TURN 1 - Player Count
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whose turn is it anyways excited to announce that we are helping to organize and sponsor the much loved Devon Bor
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game weekend at the Fox and Hounds hotel in edisford near exitor this event begins on Friday the 8th of November
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until Sunday the 10th of November for more details about the event and where to get your tickets Please check out the
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show notes and we'll direct you to where you need to go hope to see you there [Music]
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welcome to the who's Turners anyway podcast we'll podcast about our gaming group and of course the board games that
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we play today I'm with Davey hello JP hello
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and I'm your host for this expansion episode my name is Adrien we are fresh back from Essen Spiel 2024 this is part
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one of two of our Essen trip and the five days or so we've spent over there
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and everything we've seen and experienced so we've got a few hours for you this episode and we'll have a few more hours for you next episode about
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the second half of our trip so before we get started how are we all doing just got loads of energy and I'm just roaring
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to go oh no that's complete [ __ ] is that right
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yeah why are you lying to us JP why are you lying to us so yeah no I'm I'm exha fored like
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probably you guys are um and everyone else who just got back from from Essence so I mean we got back what last night so
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this is raw but we wanted to kind of yeah do this while it's fresh so we kind
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of you know bring everyone into the S and experience of why is everyone an octave lower you
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know yeah why does everyone keep coughing I don't know we edit that out but everyone is coughing coughs in just
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for authenticity but yeah you know it's all good I mean we were both we were all back what 11:30ish last night it was
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about that time wasn't it it was it was minutes apart from getting back in the house and it was yeah I'm feeling it
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today and I was smart enough to book a day's holiday um so God how you guys are
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doing activate smug mode Adrian I know it's not I would have booked the time off if I had any more time left this is
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that's the problem I had no more time so I couldn't book those extra days so I just had to kind of grin and bar today I
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would have done but my boss is a horrible person and I you're Your Own Boss JP's
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Horrible's EV he keeps making me work don't like him you would one to spend
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five days with him alone any longer right so shall we get into
TURN 2 - Welcome to Essen SPIEL 2024
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[Music]
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it right so shall we talk about our trip over to Essen who wants to go first were
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what were our trips like on the way over to Wesson this year cuz last year last year we caught we were in a car together
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right all of us this time we split up and went our different ways to get there
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we did last year we were clever enough to book a chauffeur called JP he was very enthusiastic and really wanted to
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drive 11 hours hey I said I would have driven
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some but you you didn't want to put your car into the responsibility of me but
Davey's journey by rail & Postmark Games - Aquamarine
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yeah so my trip was eventful so I got a train with Paul Grogan um he kind of I
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was his tag aot because he sorted everything out which meant I had to do very little on the admin front of the
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train and he just kind of went here's your tickets let's go get a train which was nice of him um so we traveled up and
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first of all the the the train journey up from Devon to London was great
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so on the journey up to London we played a little roll and right called uh postmark games and the first one we did
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was like a diving one which uh aquamarine and basically what you do is
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you have a limited supply of oxygen you have to start from a certain boat and you roll a dice and then you pretty much
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have to go draw uh a rectangle or square of that amount but if you pick the
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higher value CU you roll two dice you Los an oxygen and then also as you go deeper you lose more oxygen and it's
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about diving through certain combinations as roll and wres and if you run out of air you can do another dive
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and you got three total and then there's like a day and night timer that goes around as well so certain bits of the
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dive you have to do at night certain bits you have to do in the day so it was actually quite a really good roll and
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right um we played that on the journey up lovely then we went from London to
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Brussels had a little bit of a weight but wasn't too bad got on the train to Brussels lovely then we got to Brussels
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and we got the first train and as soon as we hit Germany this is where the problems started to arise so usually I
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think and I might be wrong you can get a train directly to ason from
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Brussels they must have work going on or something whatever but they didn't even tell us through the ticket that there's
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work going on so we just had to kind of make your way there if you Google anything not none of the trains come up
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there's an app that Paul eventually um had which was the only true source of
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information and we basically had to transfer like four times with our two suitcases each and yeah just it was
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absolute chaos and we did arrive 15 minutes earlier than we were meant to but yeah it was it was fun and games I
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think if we were able to get from Brussels straight to Essen it would have been an absolute Dole but also with
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brexit and the whole Customs thing having to show your passport the last time I got the Euro star didn't have to
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do that now you've got a whole C it's like you you're flying on a plane you know you have to queue up get your bag
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scanned do a double passport check so yeah I don't think I will do the train
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again I mean I would I'm Never Say Never I think if the Brussels de and trade
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like direct line is there and that is a thing then I probably would but without
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that I probably would say no I'm not going to do it again yes a long way and a lot of faf with but Paul Paul's great
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company at least yeah yeah we we had a great time um it kind of flew by in that sense we
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got to play you know some well in fact on our journey there I think that's all we played was the the three or four
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different versions of that Aqua Marine but we just kind of kept giving that again but time flew by really in that
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sense he took you under his little wing didn't he he went come here David yeah and actually just keep me coming I don't
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want to do this on my own he said do do you want to go on an adventure and I said yeah and then off we went it was it
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was like Lord of the Rings we go hon on an [Music] adventure he's my gandal The Bard game
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gandal Bless yeah so yeah it was it was good it was good well it was good fun
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other than the million transfers fair enough how about you guys how did you get there I
JP's & Adrian's journey by car & plane
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was chauffered so it was great chafford all the way there chafford on a plane oh you hired a
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shaeer this time I hired one um in the name of Adrian so yeah Adrian was very kind to to you say all the way there all
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the way there was to Birmingham airport he then flew from there still that's two and a bit hours so yeah yeah yeah the
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journey wasn't too bad on the way there absolutely on the way back was different but we'll talk about that later and uh
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you've got a new Tesla it does all the driving for you doesn't it not quite you're not allowed to do the self drive mode in in England they've disabled it
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it's illegal to do it so I can't do self-drive mode uh with Tesla but it was nice it was comfy glad I had it um got
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parked up we parked in car park 7 which is the furthest away and got the little shuttle bus to
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the airport flew across wasn't too bad we the intention was to play Streets of
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Rage 4 on the switch and then turned out that the uh actual little controllers
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hadn't been charging on the side of the switch so we played that for five
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minutes before the battery went out we didn't complete stage one oh no to get to the end of stage one and then like
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the blue one went it's like okay oh no it's a great
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game as well it's short but it is a good game yeah but so that was the plan was to play that for the sort of 45 minutes
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you're actually up in the air where you're not ascending or descending and then yeah and then we got straight
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straight off the plane bags were there on the conveyor belt when we got to baggage claim got
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onto the sky Train got to dorf got a nice quick seat at dorf and then went straight to
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Essen got off there ordered Macky D's as his Tradition now yeah and booked into
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the hotel going there was fedy it's still a long because you have to leave a few hours before the flight and all the
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usual things that come with flying so it was still a fairly long day I think it still felt almost as long probably not
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for JP but it's almost for me c certainly felt almost as long as when we drove there uh yeah the train was still
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11 hours I think and you guys were still what eight hours nine hours something like that yeah I think we were eight
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hours something that from when we left but to when we got there I was definitely more refreshed arriving um
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that Wednesday than last year last year I was like eyes is a little bit broken and I need my sleep whereas this I I
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felt pretty good pretty fine pretty relaxed obviously buzzing because we're just arriving at Essen and you know just
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that whole Square in front of the train station it's like all the memories are coming back we're back in the T you know
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back in the city ready to have all the ball game fun that is Essen SPI and uh
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yeah so I was I was well up for it definitely yeah so we um we traveled on the Wednesday but Dave obviously you
DAY 0: WEDNESDAY - Davey's experience of the press event
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traveled on the Tuesday which meant you were able to go to the Press event on the Wednesday and we had to miss out
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unfortunately but how was that Davey uh yeah it was it was good so I went to the
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Press event but I didn't go to the they do like a little
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um meeting Greek but like an award ceremony ceremony is the right word for
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it at the start and they give you all drinks and everything but I didn't go to that because that bit it's all in German
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and I'm your stereotypical English and as in I only know one language and that is English so I do need to work on my
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other languages but I missed the German bit of that um but then afterwards this
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year they had the all the developers um or Publishers as well um kind of down in
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a row or most of them not all I shouldn't say all um and showing off
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their games uh I did feel some of the smaller independent
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developers they had their game set up then they weren't there so you could get a photo and everything and you could see
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what Hall it was but I'm guessing because it's they were allow in at the same time is they were setting up their
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stool so I did feel sorry for those guys where because I think the year before it
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was at a different time um it was maybe on the Thursday but they had it in a completely different area because it was
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on the Thursday and everyone said it was an absolute nightmare because it was in this tiny little room really CR to
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everyone's kind of like ass cheek to ass cheek shuffling through and they said it was an absolute
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noo so this this year we had lots of room we got to speak to lots of different people and got a nice little
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feel um about what's going to be going on um also spoke to Czech games and they
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were kind enough to give us a copy of set yeah so out of most they were told
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they were allowed to give out games but most I think most of the companies and most of the um developers didn't bring
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them there because then it means you have to L all your game to one Hall to another Hall back to the other Hall if
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people didn't pick it up so but it was only check games that really brought any through um but they were very kind and I
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spoke to them and we've obviously got a good rapport with them as well so maybe
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that helped but they've given us K AA before and we've also had mean and elwin
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on the show before talking about lost ruins vanac so they also had there which
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we probably won't talk about um again was just a little demo Board of the new
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expansion for Los runin of arac um and they've got like a it's like a dark dark
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purpley board and there's a new mechanic in it which is like cursed um Relic
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tiles rather than your normal Relic tiles you have these little cursed ones and the tech tree to the side looked
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absolutely me Al that you go up rather than it just kind of sprawled into its own Beast by the looks of it and it had
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loads of different icons that I didn't know what they meant so that would be defin it would be interesting when they
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bring that out to see what they do with that I was a little bit jealous to be honest you managed to to do the Press
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cuz like the reason why we me and Adrian weren't there is logistically we kind of sorted all this out and then we realized
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we got press passes after Logistics have been kind of sorted and paid for and
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done um then David with his high look
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stat which looked out there day earlier and could absolutely take advantage of
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that but I'm glad one of us got to do it because I think it's quite important for you know for us to kind of be
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represented in in that press event and and to also just get that that kind of pre- meting greet piece done um which is
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you know is awesome to do and it's how you network and that's to be honest from from a press point of view that's what
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Essen is about it is literally about networking you know meeting these
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Publishers meeting these designers meeting all these different people and and it's something I'd love to love for
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us to do more and more of as you know as the years go on so yeah it's great that you did it mate so thank you and also
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thank you for setti because that was on my list from probably two or three days earlier we
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jumped on and did a Essen um stream with with Paul Grogan again on gaming rules
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think talking about the kind of upcoming games were excited about and that was one I was kind of talking about and then
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since then I've been watching videos on it and just got more excited about it so I was like oh that's awesome and then
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you went I've got a copy and I was like yes and Dave only spent spent a little
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bit of time after he got that copy playing it it was very very small amount of timeo didn't you well so I bumped
Davey's 3 games of SETI back to back
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into Luke Hector I think Paul played like Matchmaker cuz he he put a little group up on messages saying oh what are
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you guys up to I'll meet you guys here and then we both were there and then Paul was obviously too busy in the main
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hall so never arrived so just spend the the rest of the day with Luke and then we were like oh why don't we just play
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seti so we took seti to the premier in got it out learned the rules um which we
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did get one rule wrong so Luke didn't do too bad of a job teaching really for only to be one rule um and then off we
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went and played a game and we finished one game and I thought this was great
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absolutely amazing game two other um two other guys in the Premier came over and
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said oh you you playing set we're like oh yeah do you want to sit down we'll play it again because we've just learned
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the game okay cool sat down played another game JP and aun get to the
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premier in about 7 o' was it yeah about 7 o' and I
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did say to JP that i' play some setti with with them so I think it got a bit
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bit too late for Adrian so he made a smart decision he retired when I knew that the game was
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not going to be finished by midnight yeah I was like there's no point in me staying up because I'll get to like 11
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11:30 and I'll crash and then yeah JP I think walked into the room that we were sharing what quarter past
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midnight I played my third game of setti with JP that that evening um so I got to
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see all the aliens so if you don't know about seti we'll probably go over it later rather than now um but there is
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some like a little secret modular mechanic with it where you re you you're basically looking for extraterrestrial
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life and you find it but you have two different ones out of five pick two and
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you play with those two so I ended up seeing all of them that evening spoil G
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nothing left to spoil i s nothing left to spoil yeah but I do
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really enjoy that game definitely up there you know A Game's good when you
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can go yeah I'll play that again after three or four hours I think I mean we started playing it about 4:00 I think so
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the the the the learning game took about two hours and then now was a two player
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and then I played it till 5 P 12 so that was then the end of when Wednesday um so
How does a bed eat a person?
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I got a bit more sleep I think than both of you yeah and Thursday obviously was the start of the event
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so talking about sleep forgot about this I think this is the night my bed
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broke so I stayed at the stay hotel which is the worst name for a hotel
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because you type in Essen Stay Hotel every other Hotel on Earth comes up
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before that Hotel it's like the place near us like called The Pub the pub and
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whenever you tried to Google it weather spoons came up because it's just got more it's got more coverage it's got
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more um what's the word for it metadata behind it so yeah it it wasn't great to
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find but it actually wasn't too far away from the train station but the very first night jday night slept like a baby
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lovely second night I went to bed about half 12 I think I got in
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um woke up about 2: in the morning in like a hammock I was like what's going
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on why am I why am I suddenly been enveloped by the bed and yeah it just I feel like the bottom of it just went so
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I had to pull the mattress well I try to go back to sleep for a little bit and then you know when you're so tired
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you're like I can I'll be able to sleep I'll just put up with this and I'll deal with it tomorrow and then I like lay
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there for like an hour and then I went no I can't this is just this is this is not on so I dragged the mattress offto
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the floor went to the floor and basically didn't really sleep got about three hours sleep uh next day I did go
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and talk to the receptionist and she didn't really seem to care or think that
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I was telling the truth so then I went as I was walking back in I bumped into
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the the guy that runs the place the owner I don't know it was only I think it was an independent hotel and he was
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just like really helpful he just went yeah yeah we'll go take a look when I look and went yeah that doesn't feel
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right and upgraded me into a better room a bigger room big double bed to
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myself amazing bed and everything else so I ended up meeting you guys a little bit
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later um but yeah got I slept like a baby from then on yeah yeah it's rubbish
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when you don't get sleep on a on a day you're excited to do something and then you just don't get any sleep the night before through no fault of your own yeah
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yeah whether I was a little bit grum with the receptionist on 3our sleep and
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I might have been which might have also probably not helped but um yeah it did
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get sorted so it is a thumbs up for that hotel in the end I see you don't mind when things go wrong it's always a bit
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of a pain but it's it's how they sort it you know you can usually forgive a lot
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of things I think if things you know mistakes happen and it's just the way that people deal with it and if they can
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deal with it and correct it you're like fair play usually um yeah and plus I
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went from having Daniel Craig staring over me in bed to Shirley Bassie so
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that's an upgrade in itself go f exactly we obviously we were staying
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at the premier in right Adrian so we had um quite looked into a disabled room um
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in the fact that it just basically a big L shape and just kind of walking down the
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corridor on the sixth floor and you're like you see the little map and I'm like oh I think we might be in the end one cuz the end one's got the extra space
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cuz it's just got Surplus space it needs to fill and uh yeah like so you go in it's like a big L shape and then yeah
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shower open wet room whole lot was great felt like really looks it in the end um
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nice you know usually got your suitcase and it usually gets in the way because you trying to like put it somewhere just
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chucked it down the corner of the low I had I had three bags and had them all
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laid out and opened up so I could use them as I wanted to JP had two he had them laid out on the opposite side of
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this sort of L bit that wasn't the beds had those laid out and all that lot we had the the table and everything it was
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uh yeah it was pretty nice yeah probably wouldn't ever happen again but it's just the way it goes it find it strange cuz
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you're like the first people that booked and they must have just booked you straight into the disabl I don't know
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why I don't know why we got that room but who who questions the logic of the Premier in you know there are higher
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beings that understand what happens at the premier in and it's just not us I'm afraid but there we go so yeah so while
DAY 1: THURSDAY - JP supporting Mindclash Games demoing Ironwood & Septima
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Davey was having his ling um Ling JP and myself we're heading to to
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Essen day one of ESS one beat the crowds beat the crowd so JP you had a
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exhibitor's pass I did because you were you were working somewhere yeah so I had
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an exhibit as pass cuz I was demoing at mine clash games um so earlier in the
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year I kind of I said if I go back to ESS and I'd like to do some demoing um and I thought well we're best to do
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demoing than the biggest Bard game fair pretty much on the planet so so yeah and
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I thought I love mine cash games why not give a bit back they're really good to us as a um a publisher and uh we have a
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really great relationship with them um you know as kind of podcast and and publisher and it's just nice to kind of
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give a little bit back to him and get to know the team a little little bit better so so yeah I I kind of arranged to do um
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a few hours on Thursday Friday and Saturday each morning I didn't want to do too much demoing I didn't want it to
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be you know that my ESS was completely all about demoing fulltime because then you don't see anything you don't really
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get to kind of have a proper mooch around and and do the things that we want to do but but yeah so I was on two
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games I was on Ironwood which is uh the one the latest um game that they were
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are releasing well that's been released right now and people could be picking up their copies and I think people who have backed it or pre-ordered it those copies
24:05
were being literally delivered around that time I think my copy arrived whilst I was at Essen so it's yeah literally
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the timing was great so I was I think I demoed across Thursday Friday Saturday
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um I've demoed 10 games of Ironwood um and I did one sept uh game and now at
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first on that Thursday it's my first time demoing so it's a bit it's a bit like oh this is
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weird this is different and you know Fair Play It's always difficult to get the 10: a.m. demo slot right because the
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gates open at 10 you get the rush and it takes time for people to get through the
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the herd of zombies um to to get to where you need to get and then you've got to get into the queue so you're
24:50
going to get to the queue especially for mine Clash because they only do pre-bookings only so you get into the queue to then say I want a demo right
24:56
now so people you know don't really start at 10: on a 10 a.m demo you're
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starting probably quarter past 10 uh 20 past 10 so we had um for for Ironwood I
25:07
was demoing two games at the same time which is a bit of a challenge um if
25:13
these people don't turn up at the same time because you either got to start a teach for two people and then redo a
25:19
teach for the next two people which is fine if everyone arrives at the right time but you can bank that they won't
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and of course they didn't so it's kind of you've got to make a call of okay two people have sat down early great how
25:32
long do you wait before the next two turn up or do you start and get them going as fast as possible and you know
25:37
time is a commodity at these things especially when you're demoing and and quite rightly people can get a bit you
25:43
know not grumpy but they just want to get on with it they've you know pre-booked a slot and and they want to
25:49
play but no generally everyone that I've demoed to has been really great and
25:54
there mixture you know of of of nationalities and different people and for me it was just fantastic to to demo
26:00
a game like Ironwood and for those that don't know I've covered it on the UK games Expo uh episode in a bit more
26:07
detail but it's a one V one kind of asymmetric uh Skirmish uh kind of game
26:13
which you kind of race for your own unique um win conditions so as a demo it's quite a good game to pitch two
26:19
people against each other and have the banter across the table you know so you can kind of really play into that as as
26:25
someone who demoing the game so yeah I think by the Saturday I was a slick demoing machine cuz I just rinse repeat
26:33
rinse repeat rinse repeat and setting out to destroy relationships between
26:38
people no you won't be after this because you'll all hate each other um and then sept was just a quite a joy
26:44
actually it was quite a relax because I had one game four people teaching the game I've played I don't know how many
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times quite a few times and that was quite a relaxing two hours for me that was once we got the teach done questions
26:57
coming you answer the question questions and just help people along it was nice just yeah did you get any rules wrong
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for I get get any rules wrong I might have done on Ironwood on the early Thursday um I can't remember but yeah
27:09
you know when you kind of think I don't think that's right and you like then look for the rule book and go it's sort
27:15
of right but it's it it doesn't detract from the demo itself if that makes sense it like it would have make sense it
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would impact a game of competitive uh nature if you were playing in that kind of way but for the sake of a demo to get
27:29
an experience of the game it really doesn't matter and it's um yeah for septum I know that's pretty pretty
27:36
straightforward but IR will is newer um it's yeah I can't even tell you what it
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was it was something really small and the Ralls are pretty straightforward on that so yeah yeah just I was just
27:47
intrigued because it happens we' had demos of other people where it has
27:53
happened and so it's one of them things but it's quite it's quite cool to be on the other side of the curtain you know I
27:58
got to wear me purple mine class shirt I've got three of those now so I've took
28:03
them home and uh yeah I might just wear them around the house because they're cool he's not going to wash them
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smell but but no you know I just want to say a big thank you to to the guys at mine Clash especially got Robert who was
28:18
coordinating all of the demo staff and and uh just making sure everyone was was
28:23
all good and you know he was great he was very you know appreciative that I was part press and podcast and he was
28:29
very happy for me to talk about that whilst I was demoing because of you know the amount of time I'm doing um and and
28:35
likewise to you know um dker and uh s from the marketing team who are just
28:41
awesome to us every time we go there they're just fantastic and they'll help us out with different things and we'll
28:47
talk about one of those experiences later in the show yeah that's the demoing segment across all of the days
28:54
done across Thursday Friday Saturday nice while you were demoing I had press
Adrian goes scouting and Duck & Cover catches his eye
29:00
pass so I was allowed to go in a bit earlier myself and I thought there's a couple of games I need to grab but what
29:07
I'll do is I'll have a scout around the halls first especially Hall three because we know that that can get quite busy because it's kind of the main sort
29:13
of Euro big publisher for like those sort of crunchy euros and all that L it gets quite busy in there so thought I'll
29:19
have I'll have a wander around there and um there's lots of stools still being set up and stands sort of looking good
29:25
and all sort of getting the demos like perfectly lined up that first day make sure it's pristine I'm sure by Sunday
29:31
morning they were just like oh it's all on the table that'll do but Thursday they were lining up everything to make it looked good and um one stand in
29:39
particular stood out for me and unfortunately I never got a demo of it but you could not miss Duck and Cover um
29:47
which was uh which was Captain games um the
29:52
publisher they had so later on in the day they had a guy walking around
29:58
with like one of those like Duck suits on so he looks like he's riding the duck and just had a kazoo in his mouth
30:06
and was just blowing this kazoo as he walked around the hall but in the actual Booth as well
30:13
they had all these taable out there must have been about eight or nine tables but the main table was a bathtub filled with
30:18
rubber ducks they had a table over the top of and chairs round to play Duck and Cover and as I say I didn't get to play
30:25
the game but as far as presence goes unique presence that's going to shout out to you that was one of them and I
30:31
did keep trying to see if there was a table free but every time I walked past there was a few people waiting I just I'll go on to the next stand and come
30:37
back round sort of things so I do feel like I missed out but even the staff were passing each other and just
30:44
quacking at each other as they passed each other and I just I don't know I found it delightful that they were kind
30:49
of this in character and this highp and that was still going on Sunday so I saw it on Thursday that they quacked at each
30:55
other and thought that's a bit weird but they're obviously like excited like we are Sunday still quacking at each other
31:00
and I was like all right okay fine this is when you find out they've made their own code
31:06
possibly possibly they're they're actually just calling you names
Pre-order pick ups of Daitoshi, Salton Sea & Civolution
31:13
understandable so did that and then I lined up for D um so daoshi was uh top of my list
31:22
but sold out of pre-orders um ahead of time so I thought well I'm going to get that cuz it seemed if it sold out
31:28
pre-orders is going to be quite popular so I queued up for that and then it got to Sunday and they still weren't sold out so I felt a bit felt a bit sort of a
31:35
fool having queued up but KN my luck I don't have the high luck stat that Davey has if I hadn't queued up they would
31:41
have sold out so kind of glad I didn't I got back and haven't played it yet but I
31:46
opened the box today and the production value on that thing is outstanding the rule book is like nice thick textured
31:52
paper there's acrylics in there acrylic um tokens wood tokens cardboard all of
31:58
it nice and thick looks really good um so I cannot wait to give it a go um and
32:04
I also picked up salt on C purely for the reason that if you spent 90 you got a free bag and a promo so I thought well
32:12
I'll well I want a bag I want a bag that's going to cost anyway because I don't want to carry this around in my
32:18
arms so I'll just spend the extra30 and get salt on sea as well which I've um
32:23
I've been meaning to play a little while it keeps in like keeps popping up on my feed and interest
32:28
so did that yeah yeah so I'm looking forward to both of those to give them a go soon and then um Davey asked if we
32:36
could go and get cvoluion for him because having had the UK games Expo um play through I think he was desperate to
32:42
get his hands on that game so sat in a queue there for it wasn't too long to be fair for civui but that by that point
32:48
all the gates were open so it's about 10 past 10 um and I just thought I'll queue up for that and that one did sell out by
32:53
the looks of things um I think it about Midway through Saturday if I remember correctly um but that one sold out so at
32:59
least we got that copy there I think the English version sold out on Friday oh
33:05
did it I think the German version sold out on Saturday yeah there was a little
33:11
little error with the production though uh everyone got double farmers and no
33:17
settlements which is a little bit annoying but it's not their fault um yeah and they did they're going to
33:24
resolve it they did warn everyone as you picked it up please scan this QR and they had instructions in English and
33:30
German and they said please scan this QR code um and we'll sort out and like if
33:36
you've got any issues with the Box we know about them we'll sort them out for you and that was before that was basically 10: a.m. on Thursday morning
33:42
so they clearly knew about this production issue before even sort of getting there but it' be impossible to
33:48
resolve at this point right so so yeah so they um so they did highlight that so I took a photo of that for Dave to sort
33:54
that out as well um and then I headed across so I kind of was a bit like I'll
34:01
have a bit of a wander like I do with the games XO I like to have a bit of a wander in and out of all the halls and have a look around I thought I'll do
34:06
that and then while I'm doing that I'll pick up my other pre-orders so I get to Black Rock games who did far away last
More pre-order pick-ups of Faraway expansion, Castle Combo & AI: 100% Human
34:13
year which if you listen to the last episode I queued for an hour just waiting to pick up far away but this time I'd pre-ordered learned my lesson
34:19
pre-ordered um got the far away expansion and castle combo but I went to go there and the
34:25
queue was huge it was the biggest queue out of all of the ones I'd seen it was that big and I thought to myself blind me these are I know they're popular like
34:32
far alwayss proved popular and Castle combos had a lot of of hype about it um and they've got a few other expansions
34:38
to popular games but that queue was long so I went there and then I went to explorate to pick up um AI 100% human um
34:45
which I'd also pre-ordered um and again haven't played that but I know Davey has on the train
34:51
journey back so spoiler alert but I'll let him get to that when he's on his train journey back but I'm really
34:56
looking forward to it and as I was walking past there on the corner of where explorate was um was a little um
35:04
one of the smaller stands doing uh demos and that For an upcoming Kickstarter or
35:09
crowdfunder for uh I think it's War league and they were handing out promos like little
35:15
booklets and he sort of said oh you got a second to talk about it yeah not a problem he said oh you probably won't like it anyway but here's what it is and
35:21
it has the like a mini mission in it so you cut out a few of the different piece and bits and pieces some tokens and it
35:28
looks like a Dungeon Crawler of of description and you cut out the aliens and your little people and all that lot
35:33
and it's got the basics of the rules in it with a QR code and you can play through a demo mission of it just by
35:41
cutting bits out of out of this booklet which I thought was a great idea um it's only about four or five pages this
35:47
little booklet that folded in half sort of thing so that's on the side I kind of want to give it a go just to sort of see
35:53
how it plays with this mini demo to see sort of what what you can can see out of the game compared to what's on the
35:59
kickstarter page that's actually a really good idea yeah it it it sort of struck me as a bit different back of the
36:06
essm promo they had a similar thing where you could cut out and you could do a demo version of it was like a tile lay
36:11
tile laying game some gem game and they had that as well on the back of the Essen um preview so clearly something
36:17
that they've learned from that or sort of got an idea from I'd guess and then Davey said I'm on my way
Meeting Tom Heath from Slickerdrips
36:23
so I headed back across and I bumped into uh Tom from Slicker drips
36:28
um and had a bit of a catch up with him and he already had a sort of a bag with some bits and pieces in and just had a quick catch up and I tell you what he
36:35
looks summery at all times doesn't Hees he's he's got his sort of his Geek Chic
36:41
uh like Hawaiian shirt on that's always got like I think it had he had he had uh
36:47
Marvel he had like a Magneto with some Sentinels on it and all that lot but it's all patterned up so it looks like a
36:52
Hawaiian shirt and it was all light colors and all that lot and every time I bumped into him I thought man for the middle of October or the start of
36:58
October you do look quite summer and sort of yeah so I had a quick catch up with him and then headed off to catch up
37:05
with Davey yeah so I think I head in and quickly devoured my breakfast egg or
37:12
lunch you could probably called it at that time um and then JP also had finished I finally got off my demo so
37:20
great timeing for all of us we all met up and I think we head over to
37:28
uh sorry we are French where JP picked up Shackleton base and me and aan gave
Dead Cells by Scorpion Masqué
37:35
dead cells a little taster so we had to wait a little bit and then we got that
37:41
to the table uh spoiler we didn't enjoy it I have played dead cells at the
37:47
computer game before I don't think Adrien has no no I haven't played it JP has but JP was queing for Shackleton at
37:53
this point so we were playing dead cells um I think it could be good so it could be good the
38:01
problem was you start off at the start and at the start it was a very
38:06
basic you have your character of abilities you have a a dungeon very
38:12
similar to slay the Spire or like a tile thing where you go across and pick an area that does a thing either you fight
38:20
something or you draw an event card the fights they come out and then it's got like a timer which basically from one to
38:27
four it's like a round Tim each one of us picks a card except for for a four player one of you doesn't sit in the
38:34
fight which was like what why yeah just make it a three player that was my bit that I was like I'm it felt such a
38:41
downer for three people to be getting involved and because you're allowed to say what on these cards right it's got
38:48
what are you going to do on the first ter what you going to do on the second term what you going to do on the third ter and you're allowed to discuss what you're able to do on one of the turns
38:55
but nothing else so you get to have a bit of conversation and say I'm going to do some damage on the first turn okay
39:00
well maybe I'll do um some damage on the second turn or maybe I'll do more damage
39:06
on the first turn or I'll pick up the loot on the third turn or whatever it is you get to discuss it but whoever feels
39:13
they can't go says I'll sit out and if it gets to the fourth player and they say I can't
39:21
go that fourth player has to sit out so there's always someone sitting
39:26
out and now they get to upgrade stuff which is cool but while you're having this conversation and getting involved
39:32
in the fight they kind of haven't had anything to do with it and there was a there's quite a few bits in this game that I thought that's quite good I quite
39:38
like that it's nice simple all that kind of stuff but that bit was the real sort of I felt bad because someone was always
39:44
sat out and I felt bad for the person who was sat out each time even though I think we all took a turnout in the end
39:49
but I felt bad every time someone was sat out and I was having a bit of a good time with the battle sequence yeah it
39:56
did feel it felt out of place it felt like they could have done that upgrade thing a little bit better like maybe sit
40:03
out you can sit out one round and then you get to flip and you don't do the thing that you've played on your card
40:09
rather than I'm just sitting out the whole fight yeah um but yeah so you then do a sequence of fights and stuff will
40:17
usually play out sequence you'll have like an an action which is usually Associates to something on your board
40:25
which you can upgrade and get back to I think mine was I gain a shield as one of my actions so I gain a shield so I can
40:30
take a damage um and then you run that round the table but sometimes you had
40:37
I'm going to Mark someone and marks your standard thing of the next damage source does double damage oh no one Deals Deals
40:44
damage after the person's just marked them oh the Mark's gone because that's
40:49
is quite funny and it's meant it's meant to it's meant to kind of um portray
40:56
quick comat you will kind of make a decision within that second and you will fight at the same time but I kind of
41:02
felt like there was no agency to the fight once you played your card you just kind of sat back you got to talk about
41:09
where maybe the damage was going and there was some strategy there of who you're going to damage who you're going
41:14
to get first but then the strategy kind of went out the window a little bit and you just play it out but this is maybe
41:22
where the demo I think was wasn't the best if the demo had chucked
41:30
Us in maybe mid game where you've seen a load you've got a load of upgrades and you can see how combat f is mid to late
41:38
game maybe that combat develops into its own Beast where you get lots of different weapons that can a minute
41:44
plate what you're doing on your cards or but we don't know I I don't know how the
41:49
game progresses further we didn't see any of it you saw the very start which was quite slow in a lot of aspects it
41:57
had some unique things where the souls you gain from killing the monsters when you die you get to spend them and
42:03
upgrade it's like a folder sheet that sits above the board it's like ISS Vanguard with this little yeah that's it
42:10
but card sleeves yeah and then you can slot those upgrades in and those continue over when you die to the next
42:17
run so that's the way they've done the Rogue like and I really like that aspect of it where the upgrades you you could
42:25
just keep playing it you're like oh all dead doesn't matter off we go again bang bang bang bang bang and you get to keep
42:30
certain aspects and upgrades but I think they should have thrown us
42:37
into like a a later scenario or something without spoiling too much I feel like they could have maybe just
42:42
cherry pick and stuff to then give you a proper feel of this is what the game can
42:48
do we got just a you know a small snippet of it and I left with a slightly
42:55
sour taste or it wasn't even a sour tast it was more of just I wasn't that bothered by it I I didn't mind the
43:01
programmed combat as much as Davey did I could tell kind of in the moment that you were sort of a little bit deflated
43:06
and I was I quite liked it the the idea that you could only discuss a little bit of it um that sort of um restricted
43:12
communication that's quite often in co-op games didn't mind that um and I felt like it might have been
43:20
aimed at a slightly younger audience as well or having the ability of a younger audience
43:26
take part in it because it is that we all get to have a bit of a chat and then you play your card and you know if
43:32
you've got a younger kid or whatever in the group they can just make their choice and everyone else can kind of work around them as what they're going
43:37
to do so I did feel like there was maybe that part in it as well I think for me the biggest problem is the fact that
43:43
slay the Spire is out there and is a is a stronger version of it where I think
43:49
certainly sort of I'd say sort of I don't want to say Gamers gamer but certainly someone who's used to card
43:56
building deck building mechanics and all that kind of stuff and campaign mechanics will get more out of it
44:02
naturally 100% so it's competing and it's like 80 EUR right so okay there's a
44:08
bit of difference in cost but it really feels like it's competing with slay the spire and I think if you're a younger
44:13
family or something that or you've got sort kids who are just getting into gaming maybe dead cells is probably a
44:19
bit more for you um but it wasn't the most simple game either so maybe that's not quite right but it certainly wasn't
44:24
as strong as slay the Spire for someone who used to deck building mechanics campaign mechanics that kind of
44:31
thing yeah I I will I would like to play it again and i' would like to actually
44:36
get my teeth into it and see how it developed because the fact that from
44:43
what I've heard what I've seen a lot of people are like it's really good I think the demo of what they showed us is what
44:51
left us feeling and maybe it plays better at three player where you don't have to have someone sit out as well
44:58
there were just a couple of things that kind of put me off the game but I would like to give it another go JP then came
45:03
back to join us looking happy as can be with Shack base in his M absolutely
Ada's Dream by Alley Cat Games
45:09
absolutely and we all went off and what did we do next into uh Hall three and we
45:16
were just walking down the main kind of middle of the strip I'm going to call it the strip because it's kind of where most people kind of go up and down that
45:22
Hall CU it's a massive long hall Hall fre is yeah it's just narrow and and and long that's just the best way to
45:29
describe it we walk past and I managed to clock at the left of me uh at alycat
45:34
games at some people just left the table for a demo and and I said like Lads
45:40
Demo's free for for this game and uh I think I might have been challenging some of Davey's look and it just happened
45:46
because weirdly last year and I think it was in exactly the same place we managed
45:52
to do the same thing for Galactic Cruise right with a Dr Dr game and yeah weirdly
45:58
in the same place right in the middle aliat games we the same colors and the
46:03
same spots as well so it was red and green next to each other and we sat down
46:09
and it was exactly the same and I just got major de Deja familiar this is weird but the game was uh adah's dream U like
46:16
I say by aliat games and it's one I've already backed and I was like yeah we quite cool to to have a little little
46:22
taste and and we had a uh kind of an explanation and I think it's fair to say I think
46:29
it's a similar theme of the dead cells one where I wasn't quite sure how things are
46:35
connected together even after a teach it was kind of like okay there's a mechanism there in the middle there's
46:41
there's there's kind of four separate areas of the board and I couldn't quite see how it all hung together or why or
46:48
yeah just mechanically but I think the principle of the game and I love the theme of the game which is all about ad
46:54
love lace and for those that don't know history I'm going to completely severely butcher it right now cuz I'm not a
47:01
massive history buff but I believe she's uh one of the most influential people to have created or or theoretically created
47:09
an analog computer back in insert old uh year here probably late 1800s or early
47:15
1900s or something like that and you play in a kind of an alternate timeline
47:22
where she doesn't die young and actually she lives a a longer life and you plays her assistance to to kind of help her
47:29
fulfill a dream in building this analog computer so your player board has this
47:35
uh you know an array of discs that kind of set out in a 3X3 grid with uh lots of
47:41
uh kind of rows and columns and and spaces for for dice to to be set so at his heart it's a dice drafting game
47:48
which is a mechanic I definitely enjoy in games you know coin bro and uh perseverance and and any the others U
47:55
love a bit of dice draft and it's just the fun thing so you kind of have this
48:00
um yeah basically two different action types that you can do you either take a
48:05
I think it's a workshop action where you move a dice from one bin to the next and there's like a circle of circles where
48:12
all these dice are grouped I think it's three dice per per like container and all the different actions are kind of
48:18
linked to to those containers and yeah you can move one space for free and the the idea is that if you match all um SU
48:26
see the the value of the dice you can bump uh a different dice out into the worker kind of placement spot and and
48:34
then take that action and then you kind of take that Dice and put it into your um your own kind of player board your
48:40
own computer board off to the side and happy days and then you can do a bunch of other stuff like you know play a card
48:45
out your hand which depends on the dice number that you've you've bumped and taken so if you played like a one two or
48:51
three you can play a card that has a one two or three at the top and then do extra kind of action efficiencies and
48:57
things like that and um you can also spend uh I think it's like studies I
49:02
think they're like cute little books actually the production on these little little books was quite nice as well and
49:08
you can kind of bolster those actions to do all the cool stuff and and then the
49:13
kind of the other action is then you can use your dice that you've acquired um
49:18
and Slot them into your computer kind of board and and this is where it kind of gets quite interesting for me where you
49:25
you've obviously got the number as one thing which is very important because in the column or row that you're putting
49:31
this dice in you will eventually be building these kind of cogs these operator cogs which have got like pluses
49:38
and minuses or at some point maybe multiplication and you can slot those in so if you kind of Imagine a column of
49:44
three dice with three different values like I know three a four and a six you'll be putting in the pluses and
49:50
minuses in between them and and at the end of the game you'll be scoring victory points for the total value of
49:57
that that sequence so you probably think well I put multiplication in everywhere but they're the most expensive and
50:03
harder to get and sometimes you you have to put the minuses in but if you do it right it's not the end of the world
50:09
right it's maybe a victory Point lost or something like that um so yeah you're kind of putting those things in and yeah
50:15
the color of the dice that you slot will depend then on the um kind of area of
50:21
the board that you then activate so there's four quadrants in in each side and yeah you then kind of either travel
50:27
around the map you'll kind of um invest in institutes you'll go to meeting rooms
50:32
and acquire new um kind of people which are the cards that you get and also you can then develop these cogs and and uh
50:40
also I forget what they call but these other the cards that slot assignments slot into the bottom of your board so
50:46
that when you activate that color dice you then running a little engine doing different things so so yeah it's it's
50:52
kind of uh one of those kind of midweight games and I I do kind of like my my midweight games like your lorenzos
50:59
and your coin bras and things like that a little bit heavier I would say now I've played it I think when I looked at
51:06
it it felt um it looked like midweight it looked like one of those but I think you're right the fact that actually
51:12
after a teach I still like I still don't know how this works I don't think I understood it until the very last turn
51:18
but that might have been partially a Teach as well as I only had three hour sleep so you know it could be a
51:24
combination of the two but it is definitely an interesting puzzle it's it's one I've not seen before
51:32
especially with the little cards that you slot in on that row or column that
51:37
then give you like set goals that you have to get so I think mine was I had to have all dice of the same color in a
51:44
column and they had to be odd and then you score that as well as the multip
51:50
multiplications or additions or minuses within that column it was definitely
51:55
very interesting puzzle I think you said you're right the teach I don't think was the the best in the way it was kind of
52:02
delivered and you know it was a weird hybrid wasn't it because some people
52:07
would just give you all the rules and then let you go for it and some people will kind of give you a guided hiss what your first turn looks like you must
52:14
follow this script and there was a bit of a halfway house they're like we're going to do everyone's going to do a dice action first then everyone's going
52:19
to do the other work placing placing the dice but they didn't really tell us oh
52:26
here's what you want to do or here's what this means or anything like that therefore you're doing this and I kind of get why to some extent but it did
52:33
mean that it took us the first two turns took us almost too long I felt whereas
52:39
if You' done scripted and I know not everyone loves scripted like things where you're told what to do but I think
52:45
we would have all got especially at four player because we were three player and so we missed one of the zones in that
52:51
teach in the start of it but certainly at four player you'd have been able to see exactly what that looks like what
52:59
every single area looks like within two turns um and yeah as you said there's
53:04
some interesting there's some interesting bits in there the bit you're talking about like Davey with the The Columns and all that lot was quite
53:09
reminiscent of either like a role player or something that you can get gold cards that says everything on this row needs
53:15
to be the same color or everything in this column needs to be all sixes or whatever that felt like that but then
53:20
that's tied to a much bigger Drafting and trackers and all that kind of stuff
53:27
what I will say is I felt like I got enough out of it to say it's not for me it just didn't it just felt it felt
53:34
like it was trying to do too much at once um I felt like it needed to take a couple of mechanics out of there because
53:40
there was some nice ideas in there but it just was all it felt like it needed like one zone less or that card slotted
53:49
in the bottom for the engine to be a bit simpler or something along those lines because it all felt like it was a bit too many things together for me
53:55
personally um and as you say like weight ratio at the moment and these tend these things tend to fluctuate once again on
54:01
the public but it's currently a four out of five so it's approaching ler levels of complexity according to B is it
54:06
really is it that that heavy I kind of I kind of agree with that if I'm honest um I think it's much closer to to that sort
54:13
of brass Birmingham um level of of kind of interactivity
54:19
with everything there's a lot of moving Parts I think once they went through the actions and we understood the actions
54:25
those were simple but there were a lot of moving Parts on top of that of where you wanted to go because then you could
54:32
gain this if you spent a book or this extra action we didn't know why to start with I was like why am I doing these
54:39
things I don't really know and the the demo was really enthusiastic and a lovely person but it felt like some of
54:47
the things they didn't know themselves and some of the rules which I may have
54:52
gotten into a slight argument about with one of the rules um say argument you I don't know if that was right or not no
54:59
you were just trying to clarify and you know I was trying to clarify it's cuz
55:04
the rules said one thing on the the little um helper sheet and then they told us another thing so I was like
55:11
which one is it I don't you don't know if if it's a misprint it's been changed or whatever exactly there was definitely
55:18
already misprints on there because it said oh you need this color and that color didn't exist isn't a red so it was like okay all right but no I think I I'm
55:27
Keen to get a full game experience of it and and actually if it is on that heavier weight it it probably is more
55:35
aligned to my tastes anyway um once I can of understand the puzzle but look I've I've got a copy coming on the way
55:41
anyway I just wanted to kind of jump on the demo while it was there and it was just one of those moments of walking past at the right time and and you know
55:48
the table just happened to free up I thought s it let's just try it and I think you know I was tired so sitting
55:53
down is always nice I think I I think I'll enjoy the puzzle when I know what I
56:00
I know what the end goal is it's like if I started ler wheel and didn't know where I was going with it and fell off
56:06
that wheel right right at the start it wouldn't feel good my play the gall when I first played it which is I wasn't
56:11
enjoying the first half of it because of that reason I just couldn't see the wheel I couldn't see where to get on and
56:18
where to get off and all of that and yeah completely the same thing right you don't know I mean yeah oppositely I felt
56:25
like I knew what was going on with game for 's dream quite quickly I felt like okay there's a few a few parts of the
56:31
the board I'm not quite sure on but you could kind of see where everything was going and I just yeah I just struggled with how much there was of the game but
JP picks up his Nucleum: Court of Progress pre-order
56:38
that was it for our Thursday in the actual Halls itself I did before we kind of wrap I did pick up my pre-order of
56:44
nucleum cour of progress on the Thursday as well and yeah and all the little
56:50
promos and little things in there I'm actually weirdly I'm more excited about the patreon's little deck of cards that
56:55
you get uh which actually adds a bit like a unique player um I'd say a power
57:01
but also just to put the thematics on it a little bit because when you play nucleum you're like you're experiment a
57:08
and you're like great what does that mean I'm a you're B and you'll see and
57:13
always felt a bit odd to me but actually I think originally the design always had you know names I think like there's the
57:19
banker and as the scientist and as this that and the other so all of the experiment tiles and the research tiles that you play in nuclear they're all
57:26
back so you can kind of I get it now I get understand what what this is trying to do um so yeah the the court of
57:33
progress is just an expansion adds a like a politics track and I think speaking to uh David tury there's
57:40
obviously a lot of comparisons to turmoil in terraforming Mars but it's it's basically the similarities but it's
57:47
not a complete re re you know rehash of of turmoil because we know it's not widely well received turmoil there's a
57:54
lot of people that hate it and he's basically said it's turmoil Done Right which of course he would say but looking
58:01
forward to giving it a go though once uh yeah once once I unpack it I still still in shrink um but there we go so I picked
Avatar The Last Airbender: Aang's Destiny by The Op Games
58:08
up on I walk through um I picked this up for my friend because they're Avid
58:14
players of Harry Potter Hogwarts battle um I picked up the last air bender Ang's
58:22
Destiny and we all kind of left and that's the first thing
58:28
we ended up playing I think um so Adrian could probably give us the better rundown yeah no what I was going to say
58:34
was that on Thursday I think we'd all gone in going right okay Thursday's the
58:40
Chet to day we're going check a load of stuff out we'll do a load of demos all that kind of stuff and then of course
58:46
Thursday happened to be a bank holiday in Germany and it was heaving in there I
58:52
think it was the busiest of the days if I'm honest um where everyone was trying to get to demos everyone was queuing for
58:58
ages and yet everyone was also seem to be in the in the lanes at the same time
59:03
and and interestingly they had limited tickets differently this time I think
59:09
that we had a press release since saying that it's the first time they've sold out but that it was also the most they
59:15
designed it to be the a more comfortable Essen bill which makes it sound like not confirmation or anything but makes it
59:21
sound like they limited the tickets a bit lower than perhaps they had before and even that on the Thursday was
59:28
definitely a lot busier than the previous year's Thursday but was also fairly busy in all the Halls wasn't it
59:33
yeah definitely yeah even 204,000 I think they said the number was wasn't
59:38
ites was that what it was it's about that number over the over the I don't know if that was on the day or 200,000
59:44
was Thursday felt like yeah if I did yeah it
59:49
did feel like it so we went to go and get a bite toet afterwards and caught up with Paul and a few people um
59:56
and we had our schnitzel as we always do uh which is now tradition second year doing it so it's
1:00:02
tradition and our um our apple strudel and watched a lot of Germans get
1:00:08
very drunk um because again bank holiday um and yeah there was a lot of lots of
1:00:15
trays of shots went past us is all I'll say every five minutes was a tray of shots just going down that end I mean I
1:00:21
was kind of jealous but not it was it was a table of like midd AED guys and
1:00:27
girls as well you the mountain noise and everything when you first went in I thought there would be like I don't know
1:00:33
yeah it was like a stagy wasn't it and then it was just like oh know it just looks like I don't know just you Your
1:00:39
Average Joe's just still getting absolutely hammered in the corner with the towers of beard like four pints in a
1:00:47
tube kind of thing with a big tap on right the yeah who knows but yeah so we
1:00:52
went there and then we played um Ang's Destiny so Harry Potter um sort of
1:00:58
sequel if you like Yeah from a mechanical point of view at least and I thought it was a a good level up there
1:01:05
was not a lot drastically different but what was different I thought was definitely an improvement over the
1:01:12
Hogwarts battle system and certainly if you're invent invested in that IP I
1:01:18
think it'll be a great game again it's kind of split over boxes and the first couple of boxes like the Hogwarts battle
1:01:24
are a bit Sim simple like they're a bit too basic I think for most Gamers but again if you're a family getting into it
1:01:31
it's a great way to teach you deck building and all that kind of stuff but yeah I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough
1:01:36
of it yeah I really enjoyed it it does even say in the rule book now if you're an experienced gamer start at box three
1:01:43
add them all in start at box three and then go but we thought we do we do one
1:01:49
and two because we want to get we were all pretty knacked by that point anyway so we went you know what something light
1:01:56
easy just sounds really nice and at that point in time it was perfect for me it
1:02:02
was just like let's just play some stuff do some cool stuff it seems like they've simplified a lot of the artwork I know
1:02:10
it's completely different IP but just the more the symbology symbology is a
1:02:15
lot more simplified about what's there um I just found it a lot easier even though Hogwarts battle is not hard
1:02:22
anyway it just for me it was a lot cleaner with what's going on I liked
1:02:27
they had split so what was essentially would be a spell deck and then an item and a companion deck so there's two
1:02:33
different ones now so you can kind of delve into one one shop and then delve
1:02:39
into the other shop and that was a really cool little mechanic they also brought out one of the house rules which
1:02:45
we've always been playing with anyway where if two of the same comes out we just stack them on top of each other
1:02:51
that's now standard rule which was great because it meant that you don't the shop doesn't stagnate um and yeah I I really
1:03:00
enjoyed that game yeah I think by having the four elements um having to split
1:03:05
that shop into the four elements is a necessity right but it's something that a lot of players home
1:03:12
ruled to some form in the Hogwarts battle like I know that I've heard people having a separate Row for allies
1:03:18
a separate Row for spells a separate Row for items and stuff like that in Hogwarts Battle Before as well so
1:03:23
interesting that they seem to have bought quite a few House Rules that they've seen online and pulled it into this sort of more streamlined version
1:03:31
the other bit I quite liked was that you're working through like these
1:03:37
missions so a bit like um the H cruxes and that in the base box of Harry Potter
1:03:44
spoilers uh if you haven't got to box like seven or whatever there but you have to kind of do
1:03:50
missions um to keep advancing the deck so before you as well taken out all the
1:03:56
villains you have to get through this but what was interesting was it did things like once you defeated someone or
1:04:01
once you sort of completed this Mission it added to your starter deck so that by
1:04:06
box three you had a more um elaborate starter deck um rather than just
1:04:13
sticking with that base 10 cards you ended up with 12 cards in your starter deck or it added stuff to the shop as
1:04:19
the game progressed so you knew what you could you wouldn't know because the deck's kind of hidden it's a bit like a
1:04:25
it's kind of place it down as it is and then you work through it you don't get to peek through it there's no shuffling it or anything like that and I thought
1:04:31
that was a really interesting um addition to this sort of Storytelling on this very basic deck
1:04:38
builder certainly in the first couple of boxes yeah it's cool that was my favorite bit as well I think um you know
1:04:45
I enjoyed my play of it um I don't think my face probably conveyed any enjoyment
1:04:50
whatsoever because I had two pints of hop house um during the meal we had
1:04:56
obviously our main and and dessert whole environment in this place is all quite dark it's quite dim it's all lit by
1:05:02
candles and and it's warm and I just felt like I just got hit by a
1:05:08
truck just F started to feel like I'm really tired now and it's I just feel
1:05:13
like I just want to close my eyes and go to sleep and uh yeah so it just got to the point where I just can we go to bed
1:05:20
guys I'm so tired I mean I was really up for I I was like should we walk should we walk back
1:05:25
it's only a 45 minute walk let's walk back to the hotel and you guys were like no absolutely no we'll do anything but
1:05:32
walk Laden with boxes of civil and all the things that we've been picking up throughout the day like no thank you
1:05:38
we'll get an Uber get an Uber eight Euros Dirt Cheap
1:05:43
it's actually cheaper than if we all got the train it's true and I think that that sums up our
1:05:48
Thursday right pretty much first day hit hit the sack went to sleep yeah woke up
DAY 2: FRIDAY - Adrian starts the day with a bang
1:05:54
Friday and nice segue cuz we're going to talk about walking um I fell down some stairs basically
1:06:02
yeah so going down into the underground um in the on the German sort of uh
1:06:09
underground line going down the stairs and I thought I'd hit the bottom step but I hadn't so
1:06:15
my foot sort of Twisted thinking it was on the bottom and thought thinking i' had more purchase and I didn't and so my
1:06:22
foot then twisted and I went over on the outside of my foot and uh yeah I was in a lot of pain
1:06:29
luckily I fell backwards so uh kept this beautiful face intact um but oh man JP was like just
1:06:38
sit there because that looked like a bad fool just sit there and I think in the 10 minutes we sat on that step I think I
1:06:43
went from sweating to shivering to feeling sick about six times round Just Around in Circles but eventually made it
1:06:51
in yeah still you know Bravo for like you were trying to walk around trying to
1:06:57
make sure like is this thing properly knackered or does it still work have I
1:07:02
still got a foot or you know is it a Stumpy thing now or what what is it and and you were you were work you were
1:07:08
walking around and and I thought well if you can put pressure on it it's not a
1:07:14
break right because if it was a break I think it would have been scre broken leg at least yeah you screams and you won't
1:07:19
be able to move and it'll be right we need ambulance here stat and let's let's go but and you you were very adamant
1:07:26
you're like I am not missing Essen I I'm not I don't care if it's a sprained ankle I'm I'm not missing it so you you
1:07:33
solded on um which was very brave of you to be fair because oh I don't know about
1:07:39
that stubborn I'll use the word stubborn because bra gives me more credit being kind
1:07:45
um and text Davey and said can you be more walking Pharmacy for a few days can you bring your nice drugs um painkillers
1:07:52
and that with you and um and yeah thankfully you um so we had a yeah like I think you
1:07:59
turned up a little bit later but first thing I went and saw uh ice makes games
Terrorscape by Ice Makes Games
1:08:06
um who are the makers of Terror escape a game I didn't mention long ago on the podcast about its table presence and
1:08:12
again it's a hidden hidden movement game which I love I don't know that all of our group loves it or any of my groups
1:08:17
really love hidden movement that much but I love hidden movements so I picked up this and and they were very lovely
1:08:23
and they gave us a copy to to show to sort of try and show off so you'll be hearing a little bit more about that
1:08:28
soon um it's basically to me it's a bit like dead by daylight or something like that you have to leave the map as
1:08:35
survivors before the horror killer and I don't like horror movies but I love the idea of this and I like dead dead by
1:08:41
daylight um before the the killer kind of gets you all and there's a few ways
1:08:47
to do that you can run around finding keys or you can fix the radio and call
1:08:52
for the police to turn up just kind of like dead by is it dead by day Friday the 13th I think it's the game does that
1:08:59
as well where you can call the you can fix the radio and call the police and all this kind of stuff at the same time every time you do anything worthwhile it
1:09:05
makes noise and on the other side of this massive like cardboard mansion that
1:09:10
separates the two sides the killer gets told at the end of the round where you made noise um and it kind of hints where
1:09:18
he needs to go um and yeah I cannot wait to give it a go because it hidden
1:09:24
movement is normally one person hiding and everyone else hunting this is one person hunting and everyone else hiding
1:09:30
and trying to get out and I think I'm really hopeful and really interested in what I've seen online suggests that it's a great sort of switch up of this hidden
1:09:37
movement thing because three people are hiding and I think that's a that would be quite a different Dynamic of them trying not to talk whereas normally
1:09:44
you're the hidden one and you're hearing them all talk and if they're well off you're having a little internal Giggle
1:09:50
and if they're on it you're desperately trying not to sweat CU it'll give the game away right this will be quite a
1:09:55
Dynamics so so yeah got got to that first can't wait to try that hopefully trying that over the next couple of
Canopy: Evergreen by Weird City Games
1:10:01
weeks and then Davey turned up supplied me with some painkillers and uh we went
1:10:06
off to go and see um weird City games for Evergreen canopy yeah so we had a
1:10:13
little two-player morning really didn't we we did we went around Hall two and
1:10:19
there seemed to be a lot of two players there um and yeah we went to go see
1:10:25
canopy Evergreen very interesting looking game it's a follow on from canopy I think
1:10:31
it's just cool yeah so it's expanding on the canopy game so in the original I think it was just a a draft and push
1:10:38
your Lu whereas with Evergreen you've now kind of got a little board your own
1:10:44
player board where you also build the trees now so I think there was always like kind of a rush to try and build the
1:10:49
tree the highest um and this time you've got your own little board which also when you build the the trees in the
1:10:56
right areas give you little bonuses as well like bonuses that will sit out um along with your set collection and add
1:11:03
those resources into your set collection as well um and gives it scoring at the
1:11:09
end but yeah really you interesting looking game um there's also behind that
March of the Ants: Evolved Edition by Weird City Games
1:11:16
there was March of the ants the new evolved Edition um which looks
1:11:22
interesting a nice 4X but with ants I like the look I think I love Forex games anyway and
1:11:29
it's just a different theme right so rather than spaceships and planets it's uh ant connelles and uh just you know
1:11:36
right down in the soil or just battling each other yeah I I think it's quite cool quite like what it's doing yeah I
1:11:44
got a photo of it CU I actually think it looks quite unique and I've not played Mar for the an the first edition but the
1:11:50
new one looks nice and shiny as as it does so something to watch out for I
1:11:56
think the kickstarter is coming out soon Fair payon they we we said oh you know did you want to give us a game we can
1:12:03
talk about it and they basically said we're selling out so fast with Kell
1:12:09
Evergreen come back Sunday and then we came back Sunday and they had sold out so we didn't we didn't get a copy we
1:12:15
didn't get to play it but it does look really good does and then we went on to uh play Fall by Little Rocket
Fall by Little Rocket Games
1:12:22
Games which is a abstract tile laying game um that strangely reminded me of um
1:12:29
Cascadia because it's it's hexes that you put little buttons sort of little discs on top of but it's not really
1:12:36
anything like that at all like there's some bits and pieces but really what you're looking is you're putting down um
1:12:42
these Leaf hexes that have three different colors of leaf on and you have to match at least one Edge and inside some of the on the
1:12:49
points of some of the hexes are part of a colored flower and you're also going
1:12:55
to get these discs um that have animals on top of it and you've got your secret objectives and it'll say okay you need
1:13:02
more yellow birds than red birds or you need to have your foxes in this pattern
1:13:08
or you want more you know you know pink flowers are worth three points blue
1:13:13
flowers are worth one point and then someone else because it's a two-player game someone else will have a different
1:13:20
set of secret objectives so you're competing each other against each other in a sort of abstract tile lay in game
1:13:26
and what'll happen is there are four sets to set set out to start off with so a hex and a and a a a disc with an
1:13:34
animal on it um and there's four sets of those the first player drafts the first one puts
1:13:39
it out second one second player drafts the second set puts that out then the third set and puts that out and then
1:13:46
finally the last player the first player goes back and drafts the last set again and say you can place it and the whole
1:13:53
the thing is to place it so that at least one side of leaves of the leaves match but what you can also do is you
1:13:59
can stack them on top of each other like you can stack up to three layers thick and you push off what's previously there
1:14:05
so if if red birds are winning and you want the yellow birds you can get rid of red birds by just stacking stuff on top
1:14:11
of it and then put in your yellow and you've now got a two-point swing so lots going on there there's frogs as well
1:14:16
which block you completely and I knew that this was going to be a Davey game that he would love when it was like oh
1:14:22
and you can just put frogs down that block stuff they don't really do anything they just block things and of course you can put them on at higher
1:14:27
levels or whatever um yeah you can stack your tiles as well and put them over top
1:14:32
of other people so but you can't do that with frogs right so frogs block you from stacking tiles um and there's mushrooms
1:14:39
as well so mushrooms go down and they kind of block being stacked on top of but they actually score you points
1:14:44
because every mushroom you get out depending upon what height of leaf they're on they're worth more points so
1:14:50
really fun interesting abstract game actually really liked it um
1:14:55
and yeah Dave you picked up a copy yeah I got a copy I really enjoyed it uh as a two player it has enough
1:15:05
depth for me for for me to keep going back to it I think but also it's so
1:15:10
simple that you could probably teach someone in five minutes if that well I did so so David was trying to work out
1:15:18
you know can we have a bit of discount or uh what can you do for us on this um
1:15:23
of course that someone else came over while I was sort of packing up a bit of the game and asked about it I think
1:15:29
because we had a logo on our t-shirts assuming I was a member of staff and I did say to them like I'm not a member of Staff but while he's busy let me show
1:15:35
you how it's played played it and then at the end they were like oh so what variability is there and I was like oh let's have a look at the secret cards
1:15:40
and they were kind of like so do you not work here then I was like No just thought I'd demo the game while while the guy running the stand is busy and oh
1:15:48
okay but having played it once you could teach it in like five 10 minutes no problem whatsoever good that's a good
1:15:54
sign of a game yeah and it just seemed fun like trying to work out what missions the other person had so I had
1:16:01
to have Birds higher than the than I had to have the red birds or no yellow birds
1:16:08
higher than the blue birds red bird and Adrian had the opposite the Red Birds
1:16:13
and then Adrian had the opposite so we were both trying to kept trying to screw each other's Birds over and you slowly
1:16:19
start to work out like yeah I think Adrian wants the red birds out and I was
1:16:24
obviously had the yellow ones which I thought were insects for ages because I thought oh the insects need to be above
1:16:30
the birds that makes sense somehow in my mind then I was I don't know it's a woodpecker yeah they're just two
1:16:35
different types of birds aren't they but it's the petals the the flowers we both had the same one so we were both
1:16:41
building it and I was thinking have we got the same objective cuz but what was
1:16:46
what it was was the pink ones were wor three each and then the other two colors were worth one and zero and they were
1:16:52
swapped round so the primaries we were building ton of them cuz we were like yeah this is great and i i s clocked
1:16:59
after we built one together I was like Davey wants this as well but then I
1:17:04
hadn't clocked it he was also trying to build more of the uh the yellow flowers I think it was and I was trying to build
1:17:09
more of the blue ones um just for those extra little points so yeah really good
1:17:14
abstract game of that type nice well implemented good quality as well I thought the the pieces looked for sort
1:17:21
of you know it's not the most expensive game in the world I thought they did a good job of getting value out of it and
1:17:26
making it a good good bit of art good bit of quality it's quite nice having that objective where we're both scoring
1:17:33
the bigger one together though cuz you're doing the stuff together then and you're actually working towards the same
1:17:39
objective for a little bit and you could you start to think wait a minute something's not right here but yeah it
1:17:45
was it was very enjoyable and then we went and actually had to look at the golden demon stand because golden demon
Golden Demon - Warhammer painting competition
1:17:52
was being held at Essen Spiel this year um and by all accounts they might be holding it there next year from what I'm
1:17:57
hearing but it was having done um Warhammer fests and stuff in the past um
1:18:05
they were called Warhammer games day when Games Workshop games days when I first went to them having gone to those in the past with golden demon it sort of
1:18:11
took me back a little bit to when I used to go off and just spend hours staring at cabinets of really nicely painted
1:18:17
Miniatures and the cabinets weren't quite as full this year as I've Remembered in previous years but there
1:18:23
were still some really stunning um models painted up and really nice to see it kind of to one side of Hall one sort
1:18:31
of out of the way but where a lot of people would have to walk through to get between the Halls so lots of people
1:18:36
could sort of see it and you could sort of see it was a bit of a I think even for people who weren't miniature
1:18:42
painters kind of caught their eye and oh let's go and have a look at that and then I think the first set of pain
1:18:48
killers wore off agan because suddenly you were in a lot of pain and
1:18:55
and I quickly had a had a look at the map that we were luckily standing next to and then there was a big heart with a
1:19:02
line like what like a lightning bolt through it and I thought okay let's try there for first a so we had to walk
1:19:08
around the back it felt like we were just going into the back St area yeah the staff area just kind of walk through
1:19:16
and CU cuz that simple is beibs yeah and I only realized that afterwards that's where the defibs were being kept but not
1:19:22
the first aid area but they sorted us out yeah well it ended up being it was it
1:19:28
was on the door and this there were the security it was like the main the main frame where all this the security had
1:19:34
all of their CTV and everything else and they called first aid for us and um yeah
1:19:41
they came along asked if I was okay I said yeah I'm fine it's Adrian and uh then those two guys one of
1:19:49
them was there just to make jokes I swear that's all he did first thing he said was I don't know very good English
1:19:55
and then absolutely ribbed me for like 10 minutes straight good English yeah
1:20:02
yeah it kept going no football for you no no football for you and I just said I think I think this is the wrong event
1:20:10
yeah um but yeah they then called another two guys who came over so Adrian
1:20:16
now had four men tending to his foot and um yeah and then it took quite a while
1:20:24
kept wanting to take you to the hospital Des to get me take me to hospital for a scan and you know and you're like it's
1:20:31
probably the right thing to do but I do not want to have to deal with medical insurance and I've been walking around okay up to now like let's I'll risk it
1:20:39
like let's risk it um and rather than sort of waiting till the very end but
1:20:44
I've today I've been and I've had it scanned and all that lot and it's okay apart from the fact that it's very sore
1:20:49
and my whole foot now is basically varying shades of blue or purple um
1:20:55
literally sort of from my toes the back of my toes all the way sort of to the top of the ankle is now blue or purple
1:21:02
or red or it's pretty it's pretty rough and it does hurt a lot still but you did
1:21:07
walk on it for quite a while afterwards that would mean what is this the Friday this is the Friday and I did five hours
1:21:14
I worked out every day on it still on the Saturday Sunday and then Monday as well that's a lot for a f that's healthy
1:21:20
let alone one that's back his brain I was and I knew that I knew how many it
1:21:25
was because I've been doing this Harry Potter walking challenge thing and it tells you how many miles you walked every day and I was like oh look another
1:21:30
five miles today on a on a ropey foot but I wasn't missing Essen SP told you
1:21:36
stubborn so yeah and then the one paramedic showed the others cuz he first
1:21:41
of all he said oh I'm pointing to the guy making all the jokes he'll wrap your foot walked away then they called him
1:21:47
back over and the one guy had to show the other three how to wrap a foot and
1:21:53
then he wrapped your foot and then off we went back into the Hall got some more painkillers off Davey and off we went to
1:22:00
be fair I say off we went I walked around for another half hour and then said you know what I don't want to do
1:22:06
any more damage I'd rather rest it for a day and see if it'll be better tomorrow or the day after than give it any more
1:22:11
jip today while it's all so fresh which I think was the right choice in hindsight so I I left I just hobbled
1:22:18
back to me room well I was on to I I was on shift wasn't I I was demoing yeah and
1:22:25
then IED off and then caught up with you both and you went yeah I'm off home and
1:22:31
I was like oh right and you pointing down to your foot and you had all of this like you know it's been taped up or whatever it's wrapped up and then I
1:22:38
learned about all of the shenanigans that you've been talking about oh no but yeah absolutely the right call
1:22:44
mate yeah 100% 100% I ruined you I know I kind of say I know how you feel but
1:22:51
I've obviously was in so much pain one Expo that I had to go home and I hated it listen to your body I know you're so
Eternitium by Haumea Games
1:22:59
we we were down one met with a JP and we kind of a little bit wander but we had a time schedule where we had to go meet up
1:23:05
with mine clash and have a chat and kind of sort out something we'll talk about
1:23:10
later so we went and played a c game called eternum I'll let JP about this
1:23:16
yeah so we I knew nothing about this Dave's like oh follow me and I just come off you know a demo and I was like I
1:23:22
just ditch into you know play play some games really so so I was like yeah cool
1:23:28
and then the guy said yeah it's about time travel and I was like oh because you know I've got a lot of little time
1:23:34
travel fetish anyway so that's like I'm interested what's going on so it's kind of a um oh it's not kind of it is a a
1:23:42
deck building uh game um where you're kind of using portals to advance through
1:23:48
your your deck of eras and each era has a portable shape of circle square
1:23:53
triangle and diamond and uh and yeah you're kind of playing cards from your hand to to advance through these portals
1:24:01
to get to this gem which is sat on your little player board at the back so when you get to the gem um you fix time or or
1:24:08
whatever and and you win and it sounds really really simple because it kind of
1:24:14
is but you you have equipment that you can kind of uh purchase as well as part of your turn that kind of helps you do
1:24:20
that but the rub of the game is like your first eror card is face up so you know it's like a circle and you're like
1:24:26
well easy when you kind of shuffle your deck and you draw your cards your hand of five you got a circle in there happy
1:24:33
days but you always draw a portal card every turn so that first one is is easy to sort out now the rest of them are all
1:24:40
face down and that's where the the fun begins because you need to start using equipment to flip those cards up and all
1:24:48
of the equipment does kind of different things either draw more cards from your dare cable to trash from your deck re
1:24:55
reveal hidden cards which might give other players the ability to reveal their cards and it's a race basically to
1:25:02
to clear that era deck and and get to the bottom the purchas in there um to
1:25:08
purchase more cards is quite cool because you use time essentially to to
1:25:13
buy uh cards from the shop and you kind of have a standard and advanced um kind
1:25:19
of equipment that you can go for so the standards are cost one era and the
1:25:24
advanced cost two so you're really putting more Era cards on into your deck
1:25:30
for the the more powerful abilities that you want so you've got to balance you know not getting too much
1:25:36
stuff and end up that era deck getting too unwieldly um because the more of that you've got it takes longer to get
1:25:43
through and other players are trying to find routes that are efficient to to clear that that down now you can always
1:25:49
take a bit of a puns as a push your look mechanic in the game where if you and
1:25:55
you can kind of deduce this over time if you kind of start to see some of those uh Era cards with the the shapes on um
1:26:01
but yeah you can always like take a punt on play a play a square uh card portal
1:26:07
card and then you reveal and if it's a square Happy Days you carry on but if it's not you kind of crap out and you
1:26:13
end your turn discard your hand and then you draw One Less card the next round so it kind of penalizes you for for for
1:26:19
getting it wrong um but yeah we we got taught this game in again like the other
1:26:24
game you mentioned before we got taught in four minutes or something and it made sense there's not a lot to it but I
1:26:31
found it quite fun to play actually it surprised me so yeah so that that was kind of the the brief overview of the
1:26:37
game and uh just making a note that you might be picking up some background noise because in the UK right now we are
1:26:44
in quite a torrential downpour and it is what it is guys so if
1:26:49
you can hear some lovely rain in the background apologies but there it is that's the UK it's great we're back um
1:26:56
but yeah Davey what did you think you you obviously uh you clocked this game at the Press event right and is something you were quite Keen to try
1:27:04
yeah it it looked nice and easy to pick up um but I had a unique mechanic in the
1:27:09
the whole purchasing time and also the eras being your wind condition I quite
1:27:17
liked um obviously you're purchasing ones you also know what those are so you might want to put those into your deck
1:27:23
as well so there is some sort of manipulation of what you're picking up into what cards you're then getting as
1:27:30
your portals so you because you're skewing the odds of what's in your deck once you know you've got rid of x y and
1:27:36
Zed so there is Randomness there but there is a little bit of luck but there's also you know you you can work
1:27:44
out as well um I did get lucky in the game we played with Adrian later where
1:27:51
um I completely locked out my last two cards um but you know sometimes you do
1:27:56
in these games and just blasted through it and won but I I did enjoy it yeah for
1:28:03
what it is it does it's it's just a lightweight kind of filler game 20 30 minutes describe it yeah yeah yeah
1:28:10
exactly yeah it's definitely definitely one of the lightest weight I think engine builder uh deck builders I think
1:28:16
I've ever played um I think two points a bit too much luck for me you pick a card
1:28:21
at the start and then that makes your hand six cards and you draw five so I
1:28:28
didn't draw my upgrade card and so I felt behind from turn one CU you were
1:28:34
both several eras ahead of me by the end of turn one and I'd done nothing wrong
1:28:40
sort of thing all I'd done was shuffled badly um so that felt a little bit a
1:28:45
little bit on the on the tough side for me but I think if you if you can accept that level of luck and you just want as
1:28:51
you say a quick light pickme up game the artwork is G the teach is quick as you say the
1:28:57
purchasing of is nice um yeah I just felt a little bit hard Dum on my game because I still had like four cards left
1:29:05
to go and that was I was already two cards behind at the end of turn one and all because I shuffled that the bonus
1:29:10
card you get and like left it in the deck because you get six cards at the start one is your bonus Tech and then
1:29:18
you draw five and I just felt behind from that so as well as the pushy luck bit where I think Dave you got every
1:29:23
sing one of yours on the push your luck yeah it did pretty much and I didn't get any of
1:29:28
mine um so yeah so a little bit too much luck for me but I think for the for the
1:29:34
speed of game it is it's forgivable yeah and I think a lot of people will enjoy this one it's not like you're playing an hour
1:29:40
game or something and you're screwed from the start it's over if you want you know it's it's one of those I enjoyed it
1:29:47
a lot actually for for a light game so yeah so after that we we did a little
Endeavor Deep Sea by Burnt Island Games
1:29:53
meeting with M class Flash and then we kind of boogie on down further down the hall to to play game that Davy was very
1:30:00
very very keen to be playing he kept mention it pretty much all day walking up and down past the stall just to see
1:30:06
if we can get on so we managed to queue up and Davey what do we play so this is endeavor deep sea this is the third
1:30:13
version the first one called Endeavor uh second one was age of sale and this one
1:30:20
is called Endeavor deep sea so age of s I've heard is a really good game um I
1:30:26
didn't even realize there was one before that until Paul told me um when I was
1:30:32
talking about it but yeah age of sale really good game I heard loads of good things but they always said the end game
1:30:40
sometimes was a bit feel bad because it was negative interaction where you load your cannons and then you'll have like a
1:30:46
cannon fight at the end and people lose points and suddenly you can have this point swing and someone else will win um
1:30:52
whereas with deep SE they've kind of gone away from that and it's more about the expiration and and deep sea diving
1:31:01
uh so you have this little kind of uh submarine and you're still you're still
1:31:07
laying uh pucks out or discs out and doing actions with these discs and
1:31:12
gaining certain things onto your player board but you've also got this kind of deep sea expiration going on as well um
1:31:20
the the concept of the game is action selection um and with a little kind
1:31:27
of it's not really Tableau you get get some kind of like worker placement cards that you get to put out which you then
1:31:34
get to activate um if you upgrade these cards you get the puck back the disc back from the top of the card so it's
1:31:41
quite you can time these upgrades quite nicely and then you have like a little
1:31:47
uh upgrade board which is your player board where you have at the top I think
1:31:52
it was the amount of workers you can card worker cards you can select at the start of the round the second one was
1:32:00
the amount of um pucks you would gain as income the third one was um the amount
1:32:07
of pucks you could take off your cards which I miss which I really underestimated that one for mine and the
1:32:14
fourth one was how deep and how many sub runes you had you could go um so I had
1:32:21
this little kind of um expiration s where You' lay tiles out if you did a sonar action you could lay tiles out and
1:32:28
on these tiles it had lots of different effects like you could go um research I
1:32:33
think which was like turtles on there where you could go down and explore that or you could they had folder icons on
1:32:41
there which was another deck at the top which would give you certain benefits you know usually upgrades your your
1:32:48
board or suddenly give it flip one of your workers um but it had it had a really I
1:32:54
just really liked it it felt really satisfying to do all these little actions and I really liked the deep sea
1:33:00
theme for me maybe it's because I played aquamarine on the way there as well I was already like yes do some diving guys
1:33:08
um I was just I was just into it and I think it works really well um we played with another chap who had played um a
1:33:15
sale before and he seemed to be really enjoying this new version of it as well so um yeah you also with these cards
1:33:25
which um that you'd be getting from doing your file action um other players
1:33:31
would also be getting benefits as well depending on how strong the card was so there was always something going on the
1:33:37
downtime was like minimal turns flew around and we were
1:33:43
getting stuff done and we played I think one whole round which was like three actions something like that not three
1:33:50
actions but three whole or sequences yeah there so yeah I actually really enjoyed
1:33:57
it and I thought I'll pick it up and I looked at the price and I thought oh no it's it's 85 I think there and I thought
1:34:04
that's a bit too expensive looks online it was 71 at home so I was like I pick
1:34:10
it up at home of course the next day I checked online and it's sold out so good
1:34:18
luck well good luck getting it I guess so I'll have to get it in the next rep print but I definitely one I'm going to
1:34:24
lot of fun I I enjoyed that demo it was really well done as well the guy teaching was obviously quite experience
1:34:31
and you just it all just made sense very quickly like what you were doing and you know he made sure that we we drafted
1:34:38
those not drafted but we picked those worker tiles different ones so that we
1:34:43
can kind of see what what they do all the level one ones and yeah by the time we did a round it was like right okay
1:34:51
makes sense and you were off and just like exploring in the deep sea I always like those tiles as well CU like the
1:34:57
further deep that you go the more complexity it adds to the tiles and what's going on um so you know the top
1:35:04
ones were just like get a thing okay great but some of the bottom ones like what four deep they were there's all
1:35:10
sorts of wish shananigans going on with big octopuses and all sorts cool um yeah
1:35:16
and actually I'm not a massive fan of the the theme like it's okay for me but it's quite cool it's actually like Mar
1:35:24
biology uh kind of vibe rather than submarines firing Torpedoes at each other so it's a change of pace which
1:35:31
which is good yeah it was nice and I like the the depth comes in with your
1:35:37
the worker um purchasing everyone will have a
1:35:43
different like action selection board in front of them in the end because they all have different workers and depending
1:35:48
on what they want to be doing what you want to be doing so I think the the complex comes with that um and because
1:35:56
there was like I think it was four four columns by like six rows or something or
1:36:02
maybe like five rows of different workers so there's quite a few there and a loot of them give you a purchase bonus
1:36:09
as well so you're like oh I want the purchase bonus off of that but I don't really want to do the action or yeah
1:36:15
there's there's some good decision space there along with um quite an easy teach
1:36:21
which will sit nicely I don't think I've got a lot of games like that a lot of games I usually have are like really
1:36:27
complex or quite light so having something that kind of sits in the middle for me really
1:36:34
appealed I think was that it for the the Friday day in the Halls yeah I think we
Shackleton Base by Sorry We Are French
1:36:40
decided to go back and play shlon Bas we came back caught with Adrian who I think
1:36:46
had a nice rest or as best rest as he could doped up on elevated foot elevated
1:36:51
foot all of that managed to get some uh lukewarm ice from somewhere maybe doing the old Declan
1:37:00
Dean rice rice yeah rest ice compression elevation um yeah you guys went off and
1:37:07
got me some Mr Chicken was it Mr Chicken got some Mr chick and we um we had that
1:37:13
and yeah we played theum yeah we played theerum and then um Shackleton base
1:37:18
finally hit the table so Davey wanted to kind of he kept going should we play Shackleton some Bas on on the night
1:37:24
before in the pub and I'm so glad we didn't one I was dead and two there wouldn't have been enough space on that
1:37:31
table to play it just not a chance in hell so for those that don't know what Shackleton Bas Journey To The Moon is
1:37:38
it's uh been getting quite a lot of Buzz um on the Preen kind of lists that
1:37:43
everyone's been doing and really it's it's another space game which is kind of my jam um I like Space games I love the
1:37:51
theme sci-fi all that kind of stuff and and yeah for me it's uh it brings in
1:37:57
this modular nature that we're kind of seeing a lot um not saying I've seen a lot I've seen in two games but it might
1:38:03
be that in ERS as well but this modular n nature where you have seven corporations in this box and you play
1:38:10
with three of them at a time and they inject different um flavors of of of
1:38:16
cards projects and and some some changes of rules and things like that and really
1:38:21
adds to the variety of the game and how it's going to play out so so really the game's all about you you're getting
1:38:27
these astronauts on a shuttle that you draft at the start of the game and that determines your player order and then on
1:38:34
that shuttle you have three different colors of astronauts which are like yellow engineers and red um technicians
1:38:41
and uh blue scientists and obviously you get different denominations of those depending on what you pick and then you
1:38:48
use them to do various different actions on the Shackleton base so basically the
1:38:54
Shackleton crater is on the moon for those that don't know hence why it's called Shackleton base and you are
1:39:00
building domes and workshops and Laboratories and ultimately you can build your headquarters as well which
1:39:07
activates your your enhan player power and yeah you're kind of building these
1:39:13
things and expanding kind of on the board and where you kind of place those
1:39:18
buildings is super important probably didn't appreciate that on my first play but it's super
1:39:24
important um kind of which kind of row you want to put that in and you got freedom to build wherever you want
1:39:30
really in in terms of the sector but you can't have the same building of your
1:39:35
color in the you know in the same sector so you can only have one of them in yeah in each sector and each sector has space
1:39:42
for one two or three size building as well so it kind of forces you to spread
1:39:47
around a bit anyway um so yes you can build build domes um which is all good
1:39:53
you can research projects and one of the things I quite like about that is you have to
1:39:59
check the power requirement of the base so you have this shared uh Power resource um kind of tracker on the board
1:40:06
as well and that has to be above a certain level for you to fund a project
1:40:11
because you're going to drain power from the base by doing it but when you build buildings you can build solar panels as
1:40:17
well as other actions but you can basically invest in in solar panels for the base um and you get rewarded in
1:40:24
reputation for doing that which is all good because that's a separate track you can go up and get lots of lovely
1:40:30
benefits um and and yeah I really like that kind of mechanic of you can yeah
1:40:36
fun those solar panels even if you don't need them you get the reward but then other people can kind of use them to to
1:40:42
build where they need and it's a little bit of it's not even Cooperative but it's like it you know someone doing
1:40:48
something can kind of help you uh fulfill an action that maybe you wouldn't be able to do so so that's kind
1:40:55
of uh yeah funding projects and then you've got like uh these Corporation actions which are littered across the
1:41:00
the the the free corporations as well as um kind of on the reputation track and other areas as well so you can kind of
1:41:07
do three of those and and Away you go so that's kind of the the main kind of premise but what's really cool about it
1:41:14
one of the things I really like is that around the edge of the the crater there are little worker placement spots where
1:41:21
you can put those astronauts they're all pointing to the different rows if you can kind of Imagine a bunch of hexagons
1:41:27
arranged in a circle and then around the edges you've got every arrow Arrow
1:41:32
pointed to every row that exists and they have different denominations of credits that You' you'd have to kind of
1:41:38
fund depending on certain situations and yeah that's kind of how
1:41:43
you get your your core resources so um Titanium and and rare earth are like the
1:41:50
two base core resources that you're going to need and always in short supply
1:41:55
and you always need lots of them because to build buildings you need them to build solar panels you kind of need them
1:42:01
and to do anything you're going to need them um so depending on the color work you place uh on on the edge will depend
1:42:07
on whether you're you're getting these base resources or whether you're getting money or whether you're getting um or
1:42:13
activating these Corporation tokens which sit in the the crosssection of of three hexes basically and they all
1:42:20
represent the three different corporations on the board and I love that that mechanic of you put the guy on
1:42:26
a on a one credit space and you activate the entire row and we did get a rule wrong on this but but now we kind of
1:42:33
understand how it how it works but yeah you activate the entire row where you have a presence in your building you get
1:42:39
the benefit for free regardless of size if you're there you get it no problem but for every other space that you don't
1:42:46
have presence there you then pay the the one who has the biggest building in that sector the the amount of credits that
1:42:53
you're you're stood on so you know one for Davey one for Adrian Etc so you kind of see this economy of credits flowing
1:43:00
around the the the players which is quite nice because that can mean the difference if you're going oh I can I afford to do the project or I can afford
1:43:06
to do this so you get that nice flow um so yeah you you're kind of all working
1:43:11
sort of together but you're not because you're all trying to do your own thing and I really enjoyed this game like I
1:43:19
thought I would uh CU you know because of the theme and I've been hearing a lot of good things but yeah I I've really
1:43:26
really enjoyed my my couple of plays of Shackleton and uh and just the the
1:43:31
different corporations that we' played six of them now right Davey so we've done yeah pretty much most of them the
1:43:37
variability that they bring in the feeling of the game and what you're doing you know the Bas ones I'll just
1:43:44
cover the base ones because I'll let people discover the other ones in the game you've got one that's around
1:43:50
getting um uh astronaut forests that you need to put them on tours uh around the
1:43:56
base and they can kind of fill in your your kind of worker spots on your
1:44:01
baseboard as well which it's not something I mentioned but they kind of get in the way but you need to go then
1:44:06
get them there and then send them on tours and you've got another Corporation that's all all around getting resources
1:44:12
and helium um off off the planet and and basically shipping it back to Earth and
1:44:18
then You' got a one that's around researching specimens and you need different combinations of specimens to
1:44:23
basically research uh uh things for for this science company and and the others
1:44:29
just level it up like there's one in there that was just a genuine like surprise and it was like oh my God I
1:44:35
can't believe this is happening this is cool and uh yeah it's just awesome to see but the combination of them being
1:44:42
mixed is just going to create a different game experience every time so yeah loved it it was definitely up there for one of the best games I played at
1:44:49
the convention it was just for me it has real nice design space if you can't do
1:44:56
everything which means you your decisions really matter of oh do I do I
1:45:01
want to be doing this or do I want to be doing this the the scoring aspect where you can only ever score on one
1:45:07
corporation that you go down means that sometimes you want to dip a little bit
1:45:12
into one Corporation and a lot into another or do I want to go a lot into this one but
1:45:18
then someone else might choose that one and I found this game actually really shines at four which is not something
1:45:23
I'd normally say but with a four player it was just yeah you there's a lot of
1:45:29
contention there and the board fills up so you've also got a lot of way to get resources strangely
1:45:35
so but so it kind of oped up a lot of other avenues um but yeah i' I I really
1:45:44
want to play it again I just keep wanting to play it so I want to try all the combinations of the the corpse but
1:45:51
yeah it's fun yeah unique cards which give you a unique Small Engine as well
1:45:57
for the projects it's just it's really nice design design space because usually
1:46:02
you you'd have cards which aren't tied to the corporations as well which is just your generic deck but they were
1:46:08
just like nope your engine's going to be built just off of these Corps alone and that's it um so it really had some hard
1:46:17
decisions in which which felt good yeah I think it's fair to S as the
1:46:22
opposite end I think this is my worst game of the convention um it's never easy to teach
1:46:29
from the rule book which is what we basically did right so that's never easy so that that doesn't help um but it was
1:46:37
full of what I'd call microtransactions where it was like I've got to spend this little bit then I've got to spend this
1:46:42
little bit then I've got to spend that little bit or I get to do this because I've used cuz it's worker placement
1:46:47
right so you get six workers a round there's three rounds you've essentially got 18
1:46:54
turns and I think every single time the three of us had had a
1:47:01
turn someone realized they had not spent a resource or not gained a resource or
1:47:07
done something wrong so I feel like in a game that had 18 turns we had at least
1:47:14
18 rewinds or I think I've forgotten this or I've I've done that and it's a
1:47:20
game that unfortunately I think it's I think that's a sort of symptom of that kind of game um and it's something I'm sort of
1:47:27
finding less and less I have less and less time for that in games now where there's so many like little bits to
1:47:33
remember that are not necessarily they're noted somewhere but it's not like a big part of your turn it's I've
1:47:38
bought this card oh I get this resource if it's in the top corner or if I've put the right worker here I get this bonus
1:47:45
and it's printed at the long end of a long track and people were just forgetting it left right and Center we
1:47:51
were having to remind each other constantly about stuff and it it felt like it took forever that game I'll be
1:47:56
honest to me personally so um that and the fact that I feel like I it there
1:48:01
there's low asymmetric bonus tiles your person your
1:48:07
astronaut and you guys used yours so much mine was one credit
1:48:13
reduction on one of the however many spaces so JP used his a couple of
1:48:21
critical times Davey basically built his entire base using his his benefit I
1:48:26
saved five credits across the game and I was like I
1:48:31
just and I know that on the first turn we didn't know how important first player was I ended up last
1:48:37
player and it meant that all the bonuses I'd get for saving stuff with the small amount of money you have I just couldn't
1:48:44
use so it was over plays you'd probably learn oh if I've got this this person
1:48:50
I'll need to get first turn cuz need to make use of it right you'll probably learn that a little bit but from a first
1:48:56
turn to literally watch you guys using your player Powers at really opportune moments or making so much of your base
1:49:02
and I just save five credits which on the grand scale of thing is nothing I think you must probably see about 50 or
1:49:07
60 credits across the game I I do think
1:49:13
because I used I had JP's power the next game we played and I used it twice or
1:49:21
once or game been twice yeah I used it once I upgraded my HQ and the problem
1:49:28
with JP's power I found was if you're efficient because basically it's you can
1:49:33
change any color action worker to anyone you want if you're effici additional
1:49:38
resource isn't it or whatever because especially around the edge where the color of the really matters it's just two
1:49:45
credits and you get exactly what you need so it's real critical turns I never sat there with zero credits where I
1:49:52
couldn't forward I I used it once I I never used it again I used it once all game I never
1:49:59
used it again and I I still won but I felt the the powers on the back loads
1:50:07
better on every single one of them the BS side I think every single one of them they felt like they had more impact in
1:50:14
the game because I did feel like the credits one is was really strong because
1:50:19
you can substitute and then the the one of the players next to us he had one where he could only he could always just
1:50:25
only spend one to do any of the outside actions and that seemed exploting the
1:50:31
crator which seemed really strong but it does it's still kind of balanced out
1:50:36
though um during that game but I do feel the powers most of the B sides did look
1:50:42
better and maybe someone will prove me wrong with the I just felt like I never needed the the change I did it once and
1:50:49
maybe that once was enough I know JP used his a real opportune moment where he was like he he was left with one
1:50:56
worker that was the wrong color and it set up it was his last turn it set up his next turn massively and I thought
1:51:01
for two credits get out of jail get yourself set up perfectly was fantastic whereas saving five credits across a
1:51:08
game where you see 10 times that volume was just a bit like but that wasn't you know what the odd the odd off asymmetric
1:51:14
power is not enough to put me off the game it was how often we rewound a turn
1:51:20
or had to go and get something or don't forget this or don't forget that or it
1:51:25
happened so many times that I I know but yeah it didn't happen the second game it
1:51:31
didn't happen it's fair enough but for a first game that was so offputting it felt like it doubled the amount of time
1:51:37
the game took to keep doing all these rewinds and oh I've forgotten this no I've forgotten that and it just it
1:51:43
really there's some nice things in there like don't get me wrong but it really dampened that game for me I think if you're someone like me who has who
1:51:49
doesn't like these like little chain reactions that each costs a thing and give you little reward and all that lot and you've got to keep track of them all
1:51:56
um and which order you've done them in and stuff like that I think where I'm sort of wearing thin on that I think
1:52:01
that was it's one of the bigger games that does that um short of a lerda fair enough I bloody loved it just
1:52:10
yeah no and I think yeah I I think it will be popular I think a lot of people will like it but yeah just my experience
1:52:16
of it was that it was it was not a lot of fun if I'm honest for play and then
Unconscious Mind by Fantasia Games
1:52:21
we uh we finished that up I think you said Tata my foot's hurting again I'm off the bed and we thought let's play a
1:52:28
nice light game um so Davey had managed to pick up uh unconscious mind and the
1:52:35
the guys next to us were were already playing it while we were learning and playing Shackleton so we just thought you know what there might be an
1:52:40
opportunity here to get a teach on unconscious mind so we thought oh let's just give it a go we got T
1:52:48
unconscious mind while we were probably pretty unconscious ourselves and and we
1:52:53
unknowingly played a good variant that I like to call to Freud to Furious because
1:53:00
we there's a little ink pot in it and that ink pot as it moves around gives you kind of these chain actions which
1:53:06
you build onto a player board which can a lot of it's resource conversion a lot of it what we saw is resource conversion
1:53:13
there is a lot more but we didn't Shuffle the tech deck before we just put out we don't know what it's on what's
1:53:20
what's on a load of them we just put them out should have shuffled it and we played it as if when you move
1:53:27
this inkpot around you get all of the chain actions off of it and this this grid is uh a 4x3 grid that you can chain
1:53:38
down a column and you can chain along it it might be 3 by3 sorry was it is it 4
1:53:44
by3 I think it's 3 by3 think 3x3 3x3 and
1:53:49
you can basically chain off the row or chain off the column and we were doing it so this when this ink pot moved
1:53:55
through we chained off all of it and your turns became this Bas you just
1:54:01
trying to work out like oh if I were run this here and run that there
1:54:06
and it did speed up the game because obviously we were moving this input all
1:54:12
the way around and we also played what another rule wrong where every time it went round Freud moved forwards one step
1:54:20
as well whereas actually you just score your rep so Freud was flying up the track we were flying around our track
1:54:27
doing everything and it became this I just started seeing equations I
1:54:34
think that was it it was just equations while you're trying to work math out what resources were needed so I
1:54:42
should explain the concept of the game what's the premise you so you're playing as um psychotherapists yeah they they
1:54:51
were doing they were doing very very kind of nuanced uh theories and and practices
1:54:59
during that time and a lot of it was like uh analyzing dreams and this whole
1:55:05
premise is your your one of the characters FR and I cannot remember the other three
1:55:11
um and you've have clients that come in and you've got to cure their issues or
1:55:17
their problems through their dreams and or they're kind of psyche and
1:55:26
you do this by getting certain intentions I think and that each
1:55:31
intention has kind of it's like uh an emotion attached to it and you have to
1:55:38
get the right set and pay all of those so you can get rid of some of some of
1:55:43
these dream cards that sit above your client and eventually it will clear their Gloom um and when their gloom's
1:55:51
cleared you get power on the client that you can then get and then once you clear
1:55:57
them completely you you get the card and you can slot it under your board which then gives you the same effect but also
1:56:03
give you scoring and it'll also give you another client first time you clear Gloom it also thrs up another another
1:56:09
space and you do this by going to actions on the there's like a work
1:56:15
placement board on this work placement board there's a variety of actions that also move your inkp I'm not going to go
1:56:21
through all of them there's too many to to mention um but there's also another board which
1:56:28
where you move around and has an area control kind of segment on it where you
1:56:33
you follow Freud around and you can do certain actions from being on the main board and then depending on what certain
1:56:40
symbols you've got from obviously either publishing works or clearing certain
1:56:45
clients or playing certain cards um you can get some area control that goes on
1:56:50
and it's actually better to split your area control because you score more by
1:56:55
going all the way around the town um so quite a complex game lots of moving
1:57:01
Parts um I didn't enjoy my first playthrough of it but I think that was
1:57:08
mainly because we were doing the two FR two furious version where it was just
1:57:15
just too too much calculations especially at that time Jesus but
1:57:20
luckily we played the fast version because we finished it within two hours and everyone was like Co you played that quick it was like yeah we just knew what
1:57:26
we were doing we we realize this does not feel right there's something janky
1:57:31
and wrong in this game and I think it's us so you know tiredness and and and
1:57:38
things like that so we were we were gifted this by Fantasia games so thank you to them um looking forward to
1:57:44
getting it to the table I'll probably try and get it uh down to the table this weekend coming and get a proper
1:57:50
playthrough of it um because that night when I went back I pretty much got the rule book up and read all the rules and
1:57:57
sat there and went played this wrong played this wrong because it was really
1:58:03
nice the guys next to us to give us a teach um and you know kudos to them but us
1:58:10
taking the rules in at that time as well was probably not the best idea but it we played most the bit right so it has it
1:58:18
did make the rule I understood the rule book a lot easier and sometimes I i' I find me learning the game if I sit down
1:58:25
and and play it and even if I've got a slightly broken play I can see where the
1:58:31
rules interact and kind of where to go from there so it does help me yeah the
1:58:37
it for me the again it's Fantasia games production so like endless winter they
1:58:43
did and they have very modular Boards of just things everywhere and that I it
1:58:51
might be the way we La it out and just the way we we put it out in the table cuz we were restricted on on width it's
1:58:57
kind of a long table not very wide but I always struggle a little bit when you've got a bit over here on the left and
1:59:02
there's a bit over here on the right and there's a bit here and there's a bit there and you're trying to pass that information and and and pull it all
1:59:09
together like for me I just prefer if it's all on one board it's just easy for me to to kind of contain it but I have
1:59:15
to say the production on this thing is is bloody fantastic and they do do
1:59:21
fantastic Productions you know the the player board the the ink pot that you you move around is it reminds me of the
1:59:28
villainous tokens that you you move and um yeah I am looking forward to playing
1:59:33
it properly so I'm going to reserve judgment on this because it's unfair to kind of say well do I think this will be
1:59:38
good or not um from my perspective I'd like to play a proper game proper set
1:59:43
proper rules and yeah let's not go uh too too forid too Furious let's just
1:59:49
play the first one see how it is and uh yeah hopefully it will be a good good
1:59:55
fun the theme's cool though the theme's unique and I love the cards don't you I
2:00:00
like those clear cards that has the Gloom sits on top of the patient so it kind of overlays certain information and
2:00:07
adds like these green hearts on things like that so yeah I think it's the best looking Euro I've seen in my personal
2:00:15
opinion the artwork um Vincent did half one half of the artwork Vincent the same
2:00:22
one did canopy Evergreen so Vincent Detroit Detroit Detroit there we go
2:00:28
thank you um and it's just amazing it looks beautiful and I'm I really like
2:00:35
the the theme of Freud and the whole psychoanalyst as well they've just done a real good job of the Little Dream
2:00:41
cards that come up they're just weird and wacky some of them and it's just
2:00:46
it's it's a beautiful game um I just want to play the proper version of it
2:00:53
that was the end of Friday [Music]
TURN 3 - What did learn
2:01:02
right so let's change Pace a little bit and talk about we spent 5 days or whatever it was with each other we've
2:01:09
all got to know each other a little bit better so the question I'm going to ask is what is something we've learned about
2:01:15
ourselves while we're away and what is something that we've learned about each other while we're away so I'll go first
2:01:23
um just to give you guys a bit of thinking time because I can see there's a bit of chin scratching going on there um so the thing I learned about myself
2:01:31
is how much I love a walk-in shower so we got it's true we got
2:01:37
upgraded to this this the dis this disabled room with the wet room in it and I don't typically like shower
2:01:44
cubicles like the little ones you get at home so quite often I I have a bath instead of a shower quite regularly but
2:01:52
having a walk-in shower for a morning is just such a nice experience just turn on have a shower
2:02:00
get yourself sorted for the day have a sing off you go I just loved it so what
2:02:07
did I learn about JP I learn about JP that he cannot accept silence in the
2:02:13
world that's very true if there is a sound if there is a silent 2
2:02:19
minutes I'm either getting the family
2:02:26
guy or so there's a there's a a drink in Germany called meso miix which is
2:02:32
basically Cola and phanta mixed 50/50 in a bottle and if if you buy it from Little you get the knockoff version
2:02:39
which is called swp Swap and JP will say that seven times a
2:02:45
day once he's realized that's what it's called just to fill the time yeah I do this though and it's kind of I don't
2:02:52
know if it's I've learned this about myself I've already know I do this thing but I kind of anchor onto things um
2:02:59
especially when I'm away right when I'm kind of away an event holidays or whatever there's just something that
2:03:06
burrows into my brain and it's stupid things like like shwi schwap right it's
2:03:11
just it's just a brand name it's a cheaper brand name of a drink and I
2:03:16
don't know it just kind of burs in there I'll just keep repeating it because I just find it funny so it's obviously something that tickles me and I'll just
2:03:23
keep saying it over and over until it pisses people off uh I did it on holiday Rob will tell you the same thing when me
2:03:29
and uh Rob and our wives we we go away and you know I'm in the middle of um on
2:03:36
a Universal Studios in the Harry Potter land you know I'm just spouting off absolute you know Harry Potter bollocks
2:03:44
just because I'm in Harry Potter land and then I move into Jurassic Park world and you know just I can't help it I
2:03:50
think it's like you're in the middle of a packed silence train in Germany that's absolutely packed and he's there singing
2:03:56
Russ Abbott's atmosphere cuz he's got it stuck in his head from earlier it's brilliant What and I'm like what are you
2:04:03
doing like everyone's clearly awkward by this JB's like now I'm having fun yeah
2:04:08
like what an atmosphere what I saw from Davey was for
2:04:14
the first time properly I think was a real paternal side so say obviously obviously I hurt my foot right on the
2:04:21
Friday and from the Friday when I hurt my foot all the way through to sort of Monday morning leaving it was do you
2:04:27
need taxi do you need this to hold on to do you need some more meds do you need to go and sit down all that kind of
2:04:33
stuff and I don't think you get a chance to see that off of people but man it was lovely just to be like oh yeah I do need
2:04:38
to sit down now come on lead lead me to a chair like nurse Dave come on um and
2:04:45
it was just yeah I wasn't wearing the outfit I wasn't wearing the outfit it's fine only on one of the nights um and
2:04:52
yeah it's just it's just like it just helped the weekend go a little bit along and it's just not something I think you
2:04:57
sit like you know we we meet up to play games it's not often you get to S and see these sides of people um until you
2:05:03
spend several days back toback with the same three people sort of thing whatever so yeah so that's what I learned about
2:05:09
you guys yeah I mean I'll kind of go I think learn about myself really hard to
2:05:16
to kind of answer that but yeah I suppose talking about the incessant need to fill a void of silence is is is weird
2:05:24
I don't know why I do it but I I must be just CU I just can't be quiet or I just
2:05:29
like to feel that maybe if I'm talking it's uh yeah I have no idea why I do it
2:05:35
but yeah I think you calling out as well and now I'm really like yeah maybe I Le need to shut up a bit more but that's
2:05:41
that's cool um yeah never change mate never change 40 odd now I doubt I will
2:05:47
change you know you stuck with this this is what you got this what you got baby um so yeah I can't really think of
2:05:53
anything on that side but I think what I've learned from you guys I think you mentioned mine already Adrian is that I
2:05:58
think out of all of the group not all of the group but out of um us three that we went away you're probably the person I
2:06:05
know the least about and just to have that opportunity to spend more time with
2:06:12
you and learn a bit more about you you know you pasted and some things that we were chatting about that we've just
2:06:18
never had the time to to kind of really explore and and and chat through and
2:06:23
yeah and and the fact you look you're up you're always the first out of bed and he's in that shower and he's right he is
2:06:28
singing he's singing he's putting his tunes on and he's having he's having a great time for 20 odd minutes uh singing
2:06:34
all sorts of hits from the you know the ughs the 9s or whatever that they're going on it's a party in that shower and
2:06:41
my showers just feel really boring I just go in and just splash water around and then come out and go that's great um
2:06:48
but yeah put his step ones he goes is having like a complete ball in there I
2:06:55
want that shower why can't I have that shower so but yeah no I think it's just generally that surprised you didn't join
2:07:02
him yeah I near he did um but no I mean Davey like we weren't staying in the same Hotel one one day we probably will
2:07:08
share a room at some point and uh no doubt um but you know we we've talked
2:07:15
about a few things I think even on the last essent trip I started to learn more about you in your your sorted past and
2:07:22
uh um but yeah no I think I don't know I
2:07:27
don't know what to say about you what what have I learned more about Davey this time around I don't know if I
2:07:32
have I don't think it's a bad thing because more of the same yeah it's more of the same but Davey adds a a nice
2:07:40
Dynamic uh to the group because you can be chaotic but you have that caring side
2:07:45
that massive like you know you do care about people and things of what's going on and not just cuz WIP to Adrian's foot
2:07:52
like you generally will take other people's um you know thoughts and things
2:07:58
into consideration which people might not realize about you when they kind of first meet you maybe so yeah it's like
2:08:05
it is definitely there and you want to make sure you have a good time and it's always a good time with you it's like you know the fact that you're there
2:08:12
playing games and we're just having a bit of banter across the table God knows what we we talk about half the time but
2:08:18
it's just like but it's always fun that's the thing it's always fun so yeah usually swearing at each other I love it
2:08:25
yeah yeah most people usually call me a [ __ ] and I don't know why it's
2:08:30
usually I don't know why um yeah so what did I learn what did
2:08:36
I learn about myself it's something I've probably forgotten rather than I learn about myself and it's going to sound a
2:08:41
strange one but obviously I had Wednesday by myself um and I forgot how
2:08:46
much when I'm by myself I kind of sometimes go outside of my comfort zone whereas when when you with people uh we
2:08:53
kind of always fall into our comfort zone and our group and we don't go
2:08:59
outside of it that much um whereas when I was by myself you know it was a bit more like off I go here we go there's
2:09:05
just chats around on people there's chat to this person the chat to this person so I think that's what I kind of forgot
2:09:12
and it's something I used to be better at and something I've got worse at as
2:09:17
I've got older but then it was nice to have to be thrown back into that situation do that um so and that's obviously not
2:09:24
saying I didn't try the time with you guys but it was just something I'd forgotten about myself so that was that
2:09:31
was a good thing um stuff I learned about you guys would be um Adrian the
2:09:37
more I get to know you the more I like you thanks it's true no it is true that's right that's a compliment in a
2:09:43
lot of ways though isn't it true it's just I didn't know how to I didn't know how to because
2:09:48
sometimes sometimes I didn't know how to take because you can be because you can
2:09:54
be as you said yourself you can be stubborn with things and you've got you've got a set opinion but that
2:09:59
doesn't that isn't a bad thing and I think it's it was basically the more I
2:10:05
got to The more I've understood that and the more I've liked it you know you
2:10:11
are your you you are yourself and that's that's yeah I do yeah yeah exactly so I
2:10:19
mean it's not yeah it's a comp lient I don't mean in a bad way a want to JP now
2:10:25
before I get get embarrassed um and JP is probably much
2:10:32
the same I've we have spent a lot of time together now pretty much live
2:10:37
around your house some weeks when you just put b games up I probably could have just put a camp bed in your games
2:10:45
room and just slept there but you've got too too much family stuff going on so
2:10:51
for that ever to be viable so um um yeah and just obviously we enjoy
2:10:58
the same type of games so we end up gaming a lot together yeah I think that that's quite key I've always realized
2:11:04
that recently actually how mine and your tastes are very out of out the whole
2:11:10
group like ours are probably the most aligned in tastes and even recently like
2:11:15
with with Curley and and some of the others who like their heavy games we're kind of going on different
2:11:21
paths in in a way we have our games like we We join in it's not like we don't see each other or game with each other but
2:11:26
in terms of our tastes and where we're heading after years and years and years and years of experiences yeah it's I've
2:11:33
noticed that a lot more so there you go looping back to something I've learned about myself um but yeah it's it's it's
2:11:40
interesting interesting yeah that was a gushy moment was it we got all emotional on the podcast
2:11:47
it would be nice cut cut it cut it cut it cut it got it I don't have emotions I
2:11:54
am uh dead inside I'm am dead yeah inside yeah no I was that was good I
2:12:00
thought it'd be nice just have a bit of a chat about something that wasn't just we wandered around and played board games which is what this is for several
2:12:06
hours right I thought it's break it up a little bit so we ate meat and potatoes as well at a lot of meat and potatoes
2:12:13
various forms various Cuisines of meat and
2:12:19
potatoes so with that said this is the end of part
2:12:25
one part one part one that's it this is the end of part one so we will have a
2:12:30
part two out where we talk about Saturday Sunday and sort of a bit of a debrief and how we felt and all that kind of stuff so please tune back in for
2:12:37
that it's not going to be a week or two weeks we're hoping we think it's gonna be out very shortly after this episode
2:12:42
so hopefully you've got a chance to listen to it separately or listen to it all like sort of back to back as well so
2:12:49
as always thank you very much for listening um if you want to interact with us on our socials please do all in
2:12:54
the show notes um at the bottom in the description love talking to you guys um even on the S and socials that we've had
2:13:00
up you guys are interacting with us and it's just great to hear a little bit of kind of what your experiences are what you're playing um and we love hearing
2:13:07
all that lot so please do interact with us there if you got a few pennies we have um coffee which allows us to do
2:13:13
things like have good mics and improve our our quality of editing and stuff like that which hopefully again a few
2:13:19
months ago now that we did a bit of an upgrade and spent a bit of money on an upgrade and hopefully you guys are are
2:13:25
hearing that now um and that just allows us to continue to develop and push forward the podcast which we're just
2:13:31
thankful for those who do support us so with that being said the big
2:13:37
question is whose turn is it Anyway
2:13:43
[Music]