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[Music]
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welcome to whose turn is it Anyway your board gaming podcast where we talk about all things cardboard and board games of
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course and this is an expansion pack episode where we are going to cover one of our favorite conventions which is
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gridon 5 five five and we're joined by Adrian hello and
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curly hi everyone and it's just us three tonight we're going to break down the convention what we've done our thoughts
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on it and everything else in between so how are we all feeling chaps well I'm all right as always I
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took the day after off you're just you're just too smart that's what it is you're like I'll have a convention I'll
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book the Monday off just so I can chill I just know that I need the recovery time I I just I would not function in
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work so why bother yeah so yeah so I slept a lot of not a lot of M there I had had two naps two
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naps two naps so I was doing like three hour chunks of the day with naps in between fair enough it was nice it's
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good I went to work and it sucked me too it sucked it did suck you know actually
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though I I got I had to get up earlier for cckc con than I did for work so you know there we are that's true yeah that
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is true I think I did as well we have to kind of get on with it didn't we and get to where we needed to be but I had a
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quite a nice Buzzy kind of feeling on the Monday though yeah like it was a good weekend and I kind of was at work
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going that was a good weekend so I didn't quite mind it so much making it out like it was a massive chore it was
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fine the the only problem that I've got I agree with you by the way um the only problem that I've actually got is that's
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my third weekend in a row board gaming you've had a lot of it it's like three weekends in a row I don't think I've had
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a lying in about a month like and I'm not used to it I'm not used to it but no
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um what did I have mattcon followed by the Devon Bor gaming weekend followed by gcon yeah so it's
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yeah it's going to be a nice relaxing weekend this weekend I think I can say what are you doing this weekend nothing curly KH to be fair I'm going to Nemesis
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uh Dan's in the evening Sunday evening but apart from that that's not too bad that's just one game that I can get a l
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you know yeah fair enough right I think we should get into it we got a lot to unpack and a lot to uncover so let's do
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it [Music]
TURN 2 - GRIDCON 5 (2024)
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so gric con generally starts on a Friday because it's a Friday to Sunday
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convention right um for those that actuallyy don't know what gridon is it's a it's a convention ran by Gaming rules
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so Paul Grogan and team and this is the fifth iteration of it which is mad
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actually CU I think I started to go go to grion from two yeah my first one was three yeah so this would be my fourth
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one that's maths that's how maths works that's good um so yeah it's it's a great convention it's ran locally to us it's
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literally 10 minutes away from me and Adrian it's even closer well so so Mark
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monk um just down the road from us as well it was like it's 7even minutes for him but I don't know what speeds he's
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doing on the road got Chopper 7 minutes for me and he lives like 3 or 4 minutes further away yeah but we have access to
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the the roads this is really boring chat we have access to to certain roads that are easier for us to get to that can cut
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across taon where you're in in the thicker of yeah a little bit more like that but yeah about six to seven minutes
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for me I I kind of thought it was and a bit longer for you K even not massively to be honest with you it's not actually
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far off 7 minutes it's just the fact it's a lot further but it's literally I'm right on the motorway Junction and
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gcon is right on the other Motorway Junction so you literally jump straight on the motorway and go straight down but
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actually it does work out a little bit longer but considering the fact that it's probably about 8 miles or something a lot further away than you guys that's
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Junction 26 to 25 so those are really to 25 really care um so yeah no it's it's a
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great convention we've been going a few years and if you've heard our gridcom 4
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and gridcom 3 uh coverage because you can go and listen to them if you want to cuz they're in our back catalog you
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probably know all about this so let's just crack on so whil it starts on a Friday it didn't start on a Friday if
THURSDAY: DAY 0
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for you Adrian no you actually were there on a Thursday doing Thursday Shenanigans so tell us all about that mate and I think well I think also for
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quite a few people it can start as early as a Wednesday right because Paul Paul sometimes has a few of his patreon supporters over on a Wednesday or goes
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and meets them and then lots of people gaming on the Thursday but this year um they didn't have their van man to take
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all of the board games stuff from Paul's house to the holiday in where it's it's
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hosted so four cars in total agreed let's do a the final sort of f of stuff
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so he'd been handing boxes to People by the sounds of things for like weeks sort of going can you bring this to gridon I
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had four of them I had five in a trip beforehand um so yeah so we all got
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there for our designated times I was a little bit early but helped pack cars away and then out of the four cars we
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only really used two and a half so with about 5 minutes before he was due to land Davey got a phone call from me the
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usual kind of he's in a car so it's like hello hello can you hear me hello triggery T um yeah absolutely to say I
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don't know how close you are but just turn around we don't need your car now so you just turned around and went back to the holiday end and supported a bit
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of setup so yeah just took a load of boxes there and helped set shelves up and make sure you know the library was
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out and available for everyone and all that lot and then that took a couple of hours and then myself Davey Marcus and
Endeavor Deep Sea
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Kristoff a guy we met there played in deor age of deep sea deep sea something
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deor deep sea I think it's called something like that I've made notes it's Endeavor 4 basically was that the um one
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that davies's got yes yes so did he get the card replacement or yeah he he got sent the cards yeah yeah fair enough so
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and it was not one I was bothered by in fact there were other ones on in Davey's
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little parlor games I was like we could play that instead like as Bross Birmingham and that there but I think David was just really Keen to try it so
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he's like please it wasn't please it was we're playing this and if you want to join you can but um sat down and played
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it and I really enjoyed it actually I'm glad that I did I did have a sit down for that one um so for those again and I
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have no comparison because I've not played any of the other endeavors but you have different levels of the sea um
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and so you have to kind of move down and sonar down the levels to and it's kind of take two and pick one card and put it
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out and it has to be adjacent and Below things and all that kind of stuff um each turn you'll get a new crew member
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so you'll have like seven crew members by the end and you can turn them over to their other side which is normally better but sometimes it's just very
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different which is is interesting and then you're doing various different things of of diving to get one-off
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bonuses um and uh there's a sea turtles thing it's called I don't know quite
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what it is like a research kind I'm guessing it's like a research kind of thing which is just putting your um sort
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of uh your pellets or whatever you want to call it your little cubes down basically to cover them and if you link
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some of them if you link up you get bonuses if you link with other people you get bonuses um and there's different modules there's like conservation I
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think conservation isn't that what that is what the sea turtles yeah maybe Marine biolog we learned it by video and
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then we couldn't play it oh right okay I don't know it was it's cails that's what I called it for the entire thing I like
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it and there's a there's a module as well um that goes on different um that's
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different each time that has your different scoring mechanisms and all that lot and it yeah it comes together quite well um I was able to really
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successfully screw myself out of about 15 points which I think is about A fifth
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or a sixth of your score hold on um good effort mate so I flipped over the wrong
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character took me two turns to realize my mistake and then I couldn't move any of my submarines so I had all the
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actions to do stuff that would give me loads of points but couldn't actually move the submarines to where I wanted to and yeah it was I think it was about 15
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16 Point swing I think who won uh not me I can't remember off the top of my
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head cool sorry but fair enough um I think I came last if I remember
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correctly um but as I say I really I I'd been there was one and again I don't
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know cuz I've only played the one game there was one thing I was concerned about which is there's four tracks that you move along so you unlock different
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things that means you move up the these four different tracks one is the level of crew that you can hire in the a crew
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higher stage and obviously the higher level they are the better they are one is get your little pellets gives you
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pellets your little tokens to put out one is how many you can return off of crew and one is how deep and how you can
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dive and how far your submarines move now I thought I'll tell you what I'll do a submarine thing and I'll do the crew
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thing but very quickly it was clear I was I was behind because I hadn't done the either of the pellet things either
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of the like the game cubes thing um I think you have have to do at least one
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fairly well consistently I don't think it gives you the options to do the other tracks higher where because and I was
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the only one who did that and fell very far behind very quickly and Kristoff halfway through kind of abandoned that
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to catch up on the other tracks and he suffered exactly the same by the end he was really far behind whereas Marx and
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Davey had pushed them up early and continued to put a bit of effort into him and then all the other tracks kind of caught up so as much as there's four
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tracks I think you have to focus on two of them I think that's kind of the way the game is designed which is a shame
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because it feels like you should be able to go up any of those four and succeed a little bit and again it might just be
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the module we played or or whatever but it was the two people who invested in that the least came last and second to
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last yeah so that's my only concern with the game otherwise I think it's a very strong game with lots of lots of
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replayability lots of modularity don't you'll have two games the same even on the same sort of module so yeah really
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enjoyed it was glad that sort of Davey made me play it you can be right sometimes yeah yeah I I enjoyed we're
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recording this right I yeah we are you got to be nice um no I've uh I enjoyed my play at Essen when we had a go with
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it uh obviously it's a demo we only had so many rounds or whatever but yeah kind of got a good vibe for the game and what
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it's about but yeah it's quite cool yeah enjoyed it it's a bit different and it's all good and you got to learn it as you
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said and didn't play it yeah I almost enjoyed it yeah which was fun yeah great
10:57
it looked great but yeah no we literally watched a video got ready for it went down to tambos and um we set it all up
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and dve said where's the hell the G so yeah we then had to P it all away again
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and get out great western 12 remember New Zealand yeah it was yeah thr enough
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what else happened on Thursday I went home to bed yeah and we don't want to know anymore that was that
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was about it so I mean Marcus stayed around so friend of the show Marcus always stays at mine for grid it's
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become a bit of a tradition so yeah so he was staying over so went back and got ready to have breakfast the next morning
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nice hotel breakfast so Friday morning arrives and we all turn up yes the rest
FRIDAY: DAY 1
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of you turn up yeah the rest of us all turn up from me apart from you yeah you were at work weren't you yeah I was working yeah so we were all enjoying a
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day off from work and curlington had to uh Eno for a bit the thing is Friday is
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a weird day for me like you guys probably Friday is a relatively similar day to the rest the week right same you
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a bit lighter o it's heavier in for me it's heavier in the morning like there's quite a lot going on on a Friday morning
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and then by the afternoon yeah it's kind of the problem is that I've got with it is that Friday is when I deliver
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feedback oh okay so no one can really cover my feedback day because no one else has been with them the whole week it's in your notes and well well yeah
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that's it and you know you can't say right JP you you give feedback to this training group here's the notes here's
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the notes it's like it doesn't work so you got to if you've done all week you can't have to do it so you can you curle
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said you're a yeah and uh I don't know why but if you want to take it with him he's back on Monday yeah yeah but no
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the the real thing is we were absolutely rammed at the minute we hav no no one to cover so had no choice really so I
Inventions: Evolution of Ideas
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arrived and uh I had a game booked Of Inventions um evolution of ideas always
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get that name wrong uh with uh Matt uh Graham and we had Paul not the Paul that
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we usually play with Matt and gram a different from Paul who came and joined us Paul K and uh that was cool that was
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a good light game to start gcon off uh a lovely lard just to get the brain firing
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and I really enjoyed that game talked about it before in the Pod so most people know probably what I'm talking about but yeah it's the it's one way you
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invent stuff and come up with ideas and uh send people around the world and sure it's amazing it's very good and uh had a
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good game it was one of four copies being played simultaneously at the same yeah at the same time on the Friday
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there were four four four games of inventions out at the same time yeah I think cuz the in the games plan now when
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it was delivered to everyone everyone was like oh we need to play this at gcon and everyone just booked games up and
13:43
then that was like six months yeah six months ago and he's like oh yeah I played a lot of this why did I put this
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in but then you know once you set it up it's it's all good but no really good game um and had to kind of retach it for
13:59
Matt and gry and they played it once but about seven months ago and then Paul hadn't played it at all so I had to kind
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of run a teach on it uh which is good for me because it's probably been a similar time you know four five months
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since I played it and you have to kind of refresh yourself with a thir of games quite frequently uh CU if you don't
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you're learning it again from scratch um but no really enjoyed it really good game um so that was kind of my morning
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that took me up to I say morning morning and a bit of the afternoon nice yeah how about you guys
14:29
well I was going to say is it a game you think I would like see as I'm 50/50 on the cers so far um like literally 50/50
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on Mars I hated but lisbo I enjoyed I think you'd like the theme of it because
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it is like you know you're you're you've got a society and you're kind of taking them from Stone Age to you know the
14:51
computer age I mean thematically you can you kind of end up
14:56
looking past it a lot because it's like oh hexans and and doing things cuz you just iffy me just kind of you know
15:03
trying to Grog the puzzle but no I think you might like this one actually the thing that gets me I think with leras or
15:08
games in general actually I don't mind complication believe it or not it's the restrictiveness that gets to me so like
15:14
on Mars the main reason I didn't like it is because it blocks up half of your choices a lot of the time um because
15:20
you're either in space or you're on the ground and whatever I wanted to do I was in the wrong place to do it you know um
15:26
bad planning yeah exactly but that's the point is like I like to make a decision that I can I I've got a choice to go
15:33
anywhere I want to at any given time and it felt like you had to do it in advance which you know sometimes suits me I
15:38
don't mind planning but I don't like having to plan to the point of screwing yourself later you know yeah I mean this
15:44
one isn't as bad as that um but what it is prone to but basically you have the
15:50
the the worker kind of selection action selection mechanism is it's based on
15:55
these five areas called forums and then each Forum has two actions in it so you got 10 actions on the board now the The
16:02
Stick of the game is like when you put your pillar you got like an Epoch pillar and your season pillars the smaller ones
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you got three workers essentially and once you put a pillar down you lock off
16:15
the The Forum so you can't put another of your pillars into the same Forum so therefore the action that's over the
16:21
other side you ain't seeing that for a while so what you have to do is try to
16:26
find loopholes in the game to try and get to the actions you need to do and there are V various different
16:33
ways of doing that through sending diplomats to um you know technology tiles or using your chain tokens that
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you get and unlock through influence that you kind of then combo turns into other turns and so again you you need to
16:48
know the game to kind of seek out these these paths which on your first play you might not seek and it might lead to some
16:54
frustration CU you're like I need to do this action I can't see how I do it but when you kind of know the game a bit
17:00
better you you do know how to get there and it can for me it's quite a satisfying um puzzle when you figure it
17:08
out and you're like right I've got it I can do this and I can combo and chain into this and then I can chain off that
17:14
to do the action I want to do and therefore I've now done three actions that felt amazing but what it is prone
17:20
to is I do this I change into the second one and I'm going to change into the third one oh no I can't do that and now
17:27
I've got to go back and and wind My Chains a little bit I ain't going to like that so so that I'll leave that one
17:33
to you my take yeah so that's yeah that's kind of what it it can be like if you in your early plays once you know
17:40
the game you know the game and you kind of work out and you're thinking in your head I'll do that do that can't do that
17:46
um but yeah I enjoy it I think it's a great game um and the puzzle on your Society board which is your player board
17:52
is is quite satisfying as well cuz you're getting these tiles um which are
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like technology I suppose uh that you're kind of unlocking throughout the game and you're putting it onto the your
18:02
board and there's a whole yeah placing the uh the tiles in the right way and configurations to to score and game
18:09
scoring and all that so that like a little puzzle on the side just I mean the game's complicated enough and they throw this in as well just to kind of
18:16
keep you going but yeah no it's good fun um if you like your luras you'll probably like it or have already heard
18:21
of it and maybe already played it but yeah curly I don't know you're you're an odd card with the Lera games I don't
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think I am that odd yeah you are um he's giving me a cheeky smile I know you
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can't can't hear over the pop but he's giving me a cheeky smile he trying to Wi me in it ain't working yeah whatever
18:38
whatever anyway that was my first game glad you enjoyed it yeah what about you klyy uh well I started off light
Back to the Future: Back In Time
18:45
actually because as I arrived which is probably about 3:30 um yeah they Tambo
18:51
and Chrissy P um we're just setting up for a game of Back to the Future ball
18:57
game du that's the theme sh Adrian sure
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okay well it's a badly Su theme chain it I thought was beautiful but it was the theme chain yeah but no it's a a really
19:12
light Co-op game um like super light like not one of those that I would I i'
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play it again just for a little bit of a laugh but yeah it's super light there's no real um theme to it really um yeah
19:24
just wandering around dice chucking and just kind of having a bit of a chuckle which actually suited me just finishing work and everything else it was fine it
19:31
was good yeah I enjoyed it so you know good for kind of probably getting kids
19:36
involved a little bit in it especially because it's Co-op yeah I think it's probably what that game is designed for
19:43
families yeah In fairness obviously fans of the IP yeah for sure not a deep rich
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experience is what I hear but but yeah nothing wrong with that it knows what it is you know but yeah that's how I
19:54
started you know nice nice you play oh question no I played
20:01
as doc I want to say characters Jennifer Jennifer that's
20:07
it I knew it wasn't quite right so you know you been chased by beff yeah beff was just chasing you all over the place
20:14
yeah makes a change from agent chasing me around in real life yeah fair enough by the time you
Terminus & Perch (Sponsored Demos)
20:20
turned up I was already Midway through my second sponsored demo of gridon so I got both I got both of my sponsored
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demos put in for early Friday so 10 10: a.m. and 2 p.m. um and yeah both by
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inside up games both very different games so the first one was Terminus so I
20:39
had and I'm going to try remember remember this off the top of my head so I had cat Ian Stewart and nhal I believe
20:45
um around the table and I had previously played Terminus and and kind of said to
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you guys I'm not sure about it played it two player um and if I'm honest I think
20:57
it's just the fact that it's a two player it doesn't play very well in my opinion the there's a a third fake
21:03
player that builds a route so Terminus is ultimately a root building game and there's a third um Auto like autometer
21:10
player that's supposed to build a route but what it tends to end up doing is sticking to the sides a lot and so it
21:15
doesn't help it doesn't get inter meshed with all the other players like it probably should so I struggle with that
21:21
but actually having play three player and then having taught four player I can see a lot of where the what the game is
21:27
trying to do and I actually think it's it's much better than I think the two player original player I gave of it
21:32
which is good cuz inside up games also gave us a copy to try back at Expo so nice to be able to say that was a good
21:38
game and sort of I've got a bit more out of it so yeah Terminus is um is a r it's
21:44
root building I'm not going to call it city building there are buildings that you build developments but they're not
21:50
buildings what they really do is Alter the actions or improve the actions for those who have got a meeple on that
21:57
development uh um but what it really is it's action selection via Rondell yeah so you by the end of the game you'll
22:04
have done nine laps of this Rondell and it's three laps of three years and it's
22:09
a very tight game in the fact that because it's only nine laps if you forget to get one of the resources on
22:16
the way around or you don't buy enough to set you up for future turns that's it you got to do a whole another lap you
22:22
got to try and do what you can but ultimately you'll do a whole another lap before you get the opportunity quite often to buy that resource now this is
22:28
where development comes in cuz sometimes developments will say oh and in the area where you normally pick up an agenda card instead you can pick up three
22:35
construction resources or something like that so it is very tight in that aspect
22:40
of it you really got to make the use of the resources as you go around these rondells and then it's a root Builder as
22:47
well that kind of wants you to get in each other's way so it rewards you you build a couple of rails and then you'll
22:54
build a St it's not always a couple but you'll build a couple of rails and then at the end of each rail you build a station and that becomes your Terminus
23:00
and you always have to build from your Terminus so a bit like snake sort of thing you can accidentally find a place
23:05
where you're almost not able to get back on yourself and there is a way out where you can spend some power and then build
23:12
a Terminus from the other end your starting point sort of thing but every time you got use somebody else's station
23:18
to become your Terminus or to kind of go through you will gain a power and they
23:24
gain coins so it's kind of an incentive but it will help you get to uh to your
23:29
objectives a bit quicker quite often but also it'll stop other people from getting theirs so it's quite mean in that fact of when you would move quite
23:37
often or when you do something quite often you're doing it because you want to get somewhere but actually quite often you're annoying another player as
23:42
well and kind of getting in their way so it is a little bit mean and when I started off the teach you know it's a
23:48
fairly in-depth teach because you have to like teach each of these I want to say seven or eight spots around the
23:53
Rondell um and there's loads of upgrades and missions and and objectives and
23:59
stuff that you kind of have to explain a little bit so it's a little bit of an in-depth teach but um as I was explaining at the start of it this is a
24:05
mean game this is a tight game if you get a chance to buy resources that you know you need you've got to make sure you get it but at the same time there's
24:10
not much money so don't overspend sort of thing and despite saying that twice at the start of the game about
24:18
two-thirds of the way through the game they were all like oh this is really tight for resources isn't it and I was like yep I did war did warn you plenty
24:24
of fair warning but I enjoyed teaching it it's good I realized about halfway through the game that I think Niall was
24:31
someone we met at the premier in in essence yeah he was yeah and totally blanked on that and about halfway through and I was like oh it's a bit
24:37
awkward now to say oh yeah you have to go you're like you look familiar and I can't I can't pach you couldn't quite
24:44
yeah it was exactly that and about halfway through the game I was like this is the Premier in guy so yeah so um so
24:50
nice to kind of realize that that's who that was as well and uh yeah the guys seem all of the people around the table seem to have a good time of it um I I
24:58
think there was a little bit of now I know what I'm doing certain people kind of made mistakes and again it's one of
25:04
those where it's a demo so you give them some hints maybe of what they could or couldn't do but you're not trying to play their turn for them ideally and
25:11
some of them made a few mistakes that you could see sort of early doors because they didn't quite know how the game would flow um but yeah a couple of
25:17
them said oh now now I know what I'm doing and I think four player is good because it means you get um it was interestingly on um on the gridon sort
25:24
of chat or the gaming rules chat there was um a little bit someone said oh I don't know if I'd play it at more than three but I really would recommend you
25:31
try it with four maybe five I don't know if the downtime might be a little bit high at five but I think it'd still be pretty good um and just sort of because
25:39
you need to kind of be in each other's way and using each other's stuff to get across the board to where you need to
25:45
and I think at two and three players you don't get as much opportunity for that as you did as you do at four players so
25:50
yes that's what I started with and then I went on to perch and uh inside up games had rushed Paul a copy of perch I
25:58
think the only one in the country at the time I don't know if that's still the case and perch was a real pleasant
26:03
surprise because again it's not a game I would look at or or probably by normally but having played a couple of games to
26:09
kind of get the rules under my belt and then teaching it it does stuff for game
26:14
types that I don't particularly get on with it does it really well so it's an area control it's a bit take thaty and
26:22
neither of those are normally my jam MH because people end up butt hurt in
26:27
those kind of games quite often like you're targeting someone cuz you want their area or you know you take that cuz
26:33
they're on the high points or something like that and none of the games I've experienced either through play or teaching has that really felt the case
26:41
what you do on your turn is you will get you'll Chuck two of every player's birds in a in a bag you'll get two of your own
26:48
and then you'll draw two random birds out so sometimes it'll be your own bird or sometimes it'll be somebody else's
26:53
sounds like keys in a bow moment doesn't it you got my bird
26:58
so you'll end up with four Birds per round there's five rounds so you'll get
27:04
four turns each round and each space will say uh first place gets an
27:12
ability or gets X number of points second place will get so many points third place will get so many points
27:17
fourth place or more gets nothing because it's up to five players the trick with it is is that if
27:23
at any point players draw those two players get zero points
27:29
but they still take the relevant space so if first and second space have four Birds each and third place has three
27:37
birds first and second actually get zero and they don't get any abilities or
27:42
anything like that third place gets its points but isn't first place it's the third place so it doesn't get any abilities or anything like that so
27:48
interesting despite the fact that you're not pulling out birds of your own color quite often you're using them to cause
27:53
draws somewhere else to get stop other people getting points or to kind of
27:59
contest things give players a chance to draw it up if they want to all that kind of stuff so there is a little bit of
28:05
kind of take that get in your way sort of sort of mentality but because of the way it's done it's not like a cardival
28:12
stop doing that sort of thing or anything there's always there always feels like there's a chance to influence things um and yeah there's abilities
28:19
that basically allow you to take some of the birds off the board and then put them on another board called The Fountain and again that's a little
28:24
puzzle it's a little pyramid basically that um the Bas lay is worth only one points the second level's worth maybe
28:31
three points something that and what you're trying to do is is get the points you want when they're ready so you might
28:36
start removing your own Birds when the points are good and other people's when the points are bad um so yeah we had
28:43
four players around that Craig Natalie Matt and Victoria for that um and they
28:48
all seem to thoroughly enjoy it they all seem sort of came away two of them two of them had already kickstarted it said it sounded like a kind of family I think
28:55
kind of game that something their group would enjoy and the other two had a great time of just kind of I think just
29:00
is that thing of R I'm going to do that so you get zero points but it's just that it's not it's not minus points or
29:06
anything that it's just you're not getting points cuz you've drawn so feels a little bit easier to pallet in that
29:12
respect so yeah they all came away from it quite happy one of them said they were probably going to wait till retail and then purchase it then so yeah got
29:18
good reviews on that one and I enjoyed my playthroughs and I enjoyed teaching it's a it's a good like those kind of
29:23
like family weight games are quite good fun to teach and to demo um so yeah so that's my two sponsored demos were done
29:29
and out of the way yeah but I did say that's the way to do it the idea of I don't know I I would
29:36
have quite happily done two demos every day I think at gridon I wouldn't want to do it like you did at Essen I don't
29:42
think I don't know that I'd want to do lots of demoing in a public forum if that makes
29:48
sense like a convention yeah um I might but it's not something that immediately draws me in to want to do but at gaming
29:56
rules it's such a relaxed atmosphere every everyone knows each other everyone's kind of already friends or seen them there before if you're on your
30:03
it's a lot more chilled environment and I enjoyed teaching people games and showing them sort of new experiences
30:09
getting to enjoy their enjoyment if that makes sense yeah um and so I would have quite happily done a few more sponsored
30:14
demos absolutely if he decides he's having three tables cuz there was last year there was only one sponsored demo
30:20
table the year before that he did all the demos himself and look knacked at the end I can't do this again so last
30:26
year there was one table and we helped out and then this year there was two tables and we helped out so if next year
30:31
there's three tables and he want some more demos run I'll be happy to do more than just the two but yeah I I I enjoyed
30:36
doing the T and getting them out on the Friday was actually pretty good if you if that's what I was going to do sort of things so so yeah so that was my kind of
30:43
to that took me up to about 3:30 as well actually I think maybe maybe 4:00 so the
Star Trek Captain's Chair & Tournament
30:48
game that then probably took me to a similar time um so I'm basically going to talk about Star Trek captain's chair
30:54
now for the entirety of the weekend the reason why say that is because there's
31:00
um Paul Grogan had acquired 12 copies Advanced of Star Trek captain's chair
31:06
from whis kids um to basically get them for gridon so that people could
31:11
basically run a tournament and all get to kind of play it and share the experience of the game and David tury
31:17
was also in attendance of gcon and he's one of the designers along with Nigel bookle and it was just great to kind of
31:24
see him there just bounce around like a a happy puppy just seeing his game being
31:30
played by various different people and it was just yeah it was just a bundle of energy if anyone knows David he is a
31:35
bundle of energy it was lovely to have a designer on hand to an queries yes he's like what's this card mean David and he
31:41
obviously knows cuz he designed it yeah instantly that means that thank you yeah so what you need is a David just around
31:47
at all times yeah I will say we caught him out on one actually I can't remember what the rule was but he was like oh I'm
31:53
not sure I'm going to have to check with my play testers yeah yeah I mean these play test has have played it a hell of a
31:58
lot more times than he has right but for those that don't know what Star Trek captain's chair is let me just go through uh and kind of bring that to
32:05
life so it's a game built on the Imperium system so Imperium Classics
32:12
Imperium Legends and Horizons it's built in that system but it's an evolution of that system and we did a uh an interview
32:19
episode with David not long back so you can kind of go and check that out and uh learn more about kind of you know his
32:26
perspective and what the game is and how is uh yeah how he designed it and all that kind of good stuff um but generally
32:33
it's you know you pick a a captain and there's no kind of thematical blockers
32:39
in the fact that oh we're playing one timeline or this timeline and the game does a good job in the rule book that
32:44
just says it's a computer simulation and we can pick any kind of Captain or use any Captain from anything that is Star
32:51
Trek and it's literally it's just a kind of a throwaway paragraph in the rule book just allows the designers to access
32:57
accessed all of the Star Trek IP pretty much thought it's really clever of them to do actually which is great because it
33:04
doesn't limit the game in its content and actually makes it really expandable and and you know more captains will be
33:11
available I'm sure um so you you pick a captain and out of the base box you've
33:16
got six you've got um peard you've got shran the andorian you've got cooth the
33:22
uh Klingon you've got Ben Cisco from Deep Space 9 you've got uh
33:28
cell the the Romulan and you've got Michael burnam from Discovery so you got those six and you kind of pick your
33:35
captain and they just like Imperium these decks work completely different to to each other there are completely
33:41
different strategies in there and yeah you you kind of need to relearn the game
33:46
again when you pick up another deck really CU they do fundamentally work differently so for those that kind of
33:53
know Imperium or the system this will be quite familiar so you kind of got your deck of available cards every time you
33:58
run out of cards in your deck and you need to you know shuffle your your deck and and basically draw more cards you'll
34:04
take a card from a separate deck after the side called reserve and each Captain
34:09
has a number of Reserve cards they'll be different per Captain some would be four five six or whatever and so once you
34:15
kind of run through those and you've got those into into your deck as you go then you've got these development cards which
34:21
all have costs on so again when you run out of cards in your deck and you draw a card you now can choose a development um
34:27
pay the cost of either dilithium latinum or have certain requirements met and you
34:32
can then access that card and these cards are Bonkers crazy powerful awesome abilities that you can kind of inject
34:39
into your play style so knowing your um yeah knowing your what cards you need
34:44
development uh is part of the strategy of right I'm going to get that one first and then do this and do that so again
34:49
your first playthrough of a captain is going to be a bit ropey CU you're learning how the hell this thing works
34:55
so yeah so you kind of got this thing that as a deck it kind of gradually builds over time which is always a cool
35:01
system the bit I actually like in Imperium a lot is you shape the destiny of where you're going but also it's deck
35:06
building so you've got a market you can acquire cards um and in this case you've got people you've got cargo you've got
35:13
ships and you got allies all the different kind of alien races that you'd expect in Star Trek they can kind of
35:19
come into to your deck as well and then start adding new little strategies as well and you've also got the neutral
35:25
zone where all the locations kind of come out and you can send and warp your your Starships to those locations and
35:31
you can acquire them and that's usually with contention of the other player cuz this is only a Max two player game one
35:37
to two player game um which I think makes perfect sense in the way this
35:42
works because it is very tug of war and to add like more players with this level of complexity Jesus you know I mean
35:50
imperium's complex but actually captain's chair whilst it's streamlined in Ru set the depth of this I think it's
35:58
deeper than than Imperium especially with some of the captains I've been playing they're bunkers um so yeah you
36:04
kind of playing game you playing cards and and doing all that stuff and I'm going to swear now cuz I love
36:10
this game and it's no surprise um and I've been playing this in advance of uh
36:16
grig Kong because I've helped Paul out on the stream we did a uh a couple of streams around uh solo bot play and a 1
36:23
V one game so I've had to learn it and I've had to EXP experience it and learn
36:28
shran so shran was my kind of learning um Captain because there's nothing worse
36:34
than going on a stream not being prepared especially with a game as complex as this um so yeah I I
36:39
absolutely adore it I mean I love the Imperium games anyway and I still love it it it doesn't replace it for me
36:46
because it does feel different it's got a different feeling um but it's it's
36:51
very kind of still familiar in in certain aspects as well but yeah I'm I'm just digging it and we we got to play in
36:57
this tournament which is kind of a Loosely run tournament it was just an excuse to play Star Trek captain's chair
37:03
weekend really and I got to meet some great people just playing the games
37:08
which I was quite thankful for cuz probably wouldn't have met them if we didn't do this so the first my first opponent was George who comes from
37:16
Greece and George bless him he sits down and he goes I've got a present for you
37:21
and this is before we even play and he pulls out madaran whiskey ball and he
37:26
GES gives it to to me and I felt really crap cuz I was like well I haven't got you anything I feel really bad and he's
37:32
like don't worry I just wanted to to to give you this and I thought it was really sweet of him and then um so he
37:38
played as Koloff no he didn't he played as Cisco and I played as Burnham and uh
37:44
we had our game and things happen managed to win Happy Days right and so I
37:49
felt a bit guilty about having the whiskey to be honest but there we go so I have my first game and then my second
37:55
game was actually on the Saturday was against Willam from uh Netherlands Y and
38:00
he played Koloff and again I played Burnham and and we had a game and I
38:05
again I managed to win that one which is awesome and then he gave me a big pack of Street waffles so I I got taken
38:11
straight back to Essen um and they're still in the cover now they like saving them for when need that Sugar hit during
38:19
work um but it's a good choice a gift it's great it's like there's a big stack of them in to be fair he gave me a
38:25
packet of Street waffles but they didn't like last more than 12 hours so he obviously had a big yeah me and Becky
38:31
polished him off it's got to be done so yeah it was just great to to be there experience the game um and experience
38:39
other people experiencing their first plays of it as well and having the the kind of buzz that I had when I started
38:45
to learn it and and just sort of see this oh my god I've just done this really cool thing and and all that kind
38:50
of stuff so so yeah that's Star Trek captain's chair so with all this Advanced prep time having seen the game
38:57
load befor how did you do I came fourth I think overall I was in the top four
39:04
because how the the points were I mean this is why I say it's a loose system because there wasn't really any time to
39:10
do any semi finals and finals to determine a winner which is what yeah
39:15
format it was kind of a league format and then it was like well this is where everyone is on Sunday and way you go but
39:21
I think when Paul's worked it out I think I was like fourth in so yeah I think my Advanced plays didn't actually give me that much of advantage over
39:27
certain players um because obviously they're better than me that's fine um
39:33
but what was really cool is the winners or the top four which actually were five
39:39
in the end not four uh so uh Mark I think uh was got left out a little bit
39:45
bless him but we all got to see the upcoming captains from the next box
39:51
which I can't say I was about to say you can share it with all no no I can't I am under um
39:58
NDA uh section 31 are going to be on standby to take me out if I even mention
40:03
anything but I have seen them they do exist and they're very cool and that's all what I'm saying there you go so so
40:10
yeah I mean curly you played on on Saturday right so whilst we're in Star Trek captain's chair moment you you
40:16
obviously in the tournament as well right yeah so shout out to again Willam who uh I think me and JP played back
40:22
toback uh Willam lovely guy also gave me street waffles thank you very much Willam and um a chat called Andy as well
40:29
Andy Pan um really nice guy again had a really good game um I came out 1-1 so um
40:34
I just nicked Andy we playing um bicard versus Koloff so that was a really good
40:40
game um and uh Willam pipped me way p p me by a few to be fair so I say pipped
40:46
Loosely speaking um but I actually got my best ever score against Willam he just did extremely well did really well
40:52
yeah really well so he got 117 points which I think is very very good right strong score yeah 94 I got which is a
40:59
decent score I think yeah still good yeah so you know I was pretty pleased with that and obviously still learning
41:04
the game and I made quite a few mistakes and there was a rule I had wrong but that's part of the part of the process
41:09
you know it does um it's one of them some games feel frustrating to me to make those kind of mistakes captain's
41:15
chair is not one of them I don't know why I can't explain why really but some games want to make a silly mistake it
41:20
just you know really gets to me and some games I'm like yeah it's fine you I'll learn for next time it's just one those
41:27
but yeah so shout out to them really enjoyed my games I'm ready to try a new captain I think um give it another go uh
41:34
bit disappointed I don't have a copy which i' because I really want to start playing it but I can't just yet uh when
41:40
when's it actually out Q4 Q4 when we're in we're in Q4 so that means next year
41:46
it'll be next month you reckon it will still stick to it well they're still saying Q4 so Q4 is literally next month
41:51
yeah so they need to release it and then get on with it just normally by now they would have had a date well we'll wait
41:57
and see crossed but yeah really enjoyed it like you said just an excuse to play the game really the only thing that
42:03
I I I I'm really glad I played in it I'm not sure I would put both games together
42:10
in an evening again I think that's was probably too much it's a lot going on yeah I think I played 5 to8 and 8 to 11
42:17
and it was just it like that was a long time playing captain's chair you know so it's really good game but it's a yeah
42:23
it's a complicated game yeah my I did Friday and a Saturday and it was perf so I kind of dabble did the thing went onto
42:29
something else and then I was ready for it again Saturday you know so yeah I think doing it back to
42:35
back is yeah I mean I probably wouldn't have minded it but at a convention when there's other stuff to do as well it
42:41
takes up a good chunk of time even though my second game was only an hour long if that which is a record for me on
42:47
a 1 V one it's usually two two plus hours yeah um but yeah I managed to rush
42:53
that game for whatever reason and uh yeah it's like we we done already it's like God it's like 55 minutes I was mad
43:01
yeah yeah there's quite good like rushing kind of techniques in the game and though if you can see you've got a small Advantage at the start you can
43:07
kind of really try and push at home um but yeah one of the many reasons why it's kind of an interesting game you can push for that kind of interesting
43:13
strategy so but no yeah really enjoyed it would play again looking forward to uh challenging JP to a you know another
43:20
game yeah he want to play against the romulans he said yeah but J JP is unfortunately really good at this game
43:26
and it really irks me you know when someone's just better than you at a game especially someone that you know you don't have any respect for gaming wise
43:33
JP good there's three players at to to be fair it largely depends on your who
43:38
you're facing and stuff like that I think score on it own doesn't tell you a lot because it's just about the state of
43:45
what happened yeah it's difficult to compare scores it's difficult like you know I I do think of the people that I
43:52
played I think JP is definitely the best I've played like you know and he's played it a lot but was good at imperian
43:57
Classics as well so you know only I don't know if I beat you did I I can't remember if I beat you at all but you
44:04
very good at imper I've gone close to you yeah for sure I don't know if I've beat you at that so it's just a game that you you well practiced at and
44:10
you're good at so you know nice to have one I'll take it I'll take you know I've
44:16
got a few in my repertoire as well so I can't really begrudge JP you know a game that he's really good at you know come
44:21
on I'll uh I'll Ender some tournaments for anron Ultra Carry On I think I'll be all right yeah no I'm all right no I
44:26
love those games but I know I would suck at a tournament level 100% And I would cry um against you no way I'll go in a
44:35
tournament that is in a different um what you call it different table different uh what do you call
44:42
it in the football when you got the group league in a different group division yeah yeah division yeah the
44:49
lower one yeah so I'll be happier anyway what else happened we played castle combo JP didn't we that was the game we
Castle Combo
44:55
played straight after yeah we did so I've talked about castle combo a bit before still really enjoy it it's about
45:00
my fifth or sixth play of it now I think like I said before it comes from the same designers as far away I think the
45:07
the puzzle isn't as elegant or tricky as as in Castle combos is in far away but I
45:13
think it's a lot more accessible 100% it is um I mean we taught it played it you
45:19
clearly understood it within two turns out of nine like easy yeah how you what'
45:25
you feel about it yeah it was a perfect game to kind of come out of playing a lero and a heavy DAV tury style
45:31
developed game um and I thought I just need something a little bit like a pallet cleanser as it were and you just
45:37
come off your demos and you were like and there's only me and you are available and it's like well what have you got got castle combo I said perfect
45:44
cuz I wanted to try it and yeah it was a very quick game it's nine turns in the game right you yeah literally playing
45:50
nine cards in a 3X3 uh Tableau and you're trying to maximize the puzzle in
45:56
you know the victory Point conditions on those cards with different tags or Shields and and it's just a nice little
46:03
game takes half hour and so yeah I really like the market rows in the game where you've got a peasants row and a
46:09
and a castle row and the the castle cards are generally more expensive and
46:14
um I don't actually know other than that they probably got Co abilities on there as well but the peasants one are
46:20
generally more cheaper but again they all got abilities and do things and they all link to each other as well but but
46:25
yeah yeah I think you learned the the same a couple of the same lessons that I think I learned on my first playthrough
46:30
when I've shown it to others they've learned which is that keys are important yes because they allow you to wipe the row or to move to the other column and
46:37
there's a couple of times you were getting a bit close and I got to take what don't like it um and the other
46:43
thing is that you can do the entire game without doing a face down card which
46:48
gives you money and keys but quite often although it seems great because you could have a full grid with all of them
46:54
scoring quite often actually it's the inefficient thing to do cuz what you want to do is give yourself more money I mean you had a you quickly picked up on
47:00
what I think I do normally which is discounts and do it that way but yeah you had the 3X3 grid with no face down
47:07
card on it and yeah scored lower and I think that I think it's because you need quite often not every time but quite
47:13
often you need a face down card to give you those keys to give you the to give you the money and all that kind of stuff
47:19
and I think the one thing I I when I was talking about it last time that I didn't mention that a lot of people do is the
47:24
artwork is lovely it's very unique it's a unique style everyone's got big noses
47:29
and big wobbly heads on them and all that kind of stuff hav't they but I quite like it I really like it's a quirky but cool art style on it that I
47:36
think also sort of marries up well with the game so yes I showed that one off and
Aquatica
47:41
then um Marcus said can we play Aquatica with the new expansion yeah um which is
47:51
fine Adrian didn't enjoy that one I've never played it I've never it appeals
47:56
the like the coloring and stuff like that draws me in but so the the deck of hands you have is very similar to
48:02
Concordia if you played Concordia every character in your hand has got an ability and then one of them has got
48:08
pull everything back into your hand and flip over your sting RS um which are like oneoff
48:14
little abilities that you can use the abilities are pretty much bu
48:19
another person to add into the deck or buy a location and the locations kind of
48:25
sit in like in inside your little player board and they've got bubbles on them
48:30
and as you want to use abilities you can push the bubbles you can push the card up slightly it uses that ability as a oneoff and what you're actually trying
48:36
to do is get all the cards right down to the bottom of them and then you can kind of cash them in I don't know what the
48:43
actual term was like a treasure chest that you you can kind of cash them in which allows you to take them out of the
48:48
board and put one side giving you space for more of them and for most of that it all seemed
48:53
good like the expansion added this Coral thing in that I don't know that I was sure about but Marcus seemed to think it
48:58
was good and said said that it kind of got around one of his main problems with the base game Alone
49:04
um but the bubble things was really throwing me because my stingrays were
49:09
kind of oh White cards are better for you but I never saw any White cards so I didn't feel like I could grab the cards
49:15
I wanted so I was trying to grab other ones and then quite often the ones I could afford at the time these little
49:21
bubbles really weren't what I wanted so I didn't feel like I could use them to their full extent and I suppose that's
49:27
probably just learning the game but for like this middle midweight I think it'd be midl just the base on its own yeah I
49:33
think that kind of level of game just felt really odd to have then this weird sort of thing where you could kind of
49:38
get stuck or you could quite regularly not have what you needed to such an extent um yeah I I'd actually give it
49:45
another go I definitely want to kind of see it again but it didn't it was one of those games I'd wanted to try but it
49:52
didn't set my world on fire the way I thought it might kind of it's one of those SLE I was hoping it'd be one of those sleeper hits where I kind of I
49:58
kind of want to play that and then it turns into this great game and it just didn't it was kind of like well that was okay well for me yeah I was kind of the
50:05
opposite which was Marcus said oh do you want to play Aquatica and I was like
50:11
sure all I've heard of it but as a theme underwater okay and then I found
50:18
out oh right it's all these weird sea creatures that are people and okay um so thematically he's not doing anything for
50:25
me right then we started playing it and oh look it's like Concordia where you do the thing as you said and then the the
50:31
whole sliding cards bit I thought I quite like that that's quite interesting it's a bit different you can kind of spend the bubbles to to do stuff and
50:39
you're Racing for the goals right so you've got like four goals on there which might be collects 11 locations or
50:46
or do fill up all five locations on the board at once yeah or buy recruit a a
50:51
cost five person which you might think was that it it takes time to to build up to get a cost five person um and and all
50:58
sorts of different things and uh yeah I I really enjoyed that game like it just it w me over um in and weirdly in the
51:06
theme as well so I wasn't bothered and then as I was playing it I was yeah quite like this actually it's quite
51:12
quite a bit different um and yeah I've got no uh experience on what the base
51:18
game is like like you said we played straight with the expansion I can't even tell you what expansion was in it and
51:24
others may be in there I don't know yeah I think he's he's chucked a couple of in we had four Rule books on the table at
51:30
once for reference it felt like so I think three or four at least so I think he's got a couple of expansions all in
51:36
yeah it feels like it okay but now I I really enjoyed the game I would happily play that any any time and it was nice
51:42
to play with Marcus yes and that's the reason why I wasn't like do you want to play this game long no I was like yeah
51:48
sure like get to play game with Marcus cuz it's always good fun and he likes a bit of banter at the table yeah got love
51:55
Marcus shout out to Marcus listening mate love you mate you better be um I think I think the other thing for me is
52:01
that I quite like Abyss which is which is very similar in theme like underwater
52:06
sea creatures like finding locations under underwater but it's really just a
52:11
set collection bidding game really um but I think because I I like that theme
52:17
I don't know if I was expecting a little bit more I kind of the art style felt similar to Abyss sort of not dissimilar
52:23
at least so yeah I so I need to give it another go but it just didn't initially click with me the way I was hoping it
52:29
would yeah so so yeaha sounds like my S of thing to be honest I you enjoy it I think I think
52:35
you would I do think you would I think you'd uh you you'll be down with it it's that nice Pacey turns it's it flows
52:41
around it felt like it is my sort of theme as well you know like my nature and things like that nature bit of water
52:48
but it's like fantasy water it's mermaids but like there's busy crab busy
52:54
crab sounds good to me yeah all that stuff I just want to give a little shout out while we're here cuz Alex who
Picking up some PICK UPs
53:01
listens to the show he he popped over and he basically gave me said right I've
53:09
got you three packs of pickup bars and because we on the Essen episode we were
53:14
talking about we need to own like we need own something like Paul grogan's got Jaffer cakes right what do we have
53:19
as whose turn is it Anyway what we need something and I think we were talking about pickup bars and I was explaining what a pickup bar was and then yeah he
53:27
comes over with three packs salt caramel Classics and and a Milky Milky set of of
53:32
pickup bars and that's what was really sweet of him really nice they they lasted and they did share them I want it
53:37
on record they were very tasty I shared these pickup bars with people Rob didn't get one though I had two so I had one we
53:44
had robs Rob if you're editing this just ignore that yeah they did not have to Yum Yum Yum they were tasty um the time
53:51
he gave him to you I was demoing perch cuz he he tapped me on the shoulder went oh I recognize that voice like where's
53:57
JP I've got something for him and I was like all right okay I've got something for him he was like but make sure you
54:03
get some of them as well and I was oh I need to know what this is now so yeah when you were like oh I got pickup bars for everyone it was just really nice cuz
54:09
it's like you know when you say things on episodes it kind of reminds you that people do listen people list sometimes
54:15
they really throw away comments yeah but it's like what and it was just really nice and I I it was a little highlight
54:21
of my Friday that was and I got to eat The Salted Caramel pickup bars but I never had those before they were tasty
54:26
they were good I never got one of those so they were probably very very good but you know I am a fan of just the Classic
54:32
there's nothing wrong with the classic just good little chocolate bar but yeah I just wanted to say thank you Alex much
54:39
appreciated got us through the weekend with sugar highs especially that Friday actually I think that that s with
54:45
caramel one on the Friday while we were playing castle combo I think was it yeah yeah he was that went down well it was
Revenant (Sponsored Demo)
54:52
good yeah so the only other thing that I did on Friday was thanks for much for the teach JP Revenant Revenant yeah yeah
55:01
so I had a demo game just like you Adrian with with your peress and termin
55:07
yeah you had I had re had some mind Clash had some mind Clash to do so I'd already played this on gaming rules as
55:13
well I I basically had a three weekends of gaming rule streams y one was Elder
55:19
Scrolls one was uh Revenant and one was captain's chair as I mentioned um so
55:25
yeah I had to kind of remember from the the rule book which is a printed PDF
55:31
because it's a game in development it's liter on Kickstarter right now think it launched today didn't it um the 19th
55:37
which is obviously not the day you're listen not the day listen could be any day couldn't it um but no managed to to
55:44
yeah give everyone a bit of a teach I had a pointy stick which was always fun to have a pointy stick uh was teaching
55:50
games and it was nice for me to kind of just stand up for a bit and just walk around the table and and I quite enjoyed
55:57
just having a bit of movement and with Paul's demo his main one his main demo table there a lot of space there is
56:04
there's a lot of space to kind of move around you're not overcrowded and and it's just a nice central place for for
56:10
the main room right in the main hall so yeah um Revenant is a game set in the void4 universe um and that's where it
56:18
stops and that's literally where yeah where where the comparisons stop at all
56:23
yeah cuz it's nothing like void fall at all just the same kind of theme in iconography um it looks like Battle Star
56:31
Galactica but it's not but it looks like it and and really you
56:37
are uh part of a kind of a crew with different specialities of whether you're
56:42
a scientist or a commander or a scout or a politician and uh you're part of this
56:48
the Starship called the Revenant and there's all the different houses that are uh have their kind of Fleet of ships
56:53
alongside and you're fleeing the voidborn who are relentless and I say Relentless cuz they are bloody
56:59
Relentless in the way that they will just spaff out onto the board and cause you fun and games and trouble um but
57:06
yeah it's that kind of variable worker placement Style game where the actions
57:11
you're using may not be there if you don't look after the ships which is an interesting mechanic um and also you
57:19
kind of need to move around the board in order to access certain things as well so there's a kind of little spatial part
57:24
to it as well as it being in a worker placement game and and the way that you
57:30
kind of score uh your your main victory points is by going to these spaces they're all owned by a house in the void
57:36
for universe so therefore you're creating more allegiance to that house more influence you're kind of moving up
57:41
tracks and getting little bonuses along the way and you're also kind of drawing
57:46
hidden influence cards which all have the house uh symbols on there and there are ways to kind of draw more and keep
57:53
more as you kind of level up your your captain um and ultimately at the end of the game
57:59
you are seeing hopefully how how well you've scored on influence the power of
58:04
that house depends on how many ships are still alive that will fluctuate up and down but that act as a multiplier so if
58:10
you like influence five and the the power level of that house is free you're
58:15
going to get a nice sweet 15 points from that house but people know this it's all visible information so people can kind
58:22
of be a bit of a knob in this game as well um cuz if you if you're really high
58:27
on a influence track and people have to make decisions about which ship's going
58:32
to get the damage and that's kind of done by whoever's closest in their little frig which is your own personal
58:37
color ship um so if you're close to the action you get to decide where that damage is distributed so you quickly
58:43
look over to the influence board and go which ships do I want to save and which ones don't I give a about and
58:49
therefore they're going to take it and that can absolutely half your score if you don't look after those those
58:55
particular the ships so yeah I I demoed it we had Curley as you said we had Tom
59:01
we had Jimmy so board game Jimmy Instagram Friend and Friend of the podcast and listener uh and we had Mark
59:07
uh beef all the way from Malta so weirdly last year I did perseverance episode 3 and I had Mark and Jimmy on
59:14
that demo as well so it was kind of 50% return customers to the demo so there we
59:20
go he got his own little Harem of board gamers it was kind of weird I thought well I don't draw this I just get told
59:26
don't I I turn up and people uh turn up to the demo but yeah so there we go
59:31
that's that was the demo but I mean curly how'd you get on
59:38
um I have mixed feelings about Revenant because I went into it assuming
59:45
that I was going to love it because it's a mind clash and it's a moderate what what you say like a medium mind Clash
59:53
really yeah so like even even relatively like for mine I expected to really like
59:58
it the only ones from mineclash that I haven't really gotten with so far are the um mineclash play on I feel like
1:00:05
they're not really my bag um which is cool they're not just aimed at me I don't think but Revenant I expected to
1:00:10
like and it was I can see potential but in its current state I could see some
1:00:17
issues I've got with it yeah um for me and and not only just issues but it
1:00:23
doesn't also play into the type of game that I really like so it's not not saying bad game is just not for me so for an example um the part of the fun
1:00:30
that I have is making a plan with the Euro you can't make a plan in that game no way cuz your like JP says your
1:00:36
your action spaces might have been destroyed by the time you actually get to actually carrying out your plan you know um there's a little bit too much
1:00:44
well as you said knobby in there for my you know and it's just like you can work really hard at a strategy and then
1:00:49
someone could go well I'm screwed I'm going to take you down with me kind of thing and just blow up all your ships and then your stuff is worth nothing
1:00:57
almost um so there are a few things in there also I felt it was a little bit
1:01:02
punishing going last because you get your last choice of the faction of the
1:01:07
start and then half of the spaces are gone on the map as well so that felt a bit like oh God right okay you would
1:01:14
assume it was like if you if you pick first then you go then you go last kind of thing they might have done it like
1:01:20
some sort of snaky type thing to even that out um I have to say that this game
1:01:25
was obviously in development exact and I have a rule book which is a printed PDF and it even says on was missing some of
1:01:32
the rules and it didn't have all the rules so we we there's absolutely a chance that we didn't play 100% how it
1:01:39
meant to be played there's always that chance we played it live on the stream with the designer there he called out a couple of mistakes we made but otherwise
1:01:45
didn't mention anything so I think you know yeah I've played three games of it and I think I think it is most of the
1:01:52
way there but we've already fed back stuff that we don't think is balanced quite right SPS than that um
1:02:01
certain certain for me certain of the the ships don't do enough and stuff there's little there's lots of little
1:02:06
tweaks that I want to see um to that game but yeah I really like it I know you didn't I I can see the potential but
1:02:13
I mean like my missions for example and for those of you who don't know the the game kind of gives you secret objectives
1:02:20
to go for mine felt almost almost impossible to do straight from the off like or very very difficult to do
1:02:26
compared to other people's and I was like there just like I almost just gave up on them and went for other strategies
1:02:32
which actually didn't pay off too badly cuz I finished second which is 18 points in those cards exactly but there's a
1:02:38
there was a lot of points that I just immediately sacrificed in that lot just cuz I knew like I think top level of the
1:02:46
captain was it a captain or commander commander commander so you had to get to the top level of the commander and in
1:02:52
the first turn the space was gone like the easiest way to do it like before I could even take my first turn I'm like
1:02:58
okay right what am I going to do now you know because then that felt like right that strategy is almost out the window
1:03:04
you know I I don't know um I can definitely see the potential but I think it might even if it fixed all my
1:03:11
problems with it I think it's probably just not the type of game for me where there a little bit too much contention and knobby in there yeah um that's my
1:03:17
feeling but having said that I do think that it could be a really good game and
1:03:23
I think a lot of people will like it yeah the my my feelings on it but I've only played it once so you know take
1:03:30
this with a complete pinch assault as Adrian you played it three times so you probably the most experienced yeah and again it's a demo type where the
1:03:37
designer is already listening to feedback and making tweaks and has been since we played it first at Essen and since then there was already tweaks that
1:03:44
were implemented um anyway sorry yeah no like I I I don't hate the game I'm not
1:03:51
sure I I love it equally to like M clashes of the titles per personally
1:03:56
that's okay and as you say I can already see on their Kickstarter page the game looks different M already the The Arc
1:04:04
ships that you use with the the little cuz they've got like a The Minis that sit on top they look completely
1:04:09
different the actions are easier to see I think now they're not blocking and so all these things are are happening so
1:04:16
yeah if you feel that that interaction is what you're after and you don't mind that not not say it's not screw you kind
1:04:24
of thing but it's it can be but there is a bit of it in in kind of how that can happen but you can't directly attack
1:04:31
other ships you just need to maneuver yourself to make the decision to be able to see where it goes you know so if you
1:04:37
don't mind all of that then um yeah this might be for you cuz whereas people are like void for gun no way too heavy I
1:04:43
cannot get into this this is not my jam this might be more up your street um so
1:04:48
you know definitely check it out um but I think for me I can't help it cuz in the void4 universe I'm like I just
1:04:54
rather to play void4 even though it's nowhere the same game it's not even the same game so we can't really make the
1:04:59
comparison but people are going to because it's part of the same universe yeah I think I think that's I think that
1:05:06
might unfortunately be the case some people who might not do enough research will immediately assume it's void fall
1:05:12
adjacent um and yet there's plenty of games out there that do use their Universe for completely different games
1:05:17
so I feel like lots of people would have learned that lesson already but yeah it is as a designer said the primary point
1:05:24
was I wanted game where people could decide what spots were on the board almost so they decide what spots get
1:05:32
destroyed and what come back um and I think he's done a pretty good job of make of making that fit a theme as well
1:05:39
CU that's quite a tough thing I think to make a theme around yeah I've had a couple of thoughts about it and I
1:05:45
thought oh you could do this you could do that but there's not many options for what what naturally would you get rid of
1:05:51
and bring back in yeah work placement spots for but I think he's done a good job of making the theme work for it so
1:05:57
there you go so that that was my Friday demo my first demo of the weekend I will say as well just before we finish on
1:06:04
Revenant um I can definitely see potential that I know I've said that a couple of times but I would play it again um because I made a big error on
1:06:11
term one um and you did explain it in the rules but when you're learning a new game a lot of rules get told to you and
1:06:19
some of them go in properly and the other ones go in and then bounce straight off you know um and that
1:06:24
particular one bounced straight off off and all it was is like a track where one of my cards said one of my objectives
1:06:30
was I think um get up to level eight on this one particular track um what what
1:06:36
was the track the the one with return order tactics track get up to level eight and and you can do this great
1:06:41
thing I thought that would be a really good thing to kind of gun for to begin with that will give me a bit of an edge on everyone so I got all the way there
1:06:48
and then then it reset and I was like let's jump and then so literally and I couldn't even do the action once because
1:06:54
it was all about I'll sacrifice my first turn get this amazing card out and then I'll be set up for the rest of the game
1:07:00
with that awesome ability so I didn't even use it once so and it was just like
1:07:05
it was a really bad feedb feel bad moment yeah one of your 12 actions has exactly I mean well not even 12 I mean
1:07:13
it was a whole literally a whole turn to get it cuz remember I had to go tactics twice cuz it's level eight so I had a
1:07:19
whole round three a whole round was totally wasted so it was a real feel bad moment and um and I don't know whether
1:07:26
my mentality didn't recover from that and then that colored the rest of the game so I am I am totally up for trying
1:07:32
it again yeah definitely to see what what changes they make and also to see how I feel about it now that I probably
1:07:38
know the game a bit better um so yeah yeah I 100% would play it again 100% um
1:07:45
I've kind of felt like would I own it do I need to own it for me probably not and
1:07:52
that's that's okay I'm considering it but that's good cuz not normally a mine Clash a fishon no traran is kind of my
1:07:59
one main mine Clash game like there are other ones that I don't mind but that's the game that I love from from mine
1:08:05
Clash so the fact that potentially Revenant might be my second or third is good I think it shows a bit of
1:08:12
diversity and they need that because otherwise they just kind of turn out the same sorts of games and it saves me
1:08:19
money to be honest he's like divers you know diversify the portfolio games a
1:08:24
little bit and let other people experience the the Mind Clash production and the mind Clash touch on a game and
1:08:30
and the fact that you really enjoyed I'm really pleased cuz like you say there is a cracking game in there but it won't be
1:08:35
for everyone that's fine that's okay and I think there will be a few tweaks between if you go and watch the the live
1:08:41
stream we did with gaming rules there's definitely a few tweaks from them because we spoke to the designer afterwards who was like I'm making notes
1:08:47
cuz yeah I can see there's some stuff here that you've kind of clearly three games in and two games in with Paul kind
1:08:52
of understood as not quite right yet and that's great I always enjoy when kickstarters at Kickstarter level
1:08:58
they're willing to make those changes isn't always the case so it's nice to see there we go so I went and played
Terrorscape
1:09:06
terrascape so so tercape was a game I've been looking forward to I nearly backed it
1:09:12
twice there's been two seasons of of backing it on game found hidden movement game we talked about it on one of our
1:09:19
episodes where we talked about table presence cuz she put this massive cardboard Mansion which takes 5 Minutes Alone to build um in the middle of the
1:09:25
table and then one side is the serial killer um and you're in a trap mansion and the other side is three survivors so
1:09:33
unlike most hidden movement games you've got three hidden survivors and one visible serial
1:09:39
killer and oh I don't know
1:09:45
so I really like hidden movement games I don't always get them to the table as much as I'd like so I was really looking
1:09:50
forward to this played with Rob Tambo and Davey and they were
1:09:56
the the survivors yeah the the people were running around and I was the Killer
1:10:01
and the first couple of turns we got rule wrong that affected how many cards I could play so cuz I was like I'm not getting to play many cards like they're
1:10:08
getting to move all of this distance and I'm not really getting to get move very far they're just going to keep out running me and I still think that might
1:10:13
be part of the issue um but yeah at no point did I ever feel
1:10:19
in the game like I even had a remote handle on where they were in the Mansion so the way that in in this hidden
1:10:25
movement it's noise so they do certain actions or they'll they'll have to collect certain items that make
1:10:32
noise when you go twice three rounds without making any noise so six rounds
1:10:38
out of maybe 15 20 in the game without making any noise you completely lose all
1:10:45
ability of where they are um and the other thing is you can put barricades and when they rip them down they have to
1:10:50
tell you which barricade they RI down which they did but they always made sure I was on the wrong side of the board so I can't get close to them sort of thing
1:10:57
and they had a great time and the smug faces on the other side of the Mansion definitely said that they were having a
1:11:03
great time but I was as the hidden person as the visible person I had not
1:11:09
even a remote Scooby as to where they were 90% of the time yeah and I just
1:11:15
couldn't figure out how I was going to find them and one of the ways you can find and I do worry if this character on
1:11:20
their side's a bit op so one of the characters it basically ignores noise and if you to sense them which is
1:11:26
basically we say are they roughly in this area of the map they don't have to tell you so one of the players ignores
1:11:33
pretty much every way you have of figuring out if they're there and that's their one trick right others can repair
1:11:39
things or they've got Extra Spaces and and and medkits which are really hard to come by right so they've all got their
1:11:44
own power but when they can ignore basically everything you need as a killer to find them it's really tough right so so they
1:11:52
don't get me wrong I I'm sure that they played really well I know Davey was a little bit puppet Mastery and sort of no
1:11:58
we should do that I could hear him like no no don't let's not do that let's do this instead like when I think they were probably I was quite close to catching
1:12:04
them I felt like they kind of and yeah and and being like the one person like oh well there's three smug people on the
1:12:10
other side we was just really feel feel bad and I I need to try I think it might
1:12:17
just be the the serial killer cuz having looked at the other two so I played as the butcher which is the one they recommend you play with to start with
1:12:24
the chainsaw chainsaw yeah which basically halfway through the game it's just walk into a room and are you
1:12:29
here no no one's like just waving a chainsaw roughly bits of furniture in the hope I might kill one of them that's
1:12:35
how I did that's how I felt for quite a while of the game which just I randomly walk in this room and I wave my chainsaw about no you're not here okay never mind
1:12:42
um the other Killers there's a Silent Assassin there's a Banshee you know they have a bit more agency and they can hide
1:12:49
themselves and I wonder if that might lead to a bit more of a cat cat and mouse Prospect but
1:12:56
yeah for a game I was really Keen to play It's the game you hobbled to get yeah at Essen and you know again
1:13:02
delighted because they gave us a copy to try and all that lot and so I really want to give it another T another go because I've been thinking about this
1:13:09
game for two years basically nearly since since the first game found and all that lot so I really do want to give it
1:13:14
another go but it was just so disappointing and the
1:13:20
the the main bit for me is that as the person who's doing the finding whether you're on you know typic typical games
1:13:25
and I'll talk about another one cuz I've got to play another one on Sunday typical sort of hidden movement games they give you they do one of two things
1:13:32
they either give you a thing that tells you roughly where they are or at halfway
1:13:38
or a third of the way through the game or even a quarter way through the game in the case of White Hall no letters to
1:13:44
White Chapel um it will give you a thing that says they're here and then they get to disappear again you go okay well I
1:13:50
know where they are right in this moment this game doesn't really at any point do that for you and I think that's something that might be missing from it
1:13:57
as a key but yeah need to give it another go the other guys on the other side of the table they had a blast they
1:14:02
had a blast cuz yeah they they hid from me the entire game and gave me absolutely no indication as to where
1:14:07
they were for an hour and a half so they look like naughty school children cuz I was demoing Revenant and you were
1:14:14
literally the table not far and I was just glancing over and I saw them giggling and laughing and then I just
1:14:20
saw you going which weirdly made me CH a little
1:14:25
bit but not your Misfortune it was just it was just so it was so obvious that the dynamic in this game wasn't balanced
1:14:32
in everyone was having a laugh you know it was like yeah which is one of those things I really like with hidden
1:14:38
movement again I'll come back to this when when I talk about SN Sniper Elite on Sunday one of the things that I really like in Hidden movement games is
1:14:45
quite often there's that Dynamic that changes so even when I managed to wound one of them they repair the next turn
1:14:51
they they DAV came along with his Med kit went there you go patch up a chainsaw wound yeah and that was it they
1:14:56
were back to full health again yeah and you the the the the thing they're trying to do is escape either by repairing the
1:15:02
radio and contacting the police which then they have to survive for five more turns while the police turn up or
1:15:07
getting the keys and also potentially getting a secret map to get off the board they got all five Keys got the
1:15:13
secret map anded the radio just for last and waited for the police it's like
1:15:19
they weren't even scared yeah it was there was no Challen it felt like no challenge whatsoever for them at all and
1:15:24
I was like and it was weird because and I said to them a few times are we doing this right cuz when I've watched playthroughs there was quite a bit of
1:15:30
noise on the table and yet to go I would say a third of the game yeah back to back with no
1:15:37
noise constantly is really tough it really felt me a little bit at a loss
1:15:43
but never mind I've got I've played it I want to play it again I want to try it again I want to try it with perhaps not the cheaty character that Rob had that
1:15:49
meant you ignore half the mechanics of the game and maybe with a serial killer that can disappear so they don't feel as
1:15:55
confident as oh well he's on that side of the map I can go over this side of the map don't actually know where he is and there's no way I can catch them like
1:16:00
that sounds fun like so I think there's a bit more there in it I just need to explore some more of the characters yeah
1:16:07
that's fair I mean it's not anything to prove anything but I just looked on uh Google it and all it was tercape Butcher
1:16:14
and they said the first article that came up was does uh the butcher need a boost oh really
1:16:20
yeah that it's probably one of those like we' put it in it's the learn one is
1:16:26
maybe that it's not that great but it's to kind of make sure everyone knows the rules generally of the game do you know
1:16:31
what I mean a tutorial serial killer maybe but it's tough when it's one V3
1:16:37
and one side's definitely short yeah um so that was one of them that I played
Micro Macro: The case of the missing map
1:16:43
and then the next thing I think I think um Paul decided I need a bit more of a
1:16:48
windup was we thought oh we'll have a bit of a light a light sort of time of things and uh Dave and I think Rob went
1:16:55
off cuz I was a bit like sulky at that point like I not sulky but I was just a bit like I'm a bit done for the day and
1:17:00
they're like well we'll find something else I was n I'm all right I'm okay um cuz like getting to 11:00 as I've said
1:17:06
before is quite big for me right like I don't quite often last the full day of gaming and I did three days in a row four days in a row did well so I did
1:17:12
well but they were like oh okay we got micro macro and I'd bought this to someone as a gift once and hadn't played
1:17:18
it myself so okay cool it's basically where's Wally with murderers right so it's it's find the crime and and work
1:17:24
backwards so you find like it it'll give you a clue and you work backwards so fair enough here's your clue from PA
1:17:32
here's your map no worries okay on the outskirts of town find this woman who's
1:17:37
being killed near highrise blocks so there's only like five high-rise blocks on the map so we're like well this will
1:17:42
be easy to find first part not a problem 5 minutes goes by we've all moved around the table a bit so we're now searching
1:17:49
the area the last person's just searched in case they've clearly missed it no do it again 10 minutes goes by this doesn't
1:17:57
feel right we feel like we should have we've all been all the way around the table at this point we've all looked at it felt like every part of the map could
1:18:03
you even remotely be considered the edge of the city this doesn't feel right look at the
1:18:09
back of it from the wrong bloody game so it's not there's a there's a bit where
1:18:15
you can combine all four modules all four Maps into an epic version of the game you do this massive spree across
1:18:21
all of it and that's what he'd given us but he'd given us the wrong map to start with and hadn't told us that's genius I hope
1:18:29
so I hope he got well he did get giggle out it because he posted it on gaming rules slack Channel today to say he' got
1:18:34
a bit of a giggle out of it I was like ah thanks but eventually we got the right the right map and we got a
1:18:40
different set of cards for a slightly smaller Adventure sort of thing and um we just started with the hardest mission
1:18:46
basically from that box cuz he said the other ones can be a bit easy and you'll get through quick give give yourself a
1:18:51
CH like give yourself a bit of a challenge and we got all the way to the last card and required you to there's
1:18:56
like four streams you were going off on and you answered all those cards and then basically said well continue all of
1:19:02
those four streams and at that point Rob had basically given up Tambo had gone um
1:19:07
so it's mostly me and Davey at this point and we were just a bit like whatever done with it um but up to that
1:19:13
point we had a good fun trying to find things and see what was going on and all that lot so it did work out but Paul had been on the wind up for 15 minutes first
1:19:20
giving us the wrong card for the wrong map legend so yeah yeah and then that was my Friday done and then you're done
1:19:27
there we go so Saturday another hotel breakfast second the second Hotel
SATURDAY: DAY 2
1:19:33
breakfast my first nice I've been good oh that's good yeah four treatments after one cook breakfast this gon not go
1:19:39
every time so yeah or I just feel a bit bloaty I feel like my only gripe for the
1:19:45
whole weekend was the food if I'm honest the certainly on the Friday I ordered
1:19:50
the burger and before I got to sit down the burger came out and was cold yes basically like we' been sat down like 30
1:19:57
seconds and the burger came out and was cold and I thought that's been sat on the side waiting to come out um and we
1:20:03
had a stale burger bun on one of them and all that kind of stuff and it was just didn't feel quite up to the same
1:20:09
standards I didn't have anything like that but I do I will say it didn't feel like it was up to the same standard as
1:20:15
last year and I and I don't really know how that can be the case considering it's the same location and everything
1:20:20
else but I know it was just a shame because the food's never been like great great but it's always been good
1:20:27
convention food like it'll do the job it tastes all right and like had sausage and MASH which was the special one day and that was really good yeah but the
1:20:34
other days where I had other things that were just off the sort of generically bit of the menu same yeah and Thursday
1:20:39
where we didn't have the gridon menu the food I had then was lovely yeah their General menu is actually really good so
1:20:45
yeah so it's just a shame cuz some of it came out either too quick or too slow and was a bit cold and all that lot
1:20:51
which is my only gpe with it but the breakfasts were always good so there we go I quite enjoyed my Saturday morning
1:20:57
breakfast so what did people play first what was their starter for Saturday morning yeah so Saturday morning I
Dinogenics
1:21:04
played uh dinogenics that was my first game course you did yeah I've I've had
1:21:09
the game for a while I've played it a couple of times but um yeah just I know that tambo's been itching to play it and
1:21:16
uh yeah I just thought this might be a good good time to actually get it done and I'd forgotten how much I like that
1:21:21
game so yeah we already had a really good blast with it really we had uh me
1:21:26
Tambo Rob and Josh Stewart's boy M um yeah just had loads of fun with it reminded me why I love dinogenics and
1:21:34
kind of reminds me of um the tiny epic dinos on crack it's like just tiny epic
1:21:40
din building your own little you know Park and you're managing the rampaging and you're building buildings and you
1:21:46
know going on worker placement places but yeah it just feels a bit more epic and you know yeah really really good fun
1:21:53
we all out a blast with it I have to Stuart's boy is a grown man yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Stu Stuart's boy 31 years
1:22:01
old yeah he's literally a grown man yeah he's a grown man hello Josh if you're listening don't know if you do but you
1:22:06
know we got a few joshes now haven't we yeah got my son Josh we've got uh Josh tambos
1:22:12
tambo's nephew yeah and Stewart's part of our gaming group Sons Josh yeah lot
1:22:19
of joshes lot of joshing yeah so yeah Dino genics all good fun yeah definitely
1:22:24
but you know you know I love my dino game you know it's just a classic worker placement guys I I could go through it
1:22:30
in more detail but basically it's worker placement but you're kind of set collecting dinos so like you know the
1:22:36
more powerful dinos requires you to have more cards before you can actually play them it's your collecting DNA basically
1:22:42
it's the idea of the game um but what makes it for me is actually the expansion um the expansion kind of means
1:22:47
that you don't have that luck box you kind like I can't get the DNA I want like you could be one card away and then
1:22:53
you're stumped you just have to keep trying to draw cards and hope for the best whereas this introduces a kind of like you have to pay for it but you can
1:23:00
swap in any card for a wild kind of DNA that you can just use on anything um so
1:23:05
yeah that kind of fixes that problem and just adds a few more kind of um sea creatures and stuff like that you know
1:23:11
just for a bit of variety but yeah but most excellent game we all really enjoyed it and um yeah lots of good fun
1:23:18
good way to start out the uh Saturday morning cool mean day we started the day uh with stress btic
Stress Botics
1:23:24
oh yeah um which was originally arcs so when we put it in the planner with
1:23:31
Martin and nandy uh who we' met before actually last year um and Martin listens
1:23:37
to the show and supports the show so hi Martin how you doing um and he's he's
1:23:42
been getting into stress btics literally he not long been released from Essen and he said do you mind if we switch the
1:23:48
game like no I've got arcs I've played it loads now I'm I'm cool whatever and then I'm not going to lie the the
1:23:54
morning of I was like oh got stress btics this morning and I know nothing
1:24:00
about I know zero about this game and it doesn't look the most inviting of games
1:24:06
is you know I kept calling it Exel the game but it I mean it doesn't look like
1:24:11
a spreadsheet at all but it it's just I've heard having looked at it at Essen
1:24:16
I think Paul had his copy we we kind of look through it and went what the is complexity rating of 4.7 or whatever
1:24:23
ridiculous got it's really high in complexity and it's like what is this nonsense all about um so then we got
1:24:30
there me and Davey went there we got coffee and we thought right now let's do it we're going to and normally we'll have a great time cuz me and him will'll
1:24:37
probably lean on to heavy games anyway and off we go so Martin did a fantastic
1:24:43
teach I have to give that out to him he set the scene of this world that we were about to get into and that really helped
1:24:49
me to to kind of dig into what the hell this game is about so just very quick it's you are playing as
1:24:57
robots hence stress stress btics is the name but you are playing these robots that are mining this kind of exoplanets
1:25:05
core for for materials right um and you're all under uh instruction from the
1:25:11
alpha bot which we nicknam mum she was like the the mum bot that would look after everything and make sure that
1:25:17
we're all good and and if Mom gets a bit stressed then we all get a bit stressed and and yeah we kind of need to look
1:25:23
after as we we kind of do do our jobs um so you've kind of got this this bit on
1:25:29
the bottom left hand side of the the board which is the the planet and all of the different chambers and roots and
1:25:35
you've got the the planet's core as well which sits on the corner and that can rotate around and has different channels
1:25:41
of where you kind of go um and each of the chambers in in the crust and the
1:25:47
mantle and the the core Etc all give you different resources like lava and acid
1:25:53
and uh gas and uh like beta matter and all the all like really obscure
1:26:00
resources and like what is going on um and and you kind of need to like mine
1:26:05
resources and you need to get the the right kind of resource mix because at the top of the planet you've got three
1:26:11
ships three spaceships coming over and you got a yellow an orange and a red and the yellow one's really fast it's going
1:26:17
to kind of get to its destination first and the orange will lag behind and the red will be the slowest and you've got
1:26:23
delivery points a b and c which are locations on the planet so you kind of know what they want it's like here's the
1:26:29
order this is what we need to mine for and this is what we need to deliver but now you have to time your delivery at
1:26:35
the right time to deliver the right resources so you can meet when the passes at the right moment right you get
1:26:42
three opportunities to do it so if you miss one you're okay I can do it later um but yeah you're trying to do this and
1:26:48
all the while this is a programming game so it's not like I can just move like not you can move when you want but you
1:26:53
have to program your actions in so you're drawing cards of which you've got move mine and connect like their plug
1:27:01
and youve got some of these cards are boosted versions of the cards which means you can get to do them twice which
1:27:07
is awesome and uh yeah and you'll programming your your actions uh on the
1:27:12
top of your player Board of which you start with two so you can either go a move and mine or mine and mine or mine
1:27:18
move or whatever so you're kind of trying to get to where you you want to get to and you can always boost your
1:27:24
actions by using batteries so you've got different color batteries which will help you boost the the three different
1:27:29
uh actions that you can have and you can kind of um yeah and the batteries are
1:27:35
quite cute cuz like one of them will sit in your your Bot your Bot is basically a cube with a cylind hole in the Middle
1:27:41
where the battery will kind of sit in and so if you want to move really fast you'll probably want the the black
1:27:47
battery to sit in there and then you can spend it from there and way you go but your Bot always needs a battery in it
1:27:52
because it's a robot it needs a power source um and and you're kind of doing all this
1:27:57
stuff and I was absolutely digging this and I surprised the crap out of me cuz
1:28:03
you know thematic I I like space and sci-fi but it's really weird and and different um and you've got these uh the
1:28:11
cylindroids which are these basically cylinder uh cylinder robots that kind of come in on a conveyor belt and start
1:28:17
attacking your mom your alphab Bot you've got to uh manage that as well
1:28:22
because if you don't she gets a kick in in and she starts to go on fire and then you all get stress and stress is a
1:28:28
resource kind of in the game so when you take stress on it's a track that runs alongside the spaceships so if you get
1:28:35
more stressed than delivery point a you can't deliver cuz you're too stressed to
1:28:41
deliver at delivery point a and so you've kind of got to manage the stress levels of your butt as well as you're
1:28:47
going through this game and it's just it's absolutely Bonkers but I'm digging it I'm like absolutely digging what what
1:28:54
is doing and we had a blast like I mean the teach was the teach was a lot uh for
1:29:00
this and we were yeah about an hour an hour Teach an hour teach yeah this
1:29:05
making me feel sick yeah and but but you know we we're invested was like no we
1:29:10
want to play this game with Martin we want to want to do it and uh and yeah so it was a lot to come up front and Davey
1:29:16
I want to point out he did brilliantly at this cuz you know Davey that's Davey all over this top no no the teach oh
1:29:23
really yeah like he was he very you know Davey likes to learn how he likes to learn bless him and he was very good and
1:29:31
we're all patient and we got through it and and yeah we got to the end and and then we started to play it and yeah we
1:29:37
just kind of got into a flow with it and it's got about I don't know 10 maybe 12 rounds in the game and so once you get
1:29:44
the flow and you know what you're doing it's not actually that bad it just sounds mental but it's not and you're
1:29:50
still going at what 2:00 yeah finishing off we had a lot of porn is and there's you know food bits that people have to
1:29:56
go off and photo opportunity for for the patron supporters and all of that stuff's going on but you know what I I
1:30:03
really enjoyed the play of it I would absolutely play it again now I know how to play it I would play it again and
1:30:08
there's loads of stuff I've not even mention but I won't go into it because it'll be another hour um but I anyone
1:30:15
who likes the heavy games and likes the kind of quirky theme of managing robots and stress and and deliveries and
1:30:22
programming and things like that if that's kind of like that's a bit different and interesting I'll check it out but this is not going to be for 98%
1:30:30
of the the B gaming hobby space people right it's I know you two would hate it
1:30:36
oh yeah 100% you would hate it yeah absolutely the second you were explaining it before you were playing it
1:30:41
I was like I'm out already just no but yeah I'm enjoying it I I it's great nice
1:30:49
yeah it fun it was and I think that was down to Martin to be honest I think if I pick that up from the rule book and
1:30:55
learn it at gcon it wouldn't have happened but Martin did his own work kind of his wheelhouse isn't it his
1:31:00
teaching complex games yeah he he just the way he did it set the world up set
1:31:06
how everything worked and we made some rules Goofs but you going to he's not super experienced with the game as well
1:31:11
he's just you know he's new to it but considering that yeah I thought he did a cracking job so well done mate nice yeah
Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth
1:31:19
so I played what I think would probably call the convention
1:31:24
game on first thing while I was waiting for my other game which was and I've got
1:31:29
get the name right Lord of the Rings Middle Earth jewel is that correct pretty much it Jewel for Middle Earth
1:31:36
Lord of the Rings je Jewel for Middle Earth I just kept calling it seven wonders Jewel Hobbit Edition which is winding a lot of people up um which
1:31:44
quite amused me but yes it's it's a reskin of Seven Wonders jeel with the Lord of the Rings IP on it it's taken
1:31:51
out scoring for I've not played the first one so it's taken out scoring instead what it's done is you
1:31:57
got the fellowship which is what previously have been science collect sets and if you get one of every set you
1:32:03
can win by Fellowship you've got the chase for the ring so both sides can
1:32:08
purchase um blue cards which aren't kind of what they are in the in any other Seven Wonders game which moves you along
1:32:14
the track and if either person gets to the end of their track if the if the ring rats catch the hobbits or the hobbits get to Mordor then they've won
1:32:23
that way y or you've got like a battle like map which is just an area control
1:32:29
game and if you have full control of the map then you win that way and otherwise from what I can see it's exactly the
1:32:35
same as seven wers juel you're going to pick a card some of them laid on top of each other so you'll sort of overturn
1:32:40
cards and stuff like that and I think I played six games of this over the weekend and every time I turned around
1:32:47
someone was playing a copy of it all weekend all three days there seem to be
1:32:52
at least one copy out at all time times definitely kind of felt like it was the game that was everywhere this weekend
1:32:58
and it's good I really enjoyed it everyone I watch seemed to play play it seem to enjoy it to some extent sort of
1:33:04
at least sort of had a good game of it um I think there's a few of us there's a few times where sometimes you know
1:33:10
you're done by the third act like you've let it go too far even before the third act it's like well all that has to
1:33:16
happen is the wrong card turn over here and and someone's won and inevitably that'll happen but that's probably because you've mismanaged the first
1:33:22
two-thirds of the game um but sometimes the third act can feel a bit like a forone conclusion is be would be my only
1:33:28
criticism on it because it's so quick you can fit two or three games in the same space as most other light games um
1:33:36
and yeah picked myself up a copy nice CU I enjoyed it a lot and it's not many there's not many specific two-player
1:33:42
games that I enjoy normally I enjoyed playing two-player versions of bigger games designed for more players but this
1:33:49
was pretty good for that I enjoyed it I think me and Curley ended the convention on La of Jewel for Middle Earth and he taught me
1:33:56
it and it was it was just a nice end to the weekend cuz it was just pretty chill
1:34:02
lasted 20 minutes I you spanked me but it lasted 20 minutes at least I got to the third uh third age to be fair it was
1:34:09
pretty much an accident as well like I didn't even wasn't the strategy I was going for but you know it just so
1:34:14
happened that it was just unluckiness like two cars are the same final Fellowship car came up that I needed was
1:34:20
the two in a row yeah I had that a couple of times and you're like that's what I mean sometimes it's four you they've already got five of the six
1:34:26
things they need and you're like well if at any point to ENT scienes I'm going to
1:34:32
call them Sciences sence like if two of those just happen to be on the same row or close together the chances are that
1:34:38
you've lost already at this point sort of thing so I forgot it was a win condition so that that's on
1:34:43
me but yeah so I got that done and then went and played what I think might be my favorite
Kanban EV
1:34:49
lerda which is cban yeah so Matt reached out so Matt regular listener um
1:34:55
commenter commentator um reached out and said look I know you talking about a caman wanting to play cban again at some
1:35:03
at some point because you haven't really got it in the group not yet cban not yet it's coming oh have you have you got it
1:35:09
on order have you yeah got it with my Speak Easy pledge I was like right this goddamn game I've been trying to buy for
1:35:15
ages I can't get hold of it s I'm just getting on my Speak Easy PL and it's here so we will be here some point so
1:35:22
again Matt graah and Paul the the regular po that we play pa um
1:35:29
played campan and and um I'd watched i' played it but like a year and a half year before something like that um and
1:35:36
Matt did a very good job with the teach considering he hadn't played it in Forever by the sounds of things as well
1:35:41
and just a couple of points oh don't forget that sort of thing so um yeah played it I had a blast with it I won
1:35:49
which helped um but I felt like I knew that even though it been a year a little bit since I played it I remembered the
1:35:54
flow which I think is one of the credits to caman is it makes so much sense thematically a lot of luras say like
1:36:02
Lera games most about half of them um a lot of them don't always line up with a
1:36:08
theme or the theme's a bit convoluted or something that that makes it tougher to teach cam band's absolutely spot on for
1:36:15
this for it it makes sense what's happening the flow of the game makes sense and I remember I remember getting
1:36:21
in the flow and just got in the flow straight away and did I needed to do and I definitely made a couple of mistakes and yet still managed to to get the win
1:36:28
um with Paul coming a close second um and yeah again having the designer on
1:36:34
hand to answer questions is helpful he was teaching the Speak Easy sponsor um sponsor demo he was doing that Mr Vel um
1:36:42
and we were like oh we don't know quite about this one he came over and went I did design this game years ago like don't if I don't know the answer you got
1:36:49
to sort of forgive me but then we had a blast and just talked about sort of other games got on with what then hadn't
1:36:54
got on with that year and stuff like that and just again finding out the the inside of a designer's mind is just
1:37:00
really nice sometimes he's such a nice chap on that on that side note I was
1:37:06
playing um I forget what game it was I think it might have been like ticket to ride or something and next to our table
1:37:11
like Ticket to Ride by the way with my mom just you know it's not my usual bag but uh mom likes it and um on on the
1:37:18
next table next to us we had uh David tury and V Lera discussing a new game
1:37:24
and it was just like I how their brains work I don't know it was
1:37:30
like like that and it was like all these crazy designs and it was like on a flipping they were noting it down on
1:37:35
tablets I was like oh my God what's going on here yeah I'm going to use a Star Trek reference reference cuz uh
1:37:41
they they sounded like the biners right which is the two aliens that like talking binary very yeah thought binary
1:37:48
code definitely like different different language to me that's for sure brilliant love interesting yeah but no it's good
1:37:56
good that you get to catch up with valal had the Speak Easy demo last year and that was awesome to to do my one regret
1:38:03
is the uh The Great Library like wish I'd got to play that yeah it's tough
1:38:08
because I want to ask him what other what other game it's most like in his collection but see if you like it or not
1:38:13
yeah cuz there's a very particular divide I feel in leera's sort of games with the exception of vinhos which I
1:38:18
think fits in one and I just don't quite get on with it there's a very particular divide in his types of like these the
1:38:24
the sort of main series of games as people call it and I kind of want to know which side of the divide it sits on
1:38:30
um but yeah um I'm quite I need to see it when it comes out but again the idea
1:38:35
of it sounds good so we'll see what it looks like when it gets here but yeah yeah just great to great to have a chat
1:38:42
with him as well and catch up with him what about you curly what else you've been doing on the Saturday well like I
Ticket to Ride
1:38:47
said I play Ticket to Ride with Mom the only reason I mention it again is because Rob won he did tell me he was
1:38:53
very with veryone yeah I think he did yeah he did really well he told David tury he told V
1:38:59
lero he told Paul grer and he told out everybody everyone yeah yeah so shout
1:39:04
out to Rob dog he uh he smashed it on mate what on buddy uh but yeah part from that the rest of my Saturday was just
1:39:11
taken up with the captain's chair that we've already talked about I won't go through it again had a great time but probably wouldn't do two in a row again
1:39:17
after that so especially I really I wanted you know I asked you for the teach but that was like with the teach
1:39:22
on top that was about 7 hours of captain's chair yeah it was yeah full
1:39:27
day work of captain and I love it I really want to play it again now but 7 hours in one row might be a bit much
1:39:33
yeah it's fine go on then JP what about you what was your next I played a game so I was
Rebirth
1:39:38
kind of a bit of a loose end and I was kind of wanding around everyone was busy in a game or doing something like what
1:39:44
are you doing in the game okay what are you doing and then I caught up with Aiden and Sarah so another pair of
1:39:51
listeners and actually we're at the um Deon ball game weekend last I say last weekend guys love you yeah um so I got
1:39:58
chatting to them and I said what you doing now I said I know but just going to sit down and play a game so I'll come and join you and uh it was really nice
1:40:06
just invited himself along I did just I they wanted a two player but I mused my way in and made it a three so it's fine
1:40:12
but no we we picked up a rebirth from the games library and they said I we'll
1:40:17
teach you and I said fantastic I've been wed to play this I'm intrigued by rebirth so it's a game designed by by
1:40:23
Ryan kitzia and um it's got a lovely production to it cuz he's got the
1:40:29
limited Kickstarter Edition I'm not a massive like I haven't been a huge fan of of his work but then again I've not
1:40:37
played most of his work I think many people have but but I'm intrigued by
1:40:42
rebirth just I don't know there's something about this game it just looks gorgeous like the production the the
1:40:49
whole kind of premise is that it's set in the future mankind has lost its way and basically needs to kind of re rebor
1:40:57
the the world and and and you've kind of got like nice picturesque um very green
1:41:04
looking board with little airships and it's like like it's bit like that kind of planton nuo but without the the
1:41:10
robots if I you know as a as a theme I mean the theme is could be anything
1:41:15
literally could be anything doesn't matter what it is bearing in mind all these other hex games have completely different themes and so they're quite a
1:41:21
lot of similarities certain other games um ex yeah anyway so yeah so we sat down
1:41:27
and played um on the Ireland side so it has two sides Scotland and Ireland um and we actually play rebirth on Sunday
1:41:33
as well didn't we so we play Scotland on Sunday and we played the Ireland on the Saturday with Aiden Sarah so they they
1:41:40
taught the game and basically it's straight so straightforward and simple you can teach this game in like under
1:41:46
five minutes right and it's a tile Lane game so you got a bag of tiles again if you've got the kickstarter Edition so
1:41:53
you got a bag of tiles that are all your kind of house or your clan and on your turn you pull a tile out the bag and you
1:42:01
put it on the map matching the symbol up with the space on the map yeah and you score points so if you've got an energy
1:42:07
farm or a food farm which is literally two of the three symbols that you see on your tiles you put it down if it's a
1:42:13
energy farm on its own it's one point you put another energy farm next to it it's two points and you can kind of
1:42:18
chain and and score more points if you put a tile down and it's next to a castle space then you get to claim that
1:42:25
castle and you got these lovely modeled castles in your color and off you go um
1:42:30
now the challenge is if other players contest you for that it becomes an area of control uh around that castle so if
1:42:36
another player puts two tiles next to it they'll take control of that castle and put their lovely colored Castle in place
1:42:41
and there's some tiebreaking rules in there which I won't bother going into but you've also got in the Scotland side
1:42:48
you've got um these Cathedrals so if you place your tile next to a cathedral you put your little cathedal marker and
1:42:53
you'll draw a mission card is that only on the Scotland side yes oh I assume that would be on the other side as well
1:42:58
oh I really like that unique to Scotland so you put your yeah your Cathedral thing dra a mission and your mission is
1:43:04
like your personal goal objective so if you do this cool thing or if you have
1:43:09
the longest stretch of road on the edge of the Coast or if you control a certain Castle or then you get like eight points
1:43:17
or whatever the end of the game so it's given you a bit of direction as you go and there eight Cathedrals on the board and and you can kind of maneuver to get
1:43:23
those but it's such a chill game eight Cathedrals you can have maximum eight
1:43:29
missions me I got I knew I was doing bad and I got four and you just got to like keep your eye on yeah has anyone blocked
1:43:36
you off can you get in there and all that kind of stuff so yeah and on the other side the island side which we played on Saturday the difference is
1:43:42
really I mean it's fundamentally the same game but you have Towers instead of cathedrals and you have a row of public
1:43:49
um missions that are available to everyone I think there's eight and so you can kind of see what's available you
1:43:55
can kind of see what the race is going to be for from the off from everybody I quite like that um and the tower has
1:44:01
tiles on there so when you go next to a tower you flip the tile and it gives you uh a one-off u ability not ability but a
1:44:09
thing that you can do so it could be you get to go again y or you get to put a times two marker on one of the public
1:44:15
objectives so therefore if you score it you're going to get double points nice or um you can draw three tiles out of
1:44:21
your bag and play one so just adds a little bit of little bit of extra little bit of extra not masses but just a
1:44:27
little bit of extra to control um your strategy a little bit more cuz ultimately you're drawing one
1:44:32
tile from a bag and you've got to place it somewhere um the other thing I didn't mention is around the settlement so you've got the uh tile that you can put
1:44:39
into settlement spaces and they have like one two three or four little houses on them and then again you have a little
1:44:46
area um kind of majority on influence on on scoring those and the only score when you fill them up as well um I absolutely
1:44:54
adored this game and it surprised me how
1:44:59
how it adore I I wouldn't have pegged you as it because I played it at the Expo and I fell in love with it as well
1:45:05
but it's not a game if you'd gone oh would you want to show me something I would never have shown you rebirth in a million years I don't think no cuz it's
1:45:11
on the light end and but I I just had such chilled experience it is playing
1:45:17
kind of chilled isn't it like it's for me it's chill it's like and I just love the rule which you know it's so like
1:45:23
obvious but you know you draw a tile from your bag after you've had your go so you can actually see what you're
1:45:28
going to do so when it comes around to your turn you're playing the tile so it's really Snappy yeah this game is like bang bang bang bang bang back to me
1:45:36
done next next and yeah I honestly that this is the best new game for me of this
1:45:42
weekend nice um it's not my favorite game I play cuz captain's chair is my favorite game that that I played but
1:45:49
best the new game that I experienced was that and on both games cuz I just love playing both maps and experiencing the
1:45:56
yeah what because it was you me Rob and Adam from punch board on the Sunday and I'll be honest my brain wasn't quite in
1:46:03
the game so I was like making silly mistakes all over the place but still had a good time just getting a bit frustrated with like well you've made
1:46:08
that mistake now I've new agent but that's cuz you weren't paying attention so yeah you were kind of waiting for your next game waiting for Mark monk to
1:46:14
turn up at the start I was like oh if he turns up I might just kind of have to clear off the board a little bit or whatever and then got far enough into it
1:46:20
I was like hope I'm not holding him up sort of thing and then so yes I wasn't quite in the game but it was nice to get play a game I haven't played a game with
1:46:26
Adam before he taught me draft and write records in a previous sponsored demo but um I don't think I've played a game with
1:46:31
him before so it's just nice to play a game with him as well um yeah he kept swearing at me when I kept stealing his
1:46:37
castles yeah we all did that's fun and then let Rob just randomly like have half of Scotland because none of us
1:46:44
challenged him to because we forgot we forgot Rob was playing we we were just contesting each other and then Rob was
1:46:50
just doing his thing in the in the north yeah good job it but I have pre-ordered it and I Christmas is coming up and I
1:46:58
thought this is game that's going to be perfect for my family it'll work out and they'll love sorry let me rephrase that
1:47:04
they will tolerate uh this game with me cuz it's all you got to do guys is just
1:47:09
draw a t have a bag and put it down somewhere okay this is it for €60 that is what it was at ESS and it felt a bit
1:47:15
much yeah but if it comes out and it gets down to like the 30 quid Mark like even I don't need the bag and all that
1:47:21
lot like it's nice but you don't need it no um I think that it's been on my list to kind of purchase but I kind of yeah
1:47:28
I'm aware of the price on that one but no I want to say thank you Aiden and Sarah for for the game it was great fun
1:47:35
loved it nice so I was kind of requiring some fuds some food and um Tambo and
Taverns of Tiefenthal
1:47:44
Josh were kind of at a loose end so I played tavens of th hole whatever that's got you playing that um that so yeah so
1:47:52
obviously I know it's from the same guys that did CRA quedlinburg and I kind of fell out of love with I really loved CRA
1:47:58
quedlinburg when I first played it but I kind of fell out of love with that and was sort of okay we'll play taverns and
1:48:04
yeah it was didn't set my world on fire or anything like that but um I think we talked about it previously it's a nice
1:48:09
Rome dice but you pass them around so you can kind of screw over other people
1:48:15
by taking the dice you want and they don't and all that kind of stuff and you kind of build a deck and and upgrade
1:48:20
your your Tavern as you go and it's it's just that nice sort of light midweight Euro wasn't doing anything particularly
1:48:27
exciting but was a really nice play I enjoyed I enjoyed my playthrough of it I'd play it again yeah but yeah I don't
1:48:34
think there's anything particular to call out there did you play with all the modules yeah they had the schnaps in
1:48:40
yeah t was like I'm just going to throw it all in because it'll be fine and yeah it was yeah I don't know how much I'd want to play without some of those
1:48:46
modules cuz it feels like it needs it I've only played all the I haven't had the guest book one I don't think yeah I
1:48:51
played guest book yeah so I had the rest of them in I think but yeah not not those so yeah so I did that and then I
Huang
1:48:58
had the sponsored demo that I was booked in for when I wasn't actually teaching but I was doing which was
1:49:04
hang ah okay which is a rhino kitzia game and it why I had completely wrong
1:49:10
expectations of that game so because it's a hex game and the other two I've played were rebirth and cascadero I was
1:49:18
expecting a very similar sort of put hex's down area control make things join
1:49:23
up something along those lines it's not that at all it's like a little battle war game where you're putting down
1:49:30
hexes and if you put down a hex and you've got like five leaders of five different colors um and if you put down
1:49:36
a hex matching the color of the leader you get a victory point and basically uh you collect all these um Four Color
1:49:43
victory points then one is wild if you put down all of those the the one you have the lowest score on is your
1:49:50
winner but if at any point you have two contesting leaders in an area cuz they're linked up by hexes you either
1:49:56
have a war or a revolt and it'll require either yellow or red hexes and you can put some of them into this battling game
1:50:01
and all this kind of stuff and it was quite clear one person had played yellow and yanie and the rest hadn't around the
1:50:06
table and it was quite clear that none of us were expecting this game so about a third of the way through we just
1:50:13
started playing chaos mode basically I was like I've got nothing to gain out of this but I'm going to link these up and we're going to have a massive war knock
1:50:19
four of the leaders off the board and all this kind of stuff and and just oh and now I'll have a Revolt cuz I'm putting that there and we'll see
1:50:26
and it it's one where I think people will get upset playing it because they'll have built this nice little area
1:50:32
and then you come over and you can just put hex anywhere there's no rules you just put it down it's like all right that's link that to that now we're
1:50:38
having a war whoever's got the most red hexes on their side of the war will win
1:50:43
and that kind of stuff and so we had it's I haven't laughed so much at a game that I've not been bothered to play like
1:50:49
that I can't be bothered to play in such a long time because we were just doing stupid things to make each other laugh
1:50:55
and whining each other up and all that kind of stuff and I said at the end of it this room's going to get quiet when we leave cuz we we're clearly the
1:51:02
noisiest in the room just randomly playing these hexes down all that lot and I had an absolute blast playing it
1:51:07
but it's not a game I will ever buy or play again because it is like a it's a weird area control war game um that will
1:51:17
upset people cuz I think if we had been taken it seriously it would have upset someone at some point that
1:51:23
so yeah so that was my last one for Saturday but it was fun I enjoyed my
1:51:28
playthrough of it um yeah fair enough but not because of the game because of
1:51:34
how the people treated it and just the chaos mode of what why have you done that well just cuz I fancy doing it I'm
1:51:39
not a war now I don't care anything about this I've just linked it up so you guys are at War enjoy bye sort of things
1:51:44
so and yeah had a blast playing that way yeah I mean that leads nicely into my last game of Saturday which was of a
Thunder Road Vendetta
1:51:51
similar not Thief but of mentality yeah should we say and this it's becoming a
1:51:57
bit of a thing at grion the Saturday night games end up just being just don't don't give a just have a laugh
1:52:03
silly nonsense let's make lots of noise and uh and I know Curley was on the table literally next to us playing his
1:52:09
captain's chair looking over going what the are you lot doing and then we had Davey and um I think Marcus playing
1:52:16
civilan on the other side and we were playing Thunder Road Vendetta oh I came over and saw this this looked brilliant
1:52:23
I don't think I'd ever want necessarily to play it that much yeah I think again as you say it might be a once a year
1:52:29
thing but you guys look like you having the I was I'd been sore from laughing from hang and then came over and could
1:52:34
see you all in that similar state of honestly like it hurt to smile this we didn't finish it which my only like wish
1:52:41
we had because we were getting late and Jo Joel so we're playing with Joel and CLA from Devon dice podcast and we had
1:52:49
Josh uh Stewart's boy um and another Josh um which is T's nephew and myself
1:52:56
and Rob so we had a a full six player game of Thunder Road which is quite a lot of players so we had to have uh the
1:53:03
the big rig uh in there which Joel was playing basically this massive truck
1:53:09
with with loads of things and compartments behind him with guns and all sorts so anyway Thunder Road is
1:53:15
think Mad Max yeah and uh micro machines it do you know what it reminded me of
1:53:21
was Death Race yeah yeah a little bit cuz you had a big truck and then you had some cars that were fitted out
1:53:26
differently and some helicopters and all that kind of stuff it looked like that to me yeah so you've kind of got this
1:53:31
Rolling Road So you you're racing down this straight bit of track which has mud and tarmac and all sorts of stuff
1:53:38
hazards everywhere and I mean we didn't actually get to the end of this road but
1:53:43
the idea is that when you get to the end the back piece um will will go and the new piece will go on the front and
1:53:49
you'll slide so it kind of looks like this this Road's moving as you're progressing but it's not really taking up all the space on the board but yeah
1:53:56
you've got like a small medium and large car and you've got a helicopter and you got unique uh people if you're playing
1:54:01
with the expansions which Joel has the Chrome Edition so he has literally everything um in there so we got unique
1:54:07
uh player abilities and and characters and we've got upgrades that you can kind of put onto your card uh sorry your car
1:54:13
at the start when you do a draft and you go right I'm going to make sure my my small car has a rail gun on it and I'm
1:54:18
going to put a big snow plow on this one and it does all sorts of stuff but the
1:54:23
premise of the game is just random right because it is a rolling move which I was like it's a rolling
1:54:30
move but it doesn't matter cuz it's you roll four dice and you're putting them onto your cars so you kind of mitigate
1:54:37
it a little bit cuz you kind of go well I'm going to put my two on my small car and I'm going to put my four on that one
1:54:43
and I've got a control board on the side where I can call in the chopper or I can do a nitrous boost or whatever so
1:54:49
there's some mitigation there but you really you're on the board and off you go and you have to use your full movement you
1:54:56
have to do do the full thing so you can kind of guess what's going to happen is you're going to end up crashing into each other and this is where the fun bit
1:55:03
happens because whenever you crash into another player purposely or you know
1:55:08
unintentionally you you sit the cars on top of each other they stack and then you roll a dice that says which one's
1:55:15
been slammed and it's either going to be top or bottom and it will favor uh the one on the bottom generally but there is
1:55:20
a chance that you will end up up being the one that you know comes off worse and then you roll the Direction die on
1:55:27
there so you've got like uh the the six hexes but they're not hexes but six
1:55:32
spaces that sit around the space of where the slammed car will go and it's just caused like honestly the first turn
1:55:39
we all got our cars out no drama Rob ends up being on the side of
1:55:45
the road on the yeah left hand side and we had the Joel's uh big uh rig
1:55:50
literally next to him and then about I don't know loads of cars just in the middle of the road and then someone came
1:55:57
at the back ended up shunting the back car and it caused a chain reaction of Slam slam slam slam car was going
1:56:04
everywhere and then Rob's Car ended up being shunted off the road and then back again and then other cars got shunted
1:56:11
into hazards which ended up blowing things up and it was just absolute nonsense we were just laughing so hard
1:56:17
cuz it was like what is going on and and we were just yeah we were racing down
1:56:23
and shooting each other and it's just it's chaos absolute chaos this game we
1:56:28
noticed you were enjoying yourself but I want to play it again and I want to finish it and I want to play it fully
1:56:34
cuz I want to experience the full game I think all of gcon realized you're having a good time it was just so it brilliant
1:56:40
every Saturday night seriously they're s about Saturday nights is there just Delirious get Delirious was a kiss from
1:56:46
Rose was the first one we had a what was it hunger H hunger and again as a game I
1:56:52
don't don't care for it that much it's a bit like what you said it's like it didn't matter at that point we were just
1:56:58
having a laugh with the people that were were there at the table and you could have put probably not going to say most
1:57:04
games but any kind of game that was a bit silly was perfect and that was just
1:57:10
what we ended with and it was yeah I want to play Thunder Road again I wanted to play it h and it's just it looked
1:57:17
good it's great fun like it just brings you back to being a kid cuz I used to make my own games with micro machines
1:57:24
where I'd actually have um a racetrack and I'd actually it was a bit roll and
1:57:30
move actually it's weirdly had this gear mechanic in there which says the higher the gear you were you could only go
1:57:36
certain angles if you want to turn left your angle was Tighter and if you wanted to go further than that you you initiate
1:57:42
a skid mechanic I had all of this down right and uh and it kind of weirdly took me back to that even though you don't
1:57:47
really turn you just slide slide left or right cuz going really fast down this
1:57:53
big Big Thunder Road um but yeah great fun I want to play it again don't want
1:57:59
to own it probably but I want to I definitely want to play Joel's copy pimped out copy so yeah that was
1:58:05
Saturday nice then I went to sleep we try to just so excited so excited cars so
SUNDAY: DAY 3
1:58:13
then we get Sunday um and Sunday is the get the day which typically you play the
1:58:18
least amount of games either because well grion finishes is at 6 yeah um most
1:58:23
people tend to dwindle off mid-afternoon um but I had my my demo of Ironwood
Ironwood (Sponsored Demo)
1:58:30
first thing and uh as those who have listened to the essn episode will know I've have done plenty of demos of
1:58:36
Ironwood so this was just a bit of a relax to be honest and had two games going on and we had uh fix and Chris on
1:58:44
one game and we had Emma and uh Jimmy not ball game Jimmy but another Jimmy um
1:58:50
playing and it was just really again a pleasure they were great they they got into it they had the bant and they just
1:58:58
had a hopefully had a had a blast I had a blast teaching them and they were very pleasant and just made the whole thing
1:59:04
really enjoyable so yeah I'm not going to talk about Ironwood I talked about it before twice so yeah that was kind of my
Foundations of Metropolis
1:59:11
ENT entry into Sunday and I'd played more games but we've already talked
1:59:17
about them so that was kind of my Sunday um so Sunday morning I played
1:59:22
foundations of metropolis which is the 2D version I'm going to call it of foundations of Rome flat version yeah
1:59:28
the flat flatland version so um so arcan wonders have done foundations of Rome um known for being a massive box with quite
1:59:35
a big price tag on it with a fairly light midweight game in it that a lot of people sort of seem to think was over
1:59:40
produced some people like the production level the production level looks lovely but it is a bit and I wanted to play a
1:59:46
copy that was the 2D version they've just bought out called foundations of metropolis and um
1:59:52
Paul W Welsh let's call him Welsh Paul um who we previously sort of gained with before and has run demos for us before
1:59:58
and various things he um he said to me I was listening to your podcast recently
2:00:04
would you like to join us for a game of this I said absolutely would love to it's kind of been on my list to to play
2:00:10
to try out of curiosity and now they now I know that they've got a new version of it coming out um that'd be great so I
2:00:16
played with Paul Marcus and Andy not our Marcus but Welsh Welsh Pauls Marcus um
2:00:24
and I had a blast the game itself is is fairly light midweight you are going to buy you you start off drafting some some
2:00:32
plots and then you're going to start buying some plots as well and it's on a
2:00:38
a grid and what you're wanting to do is try and try and draft plots together and stop other people from doing it and then
2:00:44
you're going to place Bits and Pieces down and what depending upon what you place down you'll either get money back when you take an income phase or you'll
2:00:51
do popular at the end of each turn you get victory points for the population you have plus whoever's got the highest
2:00:56
population will get bonus points and of course as the rounds go on the bonus points got get higher so it's kind of
2:01:02
more Jeopardy um and then there's Civic buildings in there as well which um are
2:01:08
basically if you've got lots of people buildings around you you'll get bonus points for that but what people can do
2:01:15
is they can also upgrade buildings so you can put a people building down early doors they'll put down people like they
2:01:20
and you've got people buildings around it and then I don't fancy that I'll upgrade that to a money building instead
2:01:25
and then that'll help with your income um and it took like an hour and a bit but it was just again it just a good
2:01:32
laugh like they're all quite Larger than Life people um sort of all all had quite
2:01:37
a chuckle and just taking the mick out of each other and all that lot and I just had a blast and the game is good again I think it's I think it's a
2:01:45
strong game and it's one I would consider putting in my collection because I like city building games um and it's got that kind of waiting for
2:01:52
your plot you want to come down so it's worth less like down the down the river of cards but at the same
2:01:59
time not waiting too long cuz someone else will notice it's right in the middle of everything you want and they'll NAB it instead and they'll put a
2:02:05
Civic building near all your buildings so yeah it works and then we played our game I had a good time of it um as much
2:02:11
to do with the people as to do with the game and then I walked outside and Becky is playing foundations of Rome yeah with
2:02:20
not flat version yeah Nick sha and then CLA and Joel um so and they seem to be having a blast as well
2:02:27
so yeah two two versions of that on at the same time yeah just had a I had a I
2:02:32
say the game was good I enjoyed it I'm considering whether or not I put it in or whether I need to get rid of something else first or or whether I
2:02:39
don't bother at all but I I enjoyed the game um and enjoyed gaming with the people around the table nice that was that was my starter what
Minos: Dawn of the Bronze Age (Sponsored Demo)
2:02:46
about yours curly yeah so um my Sunday morning was a sponsored teacher of Minos
2:02:53
nice Bard and dice yeah Bard and dice um no I really love Minos I've played it a
2:02:59
few times before just kind of really uh borrowing Paul grogan's copy in order to get the the rules down really um and
2:03:05
kind of fell in love with it during that time so uh yeah I would say it's probably getting into my sort of top 10
2:03:11
top five sort of area for me yeah love it yeah it's it's almost the perfect game for me where it's kind of like
2:03:18
there's enough complexity there there's a little bit of area control I love the of the dice and everything else you know
2:03:24
there just so many mechanics about it that I think are really clever um but yeah feels really satisfying to playing
2:03:29
great at sort of you know two three and four player so yeah just really good game I've spoken about it before so I
2:03:35
won't go into detail but essentially you're playing um as different Creon Clans trying to V to be the new Minos uh
2:03:42
which is essentially King in C um yeah and the most victory points wins but what I think is quite interesting about
2:03:48
it is um two main mechanics which which is the dice drafting element which is
2:03:54
basically um if you make if you take Dice off the same color to do your
2:04:01
actions that add up to nine or more you get to go for free on one of the tracks to the side right of that that same
2:04:08
color but in addition to that the lower number you take the more powerful the
2:04:13
actions are going to be that you actually do with the main part of the game so it's always that little bit of push and pull as to whether you want to
2:04:19
um get the actions that you actually want to do that are more powerful or do you go for the set collections to boost you up on the the side of the the um on
2:04:28
the tracks on the tracks generally um so yeah it's just a really interesting push
2:04:33
and pull with that and the third part of that puzzle is which is really nice is the fact that your Turners are kind of
2:04:39
programmed so once you select all your dice you then go through it from your highest dice down to your lowest dice so
2:04:46
not only have you got the two bits to think of at the start you've also then got a you know there's no point for examp example in my first game I um
2:04:53
accidentally um did my play cards action before I did my draw cards action you
2:04:59
know because of the color dice that I needed and everything else and it had totally de deprioritized the actual main
2:05:05
part of the game you know so yeah just that dice drafting bit at the start is is a really nice little puzzy bustle to
2:05:10
do secondly the fact that it's a it's kind of an area control game but it's not there's no real Combat not really um
2:05:18
there's no real contention cuz you can all sort of coexist but same time you are going around on the map putting down
2:05:23
cities and stuff like that there's just no contention you know and I like that as well cuz it's thematic because the crans are actually well known as being
2:05:30
peaceful you know they they didn't have any wars they weren't anywhere near as aggressive with as the Greeks for
2:05:36
example you know um so I really like that side of it as well um yeah so the
2:05:41
game just really flows for me and and then you add in all of that into the whole like
2:05:46
um Goods system where basically the whole game is all based around getting temporary Goods converting them into
2:05:52
permanent Goods which give you permanent discounts on cards buildings you know building new cities building Farms all
2:05:59
this kind of stuff so you feel like you're you've got a kind of a not exactly um an engine but kind of an
2:06:05
engine you're playing cards you're upgrading cards to give you kind of a different side of an engine um you got
2:06:12
area control elements but I think you'd be fine with it by the way it's a game that I really want to try um and I was
2:06:17
down for one of your early games that you're going to play and just unfortunately couldn't make it but I really do want to give this one a go um
2:06:23
it's great clever clever I think yeah so yeah so I did a teacher that one like I said we won't get into the details of
2:06:29
minus because I've talked about it on a previous episode but yeah excellent game give it a go everyone it really did
2:06:35
surprise me it came out of kind of left feel really and uh yeah one of my favorites but yeah the teacher was
2:06:40
really good went really well kind of a there's a lot going on to begin with it's not a complicated game but there's just a lot of choices a lot going on and
2:06:47
getting your head around that that mechanic at the start can be a little bit like you mean what and then no doubt
2:06:53
you up the first time you did it you know so it's just it's just one of those you have to kind of get your head around that bit to start off with so but
2:07:00
it's a demo like you said it's a demo so you just kind of got to let people like make their mistakes and go ah okay it's
2:07:05
not the end of the world no good on the Friday I'd caught Mark monk playing
Sniper Elite
2:07:12
playing Nemesis and I was talking to him about that and all that kind of stuff and I said oh that's mentioned that
2:07:17
someone said something and I was like a I I want to play Sniper Elite this weekend cuz mark recommended it and I
2:07:22
bought it and I haven't played it and he said oh well I'll tell you what we'll give you a game Sunday and his friend was there who apparently loves Sniper
2:07:28
Elite unfortunately his mate couldn't make it so it was just one V one at Sniper Elite but I had a blast it was it
2:07:35
reminded me in certain parts of White Hall mystery which is one of my favorite hidden movement games um and it's if
2:07:42
you've played sniper leak the board the the computer game you're probably quite aware of what it is it's it's an American Sniper versus Nazis um and the
2:07:49
the sniper is trying to stay hidden and complete a couple of objectives and this is where as complete contrast as ter
2:07:56
escape cuz despite the fact that there's nine models hunting for you each model
2:08:01
each group of three models only has two actions so they're only moving two people um and they've got the ability to
2:08:08
kind of go are you in this area but also you can't do the two objectives in the area you start so wherever you they
2:08:14
think you started and you don't have to tell them by hat and show markers to where it was um just because he was like
2:08:20
how have you done that took after I completed my first objec I then showed him the board which kind of gave him a bit of information away but if you come
2:08:26
on on the yellow corner you can't you have to do red and black or the white there's single white objective sort of
2:08:32
thing so you kind of have to do that stuff in that order so I made it to the
2:08:38
first objective and he was completely at loss I think it was so he was like I
2:08:43
think you're over here and he was literally wandering to the wrong side of the board and I was like okay that's I've got him here did the first
2:08:49
objective and of course at that point he knows what what's going on so he's like right I'm cornering you in the side of the table and I was pulling every trick
2:08:57
I could think of I was doubling back on myself I was doing shots that I didn't need to make to try and kill someone on
2:09:02
the wrong side of the board that hope hopefully trying to re that didn't work
2:09:08
and playing cards just cuz I could to kind of put him off and I won on the last turn of the game fortunately but he
2:09:16
made me work for it I was really sweating this he had me cornered and he was searching literally I was I sat in
2:09:22
the corner of the board sort of fetal position it felt like trying not to get caught and he is searching every square
2:09:28
around me probably thinking well he's not going to sit in the corner but I was like he's going to search every square
2:09:34
around him so I need to sit in the corner like he and then he had me literally hemmed in you the sniper can't
2:09:39
walk through an area with a German soldier on it but if I'm in an area with a German soldier cuz they walked on to
2:09:45
me I can walk out yeah and so he literally had me hemmed in and this is where I was like trying to shoot people to kind of which has got nice bag
2:09:51
building mechanic in it um I was trying to shoot people to kind of fool him and
2:09:57
then I had to shoot someone just cuz I had to get out of there and then sure enough made it and on the last one it
2:10:02
was really close and just massive thank you to mark Cuz knowing that his friend was the one who I think really wanted to
2:10:08
play he was like no absolutely I'm going to make sure I give you the game of it and all that kind of stuff and I think that was his last game of his convention
2:10:13
cuz he had to go off for the weekend for for the evening and all that lot so I had a blast and it's definitely I think
2:10:20
it was a more Trad traditional hidden movement game but it took everything I like about White Hall mystery and those
2:10:26
kind of Scotland yardi kind of games and just lifted it up to add a little bit more into it yeah so yeah so i' play
2:10:33
I've played that and enjoyed that thoroughly so that'll be staying in the collection which good and
Lost Cities
2:10:39
then um I was hanging around cuz I was expecting Paul to need my car to fill stuff up so I was hanging around for a
2:10:46
bit and there's both me and Marcus were like what should we do like I was really wasn't in mood for another game but we
2:10:52
had so much time to kill so um I got lost cities as part of my prize for
2:10:58
winning the chase at the 24-hour event as one of my prizes for that so little
2:11:04
two-play game it's not the two-play game I thought it was interestingly but again another Rhino kitzia game I think it is
2:11:11
yeah yeah um so another Rhino kitzia game two player I'm not sure on it if
2:11:16
I'm honest basically there's a there's a track in the middle that's got different squares on and you're going to play
2:11:22
cards either into the discard of that square or in numerically increasing
2:11:28
order as you go but obviously there's only two 3 four five in the deck so if someone else got the four I'm never going to get the four and there's also
2:11:35
uh I can't we call them the handshake cards I can't think what they were actually called but basically if you got one of those down first it would
2:11:40
multiply how many points you got both positive and negative cuz if you cuz
2:11:46
every and let's say there was we played the short game so there was five Stacks if you started a stack stack you had to
2:11:51
score it you counted up the number the total number you had and minused it from
2:11:56
20 so if I had 19 my score would be minus one if I then had two of those
2:12:02
cards I'd multiply that by three so what you're trying to do is trying to and you can on the discard if
2:12:09
you don't want to play a card you can discard a card and you can pick up off that discard as well as the top of the deck so what you're trying to do is hold
2:12:15
on to some cards you think that your opponent might want or trying to hold on
2:12:20
to like the 9 and tens hoping they or like the eights and nines hoping they might wait to dig it out of the deck and then it'll all be too late cuz once the
2:12:27
deck's empty you're done sort of thing so you're kind of doing this kind of
2:12:32
push pull mechanic it was fine it wasn't I don't a lot of people love this game
2:12:38
as two- player and say there's a lot a lot of to it I don't I'm not convinced myself I it was enjoyable what we played
2:12:46
but I don't know how many more times I would pull that out as an abstract sort of game so
2:12:51
so yeah and then I stuck around did a bit of packing up on the Sunday but didn't need my car which was quite nice
2:12:58
CU it means I don't have to do a trip to cumpton this week um extra so yeah so that was my and then unpacked when I got
2:13:05
home there you go so that was that that was that that was gridon that was
TURN 3 - GRIDCON Debrief
2:13:10
[Music]
2:13:17
gridon I think big shout outs is I said to you didn't I halfway through through the Friday I'd already forgotten half
2:13:23
the people had said hello to me cuz everyone was so lovely so welcoming as they always are but now we've been there
2:13:28
three years I I'm recognizing faces names obviously people are hearing of us people I've never even met before were
2:13:34
like oh um I had one instance where I was sat there I think it was earlyish on
2:13:40
the Friday and someone said oh I recognized that voice it just sounded
2:13:46
happier best comment ever that made us all very happy above from Adrian
2:13:52
and I I don't know whether it was intended in that fashion or not but that's certainly how I took it was I'm a grumpy ass soul on this thing and
2:13:58
they're not used to hearing me laugh so um yes yeah that's that's how we hear he
2:14:04
but yeah so but just I think I heard oh I recognize that voice about six times
2:14:09
over the weekend which is always just nice and a bit weird if I'm honest still not used to the fact that people know me
2:14:15
that I don't know them yeah still haven't got used to that but it seems to be happening increasingly um these kind
2:14:21
of conventions and it is just genuinely lovely because it means that what we're doing is being listened to yeah um and
2:14:28
kind of people are still enjoying it continuing to listen so I mean we we're getting early to our third year yeah
2:14:35
which still blows my tiny little brain you know it won't be long what March next year it's our third year so yeah
2:14:43
wow even just saying it is kind of and and you know your besties with David tury you know I mean it's just strange
2:14:50
isn't it David I saw throughout the whole weekend and and we spoke a lot at Essen yeah and
2:14:57
and when a designer kind of recognizes you and he's like how did this happen
2:15:03
how how this happen design a best friend I bought XCOM about six s years ago that's that's was like the entry and
2:15:11
then yeah and you hear it's just strange surreal still surreal but yeah I Echo
2:15:16
what you said Adrian it's it's the people that make con for me it's the the
2:15:23
environment it's always warm it's always cozy the holiday in that I frequent for
2:15:29
business purposes and meet you know for yeah that sounds really dodg that sounds really sorted I don't mean it to be JP
2:15:35
red R weekends I actually generally go to the lobby of holiday in and I meet my
2:15:41
accountant there you stand on the corner no no no and I meet people from work there cuz it's like a nice place to just
2:15:49
the easy place to get to right so I'm kind of used to it in that corporate
2:15:54
kind of work mode setting but then when gridon comes it completely weirdly transforms the entire environment even
2:16:00
though they don't do anything they don't do anything to the space other than you can see loads of people having fun
2:16:06
playing board games it just feels like you're walking into like a real Cozy home you know what
2:16:11
it reminds me of and this I don't I don't know if I have this feeling of it but you are bringing this feeling up in
2:16:17
me of Cheers yeah where everybody knows your
2:16:22
name it is it is a bit like that which is different to some other conventions
2:16:28
where you maybe don't know as many people you still have a good time you're still playing the games but yeah the
2:16:33
more you go to to gridon and I'm sure it's the same as like bacon and uh you know handy con and all the others that
2:16:40
out there airon you just start to get that community in and obviously majority
2:16:46
of people at gcon will be patrons supporters for for gaming rules because they get Early Access tickets all right
2:16:52
so this thing is difficult to get a ticket to if you don't uh if you don't
2:16:58
support uh gaming rules as a patreon sport it's just the the nature of it and and that's not to kind of isolate it's
2:17:05
the fact that Paul likes to reward his Patron supporters with Early Access tickets well that's what he said isn't
2:17:10
it is literally the convention is put on as a kind of a patreon perk So yeah
2:17:15
thank you to the patreons for all the support and and and it was because of that which is why I um support PA not
2:17:23
not because he puts on gcon but because I attended gcon 2 yeah that made me want
2:17:29
to support because I thought God there's a guy that's doing so much work and and
2:17:34
put so much effort into a convention that's literally on our doorstep and I want to support that well wider than
2:17:40
that to the industry as well like he does a lot for for people in the industry as well but I what struck me
2:17:47
and I actually said this to them is I realized that hexy Beast I hadn't seen him on Friday H and then he was like oh
2:17:54
was a bit later and kind of been a bit quieter I haven't had the camera and all this kind of stuff but it took like
2:17:59
halfway through like a convention I was like you know who I haven't seen I normally see sort of thing and you kind of get used to seeing certain yeah kind
2:18:06
of get used to seeing certain people actually didn't see him all weekend yeah he had he had a bandanna on and I realized I this is going to also sound
2:18:12
dodgy I'd seen him from the back a couple of times but hadn't clocked it was him sort of thing um and and then
2:18:17
yeah just suddenly thought I haven't seen him this weekend and he's normally here and then sure enough I noticed him playing games while I was curing for a
2:18:24
drink at the bar sort of thing but he said oh I've been a bit low profile this year that's probably why you might not have noticed but yeah there's so many
2:18:31
familiar faces especially B with it being so local to us as well exactly it's
2:18:37
great there we go I think my favorite my best grid conon so far yeah I think so I
2:18:43
think I think it probably is mine as well yeah I'm not just saying that cuz it's the latest one no no but three was
2:18:48
really good yeah like three was better than two two was at oton yeah different
2:18:55
Hotel different vibe three moved it to Taunton great happy my first one your
2:19:00
first one and it was just leveled up in all all kinds of ways just the way it worked the way it flowed and everything
2:19:07
four I can't remember if if that's the one no three was the one I had to miss
2:19:12
the Friday I remember and I was GED about that um before I still had a fantastic time but it wasn't the same
2:19:20
level three I didn't feel like I got all the games in that I wanted to compared to this time and again that's no fault
2:19:25
of the convention or anything that but it's more but yeah exactly it's more me the fact that I was flaking at 8:00 each
2:19:30
time and all that kind of stuff you know so but for me personally this has definitely been the best of the grid cons yeah and this one I've just had
2:19:38
such a buzz every day like Friday I was a pig and honestly which is like
2:19:43
Rob was like you you're right I'm like I'm so happy it's like Christmas this is my Bard gaming Christmas yeah yeah I I
2:19:51
really enjoyed it but I think I booked too much this time I pr you overburdened yourself it's not like by the way you
2:19:57
guys had loads more book than I did um but I like to Freewheel it a little bit and I just felt like I was a little bit
2:20:03
too tied down like you know I I was like not not that I wasn't looking forward to cuz I really like captain's chair but
2:20:09
the thought of doing six hours in the evening had really like oh right I've got that in the evening you know and it
2:20:14
felt like I couldn't get stuck into anything else really even though actually I could it just yeah I w't I
2:20:20
won't sign up as much next year I don't think yeah yeah I think it's I think I was at the top end of what I would do
2:20:26
booking wise which was kind of to have two or three things each day that I knew
2:20:31
I was going to do I think that's kind of the top end for me anything more than that yeah I had a nice balance for me
2:20:38
because I like to do I don't I don't like to organize every game of the weekend I hate doing that some people
2:20:44
love it and I get it but for me I find it it's more restricting because you
2:20:50
can't just find those surprises sometimes at conventions well also the games you tend to book last like three
2:20:56
four hours at a time so you can book to a those in a day and you never yeah you never quite know when you're going to
2:21:02
finish and it adds stress to a weekend that I don't want stress so I usually book one in the morning be first game
2:21:10
get going get sorted and it gives me an excuse to play with other people that I wouldn't normally play with in the group
2:21:16
right because for me that's part of the experience is to socialize and and and meet but I do like
2:21:23
to keep some time back to play with you guys as well so it's kind of like right let's play this or have a laugh or have
2:21:28
that Sunday night game which is completely off the cuff didn't plan it just happened to all be free and Joel
2:21:33
said fancy Thunder Road why not I'm in and and I think that's the the key bit
2:21:40
striking the balance of organizing some stuff playing with some new people and
2:21:45
and I as as what you said Adrian about the demos I'm more than happy to Dem
2:21:50
games I really enjoy the the experience of it personally and and uh more than
2:21:56
happy to do it at any time so yeah I I said to Vicki and Paul like if you want me to do more next time yeah like
2:22:03
ideally I just like the morning slots all back to back yeah just get all done I don't like to have to like you I don't
2:22:08
have to wait for the evening that's my only bit but otherwise I'd quite happily do loads more demos yeah where the people would be happy with me doing more
2:22:15
demos is another thing I suppose but I and if you Cher up yeah I was I felt got very happy all
2:22:21
weekend you did there was only ter Escape made me grumpy mhm even Aquatica
2:22:26
didn't make me grumpy no now you're in good spirits you were yeah most people were yeah everyone seemed a level of
2:22:33
happiness at least well there which is good cool think we need to discuss calling it grcon though grcon yeah yeah
The famous GRIDCON raffle
2:22:41
what we haven't discussed is yet again one of our group won a raffle prize
2:22:47
completely forgot about the raffle so I and it's a major thing like six grand again 6 and a half nearly I think it was
2:22:54
Grand again um the prize pool again is ridiculous and I know that he always
2:23:00
gets the feedback of do you not divide it down more do you what do you do CU some of those piles of games are
2:23:07
hundreds of pounds yeah um and I don't have the answer and I don't I don't know what the I don't know what you do with
2:23:13
it but there's like 36 lots and I say I think every single one had at least £1
2:23:18
worth of games in it um and our very own curly won this year
2:23:23
did so Rob Last year me the year before curly this year I'm waiting for my year one one year it's not allowed fair
2:23:30
enough I don't mind you get Street waffles and pickup bars so a bottle of whiskey a bottle whiskey I'm all right
2:23:37
with that I'm down with that doesn't even cost any tickets no exactly so yeah
2:23:42
so you won some games then buddy yeah I won some games um yeah really pleased just to one to be honest with you really
2:23:48
grateful we put it on every year and everything else I always try and put in a little bit more I always feel like when you've got raffle that's also like
2:23:54
a charity donation CU I don't really care how much I put into it so it's my excuse to go a little bit you know over
2:24:00
the top probably but you know I won nothing last year which is absolutely fine I won something this year so that's
2:24:05
great so um yeah really pleased to have got M pack 2 which you guys betrayed me on so it's really it was a bit of karma
2:24:12
to get the to get a copy you know we were stood there when the the raffle was being drawn out right I was stood next
2:24:18
to Curley cuz he was doing his Minos teach and then they had about what five map pack Twos for AR no and each time we
2:24:24
were like come on for curly it was like oh would it be funny if you win this because obviously you didn't get your
2:24:30
copy that you didn't mention ever um you didn't ask for or you didn't ask for to to be fair to give you a bit of
2:24:35
backstory to this one u i I'm only joking by the way I don't really feel betrayed he's really
2:24:41
not is that I didn't even know it was coming out I didn't didn't know it was a thing so until people came back and said
2:24:48
and they they know that AR no is like like top three favorite game of mine and then all three of them were in Essen
2:24:54
where there's loads of M Patos and not a one of them mentioned to me that do you want me to pick you up a copy
2:24:59
curly not a one how many of my friends were there three that I count very good friends not one of them gave a
2:25:06
about me I didn't and nor did Adrian going into the um furan Spiel queue or
2:25:11
even store or stand did you know it existed after the fact after Davey
2:25:16
bought it yeah yeah so you know I mean there's a little bit guilt there if you were a big enough if you're the big fan
2:25:23
you say you are then surely you would know that there's a map pack yeah but when do you go ahead and just like
2:25:28
Google your your favorite game just to check to see if there's a new map pack out clearly enough a fan I don't know I
2:25:34
don't I don't Google art over every now and again just to make sure nothing news come out maybe I should maybe yeah but
2:25:40
no I actually I'm one of those people actually that I I do take offense quite easily sometimes but actually it doesn't
2:25:45
bother me at all cuz I'm really patient when it comes to this stuff I don't really give a I'll get it eventually not a problem I I did but it
2:25:52
does but it does make me it makes me happy to try and guilt trip these guys that's what makes me happy it didn't and
2:25:58
it worked a little bit but not as well as I was hoping yeah well I managed to get Becky a sep my promo though didn't I
2:26:04
yeah that's it so you know it's all right thought about Becky but you know I got it for well this is it you know
2:26:11
female is it no I just got it for fre I was working at M Clash so it was like it I was there
2:26:18
that's right so treat everyone equally yeah so there we
2:26:24
go I'm used to it from you you're a thanks for that I know I can't drop
2:26:31
the se you can cut that one out right what war in a cutting bit adri
2:26:36
looks sad now I'm going to give him a cuddle in a minute please don't uh I've think I've mentioned everything yeah me
2:27:24
had a great weekend and we met some friendly faces we've already mentioned a few people um
2:27:31
in our ball game chats but I just want to mention that I had a good chat with Mark dainy and you'll get to hear more
2:27:39
chat with Mark dainy from notb gaming because he is going to be on a expansion
2:27:44
pack coming soon literally in two weeks time I believe when this gets released so yeah CAU with Mark he was playing
2:27:50
some good games um and who else did we see we saw some other people Luke Hector
2:27:56
from broken mles yes we did yeah he was about had a bit of a catch up with him which is nice Tom from Slicker drips oh
2:28:04
yes in his Magneto top loving that top love the sumary tops all the time yeah
2:28:09
little rare of sunshine yeah I didn't get chance to to catch up with Tom properly but I did have a little chat he
2:28:14
was playing artherion night yeah I gave him a wave but it was like he's clearly deep in the game so he's in there yeah
2:28:20
and we had uh what Mike Dennis from Ready Steady play as well yeah I had a catch up with him he was playing
2:28:26
something and oh oh he told me I need to give ARS a proper go yeah cuz I've kind of written it off already but he was
2:28:31
like don't do that give it a go yeah I had a little chat with Mike while he was playing ARs and yeah I do really like AR
2:28:38
I'm I'm still not sure if it's for you but you know give it a try I should give it a try I've kind of half written it off but I really should give it a go
2:28:45
just give it a will but yeah he was coming over asking me Revenant um rules
2:28:50
oh I remember that as him and Mark Dy were playing a game late on whenever it was Saturday night he kept wandering
2:28:55
over and go right JP this dice how does this work right does this all right and
2:29:01
it it's really inconvenient for for him because he was playing in the restaurant yeah so we had to keep every time I had
2:29:06
a rules question you have to get up walk all the way around the hotel find me ask the question go back yeah he must got
2:29:12
his steps in anyway we're probably others that names will have forgotten I can't remember and I didn't write them
2:29:18
in my notes so if we forgotten you sorry it was still nice to meet you we still
2:29:23
probably had a good chat exactly just it was there's a lot going on that weekend just a like just a three-day weekend
2:29:30
four day depending upon but we had a blast right it's good and here's the g con six we cannot wait we don't have the
2:29:37
dates but I assume it's going to happen and we'll be back as always to to do
2:29:43
some more gigans so there we go nice so let's wrap this thing up let's uh go to
TURN 4 - The Final Turn
2:29:48
bed and uh and relax from the post gcon so I just want to say thank you for
2:29:54
listening to the episode if you enjoyed the episode then please share this with any of your friends or someone from your
2:29:59
gaming group and if you want to support the show you can on coffee which is KFI and every little helps with the podcast
2:30:06
that makes us uh continue and do some really cool stuff and be able to do convention coverage just like this um if
2:30:13
you want to get engaged with the show you can do through various different ways on our social media channels all of
2:30:18
which you can learn in our pH notes but other than that all that's left to say
2:30:23
is whose turn is it Anyway [Music]