Davey: 0:32

Welcome, welcome. This is James from whose turn is it? Anyway, I'm joined by JP Hello, Adrian. Hello, and Tambo Hello, we're here and we're gonna be talking about something we've just went to recently, very recently. Grid con, gridcon gridcon. So if you don't know what gridcon is set up by gaming rules, so Mr. Paul Grogan, there's a convention in the Southwest in Taunton, in the Holiday Inn, it's quite a big convention, it's grown kind of, year by year, it started off as like a little thing off to Essen spiel and people playing their little board games around pauls, and it's kind of grown to this massive convention. So I want to say a big thank you for that. Paul and Vicki and everyone else who's involved put a lot of work into it. And it's no easy feat. And we just want to say a big thank you. We've all really enjoyed it, you can see the effort that's gone in the organisation alone must have taken them a long time and a lot of hard work.

JP: 1:32

Well done like so there's just a lot of a lot of helpers and even some of his Patreon supporters who were gonna sit in manning the registration desk every now and then yeah, just to give Vicki a break. bless her. Yeah. And Vickis sister, who kind of sit in there most of the time and sorting out stuff or receiving lost bits of components that

Davey: 1:54

saw the little lost family was like looking at trying to get all the

JP: 1:58

components. So now it's just good to see. And we take it for granted when you go to these things that you just kind of turn a rock up and play games. And yeah, the amount of hours and effort that must have gone into that just to make sure that those all had a great time. Yeah.

Davey: 2:13

It was great. As long as everyone's there for the kind of a similar reason, but sometimes you don't know. You know, things can change. But then the atmosphere is just spot on. Exactly what you want.

JP: 2:23

So this was gridcon 4 And we go, yeah,

Davey: 2:28

it's my third fourth in the series. Yeah,

JP: 2:30

yeah. It was my first one. Your first one, the third one, my second, my second and your second, just

Tambo: 2:36

let's say when I walked in the door, I was very helpful, because I've gotten the lady's name, but one of the red top and she just sat there, and we've been in before. No, never. And she just sat there and explained where everything was, yeah, have a map. And yes, this is here. This is here and everything. It was really helpful. Yeah, it was really good. And I

Adrian: 2:51

think talking about the atmosphere, one of the things that's that's interesting and great about grid con is there's almost like four different areas to play. Because you've got the main hall, which is quite buzzy, and a little bit louder and a little bit sort of more just more gamers packed into an area. But it feels more like a like a convention hall gamer Hall sort of thing. You've got the sort of foyer and the restaurant, which looks and feels a bit more casual. You've got a smaller gaming room, which again, is a bit quieter, and then you've got the separate rooms upstairs as well. So each of those rooms has a different kind of atmosphere and a different feel. And I've noticed from last year that a lot of people ended up back in the same rooms, or in the same places that they were last year, whether that's due to habit or just the fact that they like the atmosphere in each separate room. Yeah, I found quite interesting because like you sat here or last year as well. And I think that's because if we like the quieter or the more comfortable or whatever it is

Davey: 3:47

that rather than with the rowdy lot

Adrian: 3:49

Well, exactly the same everyone who was with us last year. Like they there was a lot of the same people in that room again. So I just think it's interesting to have noticed that year on year that the same people are going to a lot the same people are going back into the same room because they like that atmosphere and

Davey: 4:04

also part of its habit as well as part of 100%

JP: 4:07

I'm all about it though.

Davey: 4:08

I just knew that's where I played last time. Kind of my feet took me that way.

JP: 4:14

It's nice that you have those those options, you know, it's not like this one massive Hall, like Expo Hall three where you know, it's loud. Yeah, that's it's what you've got. It's like you know what, I fancy I'm in a bit of a you know, high energy is being a bit more you know, loud and yeah,

Davey: 4:34

it's really tiring a bit. Oh, yeah. A little bit more personal and kind of, yeah, cosy, which is as cool

Tambo: 4:41

also people want squished in either with a there's plenty moves to move between chairs. Yeah, it wasn't companion spread out, which is a big thing. When

Adrian: 4:48

Saturday's definitely the busier day. Yeah, it was definitely isn't. It ran out a tablespace. In most of the halls on Saturday. At one point, there's still like restaurant space, but in the two sort of slightly big like, I'd say dedicated gaming spaces. It ran out on Saturday fairly quickly. And as soon as a table became free, people sort of jumped on it a little bit. But apart from that, there was there was still enough time and enough space to play. Yeah, especially on the Friday.

Davey: 5:13

They kind of got the player the player count about right around Right. Yeah,

Adrian: 5:17

how many people they can host assemble

Davey: 5:19

games can't do still, but

Adrian: 5:22

games or board game convention?

Davey: 5:25

Right. So leading on? What kind of games? Did everyone play? Or? Do we have a nice mix? Did you just stick to what you knew? And start with you, Adrian,

Adrian: 5:36

I had a really good mix. I showed off some games, I learned some new games, I demoed some games. So I had a really nice mix of kind of all of those things that there was some familiar some new. Some I wanted to try something else. I'll give that a go and say that and also doing the demos as well. So yeah, no, I had a really nice mix. And I got to sort of, again, I think I got the balance, right. Again, this year, I felt like I did pretty well, last year, I felt like I've got a good balance this year of sticking with our little gaming group and playing a few games there. And then going off and just meeting random people that you signed up for a game with or that you wouldn't normally game with, but maybe sort of know a little bit to go and have a bit of a game with them, and just sort of almost alternating between our little gaming group and sort of random people that were there that we signed up with, et cetera. So no, I think I've got the mix of that. Pretty good as well. Yeah, that was kind of, I suppose a very quick summary of my experience. That's fine.

Davey: 6:28

We'll go into a deeper

JP: 6:29

I'm not gonna lie allies is a bit yeah, sure. We've got places to be Yeah, that's correct. Yeah.

Davey: 6:37

How are you time though?

Tambo: 6:38

I played about four different games. Not really heavyweight once. Apart from that, I kept all the same things already knew. No, no, no, it's fine. I just kind of take what people want to play poker get too much. And yeah, problem table. So yeah, yeah. No, it's good mix. Really good mix for me. Started on my first one is a real heavy one, which I wasn't expecting. And then yeah. And I finished off on a very fun game, which I really enjoyed. So yeah, it was all pretty much what I played before.

Davey: 7:05

Okay. And you JP echo. Adrian

JP: 7:07

said, I kind of did a bit of a mix. I was doing a bit of kind of got my podcast hat on trying some prototypes and things like that. And then I took the podcast hat off and kind of had like, fun just playing games I already knew. And, yeah, nice

Davey: 7:22

finding that balance sometimes because you feel compelled to play a lot of the new hotness or a lot of the other games, so we can talk about it as well. But then, you know, there's a bit of bit of comfort to play all those old games and crack them out again, because you don't always get to play them. That's what the time is for, isn't it?

JP: 7:40

You know, I have fun playing the game in group. Yeah, yeah. That's why we set it up. Yeah. So we're here. Yeah. So I kind of want to make sure I do that and not just disappear for the entire weekend. And I echo Adrian said, it's, there's a good mix

Davey: 8:04

so I did get a mix in, but I wasn't there first like that as long. So I'm gonna be the audience voice in this episode, and ask the questions that I think you guys are going to want to know what game was the most surprising for each review? At gridcon, What game did you think you kind of went to that? It's going to be either surprising and the fact that you really enjoyed it or surprising the fact that you, you didn't have a huge gap. Start with

JP: 8:28

Oh, okay. That's a different start, or I don't know why, but that's fine. I like where you're going with it. Yeah. Surprising game for me. It was escape plan. Okay. Be Thomas. Yeah. And it was quite a meta game, because it was playing escape plan next to his prototype, which we'll cover in a bit with him teaching his prototype in the room. Kind of very lucky.

Davey: 8:50

That's what we do is make the game now.

JP: 8:52

What is going on? But yeah, so and also asking him, how does this rule work? I don't know. I'm not done that game for about. Yeah, so I've moved on to Yeah, but now escape plan. For me. It was really fun. Really fun. It's been. I think escape plan is one of those games in his catalogue that people either like the least or is maybe not the one that everyone says like, you know, when you go, Oh, what's your favourite Lacerda? Escape Plan is usually down the bottom. Yeah,

Davey: 9:24

I've heard but there's no because I feel it's because of his weight. I think maybe it's very different to a lot of his other games. Yeah.

Adrian: 9:30

And this is it. Whenever anyone talks about it, they always describe it as different, not that it's good or bad. They just seem to use the word different. I didn't know you, I was like, please tell me how good it is sort of not.

JP: 9:41

Yeah, I mean, I'll quickly kind of rattle through is I mean, if people don't know what escape plan is, if you think about Ocean's 11, heist movies, there, anything kind of that so the themes, I love the thing that is great. So you've kind of pulled off this, this kind of big job. And you you can have a board which is a hexagon layout, and it starts with two tiles and you are basically trying to get your money that is stashed in different businesses or safe houses around the sea. Get out Get out, get out. And that's it. That's pretty much all you got to do. So you have an escape plan card on that secret. You've got a little player screen which says Basically your money back. And your cash in hand is all secret as well. So no one kind of knows how much money you have on hand. But on that escape plan card or say, you know, you've got 100k in the gym, and you've got 50k in a restaurant, or maybe the bar, you can get your income from the bar, just some seed money to help you move around the city and do different things. And, yeah, you're pretty much moving around the different hexagon tiles. And the way you move is, is quite unique in that you link terrain together. So you can kind of spend a movement point across a terrain type, but you then can move across multiple hexes if it rains the same way, you can kind of slide around a little bit, and then you've got water in there, which you can cross with fairies and symbols around that. But the police are everywhere, as you'd expect, you just pulled a heist off and they're trying to look for you. So you kind of have to move avoid the different police which are like red, blue, and black. Little meeples very cute, you know, as Eagle Gryphon games produce, so it's very well done. And there are different ways that you can avoid the police, you can have contacts, which are cards that sit in your player board that you can hire, to kind of, you know, move the police around, hopefully into the direction of the other players that make their life a lot more difficult. And, and if you can't deal with them, then they will kind of give you a wound that you have to go on to take and you've got little face first aid token that you can spend it to heal that off. And if you get more like three wounds and an additional one, you will get this handcuffs card that will hinder you as you progress and basically takes one player elimination, no, no, no player and elimination just is going to score you negatively. Under any face a Euro game, it's just styled in a very unique and different way. And it kind of doesn't feel you're in terms of the mechanics and what you're doing. But ultimately, you're trying to get money, which is your victory points and and get out of the city. But yeah, I really enjoyed it, you can kind of get into the theme of it. And it gets tense as the game goes on. So you're earning notoriety, depending on what you're doing. So the more kind of interactions with Shady Characters, you do bet like the wanted level in GTA only goes up, if you can do things like go to safe houses and hide out, you can reduce it down. So every time you cross a certain threshold on that track, the other players, I mean, you get a little reward for it. So it's kind of encouraging you to do it. But the other players then can move the police closer to you. It's like they're starting to close in. So there's a real kind of push pull tug of war aspect to that, which I really enjoyed. And managing that at the end. Because the more kind of stars that you have means more negative VPS that you'll get or less money that you have to spend. It sounds interesting. So

Davey: 13:07

how long did it take?

JP: 13:08

It took a while. Yeah, we were learning and none of us really played before. So this was run by Martin, who's he's listening on the fun of the show. So it's yeah. So hi, Martin, how you doing? Okay. And he was pretty much he wanted to play it for the same reasons. I think I did, which was it was one of the catalogue that he had not tried before. Yeah, I'm just wanted to test it out. So he borrowed it from a friend. And we managed to find a couple of players and spin it through, but I really enjoyed it. I think you would probably bust that game out in 90 minutes. Once you know what you're doing. Yeah, well, under two hours, definitely 90 minutes. If you get on with it. I mean, you've got minimum nine actions each maximum 15. Right. So you have three days you do three actions per day. And then you can earn extra action.

Adrian: 13:59

Yeah, that's good to cite you say you say you got that number of actions. Yeah, but it's a Lacerda it's always gonna have you've got worker actions. You've

JP: 14:06

got like your main things and then your assets that you can spend and then you've got the fixer tiles that you can even combine things a little bit but but yeah, it works really well.

Davey: 14:15

The biggest question who is again in the loot bag,

JP: 14:18

is it going in the loot but you know what I was the first day I was playing in game I was like really like this? Really liked this. And then I kind of got through it. And I thought now I'm not gonna get it. But what I play Absolutely, anytime. I don't think it's bad. It's just not my favourite. But I think it's different enough that it is hard to compare it to his others. It just you just can't compare it to your disposal whether it's a worker placement

Davey: 14:45

shelf or anything

Adrian: 14:47

but an eagle cheap copy in the room by cheap

JP: 14:50

cheap was 70 quid, which is Yeah, but it was kind of like, if it was 40 quid Yeah, yeah, no brainer from from the gameplay you're getting right. But because it's a deluxe game. It's a harder decision. For me and That's the only reason but yeah, I love to

Davey: 15:11

have me trying to whisper in your ear. Yes buy it JP.

JP: 15:14

You would have escaped to the bring and buy and picked up I think Martin was thinking the same Yeah. If I enjoy it I might pick it up.

Adrian: 15:22

Well I asked you about it because I was like at 70 pound yeah if people come back really loving it and I can sort of the same conclusion usually which I've already got a couple of games on the shelf Yeah, they don't make the table as much as I would like them to even though I like the game sort of. Is this going to be another one of those that's cost me 70 pound Yeah, it's

JP: 15:39

it's fun.

Davey: 15:40

Price point per play. That's it. Yeah. entertainment value. But we'll do it. Boy math,

JP: 15:47

but I really here boy. I really, gamer math. There we go. Really enjoyed it. So it's just one Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's

Davey: 15:55

one one I need to play. How about you, Tandy?

Tambo: 15:58

I think the game that surprised me the most was Becky put it was forest shuffle. Yes, there's

Davey: 16:02

a lot of buzz about this. Yeah.

Tambo: 16:04

It's just like a it's a basically it's a card deck building game, which we bring a lot of cute animals from the woods, basically, and you build an environment for them to live in. And no one was ever in your words. And the more trees different trees you have the more VPs you get in the game. Kind

Davey: 16:17

of like set collection in there, isn't it with with different combos?

Tambo: 16:21

Yeah. And that's like, what's typical Becky she loved about working play it and then it was yeah, it was really good fun. You the end game is three Winter cards thar go at the bottom of the deck and thats your end game scoring. Once you draw three winner cards, the game ends so it can be a very random long game or can be quite short game because it's so that's quite good aspect of the game I enjoyed. But the combos are really good. So it's like if you ever focus in one tree in any combat often hairs because he had like he had hairs and then you have more hairs you have they come off each other? Rabbits and yeah, so it was really good and sets of butterflies. And yeah, it's yeah, I really enjoyed it really surprisingly enjoyed it and came close to buying it again.

Adrian: 17:03

It's like, it's definitely Becky game, because it's got that thing where you can look doesn't matter how you've done, you can look and you feel like you've made something. Yes. So like, you could have scored 10 points or 200 points, but you've got all of your forests with all of the animals arranged around it and like ferns and all that kind of stuff and you visualise what you've made. And I think like, you know not to talk on his behalf. But she does seem to like those games where you can see that you've made an engine or you've done something like it's very visual, because each

Tambo: 17:30

tree but for one for the top one of the bottom that live specifically for the top of the tree or bottom part and once the left to the right, so your foot you look like you're building an actual level.

Davey: 17:40

So it's kind of it's an aesthetic builder as well as a deck builder. Yes,

Tambo: 17:45

definitely. Definitely. I mean, Becky did really well she want it as well. She's really good. Martin keeps looking like him last but um, I think Martin even bought a copy because he loved at the shop and bought it there.

Davey: 17:54

I saw a lot of people playing it and we saw people playing it in Essen as well. And as one I've I've read the rules and I had to play it but I don't have that we're still not played it. Especially even though it's a quick game. It was very

Tambo: 18:04

quick game, which was also quick and easy. And they're all

Davey: 18:08

like kind of a palate cleanser game where you can do it in between another or

Adrian: 18:13

it was one of my last games on the Sunday. It was my first play of it as well. Yeah. And yeah, just don't sit next to the left of Becky because she likes to like you build up like a shop. And she likes clearing the shop. Yeah, so every time it gets to you you're like oh, I there's no shop so that's my only advice if you buying the game great, but just don't ever sit next to the left

Davey: 18:34

of BECKY Yeah, no ends

Tambo: 18:35

she did she have a cave car. But yeah, and she she built up and then she cleared it and stick all those cards in the cave, which will probably get him again. And they were just like big stuff.

JP: 18:46

Beckys levelled up. Yeah, he's levelled, I guess.

Tambo: 18:50

roofless? Definitely the most surprising for me. So be quick. Sounds good.

Davey: 18:54

Yeah, definitely. How about you, Adrian?

Adrian: 18:56

I think mine was dropped. None

Davey: 18:57

of them didn't like any of them. Like,

Adrian: 19:04

on the ones I played with you, one of them was yours. And I enjoyed smart your, like mine was drafted and write records. So it was a sponsored game where you could sign up, then you kind of bit of a lottery pick, whoever got signed up names got picked out of a hat. And Adam from punchboard, who we've had on the show before he was running it, and I signed up just for that one. I didn't sign up for loads. I just signed up for that one because it's a roll of what's a draft and flip and write that, as the name suggests. And I signed up because as much as I like sort of roll n writes or flip n writes or draft and writes or whatever, right, right. Yeah, I enjoy them. But I quite often can't sort of get people to play them. With them. I've read like from the people I regularly play with. So I signed up for that one to give it a go because it looked good but I thought I don't ever see myself adding to it to my collection and it was really good. So I have to apologise because there's five people sat around the table and only got four names because on the signup list, they only listed four people. So we had the table. Alan, Martin and Paul who taught us hegemony at The UK games Expo. Yes, who absolutely rinsed me because like three quarters of the way through the game, I had a full band. Apart from a lead singer. I produced like six albums and yet hadn't even left like the see there's there's the Timberland, there's different, like six albums, but never left the open mic. I'm just like, What are you doing? It's like, my band is doing perfectly fine.

Davey: 20:46

But self-satisfaction, it's fine.

Adrian: 20:48

It was good do you you, as the name suggests, you draft cards. So your cards are either band members, including like roadies, and sound engineers and stuff like that. Or their actions. And those actions are kind of either going on tour or producing albums, or there's two other parts of the board that I can't actually tell you what thematically they did. They were just kind of sort of tick boxes, and all that kind of stuff. And so you draft that you do the action. And each of the musicians has like a top colour, a bottom colour, a left colour and a right colour. And if you on the board, you're surrounded by other band members, and engineers and all that lot. And if you match colours, you then get to tick off another box, which then gives you combos because you could then tick off another box, etc, etc. And if at the end of the term, you can't play the card, because you've ticked off all the boxes, you get minus points, which is a scandal. So your bank has done something to cause a scandal because you try to get too many singles. That's something that Yeah, yeah, and everyone. So it's a game by inside up games, who also produced Earth, which is obviously still quite hot and talked about, and it's really nice design, and a lot of people kept saying it's Das shon clever, or That's so clever with a theme. Now, I've not played that yet. Don't need to get to play that, but I've not played it yet. And if that's what it is, then that's great, because it is in a much smaller box, and is a soloable game. So it's chance I can actually get to that myself. Whereas once things draft all my records, because it's drafting cards. Yeah. I'm guessing you there's not much of a solo mode to it. No.

Davey: 22:25

But

Adrian: 22:25

yeah, it was really, it was really fun. And you're drafting and you're kind of seeing what other people put together and you're like you're laughing at their band, how come your band has a conductor and two metal plates. You can see that but also there's just that nice little puzzle of right. If I put this one here, I get to harmonise them, which is linking up and I get this bonus, and I get this bonus. And you've got secret objectives and public objectives. And so the end game triggers are if there's too many scandals, if someone fills up their entire band, or if someone completes, I think it's six objectives that ends the game. So tends to be about five, six rounds of drafting. Yeah, because you're drafting I think it was five cards. Actually, you've kind of got 25 actions to do. But everyone's doing it was simultaneously so it's still think we've done it about 45 minutes. It's just really nice. And it's very visual as well. Whereas like a lot of Roll and writes, boxes, just boxes. You maybe don't understand why your tip while you're ticking the boxes on. Whereas I say there's a couple of areas that are a bit more abstracted. But for the most part, it made sense what you were doing. I'm going on tour, I'm producing albums, I'm filling up band members and stuff like that. It

Davey: 23:35

sounds more interesting than I initially thought when I first looked at it, so that might be one I have to check out. How long did that take? Yeah, for

Adrian: 23:44

about 45 minutes I think and that was with a sort of 5-10 minute teach the Teach didn't take too long at all.

Davey: 23:50

Just kind of what you want from that kind of game I

Adrian: 23:53

think yeah, no, and that was a I thought I was gonna like it but I didn't hadn't looked at it too much because say roll n writes game I like but tend not to be able to get to play so why invest time looking at it. I thought I'll sign up and see what it's all about. And yeah, it's fantastic. Really good game.

Davey: 24:07

So is it going in your loot bag?

Adrian: 24:08

No. I'm never gonna get to play it's just because of the solo

Davey: 24:12

play mode is that the biggest thing of it

Adrian: 24:14

if it had a solo if it had like a really strong solo play to cut no time? I probably maybe a smaller box I probably would. Because it'd be a game I could drag like, like I mentioned before, like railroading because a tiny box I can play solo very quickly. 15-20 minute games. And I think draft and write records could with a good solo mode, and maybe a smaller box could fill up that space or be another one in addition to that space, but I've got Da Shon clever if that's a very similar thing, maybe without the thing. I'll give that a few goes probably next.

JP: 24:46

You mean record back date callback? I know wow.

Davey: 24:49

When escape plans. Just stick with a loot bag. Oh quite like that. I quite like the sound of it. This

Adrian: 24:57

makes it sound like if I play enough someone's gonna give me an option of a box

Davey: 25:05

about you made for me my most surprising game was actually far away. I completely set it right I completely I'm getting further and further away from the point. So I completely dismissed it when I first saw it, the it just didn't look up my street. I do like lighter games, but it didn't look like it had any crunch to it. But it actually has a quite unique mechanic when you get up close to the artwork is really cool as well. It's kind of like a psychedelic shroom punk. Like aesthetic to it. It looks quite cool. The little artwork on

Adrian: 25:41

it sort of represent different cultures, right? But it's doing it in this weird sort of yeah, as you say, like sort of psychedelic and cartoony sort of way. It was really

Davey: 25:49

cool. Really. Yeah, looks really good. So it's set collection, it's set collection with drafting. It has a quite cool little mechanic where you have these little maps, which I think called relics. Are they Yeah, yeah. Where if you play a card that's lower than the one that you next play, you get to draw from this little deck, which adds more sets or add certain things that you get out and you pick one of those, obviously, if you can draw get more matched or more of those, it's easier to get those out and get the right sets. So you kind of drafting, you're looking at everything from the what kind of symbol it has, what symbols are needed to score VPS, etc, and you plan down. The unique mechanic comes in the fact that at the end, you flip these cards, and then you play the card from right to left from left to right. And then you reveal it. And so if this card on the far right basically says, you need these sets and you've only flipped out and you've got none of them on their credit cards. None of them really in the cards. You don't get any points. So you've got to build this real nice sequencing engine that goes along. And it's just it had a lot of crunch for really light game, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So there was this really surprising for an hour

JP: 27:09

late for dinner. Yeah. Yeah. What do you say? Thank you, Adrian.

Davey: 27:16

You're welcome.

JP: 27:20

Pizza for that. Yeah. But you still got it. So yeah, the best there

Davey: 27:24

was yeah, it was worth it. I think I'll probably I might purchase it when that's might go my loot bag loot bag it's not available at the moment. No, it's

Adrian: 27:32

good. You can import it but it's got no English rulebook for it still, the only way to get the English rulebook was to go to Essen or print it off.

Davey: 27:40

It's kind of it's not once you haven't isn't once you've got

Adrian: 27:43

the rules down. There's nothing there that will challenge you really from that perspective. I think it's quite similar to furnace in a field is you're building a bit of an engine and you're sort of trying to get cards and all that kind of stuff, but it's got less rules. It's not quite as crunchy as furnace No, but it's got a lot less rules overhead the furnace

Davey: 28:01

still has enough to satisfy that need when playing that type of game. Yeah, it was nice.

Adrian: 28:06

It's the third time I've shown it off and every time someone's gone, I did not expect this game to be this country and I'm finding quite a joy to show it to people

Davey: 28:15

to play it then for this limited time which even though it's a weekend you always feel like you don't have enough time. What was the biggest game you played?

JP: 28:24

So the biggest game I didn't play but I managed to teach so I'm going to count that to a little teacher cap on teach cap on but I have played it so it still count Did you have a pointer pointing stick as well? What did have paul grogans chopstick? Yeah, I forgot to use it. Oh,

Davey: 28:40

no. They're interactive whiteboard. No.

JP: 28:43

PowerPoint presentation. sellin it's a long teach. No, I had mine clashes. Literally newest, newest game on game plan right now, which is perseverance episode three. And as most people will probably know, we promoted it on our socials I played on game rules. With Kerley. We've played it in the in the group. And I've still got the prototype so we can still play it if anyone else is interested in Yeah.

Davey: 29:11

I love it. Yeah, it's my favourite episode. Yeah. So

JP: 29:14

yeah, I managed to get a few plays around now we have Mark monk from ninja key games. It's good to see him again. And Joel from Devon dice podcast. We had James from Board Game, Jimmy. And then we had Mark from Malta. Oh, yeah. It was like a content creator game. Yeah. From mark. So he was gonna learn oh, I need to go and do something. Yes to feel like I'm

Adrian: 29:41

on slack as well. In slack,

JP: 29:44

so he's there every day. I've chatted with outgained online with Mark mainly the server games or mine crush games. He loves heavy games. So this was his jam. And yeah, it was a joy to bring that that game to life for different people. So very quickly. I'm not gonna go into the nitty gritty of it because we've played it on the channel. I know Kerlies talked about this probably a great length and that'll come out on a future episode, but it's dino riders it's perseverance as you know it but twisted up in In its mechanics in different ways, so yeah, he kind of has that exploration that you can kind of go off but you're using dino worker placement, along with dice drafting, worker placement, and he kind of blends the whole thing together and it's mind clash. It's crunchy, lots of decisions to be made lots of little combos to be had. Thematically, I think it's great, because it just loved the themes of anyway, but it was just nice to see how new people kind of took to it. And we had a bit of a mix at the table. Some have only played episode one, not episode two, some have not played any. And then some are played both so yeah, it was interesting. You could tell the people who play perseverance before are kind of, you know, manoeuvring the city to try and dominate and maybe left the wilderness the top half of the board alone a little bit more. Whereas the new players are just kind of going push buttons BAM see what happens

Davey: 31:12

deep as I can and

JP: 31:13

to be fair, they got pretty much out there between Yeah, which is quite a contrast to the the play we had on the game in Wall Street where we didn't actually but we only did three players so maybe that had something to do with it. Yeah. But yeah, that's that was for me. Enjoy everything. Yeah, yeah, I think everyone had a blast the thing is with the doing that I was quite nervous before even though I knew the game played it a few times. And I think you probably felt this age and when you did your one which we weren't mentioned yet we'll get to it but yeah as like the hour before it's kind of like oh yeah, I've got to do this teach and they're sponsored so it needs to be good needs to be someone wants professionals to be professional and it needs to be coherent and then yeah, it was kind of gold Yeah, stop panic stop setting in a little bit but but I think the right thing to do well your teachers always give me

Davey: 32:04

one thing it's

JP: 32:05

doing so that it's a heavy it's a heavy game as you know. So it's like one of the many buck buckle in guys because this this is going to be a good 30 to 40 minute teach at least and it was Yeah, you can't not You can't not be that you can't just rock up five minutes and then go right your go it's just like there's so much in it but yeah, I love Episode Three think it's a great one I'm still deciding whether it this or two for me

Davey: 32:36

I haven't played enough of two actually give a proper opinion but from the feel I think I do enjoy three more but I do need to play two more yeah just never get around to playing it because the only time you did it usually campaign was yeah, it was combo one

JP: 32:53

but but now it's more streamline so I think it would play quicker than than so anyway. So that might have the edge but

Tambo: 33:00

yeah, I find that slightly simpler than to me just me know, Edward is it is slightly simpler. General consensus is it is yeah,

Davey: 33:06

yeah. I think I think it is but it still has that crunch just just because of the fact that it's streamlined. Yes, that makes more sense. That's why you're doing this and this is more accessible. You don't get locked out certain things as easy so yeah, it's it's good.

JP: 33:22

That's my big game.

Davey: 33:24

I'll go into my big game barrage we got a waiver it got us to the table and I taught it and I think I did alright with the teach in a good with this he did so well that Martin absolutely took took to it like a fish and water were absolutely dominated the board we kind of all just let him take all the resources all the neutral dams and then just absolutely continue to shit all over it's

JP: 33:59

really kind of embarrassing really. Yeah it was we play before

Davey: 34:03

but I still enjoyed it I know where I kind of messed up and I was like I'm just not in this anymore I've cocked up massively and I know mine anymore but I'm still just going to try and do as best as I can and go along but JP had got you'd got into a brick wall hadn't you you literally got to a point where you're like I'm screwed I can't do anything

JP: 34:22

and the crash test dummy that yeah the car into the wall and cried Yeah,

Davey: 34:28

we really saw the first grown man gridcon cry it was it was like me playing Game of Thrones It was literally I there was a point where for you're gonna stand up and leave JP I was like, oh shit, this is close. Yeah, it was

Adrian: 34:45

there was a few of us that sat over next door to you guys playing dune imperium and with the expansions which was a great game. And we will like having fun because obviously during a period quite a light game and and we looked across just the misery JPS face. And having played the game before I could see that he had kind of not got it right. Yeah. But there's other people playing the game. And you literally just pointed at the stack of this the backup action, isn't it? It's just like yeah, is that and you just pointed at like all your workers there and when they See the backup action? And these are all my workers. These are, how good it's going. And I was just laughing what stuff in life because you looked miserable. I mean, probably laughing You probably didn't help. You look like you were just Oh, no, this is bad.

JP: 35:31

Yeah, I don't mind that people take the piss or when I'm, while I say that's fine. If you've been there, we've probably all been there when you kind of tell us your frustration with yourself? Yeah, then is anybody else? Because the only person's fault is mine? Because I got in that situation? Well,

Davey: 35:47

I think it was all of ours in that sense. And the fact that Martin did, it wasn't like, I mean, you're probably only about 10 VPS behind me when you know,

JP: 35:56

a lot no more, was it? Yeah.

Davey: 36:00

It didn't seem like a lot. But then Martin was like, 40, or 50, ahead of everyone else. So it wasn't, I don't think it was necessarily your bad players, all of ours, we just let someone run away with that game. And there's, you know, there's a certain amount of VPS on the board. There's some bad play. No, I know, I play bad as well. But I'm saying we also kind of none of us help this game situation because that game is competitive. And we've let someone take all the resources off the board, which are limited amount and kind of run away. And yeah, there's I focused too much on trying to build this one strategy as our combo this my power with the with the contracts on the board, which like, so minus three energy, and I had done I had thing that was for energy, so I can basically, any energy I took was for energy. So basically, all these middle contracts, these sevens, I could do pretty easily by one drop of water. I was like, Well, I belong to this combo but by then it was a too late. The game was nearly over. I was like, oh, no, I was just really inefficient with it. But I still enjoyed it. And you came out the other side, or did you go the ditch? Back up, Oh, I can actually do stuff now. Yeah,

JP: 37:16

I mean, that was there's the frustration of I did some basically poor choices. And the fact that, you know, Martin had dominated the map. And I was just starved and just didn't have anything I couldn't get in anything.

Adrian: 37:29

Just looking dejected. Trying to work out. Yeah, happy. But there's just an hour in the middle where you decide. How

JP: 37:36

was the I just went? I don't know how to do it. I felt like, fucking useless. Yeah. And I can't see how to get out of this problem. Yeah. And I was thinking and thinking racking my brains again, right. And then I made a decision. It was wrong. That compounded it even worse. idiot. Now I can't do this is one

Davey: 37:54

of those points where I think you should have just been like, I don't need to build any dams. Now. I need to instead build an energy house off a neutral. Yeah. And start taping.

JP: 38:04

Yeah, we were able

Davey: 38:06

to slow Martin down. And then you know, his points start that gap started dropping a lot more. But it wasn't until that situation where we everyone went, why haven't we done this earlier? And did that, that it started to? And it's and that comes with practice, is a punishing game? It's

JP: 38:22

because I've not played it for a while. And I've probably forgot that you could even do that as a strategy. And yeah, and it was just one of them things. I think if you'd asked me at the time, I said, I want to burn this game and never play it again

Adrian: 38:34

Well, you did say that. Yeah, to

JP: 38:37

be fair, I did say. But at

Davey: 38:38

the end you said your player. Yeah, I

JP: 38:39

did. I would play again, I just I think I'll be more mindful of it.

Davey: 38:44

It's a game we have to pay attention to what other people assume. And I forgot that in when I started started playing it as well. It's the kick you in the balls that game? Yeah, loads of people came over to us and were like, have you had a good time?

JP: 38:56

And then work is in the bank one. What's going on? Like, could you just piss off a minute. I appreciate it.

Davey: 39:07

Yeah, really, really likes to kick you in your down this game

JP: 39:10

doesn't have a lot of times, shut up

Davey: 39:13

Does, but I still, I still want my favourite games. It's creates stories and moments like that, you know, and it's not maybe the best feeling sometimes. But as long as you know, sometimes you're gonna have bad games with it, or sometimes and that's fine by you, then it's a good game.

Adrian: 39:29

So my, probably my biggest game of the weekend was Kutna Hora. So it's not really the longest or the biggest game, I just deliberately chose to not play any sort of be expensive three, four hour games. So I played with Andy, Phil and mark and it was a hot games library. So for those who don't know, there's a sort of new back from Essen library where you have to sign up and sign out and then sort of arrange again once it's signed up and signed out. So So Andy signed out and got to the table and I got there about half hour early and I thought I'd start reading the rulebook Why not sign he was like, right, I've got most of the Teach down but I've not played it before. And Mark said basically, I've watched a video so I could kind of get a feel for it. So Andy did a great job in doing the teach but having not played it's quite hard sometimes to make sure you've got all the rules, right? So the bits where he wasn't quite our cutting board said for that normally when I'd read half the rulebook and Mark had watched a video, normally one of us was able to go, oh, that works like this. So it's kind of a bit of a combined teach with Andy leading it, which is actually fine and worked really well. I think it's bit like

JP: 40:35

our revive teach from last year. Yeah, exactly the same. Yeah. And

Adrian: 40:39

it just works sometimes. Especially with a new game where you've not had a chance to play it or like really spend

Davey: 40:45

some time if it has weird interactions, or weird links, as well, it's nice to have someone to back you up with a rule class, etc. Yeah,

Adrian: 40:52

and it's, it's an interesting game, it's got a lot of what I'd call sort of more typical Euro stuff going on in it. So the you start with a deck of I think it's seven cards, no, to six cards,

Davey: 41:07

Mark, where's Mark, when you need him?

Adrian: 41:09

Oh, I've got where you go. Now, that's a weird thing to say, anyway, I got you and you have six cards in your hand, each card has two actions, and you play the first sort of of your turns, you play two cards, and you pick an action off of each card. Second one, you do exactly the same than the last one, you just play one card and pick one of the actions. And the actions are fairly simple, you have an action where you kind of get the right to build a building. So you take one of the one of the tiles off of one the statue allowed to build, everyone's only allowed to build from certain stacks, like they they own the sort of the rights to build from these guilds, basically, and so you pick that there's one that which is plot, where you pay the cost of being next to one of the titles and the thing. Next one it has it has an individual costs. So the nice of the plot, because it's going to be next to a nicer building, the more it costs, you can then build a building, which is taking that right and putting the tiles down. And then you can also mine, which is a different section of the board. So that's all to do with the top section of board. Down the bottom section of the board is the mine, which is a bit of an area control. So each level however many stars, and each of the tile has either zero to three stars, I think we saw, each tile has that number of stars on it, and then you put your little minor like character on top of it, and whoever has the most stars, wins. And the more stars there are, the more points you win at the end of the game. And there's kind of four levels. So you're sort of trying to get the most out of each of the levels that you can. And there's a few other bits and pieces in there. There's like bonus actions for putting down so many buildings, and you've got reputation track, which means that certain actions are cheaper, and there's a joker, one of the cards has a joker on it, which is you lose a reputation, and you get to do any action. So it's kind of a Get Out of Jail Free card. If you've got enough reputation, the Joker doesn't cost you the reputation. So it's kind of the more reputation had the Joker can't do any more damage to you basically. And then there's some point scoring at the end. And at the very end of the game, all of these buildings that you've played, your building gets a number of hours worth a number of points equal to the same sort of coloured dot that's on it that's adjacent and some have one coloured dots on two different coloured dots, some have three, so you're just looking for adjacencies. But as you play the thing, as you play the title, it will normally either give you a little bonus, or it will put your production up. Or it will do something to these population of mining decks. And this is kind of I mean, use the word gimmick for lack of a better thing. But it's kind of the it's kind of the difference that you probably haven't seen in a lot of games. So you can you move like these sliders along the different sliders. And as you move the sliders along normally things get lower value. So wood goes from a three to a two, for instance, you can also behind it to sort of give you that number behind it as a deck of cards. And as the population increases, you turn out you'd like get rid of tax cuts off the deck, and then changes the numbers behind it as well. So you're playing this balancing game of the population increasing, making things cheaper and more expensive. And then you the more you sort of, the more you build wood, the sort of cheaper experiments. Yeah. So the demand goes down and it gets can get to a point where it says you now can't build any more of these because it's not big enough, the population is not big enough to house this. So you're not the the government or the local council or whatever is not going to give you rights to build this any more of these buildings. And it's an interesting mechanic because as someone builds more wood, like it's like, oh, now every time you need to spend a word, it only costs one. And because you never really have a word or stone or anything to build, you just pay the coins worth of how many words around. So it's kind of you're trying to play this game of waiting till your production when you get income. You want the money to be the number to be high, but when you're spending it, you want the money to be as low as possible. And you're kind of playing this back and forward, forward. And it was it all fit together really nicely apart from the fact that quite often things were like us flip this, this population deck and you had to almost turn know kind of what to expect, you almost had to look at the next three or four population cards to kind of see what it was going to do to the value to make an informed decision. And as the bit that people kind of kept sticking on, it felt like they were like, well, if the population goes up by three, then my next action is to spend on whatever it is wood or meat or beer, I think was one of them. What's that gonna

Davey: 45:37

Good night? Well

Adrian: 45:42

you know, what's that going to do to the production or to the cost of my next action. And it was just a little bit of a sticking point, cuz it's kind of hidden information, almost, it feels like it shouldn't be hidden information. So everyone's just kind of flicking through the cards to see what it will do if you move the slider along or whatever. Otherwise, it was actually a really strong good combination. The art design is quite different, but cool, because it's black and white, but there's a lot of silver, and it's actually silver. Like it's got a sheen to it. Like that runs all the way through the board, because silver and coal mining so hence the black and silver theme. And it all kind of fits together really well apart from unfortunately, what I think is the key change to it, which just didn't work for me. But everyone else everyone around the table seem to have a good time. It's I enjoyed it just wouldn't get it for that reason. Everyone round table had a good

Davey: 46:32

time. So that's something that will come with plays, though.

Adrian: 46:35

It was so there's a the population deck is five columns wide with three different sliders and 70 cards. Okay. And the mining one is three different or two different sliders but three different figures for Why'd I want to

JP: 46:52

say with your is a strange one. I randomised? No,

Adrian: 46:57

no, as the population goes up, things go up. Right. But there's, like that said, there's a lot of numbers. Yeah, that's a lot of numbers. Like if you take essentially like, a spreadsheet, you take 90 Yeah, is a spreadsheet. It's just got like a thing, where

Davey: 47:09

it's kind of a strange thing to have in a euro euro game. Yeah, that randomness where you're trying to plan, oh, I need this, this and this to do this. But you know, you don't know that there's too many numbers in there, it sounds like one play, because I like the whole, the resource setup and the resource trading sounds unique and interesting. But the randomness may put me off, so definitely want to have to play. So I'm guessing it's not going in your loot bag from your response.

Adrian: 47:37

It's a game I would absolutely play again, I wouldn't purchase it personally. And there's there's this randomness in it and only if you've got the different piles of cards of different tiles. But as I say, there's three guilds you're allowed to build from that. And each of them behave slightly differently. And I think there's six in total and they get around or maybe there's the other six in total, and they get randomised among the page kind of have to have the same one. And like coal and wood is a cheaper production, but their buildings are cheaper supports next to them are cheaper and you kind of got to make the most of those kinds of things. And if you're kind of not thinking the right way, if you've got an odd combination, which one of the players at the table I think Did they had an odd combination? It took them too long to work out. Yeah, kind of they were saying I'm just not getting you guys are getting 200 money, but I'm getting like 20 but the buildings and the plots next to would have cost less, but they hadn't kind of you hadn't figured that out far enough like quick enough into the game so there is some there's some replayability and but on your first play I think someone might have it tough on that first play as well. But no, it was enjoyable. I think it took two and a bit hours with a half hour sort of teach put together Yeah, yeah and yeah, enjoyable just not one that I would personally purchase for for the population depth.

Davey: 48:54

About you tambo

Tambo: 48:56

The biggest game I've ever played it was the first game I played which I thought was gonna be a play Dune and then I saw you and JP sat there and as a planter Nobo. Yeah, it was really good. I really enjoyed it. It's a lot heavier than I thought was gonna be

Davey: 49:08

it was it was amazingly heavy was

Tambo: 49:12

that when JP was saying that a little anyway, so actually, maybe it wasn't where it was heavy, but it probably did look as heavy as it was. Yeah. That really enjoyed it really good friends. Growing play time it was JP has grown plants wasn't it? Yeah. Flowers or flowers in

Davey: 49:28

the sky and sky. Platform platforms steam punk plants steam

Tambo: 49:32

punk classic. Yeah, it's

JP: 49:33

kind of a weird steampunky agricultural thing automation.

Davey: 49:38

Yeah. Steam Punk AI plants now. That's cool. Yeah, it

Tambo: 49:44

was cool. It's like a worker placement placement wasn't it generally I suppose and you're doing a little board what you did your own grown your plant your flowers, I say plants as flowers. But the worker placement was good. Was it a three by grid three by three grid

JP: 49:58

Play account but yeah, we have three players so it was like a three by three with it with an edge with extended edges on yeah,

Tambo: 50:05

um, have you for tools don't need your cards but it's mainly about the colours isn't it? Not really the tools itself so just just go by the colours really in the workplace was interested in you put it next to each card and your in between two, if you got enough power, I think it was your boss and your boss. That's it and you get golden but double action at one time. And then you do that once per round, wasn't it?

JP: 50:28

Over work? Yeah. overwork. Yeah.

Tambo: 50:31

That was quite interesting. And then if no one's gone there, but you go there again, the other car sells at different colour. We haven't been there, which was good for me to do the same action twice, which paid off for me at the end. I think a lot. That was a really good kind of car mechanic work replacement.

JP: 50:44

Yeah, it's like the the blocking is like I put a yellow screwdriver down, then that means another player can't put a yellow screwdriver down against the same tiles that it's next to touching. Yeah, so you kind of like, and you're always saving one, which I'm sure tomorrow we'll get to, but you're saving one of your tools for the end of the round. Which matters, because actually in the middle of the game doesn't really matter what tool you're using for what other than the blocks. But But knowing that you might want to keep the red one. Yeah. And then someone goes dependent and puts those ones that use a red one to do what they want to do. But contention there, which is quite nice. Yeah, you have to kind of work around and plan around a little bit.

Tambo: 51:24

Yeah, that's typical workplace, wasn't it? Yeah. You just got to plan. Like, it's often the last point of the game where you get these special abilities for that tool for

JP: 51:33

the character, isn't it now because the so called the crafting, a character lends their ability for the round at the end

Tambo: 51:39

of the round. I was I found out about beginning I was locked up with barrage. I was getting a bit huffy. Devi was doing all this comboing. And and when it came to me, I was like doing this and that and that was it beat me by one point, I know exactly, which I think makes a good game, because we think you're not doing well with your engine, but actually doesn't have to don't actually necessarily need a good big engine on it. But it was very good at doing

Davey: 51:58

that. You just had it. You were doing efficient choices where I just had more to do or just doing more. Yeah, exactly. But it wasn't necessarily as efficient.

JP: 52:07

I think thing I liked about is the on your player board. You obviously got the polynomino kind of Tetris style shapes that you put in on but they feast Odin or not. Yeah, yeah, it's not all about that, though. It's a part of the game. But when you look at it, you think it's going to be all about this, this Sky platform, but it's the modules that you get. So you kind of buying these modules that you're attaching around the whole board. That's the bit I really like because it's that's how you customise your your engine. And then you have that energy die, don't you? They have you kind of power around your board when you fulfil kind of planned contracts and stuff. So that whole mechanic was just interesting, because you're like, oh, I want that one for an engine. I want this one because it triggers off this action. Actually, I want this end game scoring module. Yeah, that's fun.

Davey: 52:54

There is a lot going on here. I will say that there is a lot going better, isn't it? It's very busy because you've got your Polynomino board. And then to the right, you've also got your like toolkit

JP: 53:05

exactly what it is.

Davey: 53:08

Which has other things going on on it like basically you've got contracts you have to fulfil with certain colour plants that you might be on there, which gives you energy which moving moving around your board, which is how you then do your modules, which is then maybe given you VPS or given your actions which you then take off and then do set action. But oh, that might actually there may make the house which will then give you X amount of ability, and then you decide now function Yeah, so I think at one point I and probably lost me the game. So I didn't lose in the end. I just went, I didn't know what I'm doing. I'm just doing this. I literally planned an action out and then it came round to it. And I was like, I don't even know what's more efficient anymore. I'm just doing this because I just got to this point where I'm I'm melting.

JP: 54:00

It's a combo century. Yeah, there

Davey: 54:02

was a lot going on with it, which I found harder than some Lacerda. Yeah, because a lot of Lacerdas is at least I know. I know the path what point I'm doing and I've built towards this combos and this is what I'm doing with this. This is just like this quiet. It's a veritable playground of plants where I'm just like, I don't know, I don't know what's gonna work we reached

Adrian: 54:23

Davies edge of his sandbox at the edge of this sandbox

Davey: 54:30

play I enjoyed it. It just it just made me melt but at one point, I just thought God can't take this and I think

Tambo: 54:36

we realised that it's really important to get your personal contracts on your board so that we

Davey: 54:41

have them and I was like skirting around the board a lot faster

Tambo: 54:44

a lot more once I got them going. Yeah, it did feel like that. But you could just do the actual main contracts on the other side of the board which you get a bit of a better reward for Yeah, and then when you do it on your board you seem to trigger off your engine a lot more I

Davey: 54:56

think yeah, I didn't do the ones on the main board as much I didn't think I did that bit of a heavy getting block power, block power was important. Yeah. As soon as I saw a module eventually gave my block power I think was too late because I had so many modules it wouldn't come right back round to that.

Adrian: 55:13

What was what power have I missed? I bought

JP: 55:15

powers is your garden But then your book How to overworked and spend your bought power. Plan on your contracts, you can use any plan some modules might require

Davey: 55:28

a but it's mainly

Tambo: 55:29

for the overworked thing it might be. You need to power lifters and you always want to get to at least do your overwork. Yes.

Adrian: 55:35

Is it your executive action? Or is that kind of

Davey: 55:37

the No, no. You have the executive action in the power which are your modules?

JP: 55:43

Yeah, it's just it's just a it's a commodity that is as rare as hen's teeth. Okay, you need to get an engine. Ideally,

Davey: 55:51

everyone is good, I would put it one of the biggest downside for me for that game, which is why I wouldn't ever own it. I don't know whether you'd feel the same time but is to set up it's a typical way and fix modem for me where it's just this has a hell of a setup.

Adrian: 56:06

Table hog as well. It looks like there's only three of you took up like four and a half of a record player table is a bit more and I was like I really

Tambo: 56:13

take my pleasure games now. D I don't know. I won't buy it because I wouldn't get it to say with my the faster time for gaming group. Definitely. But I wouldn't buy it because I wouldn't get games.

JP: 56:23

I didn't think it was that bad. I mean, we've an insert.

Davey: 56:27

I think you'll be laughing

JP: 56:28

Yeah, it's just miniatures. It's just baggie.s Yeah, well, it's just the I enjoyed it. I thought it was a good No, no is a good one to start with. And the choice was dune Imperium, but I just fancied playing something new. Yeah, same and it was just one of the funnest, isn't it? Yeah. Is it

Davey: 56:46

one of the biggest one for me, now we're going. So moving on, we've gone on to the middle games only. So there's one game that I played, which is had the like a common mechanic that everyone knows that a trick taking mechanic. But it had a very unique way to play this trick taking mechanic is cat in the box. So people may have heard of it. If not, basically it's a it's a trick taking game. But none of your cards actually have colours in your hand. Instead, the colours are kind of represented as a grid on a track, isn't it? Yeah track. And what you do is when you play your cards, you have another card, which has blue, red, yellow and green on it, you slip that card over the top to indicate what colour you go for. And you put your little marker on that grid marking off that number.

Adrian: 57:42

I think part of the reason why I specifically struggle with it, I think you did as well was the Teach was was not strong to start with. And halfway through Paul came over and just made a comment about that means you don't have this anymore. And I was like Paul, you just need to go away. Already, like you're not helping here. And funnily enough, about 10 minutes, 15 minutes later, what he said clicked and I was like, now again, all you're doing is on this grid, you put down a six, and you put the little marker on the six blue to indicate that it was a six blue. Okay. And so, yeah, so you indicate what the

Davey: 58:18

card colour is. Yeah. So obviously, if I was leaving, that's now the main suit. So someone else can play that if they can't play it, that's fine. They have no cards of that colour, I they've filled up this space, they can't they play a different colour. But if they want to break, what they can do is they can spend a token of that colour on one of your main boards, your little player marker. But that means you can't ever go on that colour again. And then there's a mechanic where if you can't play any card, you create a paradox. And that means no, it just ends. Okay. So it's, it's got a lot of crunch. We're tricky taking game. And it creates very unique circumstances of being you don't want a lot of the same. You don't want if you have like three eights in your hand. That's usually like five. Normally, you know, yeah, that's amazing.

Adrian: 59:12

It's not good. There's no There's five eights, I think it is in the deck that can be dealt out. And so if you've got four of them, and someone plays one, you're only allowed one card in your hand at the end of the game. It means there's a likelihood you're not going to get to play all your cards. Yeah.

Davey: 59:27

Yeah, it's a very unique game on trick taking. And I really enjoyed it. And no adrian, you weren't too big of a fan. But for a little box game. All the little components are really nice. It's a very good looking game to get onto the table, especially for as I said, a little box game. And yeah, I can see myself playing that again. They

JP: 59:49

just break the trick taking games that break me. I don't know why. The only one that doesn't break me is the crew because it's cooperative. Okay. Yeah, I just I don't know. I just can't seem to get my head around. What the hell I'm supposed to be doing. Winning one trick just, yeah, don't get the practice but like the long term. Yeah, actually, this is the one you don't want to win.

Adrian: 1:00:10

Yeah, stay away from them because you

Davey: 1:00:13

also can bet on how many you're going to do. Then which quite common, which is quite so but that's not, that's not the caveat. The caveat is you can bet. And if you get your bet, then depending on a combination of how you've linked all your colours together on the board on the board, so if you've linked so if you have a seven blue, a six blue, a six green, which are kind of like next to each

Adrian: 1:00:37

other, that'd be three in a row. So you'd get three in a row, you get

Davey: 1:00:40

three extra points. Yeah. strategy, but low bet. Yeah, and but try and link all your stuff together instead and all just try and win one trick. And they get your points from the length,

Adrian: 1:00:53

which is, which is, which is what I tried to do. So I mean, did you did well with it? I did okay with it. But I don't know when No, I cannot. Okay, but because I quite often if there's an option in I like trick, taking games, where there's the option to almost when none, and just try and lose all the tricks. And but there's then like a weird mechanic where you can do pretty well out of that. And, again, I didn't realise the way that the actual points scoring worked. So I was like, Yeah, I'll go one. And I'll just win one. And I'll get loads of points. But actually, because each trick that you win is also worth a point where the well that's what you bet or not. So you could win five tricks, you get five points, even if you only bid for three,

Davey: 1:01:30

do you have to weigh up? What's the best option in some aspects, it was just it was a lot of kinds of metagaming before you even played your first card with the bet. And I think that will come with with plays. It's

Adrian: 1:01:42

a lot for trick taking game. And I think, funnily enough, Graham, who helps run the ball game trading and chat group. He said he's seen a lot of people bounce hard off that game. Some people love it. And some people seem to bounce. And I don't know that I bounced completely. But I definitely the Teach was rough. Even I was like, I wouldn't want to teach this to anyone. Because if they're not really used to trick taking games, be a tough teach.

Davey: 1:02:07

I think I think if you explain it in kind of that manner, in the fact that that symbolises your claim that cover will help a lot but it was weird and got we got halfway through and then suddenly linked with me

Adrian: 1:02:22

is definitely my roughest game of the convention as well, like I and that was on so you could go into or play a few games on Thursday night, the convention not really on that day, but and that was like the second game I'd played of the thing. And I was like, Oh.

Davey: 1:02:38

How about you? JP.

JP: 1:02:39

So yeah, I'll talk about 20 strong. Which is weirdly because it's a solo game and think hang on a minute, JP Well, I'm going solo game over this long game that was solo. And there's a good reason. Yeah, which was waiting for my perseverance demo. And I was about I had about an hour and a half. And I didn't want to start a big game because I'd have to exit out of it. So I was like, What can I do? And I know, I've just bought 20 strong literally just delivered what Wednesday or Thursday before grid comm so 20 Strong is another ship theory release. Yay. shock shock shock. But it's only has one chip in it. It's got one chip and they only put that is it a theoretical chip though they they during the campaign there was like we've got to put a chip in it. Shipping one French fry Yeah, so they haven't shipped last day. Nice green. Yeah, lovely. So yeah, they've got one chip every pretty much is Dice and cards. So it comes in a real small box. Yes. We're talking about lighters, travel games, travel game size. And 20 Strong is like the dice system. And then you can load in decks into the game, which then flip the rules and change the rules in different areas. So the kind of base deck that you get with 20 Strong is called solar sentinels. Which thematically or like these these solar power warriors fighting noon bugs like aliens and basically to flatten them until you get to the boss right. But they have too many bones deck course I've got it under Hopper Marcus deck, they are kind of looking to release future decks in maybe go to different publishers and kind of bring in similar to their Yeah, similar to rolling realms. Obviously if you think about how they're doing the different packs, yeah, bringing game I think they're going down that route, which is actually quite interesting. I

Adrian: 1:04:34

see there's been a couple of these kinds of things. Oh, you can Yeah, add an extra deck that adds games, you know, systems you know I can

JP: 1:04:42

so the system is really you've got 20 dice 20 Strong, three of the dice so like your stat dicey, but your health, your strategy and your recovery. And then you've got 17 just dice with hits and crits on there with various different misses. So very much like Aubrey Marcus dice they work in the same way. They have the little notches on there. So you kind of know how many hits on each dice which again, is quite nice visual aid. You've got one red one, which always hits you got four purple for green, blue and yellow, a really simple dice chucking game so you're kind of committing or You're picking an enemy, you're deciding how many dice to roll your roll them, apply the hits. And if that you didn't roll, you can reroll again. But use your strategy kind of stat and the amount of new rolls and extra dice you put into the pool to try and basically defeat these, these books. When you defeat them, you'll get their items. And they can basically give you better stats or abilities that you can use and you just kind of churning your way through to the box. It's quite simple, quite straightforward. And I've thought about some time. It's not easy either. Because you get also missions that you have to complete left or right as well as it would be like you know, you need to apply different dice colours on on this commit step or you need to use so many items or whatever. And the more missions that you leave on done by the boss, they bring more mates in to get killed. So it's just a nice, kind of, I'd say lightweight because it's chip theory games, and they make it a bit more crunchy than just the standard dice chucker. But I was quite impressed with what it was doing. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:06:18

was your play time, obviously less than an hour and a half? That's what you had to do.

JP: 1:06:20

Yeah, I think I think I was playing it for like 40 minutes where you guys were playing Clank, wasn't it? And I'm thinking about three games. Nice. Obviously, the first game was awful. Yeah, we're

Tambo: 1:06:31

gonna be having like five bugs next year. Yeah. And got completely like, this never happened is

JP: 1:06:37

gonna die. And I've learned I've got a rule wrong, which didn't help so but yeah, and I played it a few times on the Sunday when I got home. I had not played enough games.

Adrian: 1:06:47

I was packing up tables and stuff. You're like, look at the the games I'm playing.

JP: 1:06:53

Play some solo games, but I'm looking forward to trying the too many bones deck and the holodeck because they really kind of switch it up a little bit.

Tambo: 1:06:59

Just says, well, the cards look cool. Yeah.

JP: 1:07:02

Foil foil. Yeah, kind of artwork to them.

Davey: 1:07:06

Is that the standard or the deluxe standards?

JP: 1:07:08

Anyone? Does anyone anyone thinks you get retails it on Kickstarter. They will sell it directly on your webstore. They just fulfilled it. So I think it will probably be available. I reckon they'll preorder out for the Black Friday, which is this Friday, I think? Well, yeah, yes. Yeah. Yes. So I think it will be available then probably fulfil early next year, I believe. Interested in it for just

Adrian: 1:07:33

talking about it. I'm sure absolutely hear about it. But I'm intrigued to hear about how these extra modules go. Yeah,

JP: 1:07:38

I'd like to see how they they twist it because I know the holodeck for example. They you build Mount Vesuvius out the cards and then you travel. You travel around the cars defeating the enemies which is very much like Victorium this is kind of how it works, but obviously done through cards and dice and

Adrian: 1:07:54

I'm intrigued. Yeah, it

JP: 1:07:55

was very cool. That's me.

Davey: 1:07:58

How are you tambor?

Tambo: 1:07:59

Well like midweight game I've played theres nothing new I played anything different really was betrayal I showed it to Becky I know Martin wanted to play it second edition betrayal of house on the hill we have a show house on the hill third edition I think it is so everyone's play it and it's quite quick game but obviously plays better and more people but we play with the minimum number of people which is three Yeah, it's just a quick tile exploration of the mansion and then we get to a certain point where the haunted begins and we did the scenario we have a mysterious invitation so we went as friends as a mysterious interpretation and it turned out to be once it all kicked off or the haunting kicked off it turned out to be a boy you put this photo behind the statue and then we all hate each other. So we're just gonna kill each other. Pretty much just free for all so it was Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, so unfortunate. Becky was right next to me and I already powered up quite a lot. So just murdered it and yeah, dynamite and dynamite Yeah, it's like a dynamite throughout the mansion apparently. So that was fun and Martin seemed to enjoy it a bit, but only better and more people because it free for all was one of the scenarios of many different ones you can do? Because there's like, there's also a traitor who does his own objectives or you could do work together to do one objective depending on what scenario turns out. But this was just happened to be free for which

Davey: 1:09:13

this was more of a social game and I do not know why would you mean social game as a more of a third like Avalon?

JP: 1:09:20

No, no, it's

Tambo: 1:09:21

sorry. It's just like it's like Clank you pick tied down to Room to doors and you match each different room and each room has an event or an item or

Davey: 1:09:31

why

Adrian: 1:09:31

some scenarios will have like a hidden traitor ish mechanic and yet sometimes you won't even know you're the traitor until you flip to

JP: 1:09:40

Yeah, yes,

Tambo: 1:09:41

you're not you don't need a traitor to get certain over and then you match the pitch of the omen to the person to the to the person who did it and then it tells you what books numbers are in the book. So it could be like David said hidden traitor and actual traitor. Not a trainee working together to fulfil the thing or free for all.

JP: 1:09:58

So is it different every time? Oh, he has books that really thick book are different. I don't know what the hell's going on.

Tambo: 1:10:03

But one scenario, when asked him when his nephew day he turned into a wasp man, and like spider man, but he's lost money and yet all these bees like attacked us and he kept stealing me and I died, please. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then I'm sorry to hear my brother had a demon dog with him who came around the government trying to eat us. Every everything's different. Yeah, that's

Davey: 1:10:25

cool. Good news. And it's obviously a classic. I've just never played it and played in about. 40 minutes.

Tambo: 1:10:29

It's so simple. You just go around turn a tile do the thing. Get items have fun.

Adrian: 1:10:33

I don't know if they've changed it in more recent additions, but I've had a few games where you just turn a card and you're dead.

Tambo: 1:10:41

But other than happiness, yeah. Which

Adrian: 1:10:43

is just when you've been put, like, as you say, it's quick. So but yeah, like some games I've played have been really good. And you're kind of like, oh, no, I'm doing a bit of explosion. Sometimes you're like, Oh, we must be doing really good. Oh, you're dead. Okay.

Tambo: 1:10:58

There is player elimination in it. But it's like, you know, when you get to that point, generally it doesn't last.

Davey: 1:11:04

As long as they kind of balanced that. And if the game's not too long, it's not too bad is exactly.

Tambo: 1:11:09

I think in the third edition, you can actually mute people when they don't notice we can do the body and stuff, which is funny, but it was the whole point of it. Yeah. And that was that was good.

JP: 1:11:18

Just don't take it seriously.

Davey: 1:11:21

Yeah. Well, I've kind of middling games you play it. So I'm guessing those weren't the only ones you play, and we're probably not going to get through every game. So we've had to kind of categorise this somehow. So adrian, and what other games did you get through? Oh,

Adrian: 1:11:34

so I got through a couple of other ones. So there's ones I've talked about quite a few times. But I put five Viking Cecil in front of our group. And the first comment was, these are really nice components. And it's just a really basic dexterity game. But I think probably the next one to talk about for me, was that the balance one with the balancing on it. I've talked about the

JP: 1:11:55

crew, and I think it

Tambo: 1:11:56

was me who said that the opponent? Yeah, yeah, no,

Adrian: 1:11:59

Kerley. Kerley, and Becky both mentioned it. And it's just yeah, it's, it's, it's a dexterity game, which have really nice components, but in a tiny little box. So it's perfect for sort of taking around and I really enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a good game. But the one I would kind of really wanted to talk about next was Art Society. So it's a mighty boards game that we picked up in Essen, myself, and Becky played a single round of it, or two rounds, I think it was didn't, didn't take long to play, and you kind of don't get feel for a game fully. So I thought I was going to enjoy it. But I just wanted to sort of check us it's Becky, can we please play this before, before the end of the convention. And we got to it and played with myself, Becky Stewart and Joel from Devon dice. And he'd said the same that he looked at and decided not to pick it up. And at the end of it, he was like, Ah, I've missed out on this one, I think it's coming to retail in a couple of like a couple of months or a couple of weeks time I think it is. But what you're doing is collecting artwork. And it's quite simple. The term is quite simple. The first player moves round, but the first player picks, however many players there are plus one pieces of different sized art you get don't get to see the artwork, you just pick a different size piece of art, and you put them all out. And then you've got a deck of cards, which is 1-20. And you play one of those cards, you never get them back in your hands. Once you've spent that that value it's done. And then whoever has the highest value gets to pick the piece of art first. Rather than what you're doing is you're trying to put those two kind of elements to the piece of art you've got the type of subject it is was it landscape, portrait, still life, that kind of thing. And you've got different style of frames is it a metal frame or wooden frame a pole frame. And what you're trying to do is put the same kind of frames together because it gives you a nice little bits of extras to fill up the wall and filling up the wall, or getting so many bits that you can't fill a wall. Like bad bits of artwork that you can't hang up will trigger the end of the game. So kind of getting these little bits to help fill up the wall is useful to try to put different frames together. But you're trying to put the types of art further apart. Because no one wants to see a landscape painting next to landscape painting that's a faux par. And that's kind of you're going with that but whatever painting isn't picked us so there's plus one, whatever type of painting isn't picked, the number on the backs of the size of it is the goes to the museum and that piece of art increases in value by that much and then at the very end you'd keep doing this round after round and then once the end game is triggered you look at how much sort of what the value of each piece of artwork is the most valuable every one you have on your wall that is not next to another of its types is not a faux par scores, five victory points. The next valuable one will score four for each you've got in the wall then three then two then one. And there's like a strip down the mid like it's called the eyeline and it for all of them for the most valued piece of work. So ever scored five points for all of those you've got in that strip is also worth another three points, whether it's a faux pas or not. And so you're playing this game of trying to match up the frames and not put things next to each other and trying to fit all in, and at the same time you're trying to boost the value and not take the ones. So sometimes going last is actually really quite useful because there's a load of two types and you particularly want to boost up one compared to the other like I had a load of portraits in my head and I had a load of portraits in my eyeline. So I was desperately trying to push the portraits up. But two people were trying to push the, I think it's scenic yellow colour, they were really trying to push that up. So me on my own had no chance of kind of trying to push it up either kind of made that decision already. And it's just a really fun tile placement. I like to call placement games, I like that kind of quick auction style of who's going first, like the bidding style. And it just came together into a really nice sort of mid weight, maybe slightly lower than mid weight, sort of tile placement and adjacency and all that kind of thing in a single game. I really enjoyed it. I'll be picking up like a puzzle. Yeah, because you're trying to put things you're trying to put those frames together, but not the types and you're trying to also give yourself enough room to keep putting paintings out and I

Davey: 1:16:25

saw some people playing it and I really liked the look of it. It looks a little just Yeah, it's a different game.

Adrian: 1:16:31

It also has a dual dual layered box which serves no purpose than being dual layered on a box because the painting like the front is all of these like like all of the frames stick out and all of the textured foam pro all of the like painting itself is background so I thought well we've had jewel our player boards that I've seen we've had basically jewel led dice which is dice forge now we've got dual layer

Davey: 1:16:55

boxes, dual layer meeples Yeah,

Adrian: 1:16:58

it's going in my collection is going to replace a couple of games. That's

Davey: 1:17:01

good. Where are you at? Anything else? Yeah, well,

Tambo: 1:17:04

I've just played games we've talked about all the time now but I've just mentioned Clank couple of clean cartoons and I'm just gonna mention this cause I played this game about five to six times and I've never gotten out

Adrian: 1:17:16

never just stomping around.

JP: 1:17:20

Have you died about the line? Yes,

Tambo: 1:17:22

that's something that's I've done that once before but I have mostly other times I've died deeply. So I'm just gonna mention I played it. I played the red character Congress name, but he's the guy who deals off the other companion. Yeah, games, right. Yeah, I actually got out. And to top it off. I actually been coded by four points.

JP: 1:17:44

Add another fun I bet yeah, I don't have

Tambo: 1:17:48

too much to talk about a point but that's another one of the biggest Yeah.

Davey: 1:17:53

Claims because it is just I think it is just definitively the best version. Yes. The standard standard is a standard thing like of Dune uprising coming out. It's one of those words like oh, they keep making the same game but better versions of it. Stop. Now

JP: 1:18:09

I'm gonna have to been the old Yeah, no reason. Yeah, I'll just whilst you're on the theme of thing games we've played Yeah, I'll just do a whistle stop off of a few that a whistle and what a whistle stop tour. I whistle stop. Yeah. So Terraforming Mars, we played. And we did and that was great. He won that. We won that? Kerley dominated you wasnt far behind. no, no. But again, I just enjoyed playing it. And not much more to say it's TerraForming mars. and then on the Friday, on the Friday evening, we kind of got to the end and just wheeled out seven wonders. Again, just Rob's never played before Martin had not played before. tambo was like a forgotten the rules. Expansions or no? base. If I didn't have newbs, I would have put leaders in at least. But it was just nice play. And I thought I forgot. And I like this, and I put an event we need to put boats. Yeah, well, that's why I put an event in March. Because I want to get to Armada and try it. Yeah, so that is the plan. So yep. So that's seven wonders, and I'm going to talk about it. Everyone knows what it is. I'm sure if not check it out. If no one's good science, good science. Good science. Yeah. And then we'll work our science schools good.

Adrian: 1:19:31

Played it a load without the app. And I was like, here's how science scores that JP was I just put it in the app and

JP: 1:19:41

basically, a load of old number bollocks and it just works. You just get a lot of them and a lot of different ones. And you get lots of points.

Tambo: 1:19:47

explained to me are four times I sorta Yeah,

Davey: 1:19:50

you basically have to divide by pi. And then And then, and then you win. You have to remember BOD mass and you'll find Yeah, yeah,

JP: 1:19:58

I managed to win that one. I never win seven wonders. Couple of a couple of games about you, Adrian.

Adrian: 1:20:07

So I was able to teach Barcelona it was a sponsored game and I was very happy when Paul invited me to and said, Would you be interested in teaching one of the sponsors games. So Borden dice game designed by Danny Garcia, it's, I would say the upper end of middle Wait, what you're doing is the, they basically bought down the walls because Barcelona was a walled city and it was filthy and horrible, and life expectancy was really low. And they decided to bring down the walls. And what you're doing is showing them the sort of migration of people out of this centre of Barcelona, and how they built up this sort of orthogonal road system with all the buildings in it. And it's a, it's a great game, but it's filled with lots of elections. There's like, I think there's like eight or nine actions, and most of them are fairly simple, you're, you gain this, but there's a couple of actions that are quite like, Well, okay, here's how trans work. So I felt like it needed a bit of prep. So I'd done my prep and made my notes and all that kind of stuff and set up and I had add a few locals around the table to be fair, so I had them, Becky and Andy who've met before, they've been on the game channel a couple of times, and they're local to Cranbrook and stuff like that. So I met them before. And then two people I hadn't met before, who was which was ego, and Dan. And yeah, the teacher was about half hour long. And I thought I'd probably lose some people on this, because there is quite a few actions, but everyone seemed to pick up really quickly. And there was just such a nice group of players to teach into gaming. And they just had a sort of, there's a bit of laughing going around the table, and just really nice experience, it's really nice for me to get to sort of show them it and help them through as because it's quite, there are a few, it's not the heaviest game. But there are a few actions and a few sort of weird sort of moments in it where you just have to, like people would need reminding a need to check a rulebook. And it's great for them not to have to do that I felt great to be able to supply that experience if you like. And they probably had the quickest game of Barcelona you'll ever have. So you're what you're doing is you're putting down like these two worker chips, one on top of the other that represent different classes. So you got the working class, middle class, and upper class can't think there is a specific term blanket. That's not the specific. And you're putting them on top of each other on this orthogonal grid, and you get the action of like the column and the action of the row. And then, as these sort of these workers build up, you'll then be able to take them off in order to, to buy a building, and the building like increases you on certain tracks, but also scores, you points equal to the lowest number, you can see. And what you do is you take these workers off, you sort of spend these workers, they go on this track. And this track has numbers on different levels. And the lowest number you can see is the number that that building scores, and you can over build each other. And again, there's loads of different actions, and there's loads of little extra ways of scoring. But the game ends when you get a track, like all one type of work or right to the end. And there's sort of three phases, and each one has a scoring but when you get right to the end of one track, it triggers the end game. And I've played this game a few times now. And the green tracks are the working class was at the end, and the middle and upper class, upper class tracks were less than halfway filled. So they must have literally pulled all of the working class out of the bag before half of the other ones that even come out. And so I think the game itself only lasted like an hour and 50 minutes, because they just filled up this track so quickly. Yeah, they didn't really get like, I felt really bad because obviously they'd signed up for a sponsored game, and they get got to see the game. But I'd have been expecting a little bit longer. Possibly, I'd signed up for it. And I was like, That's the game. You've seen the game. It's gonna happen sometimes. But yeah, a lot. A few of them were like, I've only just got started. Like they'd only put one passenger down for the tram or, yeah, then you've got a couple of the public buildings and stuff like that. And they will ah, I was hoping to do more. Yeah, normally you would, just because of the way it's worked out. It's kind of rushed the end because again, we

Davey: 1:24:06

did play that game. To help me with the team shear to get things done. We got quite a full bodied game of it was about to to most of the trust and most of the most attracts. Yeah. And

Adrian: 1:24:16

he for it, it was over two hours. Yes. Like for them to have an hour and 15 minutes. actual game time was like almost half the time because of the way the track was, and you wouldn't have been

Davey: 1:24:25

okay, if they were playing the game themselves, because they would just read this play again. Because it was a teach. I'm guessing they didn't you know, you couldn't? Well, yeah, you don't have time. You can do

Adrian: 1:24:36

whatever else you need to do with them. Yeah. But ya know, it was they seem to have a good game out of it. But it was a really quick game of Barcelona. So you know, just to say thank you for them for making it such a nice game. And yeah, sort of Yeah, it felt

Davey: 1:24:48

how, how easy was it to teach?

Adrian: 1:24:51

It wasn't the easiest, because it's upper end of Mid way, I would say. But because there are so many little actions, and you have to kind of explain them and describe them. There's a few times where they put something down and I was like, right. Okay, so you're going to trigger that you don't have enough money for this. Is that what you wanted to do sort of thing, you know, like, oh, yeah, I'll go here instead of thing or

Davey: 1:25:10

it does kind of need that guidance, because there's also some things where you're like, Oh, I can't do it and you're like, Oh, no way I can do it. Me. tram here and I get this action, which gives me the money, because you can do it any order as well. Can you? Pretty much yeah, where you live? This is why when

JP: 1:25:23

you're doing these demos, you've got to know because like, again, the perseverance is like, right? I need to do this. How do I do it? Yeah, like you need to go there. And yeah, and you do that? Okay, got it. Thank you. Yeah, if you don't know, they're just gonna flounder. And

Adrian: 1:25:39

I think it is a good game, I think there's some really strong stuff in it, it's got a lot of stuff that you're sort of gamers, or regular Euro gamers would be used to. But yeah, it's just bitty. And because you're doing things in certain orders, it can be really easy to miss the fact that you're not gonna have enough to do this, or there's a diagonal action as well, that costs you money to go on it. So you get the column, the row and the diagonal. And like that costs one money. So a lot of people were thinking, I've got enough money, right? Like, that's cost you one. And I haven't got right, like how would you want to take that back and do something else sort of thing and just pointing out those not trying to play the game for them? Yeah, but you can see where they're going. And you're like, so if you do this, you might not have all the own and do this and this. Okay, but have you seen you're not gonna have enough money? Yeah. And I just yeah, it was it was, I really enjoyed doing that.

Davey: 1:26:22

I know, a lot of people really liked this game. And I can understand why it's got a nice nice that for a lot of layers of mechanics. Personally on I wasn't a fan, but you can kind of you can see where the meat is really tiny.

JP: 1:26:38

absolutely huge. And delight, the randomness, the randomness drawing, which

Davey: 1:26:41

is also seems to have encountered, you know, created a quicker game for people as well, but it's one of those who haven't played it enough to give it

Adrian: 1:26:49

Yeah. Yeah. A few times now. Obviously, watch the play. People played it. I think there's something there. Not my favourite game, but definitely a good one that there was it was nice to see. Yeah,

Davey: 1:27:00

yeah. Um, are you? JP? Yeah. So

JP: 1:27:02

on the first day, we actually, I got invited to a game Voidfall, which was run by Tim and his brother, Nick. And we also had Mark for Malta. So yeah, I managed to get a game with those chaps. It was a nice way for me to start grid con, because it's kind of like the Thursday night before. And its a game I know. And put red grapes up in this special resolutely rose in the rubbish than sweet Yeah. And everywhere. So yeah, we play the game. I was house Zeno. And they basically the ones that give you credits for over producing science. Yes. Never played on those the last time we played interesting strategy. So basically going heavy on putting signs out and just spamming that for for credits. And then using credits for

Davey: 1:27:49

the faction that gives you allows you to have more guilds within your home sector as well as one of the texts.

JP: 1:27:56

No, no, not I don't think so. Unless up later on. That's fine. Yeah. Which it might have been one of those things. But why is cloning or it's destroys them as a clone. Oh, I went cloning cloning yet because I've not had that tech before. And I thought, Oh, that's interesting. Let's give that one a whirl. So yeah, I'm not gonna go into it. We talked about voidfall, actually. Yeah, well turn into the voidfall podcast. or listening to it. The Adrian. So

Adrian: 1:28:24

played it. It just purchased. I think it'll interest me. Again, you hate

JP: 1:28:29

your opinion on it.

Adrian: 1:28:31

It doesn't it doesn't like it. It'll be a game I'll be interested in at some point. I will play it because I think I should. But it could surprise you could maybe go up, there's been some more. There have been some games. I thought I'm not interested in that. And then they've really surprised me. And I've absolutely loved them. So it could be one of those. But

Davey: 1:28:48

far away was mine. I had such a low expectation that excelled

Adrian: 1:28:53

happens, but I just everyone's on a real hype right now. And I don't want to hate it and bring the table down where people have a bit of fun with it. I'll learn. I'll give it a go.

JP: 1:29:03

So yeah, just just a quick mention, and thanks to Tim for organising it because it was great. And Nick won that game. That was close. It's close second school. Yeah, he got 316, I got 286

Davey: 1:29:19

I still don't know a gauge of like a good score. Game is here there and everywhere at the

JP: 1:29:24

moment. Some games depending on tax and fractions and scenarios you can get into the fall to bear a bear variabilities Yeah, it was good fun. So nice way to start the conference. Yeah,

Tambo: 1:29:36

sounds good.

Davey: 1:29:38

So we're gonna move on to our highlight game gave you that nice little buzz of excitement, you know, the opposite of how you felt was brought up in that. What really next time? Yeah, exactly. Well gave you that momentum to keep on gaming for me. Yeah. speakeasy, speakeasy. So there's been a lot of buzz about this

JP: 1:30:01

photographer that was up in the room being fed Great. What was the feeling to me I can't remember. Just a few analogy. But you know, we he basically running a bunch of kind of demos of his new latest big box game in prototype form not out yet not even remotely close to being kind of kick started or on game found, etc. And yeah, I got a chance to jump on in and give it a whirl. So speakeasy thematically is based in 1920s prohibition era set in Manhattan good theme I like so theme eyes, your your your mobsters, your mob bosses, and your it's a worker placement game, the cap O's which are your like your four heads of the family, and you've got family members, and you can hire goons. And so you're right in there, and you're playable. And I can just see evil Gryphons production on this because it's not there yet. It's gonna be awesome. Because you you literally you are sat where the mob boss is Saturday at your desk, your desk has got a little desk, and then the CAFOs have their seats in front of you as little spots where they sit, your family members are on the sofas behind into the side. That's brilliant. And then you have cards that you will play. And they're going to slot in Lacrimosa style that they'll have cut out. So for example, one is all around travelling, it's like a green card. And that that is the window because you can kind of see outside your office so that will be cut out. So when the card goes in the art will show that there's something happening outside. So very, very dramatic in what what is happening. And as soon as the tower was explaining that was cut down, this is cool! We haven't played it yet.

Adrian: 1:31:51

Going this is awesome. As long as you can sleeve it when you slide. I

JP: 1:31:55

don't know if you can, ya know, I don't know. But, you know, the press. I don't do it just yet, but badger EGG to doing it. So yeah, so that's kind of the playable situation, but what kind of game is it's it's kind of an area control game. And I was like, oh, then if I'm gonna like this, because I'm not a big dude on the map. Kind of fan. But it's not that so I was pleasantly surprised. So that was good. So you kind of have Manhattan, it's split into upper town, mid town, Lower Town. Upper Town is where the money's at lower towns where there's less money to play as Al Capone. Yeah,

Davey: 1:32:32

like no Nucky from Boardwalk Empire. Oh,

JP: 1:32:36

yeah, you get that vibe? Yeah. You got a docks area where there's boats all around Manhattan. And on the docks, they've got a bunch of barrels supplying moonshine, booze, etc. So you're kind of building your skills and speakeasies around the the districts which are going to count for area majority in the various different districts, or certain districts are under threat from outside mobsters that are coming in. So the thematics is that you? Lucky Luciani I think, is the one that kind of brokered some peace between the mob different mobs in Manhattan, because there's a lot of mob wars that are happening. And basically, it's just causing destruction and no one's making any money if everyone's at war with each other. So we kind of broke this kind of piece that we all kind of work together sort of would make more money and more profit. So that's, that's kind of thematically saying you can't kill each other. Yeah. Which is quite nice, because that's what I was expecting when I started. But you do have the looming threat from other mobs outside of the city that will come and try and take over your businesses and your speakeasies which you need to prepare for. So you kind of have these five tracks on your player board. One, the main one is your power. So it's a strength of your of your your mob. And you can boost that with goons that you can hire in and spend. And he's basically they're cool because they're little chunky meeples with shotguns as you can expect from from EGGs. And then you go the other four tracks, which are more about your kind of operations of the business. So you've got your transport of how far your trucks can go the trucks are cool. Trucks are like little trucks, the book barrels and you got one that's how many kind of booze your distillery can produce. So obviously, you pump that up, you can produce more, sell one more, you got one. That's how many family members you can house in your office. And the more that goes up, the more family members you can have and you send them out to defend and protect your businesses. Because there's cops around. Obviously what you're doing is illegal at the time. Obviously speakeasies are underground. Yeah. So that there but if you've got the family members outside, then you are bribing them, essentially. So you can basically make money. And then the other track is like the jazz and party track. So it's how many especially how many how much booze you can sell at your your speakeasies and then the what kind of a swinging Time Is everyone having a drink a lot booze personal time although my speak not because it was dry is anything So, so yeah, that's kind of the thematics of the game. And the tracks also count for the infamy. So the higher up those tracks, the total number is your, your total infamy, the more you go up, the more benefits you're gonna unlock for yourself or family members come. But the biggest thing I loved about this game, and it's so thematic, is that you've got two money systems in the game. So you've got your cash in hand, similar to escape plan in a way, you've got your cash in hand, and you've got your safe, some money that you earn, go in your hand, and certain things that you do like cooking books and other stuff will go directly to the safe now, you can access the money from your Safe at any time. But in order to spend it, you need to wash it, which means you're kind of doubling the cost of anything that you clean money. Yeah. Which is very dramatic. But also this the money and you safe is your VPs at the end of the game. So you've got you've got a real tough decision of am I trying to grow this like your savings? Or can

Davey: 1:36:17

you speculate to accumulate? Or is it just going to be speculate?

Adrian: 1:36:22

Put your money in at the end into the you just to take it out? It costs money? Yeah. Oh,

JP: 1:36:28

yeah. Putting in is fine. Yes. Just using it. Yeah. And finding out is going to cost so. So when you're selling booze is going into the safe. And when you do an area majority and you're winning that goes into space, there's a lot of ways that it goes very

Adrian: 1:36:44

little cash in hand. Yes, a lot in the safe zone. Do you take out sounds like a great puzzle? Yeah. So

JP: 1:36:48

it's quite, it's quite interesting. You can raid the docs. So you can actually go and steal some booze from the docks, or you can buy it directly if you don't want to make it yourself. So there's alternative strategies, they're just bloody cool. You can also have a conference with people that the mobsters that are coming in, you can actually befriend them and then pay them to help protect your businesses Nice. So adding to your overall power and strength. So yeah, but the core mechanic is worker placement. So you're kind of taking your Capo putting on the space and doing the thing. There is a bumping mechanic similar to the gallerist, where you can house one of the workers to another worker placement spot called the park and then they choose what benefit they get. So you can do that three times before that's filled. And then that's it. That's locked up. That's cool. So it's split into four rounds. At the end of each round is the mob war that kind of happens, you already know certain information, what districts they're targeting. So you can prepare for that. This is where I fell over in the game.

Adrian: 1:37:50

I was gonna say, mine is that you were terrible. Ending your skills. Yeah.

JP: 1:37:55

The only person I'm gonna blame is myself. And my, my stills got raided and then I lost them. And then when you lose businesses, they're gone forever. And you only get one still. So I was like,

Davey: 1:38:05

Oh, you just have a problem with keeping liquid and I just

JP: 1:38:08

have a problem with games. Yeah.

Davey: 1:38:13

In barrage. Speaking. Do you pitch yourself?

JP: 1:38:21

But yeah, it was a it was a great, I can see a great design in it in this game. Yeah. And it's really strong theme and thematically. In the second year or second era. You lose one of your kapos because they've been murdered. You know, you're a mob Yeah.

Davey: 1:38:38

So you can't see his hand action what he did that but that's most gangster thing I've ever seen. APD literally just did like a gun action. Yeah, you lose your clothes. Yeah.

JP: 1:38:48

And and then you get to the point and the last area, you'll end you end up with one. So thematically, you're losing workers as the game goes on. But hopefully you'll have a better engine. Yeah. And a kick into gear. And but yeah, it's pretty cool. I've only explained a fifth of the game. I'm sure

Adrian: 1:39:03

it's a lacerda game. Again, you'd be here for another 45 minutes if you want

JP: 1:39:07

to watch Definitely if you like that theme. There's there's awesome positive mix makes me

Davey: 1:39:12

want to Yeah,

Adrian: 1:39:13

a bit like escape plan. It sounds like is his DNA but not his standard? Yeah, like what's considered his more standard Euro style game, you know, so

JP: 1:39:22

the highlight was just being able to chat to him. Yeah, you know, and just just ask him questions, and just fanboy for like 10 minutes and just Yeah, it was just great. You're hanging out playing his game, asking him what his favourite game of his design which he gave me a political answer and a real answer. So

Adrian: 1:39:42

so on stream the political answer is all of them

JP: 1:39:45

are the stream the political answer is his latest one yet, but offering that's nice. That's off the record. And if you're asking me we'll probably say no, I didn't know. But there we go.

Davey: 1:39:55

So in a future episode, I will talk about trolls and princesses. I got to play it again. This episode is kind of coming first because we'd like to push these out as soon as you've done the expo. And my previous gripe of it has kind of been rectified. We only played a two player before. We've got a three player game in and is a little bit of a three player to play, we kind of both kept to our own little areas, and kind of played a solo game. When we got three player game of it, we it was a lot more contested on the board. It clicked straight away, when we played at this time, got a lot more combos out, got a lot more different buildings out, it was really fun. I do think there's going to be probably a limited amount of plays with it. But what games aren't, you know, they're usually Rare games that you have which have variability or, or I still think you'll get your money's worth. And it's a beautiful looking game, everyone kept coming over and look at this. Yeah, and it's just, it's really nice. It's kind of got a slightly unique work placement. I'm sure it's been done before. But I can't list the game at the moment. But you have groups of workers, but other people's work has count towards your action points when you're playing. But you've also got a workplace within your own area that no one else can affect. But then you've got the one in the middle where the main resources is all set. And the Meet the main resources will ebb and flow depending on what cards you play. And so there's this little kind of I really want to play this card, because it's given me an extra action point in this area. But it means that resources going to go over there. At the moment. Marcus has got more for trolls over there. And if I do put it, that resource I'm gonna get a princess is going to get more VPS Yeah, so we played it with Stuart as well joined us.

JP: 1:41:50

Hi, Stuart. Hi, Stuart.

Davey: 1:41:51

I think he enjoyed it. I think it was a start there's obviously there's a lot going on. Me and Marcus have both played it before when you clicked on but then started to click which turned towards the MO thing that's really started to you know, enjoy it more and you know, you kind of have a plan what you're doing, but probably second playthrough you'll enjoy a lot more. So yeah, that was one of my favourites just because we actually got our teeth into it this time. And yeah, as I said, I will play it again. Definitely. I don't know how many more times that will be. But this one is you can enjoy it. As long as you enjoyed it, then that's the main thing. Isn't it? Release games. Again, it's price value for the entertainment. pound per entertainment value for me. Efficiency.

JP: 1:42:40

Sure.

Adrian: 1:42:42

You haven't even even your game so it's exactly

Davey: 1:42:45

paying nothing for a bloody Exactly. Yeah. So that was mine. And how about you Tambo? What's your favourite? My

Tambo: 1:42:54

highlight of the game was that there was the last game I played which was beast actually funny enough. Yeah, I played it a few times. So I've already played it But Marcus joined us who's he to play it so yeah.

Adrian: 1:43:04

I mentioned Yeah, I got it

Tambo: 1:43:06

to the table. I find his Marcus but I did a booboo big booboo, I did what you did with perseverance set that on so the board I just saw play the cricket game. But it's actually designed to be for two to three players. Yeah, and I set that aside and actually we were for three or three hundreds me Martin and Rob and it was obviously Marcus's the beast, but we are known

Davey: 1:43:26

as that Yes.

Tambo: 1:43:27

I made a house Wall

Adrian: 1:43:30

Street's main

Tambo: 1:43:33

is the X man there but even when he made the cut because Marcus was in his element to be fair, but he was playing the wolf and I said the house rule because normally all the hunters get to go before the beasts but as said to marcus, I said right, I won't go first you have to hunt escape from the base and you can have a go. So it's like that but as it's such a small board, it started off he went off and we caught him really quickly basically and we hit for two damage very quickl, gonna be over really quickly very quickly. But fair play to him. He actually just ran off and then hid for ages and uses little wolves and he was loving it because he was making all the sounds, people looking at markets but.....standard marcus. Yeah, but he was just like I didn't I never seen all the a lot of the things you put down the hidden south east west or north card down and we even in our cards because it was so long because he just didn't reveal himself because if you eat something that a sheep and always like anything as the wolf, you have to reveal where you are. But he was using all his little wolf packs to kill the sheep's and stuff. You don't get a reward for it but still cancel the contract award. So he kept doing that and we just couldn't find him and he ran us from circles and he was really well and then rob decided to ask me how the traps work and I spent on transport we put trap down and it's been such an honour to do that and I forgot it was even there. And at the end, it came down to the last two cards in his hand and he asked the settlers the whole day of the contracts that eat to settlers. And he wasn't the last one. And if we knew he was on his area for just go for it. He had to attack cards for us and get to damages and ceremony him and he got into settlement and he revealed himself and then we ended up we got trapped there. We will reveal the trap and the trap card was to discard 2 cards from your hand.. He wouldn't want it and if we if we did it and we wanted to move on Wi Fi. On the second night it's done in three nights but it was the second night because it was like I say, I said at the wrong side of the board, so it's quite close. But yeah, actually made a really good game. Funnily enough, I thought it was

JP: 1:45:24

raving about this.

Adrian: 1:45:25

So it was Marcus watched a lot when he got back.

JP: 1:45:28

Really good.

Tambo: 1:45:29

I think Martin enjoyed it, but it's very quiet, much Quiet, quiet. catenate. But he was he was there. And he was he was doing great. It was one side of the board and just keep them outside. Then he came into a crack and movie game straight to settlement. And then the fun. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, I've heard lots of good things about it. So I think I made the whole fun game, and it just shows you when you get someone new to them, loving it. It just makes the day isn't it? And it's not always easy, like

Adrian: 1:45:52

that kind of role where he can do all that kind of stuff. We'll make that definitely.

Tambo: 1:45:57

Yeah, so that's good. That was my hammer.

Davey: 1:46:00

So Adrian, what was your favourite game?

Adrian: 1:46:03

My favourite game of the weekend was the other one that I queued 45 minutes for at Essen, which was Satori. So story's not available out here. As far as I'm aware, it's available at s&m preorder. And I think the publisher, which is Spanish publisher, para loco, I think they're only doing current shipments to like Spain and stuff like that. So unfortunately, I don't think it's really easy to get hold of, but it was a Fanta it was a game I watched a little bit before Essen. And then when I got there and saw people playing it, and they talked it through, I thought that sounds like my kind of game on. I like the look of it. It's a very sort of simple, like watercolour sort of game. But in sort of lots of white areas of the board. It's not like lots of colours popping off the board. But it's like my kind of mechanically my kind of game. So I thought I'd give it a go, I queued up for a little while, and bought it. And yeah, I got to play with Mark and Sally from Cranbrook, who have played with before. And Lee, who apparently is also local, but I don't think I've played with Lee before. And did a bit of a teach wasn't the best teach, but they all got it. So it was good enough, obviously. And what you're doing in this is it's it's about Japanese Buddhist enlightenment. So you have altars that worshipers will go to, and the altars have a colour and two actions, there's a worker placement pool, so you don't have your own workers, there's a pool of workers that are randomly drawn from the bag, and you draft on your turn, you draft the worker, and there's three different colours. So your your worker will then go to an altar. And if the altar doesn't match, you only get one of the two actions. If the altar matches, you get both of them. So you know, you're never stuck completely. But there's definitely inefficiencies trying to draft the right ones. And after that, there's then just a lot of you know, some of them are just grab resources and stuff like that. And that there's you get the chance to build new altars that become yours, and you can upgrade them. And when someone goes, they're a bit like Lords of Waterdeep, when someone goes there, you gain a bonus. So when someone puts a worker there, you'll go up on this track. And then there's an action where you can then claim one of the bonuses you choose depending on how far off track you are, you'll get choice of better bonuses, and you choose one of them and go back to the bottom. And there's two, there's three ways of really getting good victory points, one of which is you get to put out one of the actions as you get to put out your little monk. And then you can move the Hakkari which is an enlightenment son thematically, and then you claim that and that often either converts resources or allows you to give resources in to gain victory points. You also at the very end of the game, you multiply the number of upgraded altars by the number of altars. So ideally, you want to put as many altars as you can and then upgrade as many of them. The other kind of track which is a multiplication is there's like a pagoda you can build which is one of the actions. And you can use one of your enlightenment tokens to put a roof on it, or you can turn over like the main body like the bit below the roof of the room, you can turn that over. And then you can put these JaCoCo which like these upgrade tokens on there as well. And the other part of the scoring is the number of JaCoCo rows, the number of upgrades you've got times the number of roofs the pagodas got and everything else is just little actions that get you to either one have to do one of these things or get multiple different scoring. So at the end, I lost by a tie. And I had gone purely into building I didn't I didn't buy a single altar didn't make a single altar didn't upgrade any nothing. And obviously the downside is that is I don't get to pick the actions that are good actions and you can cover up some of the base actions as well. So Mark, he covered up to the pagoda building one. And I was like, Oh, this is really tough now because the only way to build a pagoda is basically using executive action where you get to spend incense to do one of these bonus actions. That was the only one I was having to get instance every time to do the action that I wanted. And I just went purely after the pagoda buildings whereas like Mark did a mixture of both and he won on the top I painted a mixture of altar building and, and a pagoda building. But he mostly did more of the altar stuff. And it's it was really an interesting mix of trying to get right. And there's a lot of talk about the Toku, and similarities with the Toku. Because the theme is about enlightenment and Buddhist enlightenment and all that kind of stuff. And there's some parison some similarity in the gameplay, that there's a few comparisons to Lord of Lords of Waterdeep. Because work placement, it's a really

Davey: 1:50:44

great wall vibes from what you've said about micro actions. But no, no,

Adrian: 1:50:49

I wouldn't think so. Maybe, yeah, maybe it's just the way I've explained it. But I wouldn't personally think there's much of the Great Wall sort of going on in there. There are some quite rough symbology bits in there where I think the symbology is not, most of it's really clear that you get like a little secret objective, that's not a massive change to the game, but is an at the top, they've put a number. But it looks like because of where they put the number, you got to have the most of something. But actually what it looks like is have more than four of something or more than three of something that actually that's just subjective number three, or objective number four. Yeah, and there's little things like that throughout the game, where most of it they've absolutely nailed the graphic design. And, you know, I'm a stickler for sort of the kind of the way that board games that iconographies use most of it, they've absolutely nailed down and then occasionally there's just a real, I'd say, biggest blunder where if you're teaching it to a new person, they will obviously think you need more than three emeralds, in order to score. But actually, it's the moat you've got to have the most. And there's little bits. Otherwise, the gameplay is a fantastic sort of upper mid weight, I would say. And just doing lots of that work. Lovely worker placement, lots of this gives you this action extra or you get to do this additionally, and yeah, and again, it's got that kind of executive sounds

Davey: 1:52:06

nothing like potato food to me.

Adrian: 1:52:07

But there's a couple of yeah, there's it's not massively, but I've not played for Tokyo. So I can't say but there's three, the other three on the table kept mentioning the Toku of a some of the symbology issues, but also the theme and a couple of different bits. They're like, Oh, this is where things don't refill naturally. And apparently that's quite similar to the Toku where things don't read a lot of games. It's like, oh, and immediately replaced it. And yeah, no, it's done. It's gone. Yeah. And there's some actions that allow you to use the things that are still there, even if you're not building, like

Davey: 1:52:35

the Enlightenment adventure track on Bitoku, which maybe is a bit like that. So

Adrian: 1:52:39

yeah, I've not played for Tokyo. I can't speak to it. There's a few mentions of it both good and bad reminiscing of the Tokyo and loads of water do you get through because of building and building? And building bonuses for people using them? The bit I like about oh, yeah, yeah, it's a bit I like as well. So yeah, no, I was really happy with picking that up and great to get to the table and have a good, good group to play with and

Davey: 1:52:59

really enjoyed it. So yeah, you'd be putting up in the group soon way.

Adrian: 1:53:02

Yeah. When someone's happy to host Yeah, yeah.

Davey: 1:53:05

So going off of board games and kind of go more into the convention side of things. And the people that we've met, I got to meet Matt Lawrence. Said Hello, we got to had a nice chat about our plan weather machine. So Hi, I'm Matt. So I had a good chat with Adam from punchboard, who we played the old kings crown with on live stream with Paul. So we had a good chat with Adam, about other games about food chain magnate and barrage because it seems like he likes me and games as well. Yeah. had a good chat about that. And it's just nice to see some kind of friendly faces. And so yeah, it was really nice. And it got a shout out. Yeah, yeah, blokes, I've

JP: 1:53:42

met Matt, which is always nice to have a chat with him. So obviously, one of our kind of keen listeners. And again, it's always a bit surreal when you meet your listeners to do a podcast. And, you know, we're just dudes that play games that happen to record. So that's really lovely to get the comments that we do.

Adrian: 1:53:59

But can I just jump in there as well? Because obviously, we had Matt and Paul Richards. Yeah. Behind and Paul always comes. First

Davey: 1:54:07

of all, as well. Yeah. Lovely chap. Yeah. Last

Adrian: 1:54:10

year, we played Lacrimosa. We did. And then afterwards, they sat at a different table behind us and asked questions about Lacrimosa. So so this time, I played quick, La Corha, and then moved across and they start getting La Corha and asked me questions about that. So whatever I play next, as a spunk, like, games library, I'll just sit next to you next time you go to play, it seems like every every con, I ended up being the rules query game I've just played, because I

Davey: 1:54:35

did off with Paul as well. I was going to offer to teach nucleum because I was like, ah, but me only being there. For a day in an evening. I was like, oh, it'd be like different circumstances I would do.

JP: 1:54:46

But I play speakeasy with Paul. So Paul is actually someone I met a group come to, and when I went on my own, so that's how I met Paul and not Paul Grogan, obviously, but the other Paul, Paul

Adrian: 1:55:00

Yeah, yeah. Nice guys. Nice group of they listened to me fondant. Yeah,

JP: 1:55:05

so it's always good to see them catch up with them. But we had Brian and his fiance Ali. And on the Friday night I think they're about to wrap up and go and they just came to say Good night, and Brian runs always pay blue Instagram as his handle. So check it out. And he's gonna say bye. We just set up strong point, which is a very simple quiz bidding that one yeah, yeah. And we just, you know, we've kind of gamed out a bit at that point. We're just happy to play something like Tom was dreading it because it's like a quiz game. Yeah, he's like, Oh, just bet zero on me. I'll get more wrong

Davey: 1:55:43

the long game. Like, I'm not gonna get any of them this money is

Tambo: 1:55:50

reality TV shows which I'm well happy.

JP: 1:55:53

That's a good thing. That's a good thing. But no, Brian, we just said our look. Do you want do you guys want to play? We just offered it out. Because it's, you know, it's an easy game. Sit down. I think Ali was ready for to go hit the kind of hotel. You could tell Brian was I want to play. It was just kind of looking going. Can I play? And yeah, he ended up sitting down and having the game with us. And it was just lovely. Nice. Got to hang out and play a bit. A strong point. Yeah. Nice. I remember playing that game. Expo. We did. Yeah. So we just went and did about three rounds of that. And kind of gifted to us actually. It was yeah, by the other makers and publishers have it. Thank you very much. Check it out. couple a couple of games. You play to that now. Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, that's I'm sure there's others that I've said hello. And I cannot remember the life. Yeah,

Adrian: 1:56:40

there was plenty of people that were like, Oh, we listen, or just wanted to chat or that I'd seen last year. Yes. And it just sort of stopped me and said out, how's your convention going this year, something I hadn't got to play with. And it's just it's such a nice atmosphere, as we sort of said at the start of the show. But it's just so lovely to get to speak to people or meet people that you've met before. Even just as you say online, or I played it's a balloon at the very end, which is a very silly sort of, you know, when someone tells you how to draw something, but you can't see what they're drawing. It's that in again. And like just getting to meet and say hello to Graham, who, before we set this up, you know, was someone that you saw quite regularly talking in the Facebook groups and stuff like that. And just getting to have a catch up with them quickly. Nothing more than just has go in and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, absolutely love getting the chance to

JP: 1:57:29

remote grammars are applied nuclear weather, just so yeah, just to say hello and

Adrian: 1:57:33

get to catch up with people. And yeah, absolutely. Great time.

JP: 1:57:37

Good community. Yes. What is fostered, though, is that community of people? And the more you go, the more you get to know people and actually a bunch, you probably just think I can even go on my own even like if none of your gaming group when you happily go on your own. And you'd have an amazing time. Yeah. Because the so many people come and play, and so many opportunities to even organise games before you go.

Davey: 1:57:58

That's what it's all about. Yeah. Lovely. So I think we're gonna wrap up there really, we could probably talk about grid con for a lot longer. But we're cracking on now. Anyway, and we've got to get Yeah. I know about you, but

Adrian: 1:58:24

I'm always going to take the day off afterwards. Yeah, I did you have today? Oh, yeah. Every time I book it off as holiday. Gosh, it's another day's holiday that I could use elsewhere. And then every Monday after any convention, I'm like, yes.

JP: 1:58:36

You feel wiped. But in a good way.

Davey: 1:58:39

Yeah. Yes. So if you want to contact us, you can find all the details within the show notes. Just want to say thank you again, to any of our supporters on coffee. And if you want to go on there, so that's spelled K O hyphen F i is a massive help to us to keep producing content. And at the moment, we've got goal of increasing our audio quality so you can have some silky smooth voices in your ears just because

JP: 1:59:04

you want to produce more silky smooth

Davey: 1:59:09

so if you do, it'll be great, but if not, that's fine as well. We're just happy to be doing this about something we love. So as always your turn is it thanks to Paul Grogan, Thanks Everyone.