk even if you stay in anyway. So that means you buy a drink.

Becky: 1:20:23

So we cracked the game out. And I was like, oh, it's very complicated looking, but I'm getting it. And JP explained, and we did play the, like the teaching game, I will say, but I was like, Oh, I understand this. Oh, I'm like, I'm part of the group. I love it. I mean, like, I understand what's going on. And Rob asked, three, I've gotten what they were, but he has three very, very relevant

JP: 1:20:43

questions. So they're intelligent questions I've ever had. Fire.

Becky: 1:20:48

He made a good point. Good

JP: 1:20:49

point, Rob, are not

Becky: 1:20:50

covered that in the rules. Yeah, it was amazing. It was amazing.

Davey: 1:20:54

Sorry, I've gone into a different dimension

Rob: 1:20:55

like Pokemon evolves.

Becky: 1:21:02

It really made me like, really piqued my interest, how good you know, in a good way, because I bought game now. So. But it's really made me want to like sit properly, and play it and play it properly. I think I'll still play the beginner game again, just you know, to dismantle what's going on. So the gameplay takes place in over four seasons. And you've got kind of five moon cycles in each season. So at the end of that the game is done. So you can very quickly tell how long it's going to take you? Course, yeah, of course at the start is gonna take longer, because you've got to figure out what's what, but the gameplay is actually very quick. This happens. And this happens. And this happens, right? That's that next one, this happens. And so it's, but it is about plotting where you're going to be next, which is not something I'm normally good at. But I don't know the way that of course, Mindclash do it because they're amazing at this. It all makes sense. And it flows. And the art works really nice.

JP: 1:21:55

Thinking that game is quite. I'll say this, it's quite obvious what you should do. And I caught even on one second, yeah, I'll blame tiredness. But it's

Davey: 1:22:07

like, oh, I'm making potions. Materials. Yeah, why am I making

JP: 1:22:10

potions? I'll make one post doing this stupid. But now like, the cards are just clear. You can kind of get a sense of the order of what you're supposed to do. Because it's just logical. Yeah. You know, God ingredients that make you know potion and you're trying to heal sick people. Yeah, so trying to avoid the witch hunters. Yeah. It's great. It was good. Yeah, it was pretty good. All right,

Becky: 1:22:32

excellent. So actually.

Davey: 1:22:37

Yeah, so hopefully, we should do a Halloween one.

JP: 1:22:42

Mine comes before a

Becky: 1:22:45

little event. Yeah, yeah. Look, we

Davey: 1:22:47

got two copies, we can do a little two copy of Septima

JP: 1:22:54

adrian talked about Halloween.

Adrian: 1:22:56

Yeah. So as it is, I was like, where's the link but zombies? Strong strongly, strongly is pretty straightforward. Because my leading to this is going to be through Apex legends. So carry on. I was funding in my head and then you just threw me like a perfectly

Davey: 1:23:15

you stumbled you rolled the wrong dice. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:23:17

I have a low luck staff. So we went by the glass cannon unplugged stand, who are probably best known for Frostpunk at this point, but myself and JP have played Apex legends before. And I think it's fair to say when we turned up for that game of APEX legends, we weren't expecting the most out of that game. That's kind of a, we'll see what's going on. And it's gonna be an IP cash in. I've done I've done a lot of these kinds of skirmishes. War games that are board games just end up chucking loads of dice, and it's nothing like that at all. And I think they've done a really solid job of bringing a shooter into a board game without lots of luck and rolling dice and all that kind of stuff. Walk past it. They've got time with dying right now. This is one of the things I hadn't, it's very few things that I was kind of surprised by, but stranger hadn't known that they were doing Dying Light. So it's like, let's get down on a Dying Light. And so yeah, it was pretty much the last thing I think we did on Friday, wasn't it? Yeah. And it's for me, it felt like it felt like dying light. it felt like touching the floor was a bad idea. And it felt like slowing down was a bad idea. And obviously, it's early in the production, it felt like it was sort of 90% there. To me, at least. And it's a it's a fun, quicker game, isn't it? There's not quite as much tactical depth. There's about moving around the board and trying to get to objectives and backwards and forwards. And so yeah, the very quick sort of what you have to do is during daytime, you pick who you're going to who's going to go next, they roll their dice, and then they each dice is just an action point, but on each face is kind of a bonus. So one dice might have you can move through zombies a bit better one might be you can jump a bit better or climb a bit better or punch a bit better defend a bit better. And you kind of pick as many dice as you need to get to where you want to go or punch enough zombies as you want to punch and if you put enough dice in you get an extra dice called momentum dice, which is then important as you get more action points, and so it kind of builds, but you need to keep getting this momentum dice. And so you do that, and then it moves you. So you sort of climb up a building or jump between two stands or smack a zombie in the face, whatever it is, and then you move on to the next person, it keeps going, you do this to get whatever objective we had to go and unlock a fence that was electrified, and then go and get some bits and pieces that this guy over the radio told us to get. And you keep doing that, and then the zombies can hit you back. And you can use dice to defend with ones. The ones Yeah, the ones you haven't spent so that there is kind of a bit of a, I think you ended up on on the ground, Rob in the first round. And well, I got to save a load of die, so you didn't get your momentum dice. And you got swarmed pretty badly by zombies and didn't take any they didn't take any damage, because you'd save the dice, which was the important sort of decision. And then to start with, none of the zombies can climb, see your safe up higher. And then as it goes on, it becomes nighttime. And escalated quickly escalates quickly, because at this point zombies that can can't climb buildings tend to come out. And it's ordered drawn out of a bag. So you don't get to decide the order you go in, you're now decided the order for you. And also, the not really mentioned it as a mechanic. But you flip over cards depending upon the amount of dice you use, because you're making more noise. So you flip over more cards. And the dayside of those cards is fairly relaxed spawn a zombie move one zombie, the nightside is like spawn three zombies move four zombies. Like if you get caught on the ground at night, you are done for the hurt. So that it's for me, it's just missing something. And I think for me personally, I think it's the map size, because I love the dice bit. And I sort of loved the feeling of not wanting to be on the ground and all that lot. But it felt like we got across the map remarkably quickly. And then got back again, remarkably quickly, it felt like the map needed to be a little bit bigger. I

Rob: 1:27:23

think he did say that we're going to be two of those. Two of the maps that we used

JP: 1:27:29

when he said that the whole scenario, although set in a four by four city, and you only ever see a three by the two.

Rob: 1:27:38

That's my understanding. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:27:39

and the only other thing I found a little bit confusing is there's big sections that the zombies count as being in the big section. And the people move between like dotted lines that says like, might be three sections inside a big section. Sometimes you kind of see the zombies is inside the little section rather than inside the big section sometimes miscounted that a little bit. So I think where you placed the zombies inside, that's actually quite important. So you can see how many zombies you need to wade through because of it. But apart from that, to me, I think I enjoyed it the most out of everyone at the table of me, it'd be somewhat one I'll be definitely looking at. But for me, those are the couple of bits that needed tightening up, but I appreciate it. Very early demo copy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

JP: 1:28:23

it's literally Yeah, we only played a demo scenario. Just to get a little flavour. But yeah, I think for me, it didn't grab me. Really? I can't tell you why. I mean, I don't know the IP might be might be why I didn't know apex. Now I didn't know you're right. I didn't know apex. And that literally just drew me in straight away in a pool when I was in. So that's how apex is played, right? Yeah,

Davey: 1:28:51

yeah. Yeah. So I do all the time when I play it. But yeah, I don't know. It

JP: 1:28:54

just lacking something from me. Personally,

Rob: 1:28:55

I think maybe we didn't see any weapons. Yeah,

JP: 1:28:58

I didn't even change anyway, but I just lost my clothes. I just

Rob: 1:29:05

didn't enjoy the game. I tried to fight zombie. But um, but I think the potential is there. I think that a lot of it because a lot of the get I don't know the IP because I well don't play scary games.

Adrian: 1:29:19

It's not that scary.

Davey: 1:29:21

The noise can be pretty.

Rob: 1:29:24

But but as I say, the sort of weapons that you make in the game, right? Where the crap you find, yeah, find them, craft them. Whatever. We didn't see. We didn't see a single weapon. No, no, again, I think there's something there. And I think I'd be tempted by it. My only thing is I like the silliness of zombicide. I know. I know. It's not for you. Yeah. But I like the silliness of it. And it doesn't take itself too seriously. But Zombicide isn't tactical apart from where where that is very tactical, at least the at least the bits that we played

Davey: 1:30:05

into zombies. So yeah,

Rob: 1:30:08

it's definitely got something there. And I think I think the potential is there. I'd be tempted by it. Yeah, it happens in the in the developments. Ah,

Davey: 1:30:17

it definitely felt like it was missing something for me. It just needed something a bit deeper. And as I said, it's a prototype game. Like the items I did get, which I was able to go and get, they were fine. There was a standard heel, and then it was a bait. And that was kind of it. But the gameplay was fun. It just, it just needed a little bit more. And then we might see develop into that we don't know,

Adrian: 1:30:43

having seen how good Frostpunk a pet, I'm sure there will be I've got a lot of

Davey: 1:30:47

like, hope, we can see that it's gonna

Adrian: 1:30:51

turn into something a bit more than it is at the moment.

Davey: 1:30:54

They've got the core mechanics there. So that's them sometimes, you know, that's the some the hardest bit you've got that you can develop.

Rob: 1:31:01

I'm tempted to back it already. I'm tempted. Yeah, I'm not. It's not a cert.

Davey: 1:31:08

Is it out yet? No.

Adrian: 1:31:09

I think they said March was a little bit of time,

Rob: 1:31:13

I'd be tempted to back it. It's the price point that for me. I mean,

Adrian: 1:31:19

apex is fairly expensive, because it's lots of miniatures, etc. And they've basically said they can do the same with it's going to be they're hoping to do a standard version of the miniature version, I think the miniature version is going to be that much nicer. Also, it will probably be worth getting that version. I just want to see what they do. I want to see a little bit again, there's an there's a part from the action dice, there was a few other dice rolls that personally is someone who's enjoyed what they've done. Because there's no dice rolls in it. I'd like to see less of the Oh, is it noise? Or is it exhaustion and all came down to a dice roll, which seemed a bit odd. I'd like to see a few bits tightened up here or there. But I feel

Davey: 1:31:55

a call it feels a bit more like an Event deck that you then had to pull from and something happened, you know, rather than just oh, it's noise, or oh, it's exhausted. Yeah. Oh, zombies grabbed onto your foot. Now you've lost now you're exhausted? You've been there. I've seen you in Yeah.

JP: 1:32:13

And I think games like that. For me, obviously with the ignoring scenario replays a demo one,

Davey: 1:32:18

yeah, whatever. But

JP: 1:32:19

the games like that, for me will live and die by our intriguing and interesting scenario that you're playing, you need to be invested in what's going on, rather than on just running across the map.

Davey: 1:32:29

And that's what numbers you can simulate LPNs when Nemesis does because it's Yes. Really it's not a game or normally play. But if if it draws me in and intrigues me in that sense that I'll play again.

JP: 1:32:41

Yeah.

Rob: 1:32:43

I'll just let Adrian back it and then play it. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:32:46

I think I think there's enough pedigree there for that company. Now to say that I reckon they're going to do whatever it takes to get it looking a bit sharper than it is at the moment. Yeah, really good core, though. I think it's worth one worth keeping an eye on. While we were doing that, you were meeting up with Chris Prescott.

Becky: 1:33:02

I was Yeah, I was. So we kind of caught up. He didn't actually have a stall. In essence, he was talking about his new game, molehill Meadows. So I'm not really sure about how much we can actually talk about this and the gameplay and stuff.

JP: 1:33:17

We can't meet.

Rob: 1:33:19

We got an envelope. Yeah, I haven't even opened it yet. So we can confirm

Becky: 1:33:24

or deny it. So I haven't opened it yet. Because I didn't want to open it where I could lose things or something could happen to it. So he's still safely sat in the living room. Needless to say, it's very different to Zuuli.

JP: 1:33:34

Okay, cool.

Davey: 1:33:36

There we go. Yeah.

JP: 1:33:38

Thanks, Chris.

Becky: 1:33:40

Yeah, so I'm really excited to delve into that and look at it. Yeah.

JP: 1:33:45

I mean, we were so appreciative of that, like, Chris has even given us an envelope to have a little sneak up

Becky: 1:33:52

to even bother to, like, you know, just

Rob: 1:33:53

first press obviously I wasn't on the podcast where you spoke Yeah. Lovely, lovely guy. Yeah, we're genuinely lovely guy. I told him how much I love Zuuli. I think it's great you know, played with the family they really enjoy it and I just said to him like you know really love again and again he was so appreciative

Becky: 1:34:14

you know, that game was his like passion project right from the start he did everything to do with that game and he's seen it blossom into this

Rob: 1:34:21

and he seemed genuinely pleased Yeah. Love the game massive successful Yeah,

Becky: 1:34:28

so I cannot wait to have a little look but I can't do it when I'm really knackered. Like, I really wanted to look at it as soon as I got in and I thought no, now isn't the time. It's like I don't know what time am I need to go to bed and today finish work came straight around here. So I read this envelope is still sealed and that is no word of a light. On what I know. I know. I know. My car. No, I couldn't because I was scared of losing bits or not giving it the full

JP: 1:34:54

fall into the crevices where my son's Christmas present What do you call it? His treasure

Davey: 1:35:02

trove of treasure treasure?

Rob: 1:35:04

I think that was the most disappointed I saw you in five days was when I dropped a pink Pringle between the seat it wasn't for me. The look on your face. It was like it was you weren't angry.

JP: 1:35:16

I just knew that shell ago was it smell like sour cream and chives Chris

Rob: 1:35:22

for nine hours and the only smell was was so creamy sour chive that's a massive success

JP: 1:35:30

for those pieces Yeah.

Davey: 1:35:32

And to link this back to kind of Chris someone else we bumped into who also loves his games was Jack from mycelia and corr his campaigns going really well really matters just a shout out we we bumped into him and got to chat to him and it was bit stressed out because obviously had been an absolutely crazy journey there for him by the sounds of it but yeah just want to say like well done with his Kickstarter campaign literally over

JP: 1:35:57

8000 backers.

Becky: 1:36:00

400 and third 402nd backer 400 and early something Yeah. Yeah,

Davey: 1:36:06

just for give him a shout out. He was chuffed was so

Becky: 1:36:08

great. Yeah. Me and

Davey: 1:36:09

was also grinning from ear to ear.

Becky: 1:36:12

Yeah. walked by and he was just rammed we just couldn't, you know, could have hung around and tried to say hi to him. But you just like the guys working his butt like he just wants to want to try get to play.

JP: 1:36:21

Yes. See his last few days on his campaign? I think it wraps up. It's probably already

Davey: 1:36:26

wrapped. Wrapped up. Yeah. On Sunday.

JP: 1:36:29

Yeah. So yeah, it's working out. Good for him. Yeah, a few Jack. Cool.

Adrian: 1:36:35

I would like to start with how we started the Saturday. She's just so JP let us in on something he particularly disliked.

Davey: 1:36:45

Yes, it's a quality moment. So you've tried to watch this over and over this as well as you move on.

Adrian: 1:36:55

So JP may have admitted to us that he hates sort of when people do this sort of in nightclubs and stuff like that. And he also mentioned I hate it when people go do the Hey, baby, and everyone goes through our Saturday morning, walk you in there, etc. Doors open, big round of applause if someone's gonna try it. So I sang the Hey, baby line. And from across the hall, you just got ooh aah and then a face of fury

JP: 1:37:23

happiness. You're like, I just thought that was good.

Adrian: 1:37:28

I'm gonna try it and see if I can get again, my luck starts low. No, and mine everyone would just look at me like whatever the other side of the hole decided to join in with

JP: 1:37:40

it's just It just pisses me off. I don't know what it is. It's just it just gets under my skin. It's

Davey: 1:37:45

like, why don't you do like a physical eyeroll friggin job. You're just like, Oh, no.

JP: 1:37:53

I wish I could just join

Davey: 1:37:54

in. Yeah, that was a moment.

Adrian: 1:38:00

Off the Saturday quite nicely.

Becky: 1:38:02

I'll be on time because people have cheered when the doors open. So that was perfectly timed. And it got there. Yeah,

JP: 1:38:07

if you hadn't done it at that moment, it probably wouldn't have worked. Everyone was excited. Yeah, get it. Get it done. Yeah, tell me that. That morning. We got to play perseverance, episode three, which is one of the ones on my list. I need to basically get a demo of this game. I own episodes one and two big mind clash finders, we know. And yeah, I got to play it and Bloody loved it was very good. It was just really like they've taken elements of the first two lineup. So one kind of on on the lighter end, it's not like some of the lighter and then Episode Two is bloody heavy, makes your brain work and all that kind of stuff. And they've kind of taken the the weight of the second but streamlined it in terms of a rule set. So it

Davey: 1:38:53

to be even though even though there's more depth, probably more to do, it felt lighter. And that was because of how streamlined It was

JP: 1:39:00

exactly. So the premise of that so phrase that we if anyone has played episode two, you will know that as a whole of venturing section of the map that you're going to kind of explore all the way up to this temple that sits at the back of the board. Well, so free kind of takes that and runs with it even further, which is there's now a whole wilderness that you can travel around. And the whole premise of the game is that you I've kind of settled on obviously on the island now, I think it's probably been over a year. And you are now building dinosaur ranches. So you don't really have soldiers anymore. You have Ranger Rangers. Yeah. And it's all about kind of capturing dinosaurs and taming them. So you can actually ride them out into the world and then then you can now use them as actually yeah, rather than the die. So you can you have a smaller city zone, which only has four actions on it. I think they condense the city's own area into those four actions. And then you've got the whole wilderness where you can spend the time dinos out and then trigger kind of areas to explore and further explore the wilderness. And when you explore you can kind of forage for some resources or you can kind of figure out what the other thing is settle, set or put one of your little camps out there and you can get artefacts and these artefacts then unlock abilities on your board. and which is very nice, you know, I get this kind of slot for my Infirmary

Davey: 1:40:22

now. Or I'll knock my my character but it's when riding a dinosaur Yeah, your

JP: 1:40:29

leader now is like riding a T Rex

Davey: 1:40:31

yeah

Becky: 1:40:35

with you guys and dinosaurs

Rob: 1:40:36

its a guy thing

Becky: 1:40:39

sexist about it but I just don't get

JP: 1:40:41

Kurley's dinos

Davey: 1:40:42

she's gonna go to overdrive.

JP: 1:40:45

But what I loved about it was the ranch kind of area itself is like that in perseverance you typically do a primary and a secondary action when the primary one is put down on the board do the thing. And the secondary action is either kind of a bit of luck, a weaker thing to do, you're influencing officers or you're getting some resources or whatever. But what they've done in this is they turn the whole secondary action into a bit of a tableau builder on your map. So you're kind of upgrading and enhancing your ranch with the abilities that you spend the supply crates itself to the left, and you can then telling them how many supply crazy spend, you can trigger that row of abilities. So again, you can kind of customise your secondary action as the game goes on. I love

Davey: 1:41:30

And yeah, it was really good. But that's not the only that. thing that you can do as a secondary action. And this, I think, was the biggest change that I really, really like. Because before when you had influence on your said, officer, if you had committed that influence, and then someone else to take it over, there's nothing when you've just spent X amount of times during this influence, there's nothing you can do about it. Or now each one of those officers also has an action on. And so instead of doing your tableau, if I spending your supplies, you can take a cube off one of the officers and do the action on one of those officers. And that also means you can chain some crazy things off of it and combos coming out. Yes, combos are coming out. And it was it was it was very nice, because you'd be like all right, well, if I then do this action, this this officer actually means I'm doing this action over here. And then when I'm doing this action by putting this Tame Dinosaur over into the wilderness, that's then given me an a set or or expedition and then some of those it's like oh then that's given me an adventure. So I'm going over here and I'm getting an adventure and it was just did your turn to take an hour? No, they

JP: 1:42:41

didn't. We had played before the head that the people we pay with haven't played with any of the persons and perseverance before then the difference in it like you would expect to have episodes one and two is that you'd have three kind of assemblies that would trigger when the dice or spend this doesn't work the same? No, you have less coloured dice to to use because that's one of the abilities of the artefacts to put one in rather than it being an action on the board but assemblies can trigger just know at any time. But as you progress the game and is only eight rounds in the game now I said Yeah. So you've got so as they've kind of twisted up

Davey: 1:43:17

and they realise some of you actions you're gonna have some of your goals you're gonna have a lot more actions and so this obviously condensed it down. And yeah, the assemblies it was for four dice or for the colour and an area Yeah, one of those two. Yeah, or certain triggers were Yeah, and the wilderness and yeah, it was just really good. Good fun. Yeah, I don't have a clue what they're gonna do for force that's gonna be interesting purgatory purgatory open world RPG

Rob: 1:43:47

Yeah, love to have me dinosaurs with saddles on

JP: 1:43:50

about you guys.

Becky: 1:43:52

Well named Robin a bit of an experience that we were off

Rob: 1:43:54

we did we we we bumped into Joel from Devon dice

Becky: 1:44:01

and his wife

JP: 1:44:02

really nice

Rob: 1:44:03

and we ended up playing a game that well which scene and we were buying it and JP had seen it and we got a little picture of him in this little in the little stand. Yes. They went whole hog for this game. I mean, if everybody sold their games like these guys did. They would they would there would have been a lot more board games so that weekend

Becky: 1:44:26

it's called gay sauna. So it is exactly what you think a game called gay sauna. Yes. No, it's about it's not well.

Rob: 1:44:33

Well, it is so isn't it so we walked to the booth. I'm a heterosexual man. I've no problem with homosexuality or anything like that. Everybody be happy. And these guys said you doubled I said I'm confident but we went to basically everyone's in a vest top and the smallest pair of shorts I've ever seen and they were proper hamming it up. It was brilliant. It was like a proper party and

Davey: 1:45:00

these are the guys that have designed the game

Rob: 1:45:03

that these are the guys that have designed the game and their friends basically their so their friends. Their friends. Yeah. Oh yeah, the couple and their friends. Five or six people. Yeah. Yeah, and they're all in the game. So the cards of these people, okay, so we were given a towel to sit down on because you don't want to burn your bum when you're in the cage.

JP: 1:45:25

That's the bit I love that

Becky: 1:45:28

wasn't it? It was themed.

Rob: 1:45:30

And the guys had so much fun with it. I'm pretty sure it was obvious that me and Joel was straight men. And they proffer just just went the whole hog. It was brilliant. It was so funny. You've got the kind of it was tongue in cheek? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So we sat down, and they said, basically, this is unlike any dungeon crawler you have ever played. I loved entrepreneurs I'm in. So we sat down. And he said, basically, imagine you're in a dungeon crawler. But instead of fighting monsters, you're trying to sleep with them. And instead of monsters, they're men. The premise of the game is that you go to a sauna and you're trying to hook up with as many different men as possible of your type of your type. So you have a type you've got like a Class C Class A belly, you know, there's you only compatible with certain other classes. Yeah. classes that you like, and the classes that yeah, and the classes that like you, your your class, there were kinks that are basically special abilities. And they were only compatible with people who also have that special ability because obviously you're trying to match you're not trying to repel. And and then there was a type on the bottom of the card.

Becky: 1:46:51

Yeah, what kind of relationships? preference you prefer. Yes.

Davey: 1:46:57

It basically is a very NS F W do get

Becky: 1:47:01

anywhere near your work. Yeah.

Rob: 1:47:05

Unless of course you work in a case

Becky: 1:47:10

I think the good thing about it was it is just they were they were playing with and ramping up every stereotype that you've ever heard or not heard about a sauna? Yeah,

Rob: 1:47:21

obviously it was a type of gay persons here bears you had

Becky: 1:47:26

it. Yeah, it was it was

Rob: 1:47:27

all these different classes almost. Yeah,

Becky: 1:47:30

I was just really fun with it. It

Rob: 1:47:32

was so much fun. It really was and the experience, but like we just laughed. Yeah, the whole time. It's not obviously not taken seriously,

Becky: 1:47:41

tongue in cheek and it's not meant to be a serious sit down and try and win a game serious game is meant to be fun. It's meant to be and there's dice where you roll as a flirting guys to see if this match is gonna work. There's an outcome to, you know, kind of describe the scenario that happens. And it's just a new

Rob: 1:47:59

can only move x card where you can only interact with other players through the specific cards, Chief mischief cards. So we did act one and act two. We had a lot of fun. I mean, the other guys were very, we all got wristbands with gay sauna all over. The font of

Davey: 1:48:20

you would not take that off. I love that. You would not take it off. I love it.

Becky: 1:48:25

That's what it was. That's what it sort of made us realise right from the start, wasn't it? Their font and their kind of logo is a bit similar to our logo. And that's what made us go. And when me and Adrian were playing golden guest, the guy who we were playing with asked him anything.

Adrian: 1:48:41

Because it's just the logo, neon pink, and

JP: 1:48:45

we've been at his vibe.

Becky: 1:48:48

Yeah, I mean, hats off to the guys. And that was it. There was a girl on the store at least one night. So they would just they just thought they were enjoying themselves.

Rob: 1:48:55

I think they were the happiest people. Yeah, hands down. They had so much fun. Yeah. And like the you know, the the the Creator and His husband are in the game, as cards and all their friends are in the cards. And his game was cards as characters that you can try and hook up with in obviously, in the sauna. It was a lot of fun. The amount of questions that you guys asked us about that game,

JP: 1:49:20

we were so intrigued the fact that you had that experience. And like I think it was a you know, such a memorable experience. You're not going to forget

Rob: 1:49:29

that little while but such a blast, but it was a lot of fun. And I wish them all the very, very best with it because they deserve it. It was great.

JP: 1:49:36

So our gay saunas and where else are we going?

Adrian: 1:49:40

So yeah, talk a little bit about the start of my Saturday anyway, so I'll be honest, I went home Friday feeling like Friday had been a bit of a bust for me. I hadn't got see half what I wanted to see. Hadn't hadn't got a chance to demo half the games and all that lot. So we left quite early. I was still you guys were knackered I could see it, but I was still buzzing. That's how I got a meal to go to Okay, fine. So after the meal, I went back to the hotel and I basically went back through my list and checked through all the games I absolutely had to see before I left. And again, a lot of the time I didn't get to see demos, but I got someone who could talk me through quite a few of these games and a lot of time I'd be like, can I buy this? And they'd be like no Well we've pre ordered everything if you come back by such and such a time and all the standard slightly different times, you can buy whatever pre orders hadn't been picked up. So I'll talk about the games a little bit later if you had other games in between but once I'd done that, I'd been I don't say desperate because that's gonna make the story sound even worse than I've been really wanting to see Zee Garcia so from the dice tower he is my person that if he recommends a game I am 100% Checking that game out and so my I'd kind of got got there on the Thursday he wasn't there sort of said hello quickly to Mike De Lucio. And Tom was playing some games and then what pass the next bit and still nosy but listen to I think it was Camilla click on talk to someone else a little bit just sort of stood on the side. Listen to what she's talking about note come back. Saturday, Zee's their way quite fun. Stand in line, or good practising in my head. Right. Okay, so Zee like big fan, love what you do. There's a few times when our groups will get a bit heavy and it can get me like a little bit sort of twisted a little bit but always know that you can recommend some lovely midweight games and it keeps me going in the hobby when our group has that don't be graduate of you. It's just something that happens. Yeah. sort of thing. So had that all planned out in my head. Love the work you do really appreciate It's kept me in the hobby, all Amazing. She's talking to someone in front, taking selfies with them. asked me to take a selfie of course absolutely. Get to the front of my mind went completely blank. And I don't really get starstruck much I've met plenty of celebrities happy to say hello to them all this kind of stuff. The words that then came out of my mouth were hi Zee was such a big fan. I've bought loads of your games, and I've been to vist your booth a few times, recommended this weekend. If so that was something but just such a big fan. So long. Thanks bye myself because when you're like two sentences in and you realise that you just, you've just become weirdly starstruck by someone that you've looked up to. And at that point, I was just ageing to Go get out of here now because whatever you say and say is gonna make it worse and worse and worse. And bless him. He says, Oh, you've you've been to this stand then. And I was like, Yeah, they've run out of that copy. You went on this one, too. Oh. And I was like, No, there's no way of getting back from this now. So I like literally what thanks, thank you so much. legged it and I reckon if I'd looked round, I'd have seen him looking at the guy next to him going What a weirdo. mortified, absolutely mortified. So yeah, the thing I was like, I've not been to a convention where they've been there or I've seen the money that I really want to say thank you very much. That moment turned into Oh, dear God, how embarrassing moment so yes that was my Saturday morning basically was embarrassing myself in front of someone I really look up to.

JP: 1:53:24

At least it's right.

Rob: 1:53:26

Next time you see it, you can do anywhere.

Becky: 1:53:29

Oh god is that guy

Adrian: 1:53:31

just off to go and get

Davey: 1:53:33

I'm sure you weren't even

Adrian: 1:53:36

know you probably won't. But what if he does then? Yeah, at least

Davey: 1:53:40

whether you made an impression or made an impression there you go.

Rob: 1:53:43

So on behalf of whose turn is it anyway, podcast. We apologise for agents behaviour he's very very nice man. Just cut him some slack

JP: 1:53:52

just get a selfie with him. Yeah

Adrian: 1:53:55

that's terrible.

Rob: 1:53:56

You never know in five years time oh my god there's Adrian from whose turn it is anyway we've all got those horror moments right and the important

Adrian: 1:54:10

thing is that yeah, in that second I was mortified now I've got enough distance away and then just kind of Oh what have you just done? Anyway, moving on. So what was your nexrt bit

Davey: 1:54:26

so well, Adrian was running away. Me and JP play a nucleum, which is the one by Simone Luciani and David Turczi. Very good game. It's board and dices. Latest latest game, so Paul Grogan was doing the teach and we're joined by Luke Hector broken me Paul and Dan Wiseman, designer of the detective society Yeah, design or heavily involved heavily invested heavily involved with the detective side society. So Paul did a great teach. It was on rails first away because it's quite a heavy game. There's a lot going on. It's always been likened where it has been likened to brass and barrage and you can see why. But it has its very own unique twist. It seems to eliminates a lot of the harshness and barrage in my eyes were barrage, if you started to build a strategy someone can come and basically just shit all over it.

JP: 1:55:26

It's currently mildly Yeah, it's been

Davey: 1:55:27

a mildly. But I mean, if you see it coming in, you might, you might have prepared for that. But it, it can be perishing, if you don't know what you're doing, especially if you're playing someone that does. But nucleon kind of eliminates that a lot of time, you're actually trying to, in some ways, kind of work together. Because you get both get benefits in that sense. You want to be building chains, so that you can use resources and build do these contracts. The action tiles are a real nice little unique concept that you can either slot them in, and you do the actions on above your player board above your player board. Yeah. Or you flip them, or sorry, you didn't flip them over, or you put them down as the railway sections, which you get if you match the colours. Because there's different colour areas on the board, you get to do the action of the colour that you match, which is really nice, because you can obviously bring the old little chains up and also try and someone else put a cotton section there, like, Oh, if I join those two together, not only do I get an extra action, we get to flip that railway because we've completed that railway, and we get more income. It's got a nice little thing where with your action pieces that you slot above your board, you have to build them up as much as as far as far as your income is, or you'll only ever go up to where your actions are. So you can't try to take your income turns too early. You got to time them well, especially with your influence stars, which is how you suck it your influence to certain end game scoring. But you have to build those stars up by flipping the board the tiles on the board by building a production chain going there's a lot going on. It sounds quite busy. I'm not Yeah, but oh is very very good. Me and JP both bought a copy just because of for me. I love Faraj anyway, heaven knows this and I love to rock brass deserves even though it's got a likening to the two is still very different. And it deserves a spot on my, my wall to go on my wall. Ball game. Someone else's. Yeah, yeah, it's like it's like trophies. Because I never played them. So they just sit there. And so, yeah, it's going on my shelf. Because yeah, there'll be a time where you'll get brass up for a lighter game for people and my family still like playing brass. So I can bring that out. Because we get barrage out because everyone wants to be mean with each other. You know, Taz enjoys that game I enjoy that game you enjoy. But people in the group don't. And their nucleum my thinks and is sitting there happy in between where people will actually be like, oh, yeah, I can play this. It's not so mean. But it's still for me. It satisfies that barrage itch. So I'm really looking forward again to table.

JP: 1:58:14

Yeah, yeah. Likewise, I love that I looked at decision that you have with those action tiles, which is, I can still get the same actions of a place as a rail, but then it's gone. Yeah, get more of them in, yes, I'll come around. But then you might not always get the combination of actions that you want.

Davey: 1:58:32

And then you got this little advanced tech, which is the asymmetric stuff to the side as well, where you can slot them in by getting the advanced, which is flipping buildings, mainly flipping your lamps, or doing contracts pretty much the only two ways on your

Adrian: 1:58:46

player board is I had a player board when I played my copy, which was all about placing links on the board. Okay, so I think this is one of the main things is that you choose in the full game you choose backwards and backward turn order which of those powers in which cool. So you see what's out there on the board from like, not the contracts, the multiplier section are coming when it's cool. Yeah, the treatment, the cheeky is you get to see that and then you pick which board you want. Whereas in the demos, we haven't seen that, but you do get to pick it and therefore you can sort of see the achievements and whoever's going last can pick the one that probably lines up with those achievements. And so I had the one with the links, but I didn't have a lot of stuff with links out there. And I was last player if I had known so again, it's that's kind of your first game really does have to be a write off. There's no getting around it because you have to learn what all of those bits do. You can see them and how you go last. Like if you're last which one you pick is gonna be really important to you actually catching up. Yeah, because there's definitely disadvantage going last Yeah. You have to kind of pick that that order first. So yeah, so yeah, yeah, you're right. You kind of have these achievements that you fulfil, and it gives you bonuses then to whatever your theme is down that sort of modular part of the board.

Davey: 2:00:04

Yeah. And that's got similar liking to barrage and that sounds Yeah, it's definitely me want to watch it. Well, I want to play

Adrian: 2:00:11

I think it's, I think it's gonna be big this year. Yeah. I didn't quite get on with it as well. As you guys. I'm interested to At another time, but I like the cleanliness of brass and this is a little bit more it's cluttered the right word there's there's more randomness and a little bit more extra going on. But I think it will be this year's barrage revive whatever. I think it's gonna be this year's Yeah, for those who like crunchy heavy, slightly mean games. And so I think it's gonna be Yeah, absolutely this next year you're gonna hear a lot about this game. Yeah. Nice.

Becky: 2:00:41

While you guys were playing that. Me Robin Adrian just wanted to sit down by that point. We just wanted to sit down. So we were just wandering around like, whatever table we see. Whatever game is going to be we're just going to sit down. So we wandering round eyed cotton which Hall it was in in the kind of more family friendly. Yeah. more family friendly zone and we saw this Well, me Magpie eye took clocked on to this shiny it looked like a pop up book. So the board I think actually it it does pop up. So it's like a mountain a purple. Kind of like gem gem ish looking mountain with like a little like a marble run. Did you play that Marble Run? Yeah, so it had like to like one continuous but it was in to kind of size? All these little shiny beads. Little red ones. Yellow ones purple one, dude. Yes, yes, I did. Purple. Yeah. And it had lots of different colour beads on it, which are all very shiny little facets on. And basically the premise of the game was take bead, put it on your little while you're mining. So you take the gem, you put it in your mind cart. And then you slot that onto a piece of jewellery this, you know this little card so one card might give you three points, but you need to a red or yellow one. And another little piece of jewellery might need three yellow beads. Sorry. Gems. Yeah, but if you fall, yeah, so it's about deciding, you know what, what do you basically take the things off, and then it's got it, it's a little bit more interesting, then take that thing, put it there. Some of the cards, you can see you'd either take a gem, put a Gemini gem in your jewellery, or take a special card and some of these special cards or things like Nick the other person's gem over there or swap it with your own or put their gem back in the mountain or take three new special. Yeah, all sorts of different kinds of things, which I think if you're playing with a family with sort of younger children, which is probably is intended for, it becomes very nice. Oh, I'm taking three gems putting them there. But of course, we were playing it. So the first thing we're doing is like right now

Adrian: 2:02:40

I got I picked up this, everyone else has picked up special cards that got them three gems or got them to draw three cards. The first two I got was get someone to discard three gems. But they gain a point. And I was like, well, because it's because it's because it's like knowledge draw one or place one, whereas the cards are all powered up versions of it. So for the most part, you're using the cards. Yeah. So yeah, so I just was like ditch all your gems, ditch your gems, ditch all your gems repeatedly. But, and there's like cards in there that are like, well, when someone else takes a gem, I can take a gem for free. Yeah, and stuff like that. So the cards are kind of a nice little sort of power up isn't sort of moves all along a bit quicker.

Becky: 2:03:21

And you're sort of looking at the colour gems that you need in your little jewellery items. And you're looking at the gems in the mountain that are going to fall down, because you can see all of these so you know in what order they are appearing. And you can only pick the bottom most one. Yeah. So you know that I need a red one. But it's like five red ones. Oh, that's not going to work then. So you then looking for a way of like, either nicking someone else's or cycling through these or whatever it is. Yeah, it's a lot. You can play a lot more kind of take that ish. Yeah,

Adrian: 2:03:49

I think like, there's kind of there's cards that just say you can't have that effect. And if I was playing with a family, I wouldn't play that on a kid because they just like to play their big mean cars, and they're feeling all sort of happy. And they got to learn

Becky: 2:04:00

to me when I was all excited.

Adrian: 2:04:02

And then you're like, No, I think you generally wouldn't play that on like the littler kids or whatever you play that on. Well, yeah. I don't have kids. So this is what I'm so yeah, but it was definitely that family work. But I thought it was pretty decent family weight game. So

Becky: 2:04:19

I don't know that it's available. It seems like the red cat I think was the company are basically kind of promoters for games to see if anybody any designers want to pick them up. Nice. So I don't think it's available, but it's called gem Forge. So, you know, I hope it

Rob: 2:04:36

was fun. Yeah. And yeah, we had a lot of fun.

Adrian: 2:04:40

We had a lot of fun. The guys showing off was sort of quite sort of chuckling along with us because yeah, he actually had a family. We were we were three adults playing it quite mean and being a little bit sort of harsh to each other. And they had a little family behind who was mostly just interested in picking the gems up and putting them on the card sort of thing that was kind of

Davey: 2:05:03

Yeah, we met you guys for some food. And I walked up to you guys, you were just bumped into mark from ninja geek game smart monk. Yeah, yeah. And then his friend who we met the night before. Yeah, and

Rob: 2:05:16

And both would be really nice guys. And I just walk over

Davey: 2:05:20

my body to suddenly forget how to do things normally

Adrian: 2:05:25

lockstep run out for like, yeah,

Davey: 2:05:28

I put no I probably should have died. So I was lucky. So I just walked over and I don't know what it was

Becky: 2:05:36

like it was like a sneeze like that kind of big. It was like

Davey: 2:05:41

a choke and sneeze

JP: 2:05:42

and cough choke and explosion. There was no

Rob: 2:05:48

noise came from you. That kind of thing is.

Davey: 2:05:55

And it was really funny because Mark's friend obviously didn't know what to do because it looked like I just come over were just distracted laughing dying. Marks box Fred and just yeah, just looked horrified and just kind of slipped into the crowd behind away.

Becky: 2:06:14

facing you, when you make this noise. I just saw this confused face of

Davey: 2:06:18

noise, you're wanting to say hello.

Becky: 2:06:21

To you back, say hello, or just experienced what could only be described as some kind of spasm and just just backed away

Davey: 2:06:28

and sure they blame him. I didn't know what happened. I don't know I happen to live with seconds. The

Rob: 2:06:37

way you grabbed me is

Davey: 2:06:41

what happened I rescind this day. I don't know what happened to my body. It is literally, you know when you choke it was similar to that. But then I also wanted a cough and I also was breathing in at the same time. So

Becky: 2:06:54

it was like that. Yeah. Nice. Looks really like

JP: 2:07:01

a surprise. Yeah. Yeah, he

Becky: 2:07:03

seemed really nice guy. Yeah.

JP: 2:07:06

Sound.

Davey: 2:07:07

We bumped into them again, later as well. So it was continuously

JP: 2:07:11

probably I think there was only there on the Friday and Saturday. Yeah. And so yeah, just throughout those two days, we're bumping into them. So yeah. Yeah. Sneaky peek marks coming on the show soon. Yes. So look out for that one. Yeah,

Adrian: 2:07:25

so So while Davey was doing his best demon impressions, I was sneaking off to pick up a game that I knew I couldn't buy here. So a lot of this was me trying to pick up, I've seen what I wanted to ask him to buy everything that I don't think I combined England for a little while at least. So I went to pero loco games. So they're a Spanish company, I believe. And they've got a game that really intrigued me. It's called great board presents, I think called Satori. And it's a Buddhist temples and get like enlightenment. And all that kind of is the general theme. I didn't read too much into the theme. I just like corporatist stuff going on there. But the the mechanics really had me sort of intrigued. So you draft workers, that are different colours. And if you put the wrong colour worker on one of the temples, I think it's a shrine so that you get one of the two actions, if you put the right colour worker there, you get both of the actions. And that's the real central thing that sort of made it look sort of cool to me or something I hadn't really seen. I'd seen it in some smaller games. But this looked like a sort of a sort of mid to mid heavy Euro. Because around the edge, there's a lot of extra things, there's like a rope that you go up and you can, the further up the rope you go. You can spend it to get more resources up, you spend everything. So it's how far off that rope do you go before you decide to spend, and then there's some upgrading and opening of new temples or shrines or which whichever they are. And then there's, you know, getting your, which goals you're going after. And all those kinds of things that looked really interesting add on to the side of this basic premise of just work placement drafting, all in a board that's shaped like a mountain, and all these lovely little looking pieces. And that that went on it so far pick that out.

Davey: 2:09:12

It does look really good. I've seen I saw a lot of people with that in our hotel afterwards, actually.

Adrian: 2:09:19

Well, yeah, it was one of those where you had to preorder it or you had to be there at 12 o'clock bang on and there was a queue by the time I got there to pick it up. And when I got when I left the queue, I think there was maybe 10 or 12 copies left

Davey: 2:09:30

are when we walked by later on in last long.

Adrian: 2:09:34

So yeah, so really glad that I basically queue to get that one as well, because I'm looking forward to get that one.

Davey: 2:09:39

Yeah. I look forward to playing that. That's really good.

JP: 2:09:42

So our kind of last game that we kind of demoed on Saturday. And we just happen to kind of chance it, this was this was a Hilux that his name was I was leaning into your look, look, look. Lean into your look big time and we just walked up to Drandas games and they had galactic cruise. And they were just resetting. I think just after a demo. It was like Can we play? No like Absolutely. We just need to, unfortunately, Rob bow down

Rob: 2:10:15

to the boardrooms right now. Yeah. And he ran off not because it doesn't look good, but just because it looks complicated as hell. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah,

JP: 2:10:24

so meet me there you sat down and we,

Davey: 2:10:27

first of all you and sit down I said, what you do? Yeah, sit there, man, you were like,

Rob: 2:10:33

JP looked at you like you're a moron.

Davey: 2:10:36

And then he realised the two colours that were left as well were red and green.

JP: 2:10:43

I suppose my instinct Yeah.

Rob: 2:10:46

The hell is going

JP: 2:10:46

on? Why do you want me to move to the opposite side of the table where I got the right colours? You can look? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we had a probably what I would call the best teach of the convention 100 Hands down was a chap called will. And he's known on Instagram as the ball game wizard. When you see him, you can understand why because he got kind of long, wispy grey hair. And its theatrical performance was

Davey: 2:11:15

buttholes paying a heavy Euro. You're paying a heavy year in which for its theme they have put effort in to make sure that what you're doing makes sense, which sometimes euros are a bit like, why you do that. It's like, well, why are we doing that? I mean, yeah, so he leant into it. He lens into it so hard, like when there was a takeoff, which we'll go, I'll go, well, JP will go over in a second. He started doing the countdown, like five, four, and then we'd go through the actions and then three to go for the action two and then he's got a little crowd cheering and

JP: 2:11:50

clapping just because of that inaction

Davey: 2:11:57

made me want to take off.

Rob: 2:11:57

Now, I think I need that when I play board games.

Davey: 2:12:02

I need hope.

Adrian: 2:12:03

He's got his business card, so we can come around the house and make sound effects

Becky: 2:12:08

needs a cheerleader helps.

JP: 2:12:11

This game has been getting comparisons to Lacerda games, right? This I knew this before going in was probably one of the reasons why I wanted to try it out. When you kind of look at this, you know, Ian OToole artwork, to think okay, looks stylish and nice. Although we were playing on a prototype board, which is very black and white and clean, functional,

Davey: 2:12:29

the work so I thought this was the end product, I

JP: 2:12:30

I thought they purposely went down at design. Yeah, I was thought thinking, a brave choice. Yeah, it worked. And then I realised No, they're gonna style it like the box. Yeah, it's gonna look stunning. And yep. So really kind of it's worker replacement, you've got six action spots on the board, and each spot has two actions that you can trigger. And then you can do both of them, then you have these kind of development cogs that you can put out onto the board, either between the action spaces or on these technologies at the top. So if it goes on between an action space, it just means that you can link the action next to the one that you're taking. So again, opening up the board, being more kind of creative with what you're trying to do, or the technology just gives you, you know, discounts on things or whatever. But the whole premise is, you're in a corporation, you're trying to kind of browse your way to the top of this corporation earning kind of respect and popularity and ultimately, reputation. And you are kind of building your own spaceships, getting blueprints, building, advertising, the kind of trips that these patients are going to take the different routes, making sure you get the right clientele onto the ships or the different types like families adventurous stag, booze, or whatever. And then there's a kind of a whole process and change and get everything ready, get all the fuel, get all of the oxygen, the food, everything you need before you take off and obviously sell these trips and get lots of money. And you kind of do this rinse and repeat is nice conveyor belt production chain that you have to go through and you can shortcut and you can spend your reputation to be a bit of a bit of a git to it's kind of fast track certain things, but you will be penalised in doing it. And there's also a little bit of a knobiness that you can do in the game where you can kind of purposely spend kind of advertisement tokens to actually put the wrong kind of people on other people's cruises that they've already booked and sign the contracts for. But it's all very clever like this the way

Davey: 2:14:38

it's a bit more friendly than like because Kanban probably is what you liken it to a Lacerda or really because you've got that set chain process that you have to do. But it's a bit more friendly in the fact that you bump workers off yeah, benefit for

JP: 2:14:52

a lot of things. Does that yeah, a lot bumped joke. We had

Davey: 2:14:55

a lot of bump jokes going on. There was a lot of bumping going on and open yourself don't yeah, there's HR getting involved. And then there was

Adrian: 2:15:04

you thought you were the only one who had an HR

Davey: 2:15:09

and then there's also you can use other people's tech that they put down or their upgrade things and you can just give them a money Need to use their tag and that but that also goes off your reputation. So the more reputation you have, the less you have to pay them. And then it gets all the way to the top where you can just start using everyone's. So even though there has this very set processes, lots of different ways of doing it or getting there, it seemed quite cool.

Adrian: 2:15:33

Yeah, I stopped about an hour beforehand. And I'd said to you, I've managed to watch it for about 15/20 minutes, it looks a bit heavy for me looks on the heavy end of Lacerda and you guys came back and went. Now it's on the light end of Lacerda. But I hadn't really seen that bit where you get to use each other's tech. Yeah, for if you you know, I'd seen them get using each other's tech, but they seem to have to do a lot to do it. Obviously, someone had a low reputation. And there was quite as you say, combat and so there's a lot of steps in it. And I was like, I think this might be on the top end of Lacerda. I don't know if it'll be one for me, you came back and said nice on the low end of Lacerda. It was

JP: 2:16:07

like a really accessible Lacerda. Like if I compare it to other Lacerda that I've played, not including The Gallerist because I'm not played. It just feels like an accessible lacerda game,

Adrian: 2:16:18

nice slideshow is probably really good. Let me back on you can save the 20 Minute 15/20 minute watch that I got was not. And it wasn't with the same guy you just described him. And it's not the same guy. But the 1520 Minute watch that I had didn't make it look like that. And so I was like turn right off. Then you came back and went Oh, it's like this. Oh, okay, fine. Back in like,

JP: 2:16:39

it was really enjoyable. Yeah, one of the biggest surprises, I think, yeah.

Davey: 2:16:44

Yeah, lots of fun, cool.

Becky: 2:16:47

Unless game that we played me, Rob and Adrian, we played next station London, which is a flip n write. I guess you could play on your own with people, you could just make the highest score. So that was fine. But there's no real player interaction other than you swap coloured pins with each other at the end. And you're basically drawing what looks like an underground map on a sort of greedy version of London with the Thames through it. So you will start on a particular colour circle that matches the colour pencil you happen to be holding. You then turn the cards that they have over one at a time. And it'll have a symbol on it such as Star Circle, circle, triangle, Pentagon, hexagon, no, it wasn't a hexagon, circle, square, rhombus, triangle, parallelogram. It's got this, it's got symbols on it anyway. And you have to then draw your your train line to the next one of those symbols, you can start it in, you can use either end. And basically you've got to try and go through as many different kinds of boroughs, nice boroughs as you can and try and have lots of stops in the same borough. So you kind of times those two things together at the end to work out how many points you've got, and how many times you get to cross over the Thames. So it's a simple scoring process. And then at the end of that round, you swap pens with everyone else and then you draw a different colour line. So you can't cross over your original line. You can only go through stations but like you know, the actual real underground, you'd have lots of lines going to the same station. They just can't cross each other. And yeah, it's just a simple sort of scoring games a lot of fun really fun. Yeah, and you get really you don't have to you know, draw your line any further if it doesn't work for you or whatever. So it's just yeah, like adrian commented like these little kind of frustrated Oh, boys is usually from me when I realised I should have done something else earlier this time for

Davey: 2:18:38

because this was this was the or the hotness in Expo. I think

Adrian: 2:18:41

it was great. Yeah, it's because this I think the reason why they're showing off is you've got next station on say Tokyo, which is apparently got some ring route. In a circle around the middle is sort of worth a load of points. But we stopped at a German stand, didn't we? Yes, we didn't realise start off with we didn't realise it was German. Then we went to sit down notice all the games are in German. And the rule books are in German, but they've been two tables empty. So we're like, well, let's just sit down and give it a go. pulled up the English rules because it's language independent. Yeah. Like the all the cards that you actually play with. It's just the instruction manual. I just pulled it up on my phone and played along and the guy came back and went you like he didn't I don't think he wanted to give us a teach because he's native German speaker sort of thing. His English was fairly split. We just kind of kept coming back and going you think you've got the rules like Yeah, I think we've got the rules on line II didn't seem to care and we just didn't care that we were doing English like getting the rules up and playing.

Becky: 2:19:40

I will absolutely buy that one. I just didn't buy it this time because they only had to travel once left. Well, there was a bit was a bit of a slide in. My mom's crying

Davey: 2:19:53

was about two times the size of everyone else.

Adrian: 2:19:59

Yeah,

JP: 2:20:00

I bought one game. I didn't buy any. He bought my game.

Rob: 2:20:06

Well, there's no point buying Why would I put one game up?

JP: 2:20:09

Because it's your home? Yeah, you could have been

Becky: 2:20:12

a whole if it's one here

JP: 2:20:13

and you put one game up on game. An Englishman booked for a game that I couldn't go. I wanted to buy

Adrian: 2:20:19

some upgrades so he doesn't have a game I didn't

Rob: 2:20:25

I bought the game for you just basically a thank you for buy. everything you did in Florida. When we went on there and I thank you for that my friend and obviously planning that a meal both me and my wife had said we were just gonna get like a 50 quid voucher. So

Becky: 2:20:42

nucleum people Yeah,

JP: 2:20:43

yeah, but the rule book I got was a game called plant a new bone. Which is if I've done my research is one of the biggest highest games of Essen so that has been released. And it was all sold out. I saw my stroll down there last Saturday, late afternoon. Got any copies? No course we haven't. It's got three designers at one of them, which is Uwe Rosenberg's. Ooh, and looking at it looks looks awesome. Does really, really good. It's kind of themed around like a solar punk. Like futuristic but kind of dystopian. Its own law book. Yeah. It's like the world building. And it looks pretty awesome. You know, you got big farming robots and all sorts of stuff going on. But mechanics, just flowers, like growing flowers and then selling those and I think you generate energy or oxygen for this world to function. But yeah, mechanically, I don't know loads about it. I was fumbling through the rulebook earlier for looks quite cool. Yeah. So I

Davey: 2:21:47

had two player boards, you order them remind me of the like the when you go off and explore exploration and fifth road and you have like this little puzzle, the thing that you got to build upon Yeah, that's what I want. Like just patchwork. Yeah. And then the other one would look like your abilities or whatever or you're a player player board. And then you had seem to have the actual player was into a buildup of different sections, then

JP: 2:22:15

yeah, the player board was like tiles is actually tiles and you have tools that you put in between the the action tiles and then you trigger either one or the other. But then you can spend your garden but to actually do both. So you can power it use the power of the garden but to do more efficient turn. So again, there's combos and stuff, but I think you can build like these modules that go around your your polynomial know board that you can activate energy when he kind of get his green energy will activate those modules and obviously going to combo different things from the look of it. I have not played this, but it looks cool. Looks really good. But I have ordered pre ordered the German copy from meeples corner. Nice because they get some German copies in the local English rulebook is language independent. So now? Yeah, so it's still quite it's still can't play it now as its delayed, delayed.

Davey: 2:23:06

Yeah, got lost in customs.

Adrian: 2:23:08

You guys were going to get food. And I decided that there was one last game that I really wanted to get hold of, again, it's not going to French game. It's not going to be published. Doesn't look anytime soon in the UK, but they had UK rule books if you picked up there and then that's the game called far away, recommended by my friend Zee

JP: 2:23:33

We're not worthy. We're not worthy.

Adrian: 2:23:38

So I'd been along earlier in the day, and they said, again, come back at six o'clock. Whatever pre orders we haven't got rid of. We could have put up for sale. Okay, no problem. Our table bookings 530. You know what, if I miss food, I miss food. I've come all this way to get a set number of board games, including this one that had already been on the list, but kind of after Friday night of having a bit more of a look at it was like definitely on my list. And they'd sold out the second I got there in the morning. And yes, so I went and stood in line for an hour was about third fourth from the front. So I was feeling quite safe. So though, how many copies have you got? We've got 15 copies left, that people can still pick up pre orders. This is like until quarter past Five. But anyone who picks up a preorder or obviously the number gets less than less. So I've stood there, and people started joining from the back and joining and you could see like well this is 20 long already some someone's going to be behind the booth have come out and count 123456 And then basically like go note, there's no point you stand in here, you're not gonna get any off you go. And then 10 minutes later, the queue would be 30 long. And you'd come back 123 Good. Like they'd be 13 every time someone came and got a preorder see the like, the sort of person around whatever number it was looking really nervous is like, is there enough left or whatever? Did they did that person get booed? When they the period. It was much more. It was much more very nervous sort of looking. Good chat with people in the queue. They were mostly really friendly and chatting about their experiences and a lot of them being there quite a few times before and they're telling us how they better organise their time as well. conventions, they'd gone to more and more conventions. And then there was people trying to sneak their mates in to get a second copy, that's one copy per person, see people try and get more know, you go, then they were really keeping an eye on that cue. But yeah, I managed to get a copy. And I played a bit of a two handed version of it myself. Now, of course, today, just because it looked really good, and I wanted to give it a go. And what you do is you draft, it's the typical thing of there is one more card than there are a number of players draft a card, and you play these eight cards over the eight turns from left to right. And what you're looking to do is play cards in a certain numerical order, because it gives you bonuses, so you get to build up your engine, but then you get to the end of the game, and you turn all the cards over exactly where they are facedown. And then you flip them from right to left. So in the opposite direction, and as you flip them, you then score what's visible. So the first card you flipped over, literally, we'll have some of these bonus cards you can get. Plus you're the first of the claim what they're called. Now it's all about simple, like growing civilizations on a on an island sort of thing. So you'll get whatever that one card on its own plus a few bonus cards or school, then you flip over the next card from the right, and now you've got these two cards that can get so if it's like one red card, than the cards to the right was a red card, then you have acquired and so you kind of applying them in one order, but then scoring them in the complete reverse order. And it's a nice, it's not a heavy game. It's like a 30 minute game, but it's quite quite a sort of have a sort of a brain sort of sequencing. Yes, the sequencing of work because it scores in the opposite direction. So when you play Do you want to play them in a certain order? Because you want to get the bonuses of playing them in the right order?

JP: 2:26:55

Is it like I'm sure it's nothing like it but you just describe an ink is the furnace fives in a way?

Adrian: 2:27:03

No, because furnace you never have to work the other way furnace. Furnace is just kind of an It depends if you're blaming the advanced.

JP: 2:27:09

Yeah, that's probably what I'm thinking

Adrian: 2:27:10

of furnace you have to place it in a sequence and then no, this is just you kind of you're looking at one set of things to go left to right and then a completely different set to go right to left. So yeah, a really a neat little 30/35 minute game. And then luckily you guys managed to delay the restaurant enough that I can actually go and get food afterwards because I legged it full pace. Once I've got that game. There's

Davey: 2:27:35

all the laughing banter we were having in the restaurant.

JP: 2:27:39

You turned up

Davey: 2:27:42

bouncer, the bouncer sorry, the waiter tried to turn Rob away instantly. Like you've got a table

Rob: 2:27:49

to start running at me in German. And I went yeah, anyway. What I don't know. Anyway.

Becky: 2:27:58

I have a reservation, right.

Rob: 2:28:00

I'm looking at you. I've got no idea what you're saying. And he just went like reservation. And I went, Yeah. I mean, look really sharp. And then he went and got somebody that that David spoke to earlier and he was like, Yeah, they've got reservations. Oh,

Davey: 2:28:16

it's been disappointing.

Rob: 2:28:18

thing is that we were smaller than me. So I don't understand. I'm sure. Yeah. What a build wise he wasn't bigger than me. Yeah, given it. The big one is I mean, we wouldn't allow he wasn't huge. He was oh, he wasn't

JP: 2:28:32

Rob. Rob lies the biggest walls.

Davey: 2:28:37

Yeah, he was, uh, he was like, No, he was trying to bounce for some strange reason. But he was big.

JP: 2:28:44

Anyway, you

Rob: 2:28:49

know, I'm saying but like, six, eight.

Davey: 2:28:52

he was only 6 foot 2.

JP: 2:28:57

Yeah. On that bombshell. So I think that's all the gaming experiences that we kind of talked about in length. That's good to say that's all of them is that big episode. But very quickly, to kind of wrap this up, like best and worst moments. I will. How was it?

Davey: 2:29:15

It was amazing. I look forward to get I'm definitely I'm definitely gonna try and go next year. Yeah,

Becky: 2:29:20

I would go again, I would go again. I think on reflection, I prefer the UKGE. And that is for the sole reason that they've got the open gaming halls. I like to have a meander about wander out, see the stuff and then like to go have a little sit down and play game with the friends like a base. Yeah. And then right. We've done that thing now. All right, going on under the little meander about and I think in the UKGE there's more accessory stands. And we all know, I like a little shiny dice or a bit of sparkly malarkey for the games. And there isn't really I saw one guy selling coins.

Davey: 2:30:00

There was a DICE DICE. Yeah, there was some dice and there were there was art as well. There was I think it will just lost in the sea.

Becky: 2:30:08

Now I saw the amazing art. I saw the dice tower area. I don't play the D&D. Really? And no I

Rob: 2:30:16

just stopped Before buying one because Becky, why'd you need to do 25

Becky: 2:30:24

It's got an eyeball in it that moved around. Let's

Davey: 2:30:28

see,

Becky: 2:30:29

we have one out here, mate, they will cool those eyeball dice. Anyway.

Rob: 2:30:33

So you actually started that sentence by saying, I don't need a d20

Becky: 2:30:37

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Well I further UKGE because there's more tat

Adrian: 2:30:49

big up UKGE big time.

Becky: 2:30:52

It's a fantasy. It's more Blinky just malarkey. More fripperies? Yeah, I think on reflection, I would definitely go to Essen again. 100%. And I would I would like it to be in a car with you guys again, because that was just an experience. It was hilarious. I've learned some songs I didn't know before. And we'll leave it at that

Davey: 2:31:12

to the window.

Becky: 2:31:15

And we'll cut it there. Yeah, I like the fact that you can get away and just sit and decompress for a bit because it is a very oppressive space. Yeah. And I'm fine with big crowds. I'm fine with that kind of thing. But that constant noise and like, they were saying that row rebel noise the whole time. It's something happening. And I like the fact you can just escape away, sit down, play a bit that refreshes me, then go buy more stuff. So it'll be good.

Davey: 2:31:39

I didn't miss that. Yeah, I definitely didn't miss that. But they are. For me, even though they're both conventions, I think they're both completely separate. Ones one's for networking, forgetting all the latest hotness for buying games for demoing games is not actually for playing them that much easier. Just get a taste of everything. Not at all. And I always found it strange that when Paul said he used to do an Essen Paul Grogan, do a, you know, have a, an Essen party afterwards where they will play the games they got I understand why? Because now I'm back. I want to play all these new games. Whereas Expo was a lot that there isn't a lot of new hotness, sometimes. There's a lot of sometimes there is there's some releases, some releases, stuff like that. But you you get games and then you go play them. It's more about playing the games. So I will still do both. But I'll just have a different attitude towards both. Yeah, I think this way of doing it. Because we, I mean, networking was it was good for us, wasn't it? Like we, we a lot of developers, you meet a lot of people passionate about the subject. Everyone's lovely.

JP: 2:32:47

We're not prepared, though. We purposely kind of visited the convention, just as regular punters. Really we're not dealing with press pass. We did with Expo because we've not experienced it. And we, you know, always think when you go and get a press pass, you should at least have contributed something to the convention in previous years. And because we've not been it's a bit like, can we have press passes to attend for free? What have you done? Nothing. Yeah. So we wanted to kind of experience it and do it this way. And but yeah, I echo what you say, Davey, I think for me, it's, I loved it. I really love just being like that kind of cutting edge where the deals are happening. This is like the the epicentre of the industry. It's what it feels like. And just to kind of be a part of that. And even though we didn't really prepare on the press side, we still met loads of people got loads of contacts. Talking about different things. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, you could feel the ideas happening when David Turczi is walking down. Yeah. But yeah, like there are negatives, like every convention.

Becky: 2:33:57

Five quid for bottled coke. 15 euros

JP: 2:34:02

for two cokes and two chocolate bars.

Davey: 2:34:04

Yeah. Nice. I was worse than Essen can believe.

Becky: 2:34:08

I'm like, yeah, 60 quid for D two, D 20. No, no bother at all. 50 $15

JP: 2:34:14

you're in a Mars bar.

Becky: 2:34:16

Yeah. Do yours for that. I beg your pardon.

Rob: 2:34:19

I love the trip. Being being away nerds is awesome. For me, like you said, Essen is very much at the cutting edge the hotness. Me personally, I couldn't care about the hotness. I have no FOMO with board games at all. I like what I like and you know, all the games I loved, or at least a year out for me. And now that I've played them, it's just made that it's even worse. Yeah. So I very much like Becky I'd prefer the UK games Expo not because of the blame, because I couldn't care less about that. But it was the fact that you could play a game 90 90% of the time you can play a game and then go buy it. Right, you know, for me, it was much smaller. Like when I went off and did my own thing I got lost. As in I couldn't find you guys again. And it was a real Rob. Rob. That Why GM, that's what I get when it came down to Breakfast. Davey, even though he's the only person in the restaurant. So for me, I'd like to treat Essen like the European Championships that happen every four years. I'd happen, I'd happily go again. I love the experience I loved. You know, all the geekiness and everything else that happened there was great, and I truly love that. But for me, you know, UK games Expo is is for me, just as that experience Yeah. But we could treat the European Championships every four years, but then do the World Cup every four years, two years apart and go to Gen Con. Gen Con. Gen Con. Two years late. Yes. And that that would be my thing.

JP: 2:36:08

Well, this is well, this is the thing I the reason why I went to essence because you did an inception on me didn't

Rob: 2:36:15

is kind of my fault. You're driving go

JP: 2:36:17

How fars Essen?. Oh, I've always wanted to go, oh, putting Google Maps doable. We just literally drove into France on holiday, which was a lot further. So 15 hours. Yeah. So now you put another seed and I have a little bit just a little

Rob: 2:36:34

bit. So yeah, would I go again? Absolutely. Would I personally go every year? Probably not. But that again. That's me. And I understand why you guys because the three of you are just like kids in a sweetshop.

Adrian: 2:36:47

Yeah, I've done plenty of research. So I thought I'd done plenty of research and got the most done the most out of all of us. And that's like not all researched. And then I got there and I was like, haven't done enough research. I loved it. And I treat the UKGE the same way that I that everyone treats Essen because I don't play any games that UKGE I want to I did feel like I'd seen everything like two and a half days into UKGE, I felt like that last day on was literally just hanging around, see if I could get any bargains. Because it's kind of not big enough to treat you that way. That's why I think people do do gaming as well as because it's small enough. And there's the gaming area that you kind of can get around in two days if you want to. Whereas Essen we did three days we didn't do till seven o'clock each day. And we didn't do that fourth day. And I felt like I needed all of that. Just to get in what I want it to get in. And so yeah, I'd absolutely go again. I kind of just want to see as many conventions as possible at this point. So I'm probably thinking of not going to Essen to maybe go to Gen Con or to go to I don't know one of the dice tower ones or sharks or something I really want to just now absorb a little bit of every con out there like we haven't been air con yet. We know there's so many that we so many of the sort of the bigger cons whether they're purely playing or purely like sales or a mix of both whatever they just haven't seen and I really enjoyed Essen and I will absolutely be going back again. But I don't know if it's next year purely because I've got to count the pennies and figure out what I can do next year.

Davey: 2:38:28

Yeah, makes sense. It wasn't a cheap trip. No, no,

Adrian: 2:38:32

no. I mean, it wasn't expensive. We we may have

Davey: 2:38:35

ended up being expensive, but that's because we made it expensive. Shopping 90 quid on game or 90 euros on games, you know, not that's one game. Sorry. Yeah.

Adrian: 2:38:45

Just drop 50 quid on a lot. But yeah, I thought it was I think it was fairly reasonable considering how much it costs for the games Expo with the hotel and the bring and buy there and all that kind of stuff. I think it was fairly reasonable to go it was it was really, really yes, we've I've seen so many pictures of people like with tables full of their haul and I'm sure you could do that. My feeling was that the majority of games that they bought there was going to come out in three four weeks time in England or America if you live somewhere like I've heard people talk about like Sweden and stuff out and since idea that just won't get the games in language, or anything like that for months and months or you know, like South America there's someone from South America who say like, we will never see this game if I don't buy it here. understand all of that. For us. I've literally just picked up games apart from a couple of sort of cheaper games. I've just picked up games that I won't see for several months because I think you can then get the rest in England for about the same price. So yeah, I think it was relatively considering we went to a foreign country and we stayed an extra couple of days. I think it was relatively good value the way we did it yeah percent there we go.

JP: 2:40:10

Just wanna say thank you to everybody that we've met, whether it's in the hotels or the the kind of trade Hall Have you stopped and said hi just massive thank you as you can tell we've loved our trip. We definitely will be going again at some point and let's wrap this shindig up so we can all go to bed because we're knackered I'm

Davey: 2:40:30

tired knackered

Rob: 2:40:32

not having to go to work yeah or tomorrow.

JP: 2:40:37

Lie down tomorrow. There we go. Thank you for listening. If you want to kind of get in contact with the show our contact details are all in the show notes and if you've enjoyed this episode or been to Essen we'd love to hear your thoughts and also share this episode to your friends your gaming group because we're trying to get the episode out there and the show we'll be back again with our main episodes no doubt next week and some more expansion practice coming very very soon but whose turn is it guys?