TURN 1 - Player Count
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[Music]
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welcome to Whose Turn It Anyway a podcast blooming with tales of our gaming group and the board games we're either growing or pruning from our
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collections if you haven't already guessed our main topic of conversation today is all about nature games i'm
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Becky your current first player and I'm joined by Curly hi everyone and Adrien hello they are both looking like
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majestic trees and not like smelly compost heaps how are we all today better for being called not a smelly
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compost heap well there you go come to me for all your you know um compliments compliments yeah
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yes very good thank you Jeff good how are you Adrian i'm not too bad at all how about yourself yes I'm all right thank you it's the end of the work day
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so I'm just pleased about that yeah scar of the World Week though yeah don't say that to me that's just quite quite
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miserable isn't it it's Monday on our recording day if anyone if anyone wants to know and we're all just a bit work
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start holiday next week though holiday next week very nice very nice i'm not on holiday next week no I'm only working
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two days so you know that's something I suppose anyway let's talk about Hex
Adrian - Parks
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adrian what have you been playing lately so knowing that this was our topic coming up I thought I would take a game
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that I've owned for a while and had never got round to playing and give that a sort of wheel out so game called Parks
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very popular one um came out a few years ago now i think it was seven or eight years ago I'm going to guess um a game
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by Key Master Games and it's a very sort of it's it's heavier than I thought it
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was based on people telling me how lightweight it was it's a sort of light midweight game where you are going on
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through four different seasons you are going through the trail of the national parks very nice um what you're doing is
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basically going along each season and you start at the beginning of a of the trail and there are spots along the way
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and you go as far as you want along the trail and then stop there and then take the resources or the action of of what
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you want to and then the next person will go and a bit like worker placement no one can go where you are
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and if they want to they've got a little campfire token that gets turned over um
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and then that's your once uh it's not really once a go but that's your your one campfire spent the thing is you've
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got two hikers so you're trying to get both h sort of get as much as you can out of getting
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both hikers to the end but there will be people kind of in your way on the trail so as you move along there will be other
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people who have moved their their hiker along the trail further and therefore are blocking your spots
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and what you're really doing what you're aiming to do is collect these different resources to then be able to afford one
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of the national parks so you've got like um sunshine or um water droplets or
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mountains or forests and the parks which there's like a little display of parks will cost you like three sunshine in a
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forest or something and sounding like sounding like um uh Lords of Water Deep Adrian sounding like that nothing like
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Lords of Water you're putting your people places and getting stuff it's not
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a worker placement you're just moving along a track all right all right and then and there's no mandatory quests and
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um and then you'll buy that park and add it to your thing but you can only buy parks when you get one of your hikers to the
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end of the trail and when you get to the end of the trail you have sort of three things first of all you get to relight your campfire so when I said it's kind
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of your one campfire if you get one worker to the end they relight their campfire your second hiker can use that
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campfire again so there's a bit of a push pull of trying to race someone to the end but make use of the campfire so
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you get use of campfire both times and you can also then if you're the first
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one to the end you can choose the start player one or the first person to take that spot can take the start player you
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can reserve a park you can purchase a park either one you've reserved or one you the one that's in the display or you
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can gain an upgrade and the upgrades are sort of typical like things cost one
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less or if you get one of these things you get something else um and so you'll get to do that twice
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because you'll have both of your hikers at the end so the chances are you'll buy at least one park and you'll do something else and you get to choose one
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of those actions with each hiker when they get to the end there's also a lovely little bit which is um cantens so
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as I say this is first edition so I know this changes in second edition um and we'll talk about that a little bit more
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in in a second but in the first edition the cantens are just like a card that when you put a water droplet on it it'll
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give you like a a mountain or a forest or something some ability you can swap
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some stuff around or whatever and but you can only put water in it when you
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get it i.e you can't have an old water token you need to fill up your canteen at a water source as soon as you get the
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water you can put it in there you gain the bonus and there's a lovely little sort of end between the upgrades and the
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canteen there's like a lovely little light engine builder in there as well so you do that for four seasons and then
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that's the game end and when I was sort of heard how light it was and when I was watching videos and stuff like that I
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thought this is going to be real light this could be lighter than canvas sort of thing which is already paper thin
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really um but when you get playing it there's there is this push pull of sort
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of how far do you when do you use your campfire how far do you race one hiker up do you keep them together
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that kind of thing and so I completely misplayed the first turn by sort of
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racing ahead a little bit but then we had one player who there's one rule which is the last hiker must head to the
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end trail when it's their turn so they were kind of doing this thing
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where they had both their hikers almost as far back as they could and just were leaprogging each other so they got as many actions out of it as possible where
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a few of us had sort of skipped the first one because it wasn't really a good spot to to do and and then they
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played this real slow sort of amling hike in this I think it was the summer season cuz there's the four seasons four
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rounds um and they got so much out of it in that by being able to do that and
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then won the game basically and I'm convinced it's because they took this like little leaprog version
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um and I thoroughly enjoyed it i really did um I do think that we played it at
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five player which is like maximum player count and I did find I was either last or second to last pretty much every time
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and I did find myself constantly not being able to do what I wanted to do um
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and I didn't come last score points but I didn't do well either and I did wonder whether or not five players it's a bit
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much i think there might be a bit too many people blocking your trail is there many games that can play five player but
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you should play five player i mean when it comes to those type of games it's usually five player is not ideal
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normally the perfect is three or four it's probably the only place where you don't play these types of games there is
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like your um Twilight Imperiums and stuff like that yeah fair enough you know Game of Thrones and where you get
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simultaneous actions quite often i quite like I quite like big accounts with simultaneous actions but yeah this was
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just one of those where I felt a little bit like I'm not sure how well this is playing at five player because there's just too many hikers and there's no
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there's stuff for being at four player or more to kind of make the game fit four players but at five players it's
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still there's not a lot more at four players i still think it's a tighter game at four players than it probably is at two for instance um so yeah
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thoroughly enjoyed it and we'll probably now go and buy the second edition so because I did a bit of research so the
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second edition um the there's some positives and negatives from what I've seen the positive is that it comes with
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load of the expansion stuff in the box um and they have changed some of the way
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the upgrades can and cantens work which is nice the other upgrade is that um
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the your backpack technically only has 12 spaces in it in the first edition they don't have anything for you to put
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those 12 items you just got to keep track of having a maximum of 12 this you get a little backpack oh okay with 12
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spaces to put all the things in they're all good i think two things that I don't love about it one is that it's a big box
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to fit all of the bits and pieces in whereas parks is a tiny little box and it can fit one of the two expansions in
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it to my knowledge um it's kind of designed to take one of the expansions
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um so it's still a smaller box and second it just kind of loses a bit of charm it feels very sort of modern
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minimalistic board game style whereas the old parks is very um don't know what
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the word is very twe it's very you the the like parts of the trail are on a
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like are a shuffable set of cards sort of thing that all have a nice bit of artwork on it whereas the second edition
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you just shuffle up the symbols and place them out and it doesn't quite look the same all of the park the national
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parks had beautiful art that was all done by different artists in the first edition second edition the artist is I
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think there's just one or two artists on it so it looks kind of similarish across the board but because the price of
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buying the two expansions will be the same as me getting the second edition feels like I might as well just sell off the first well when you're selling it
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off you know maybe give first refusal as as most maybe I'll let you borrow it for a little bit if you like it first and
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then buy acquire games yeah and then probably pick up the second edition cuz I I enjoyed it more than as say because
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I've got a few of those sort of lighter weight games that are just nice to kind of where they're just slightly more than
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an activity they're sort of not quite a board game but and I thought oh this will fit in with that and I'll have to
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decide but actually it's enough more of a board game that it doesn't quite compete at that level of sort of there's
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something to there's something to decide there's something to you sort of get in the way of each other on the on the trail out of interest because it's
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sounding a little bit and forgive me for this because it might not be the case is
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it a little bit solvable it feels like what you're saying is the tactic that is
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obviously better you could just do that every time and everyone could do it is that not fair i think once people know
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it's there we didn't know cuz it was our first play through i think once people know that you can do this sort of slow
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amble up people will start and decide to block you a little bit more and play a little bit more um like that and the
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other thing is because all of the each season all of the like spots on the trail are mixed up again so there's no
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like right order to do things so um one of I was going to say it doesn't sound very replayable at the moment but that
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that kind of fixes that right so what with the setup one of the bits is you take all of the basic spots on the trail
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and you take one advanced and you shuffle it all in and then you deal it all out and then each season you take
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pick them all up add another advanced tile in so the trail gets each slightly longer each season and then you shuffle
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all of them up and then deal them out in a different order so um in the third season there was a spot that came out
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which is a second or an extra opportunity to buy parks or buy upgrades and the first time that came out that
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was right near the end so everyone bought four parks that time cuz that's the maximum you could get out of using
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that spot and the end of trail so everyone absolutely smashed it that round the next round we played the park
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purchasing one was like the second spot on the trail and people had blown all of their resources trying to get the ones
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at the end and weren't expecting it to be back at the start and therefore no one used that spot really this on the
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fourth season so it's not I think there will be patterns and you will learn how
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each other plays and have to sort of possibly counterplay a little bit but I don't know it's solvable in the fact
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that you know if you think about worker placements quite often all the spots are the same there's no change up with this because they're in a different order and
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you can only go along the trail you can't go back along it then I think it's
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less solvable um but yeah I say I really enjoyed it it's not it's not even
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midweight it is light midweight um but thoroughly enjoyed it and we'll talk about sort of how the theme came into it
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I suppose in a little bit think it would work at two yeah it was recommended at two originally for me as a game for two
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people i think it will work at two again I think if someone gets a good gets a good strategy down and the other person
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doesn't deliberately counteract it there's a chance that it could feel a bit of skew but as soon as someone knows what's going on I think you would the
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next play through they would make sure that doesn't happen sort of thing so but yeah it was recommended at two or three
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um as best player counts when I looked so sounding good cool it is sounding good curly yourself well I'm glad that
Kerley - Beyond the Sun
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was such a uh detailed rundown cuz this is not going to be uh So yeah I I've
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been replaying some old classics lately which is you know what I like to do to be honest i'm a little bit against
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playing new games if I can possibly help it unless it's like ones that I'm really hankering for um so yeah I've played a
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few games lately but the one that uh I played most recently was at JP's Games Day which was uh for his birthday and it was a lot of fun uh was Beyond the Sun
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um and we kind of taught that to Adrian that was your first time playing it it was yeah yeah it was lot lots of fun um
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for those of you who don't know we've talked about it before so we'll just give a brief rundown but nowhere near that detailed it's uh it's a space game
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um the main part of it is actually I guess uh researching new technologies and stuff like that which enable you to
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carry out all the other actions easier um you've got a little board over to the uh right hand side which you basically
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can go out and explore um space colonize new planets and increase the production
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that you get in your main area so it's kind of like a mini it's not a 4X exactly but there's elements of it but
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light you can play play even a four player what two hours Adrian would you say yeah it was it's a little bit longer
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than that but that involved teach and me kind of figuring things out so yeah I'd say about that it's the one with the
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tech tree isn't it yeah it's mostly based around that tech tree it's basically a tech tree with a very small
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like area sort of what's the term area control sort of thing going on isn't
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there but it's you know for people like "Oh that sounds very beige." It isn't it's really good fun and like there's loads
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of really good decisions in there really interesting kind of ways you can go with it um and there's we play with the
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expansion which I played with before but it reminded me of how much better it is with it it's got asymmetric powers and
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different kind of you know abilities they've all got it's um yeah it just adds a lot of uh variety to the game
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really which could again become reasonably solvable um without it so yeah it adds an awful lot so Beyond the
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Sun definitely recommend it especially if sci-fi is your jam um and something you want to play a little bit lighter
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even with three or four people it's really good fun would I like it uh the theme no the game yeah I could see you
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liking that it's not yeah there's Is it the one that's really white you It is white okay it It's not a boring game but
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it does look it i'll be honest it looks like a spreadsheet or a sort of a flowchart if you like you don't mind a
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spreadsheet i don't mind a spreadsheet looks a bit like a Yeah it looks like a basic flowchart sort of thing but no it's really good and I I'm always sort
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of not sure how I feel about overly asymmetric player powers so I was a bit
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when it was like well we're going to put that in I was like okay we'll see how it goes but actually for a first game it gave me something to aim for because it
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was cuz one of the bits is when you do this thing which is like an ultimate thing that you do isn't it or certainly my board was like when you get to do
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this so when I move the last thing off of a cold track or whatever you get a
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big bonus for it so I was like "Right so what I need to do is remove stuff from this track that's what I need to aim to do because that must be a good thing to
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some extent." Um and I thought that actually really helped out with the first play through which I was surprised by because normally asymmetric is just
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adding extra stuff you have to think about yeah no definitely does that it is there exactly like you say kind of the
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way that other games and this one included give you like endgame goals to go for this gives you abilities which
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tells you right this is what this faction's about it would benefit you normally but it's going to benefit you
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even more you know definitely I wish my playthrough of sci had been like that
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because you've kind of got the endgame goals there and that should have made me a bit more kind of aimed and it it just didn't size is one of them it takes a
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little while to get used to and there's an awful lot going on maybe one of your favorites isn't it well I think I should
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have liked it but I just didn't really i would I would play it again though it does grow on you sometimes i think Dan
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was a bit nomin
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yeah I I should like it because it's a Stone M game and I like most of theirs
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but it's a very different Stone M game I think yeah not so much these days but different to the ones you've played by
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quite a bit yeah maybe maybe so what I have been playing lately well uh Lord of
Becky - LOTR: Duel for Middle-Earth
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the Rings Jewel for Middle Earth so I have spoken about this before it is a really great game but I won in a
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different way this time so it was just me and Curly that were playing and I won by getting all the sciences but what is
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it in thees yeah so I had one of the pipes one of
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the planters one of the meant to represent alliances with the with the um
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folk of middle earth middle earth yeah so that was interesting it did kind of come down to the wire cuz we were kind
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of halfway through the third age I think and I you were about to absolutely storm
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it unless that very specific um faction came up it's It's just one of those I
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had to flip um I had to take a card and it was going to flip either two cards or one card the one one that was hiding two
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cards benefited me the most i risked it it did not pay off long story short but
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you would have absolutely absolutely totally kicked my ass had that card literally been any other green one i
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don't really mind losing that one cuz it's so quick and like it just goes for it and it's really actiony then it's
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kind of like oh I lost never mind i don't mind taking a risk in those games but when you're like committed for like 2 or 3 hours you're just not prepared to
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take that risk are you in that point it feels like it feels worse when you lose as well so yeah I'm not going to describe how this game plays basically
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it is Seven Wonders Jewel but with Lord of the Rings pictures that I don't care
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for and and some different nuances as well yeah a little bit it's better i actually prefer yeah me too me too what
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do you What do you How do you compare the two um have you played uh Seven Wonders Duel uh yeah briefly i didn't
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really get on with Seven Wonders Jewel but enjoyed Seven Wonders Jewel Lord of the Rings but I think I played Lord of
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the Rings first it was over the same sort of bit of time so um yeah Lord of the Rings for me is definitely the
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superior of the two yeah I think so um interestingly I played Seven Wonders only a couple of days ago and it did
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make me think I want to play Lord of the Rings um and also maybe wonder what would a a Lord of the Rings version of
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the actual Seven Wonders game sort of look like because you've definitely got the ability to
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have seven seven different starting factions yeah with the Seven Wonders like you could have sort of Mordor and
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sort of Riendell and all that lot with its abilities to do it um but I think
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the the beauty of seven of the the Lord of the Rings jewel is that there's no counting involved you've either won or
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you've not that's it yeah I don't think you could translate that directly into Seven Wonders itself in
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the same way um but it did make me kind of go this would be really cool if it was at least reskinned and had a little
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given a little bit of sort of love for Seven Wonders Lord of the Rings actual game rather than the dual version
TURN 3 - Main Event: The meeple menagerie
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[Music]
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on to our main event then so this episode we're celebrating games inspired by the natural world so I just wanted to
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think if everyone could pick one of their favorites mine all say it once one two three ark Nova well I knew yours was
Our favourite nature games (Ark Nova, Earth & Everdell)
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going to be Arn Nova no one's surprised i mean obviously I love Arknova but you can't pick it cuz I said mine first well
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no I can if I want to all right then but no I I've got a few different ones what about you Adrian i'm the same i I sort
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of struggling to pick one that that sort of really stands out as being like my
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favorite nature game generally I do enjoy nature games but quite often I find that I enjoy them for a little
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while then pass on the nature games and I don't know what it is but yeah I suppose Earth is currently a pretty good
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one that I quite enjoy playing i enjoy showing it to people a lot as well yeah so yeah I heard that about you
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it makes sense because it's quite formulaic isn't it so that's quite easy for everyone to like you do the same
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series of things pick your thing at the top get those things play a card or whatever play in a 16 4x4 grid or
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whatever it is there's no What I love about that game and I don't it's not my favorite but what I do like about that game is that it's action action action
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you're always doing something um so it's never one of those games where you're just like "Oh my god 10 minutes before
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my turn again yeah absolutely it it's simultaneous actions if you've played a bunch of
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other either like sort of engine building or um Tableau building games
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you will have something to reference it to um and we'll talk about in a second but it's an easy theme to sort of
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explain why what things are for so yeah I think that's probably it as say
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there's a few others that like are in my mind but without going just through all of them I
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think I'll pick Earth for the sake of moving the podcast along i I could go
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for a few but I'm probably going to go with a forgotten favorite of ours that we need to crack out again and that's
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going to be Everddale i knew you going to say that you've been playing a lot of it online haven't you yeah I've been playing a little bit online and I do
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like to you know the trouble is with the board game and it's not really but a lot of the time it's an event especially
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when it comes to those big box games like Everell um and it takes half hour 45 minutes to set up everyone's coming
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around which is nice in some ways but sometimes you're having a cup of tea in the morning before you go to work you
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just want to scratch that itch a little bit easier then you can just play it on Steam basically um yeah do that do some
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challenge modes and stuff like that as well so there are some changes to it but yeah I really like Everell just the
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whole theme of it and you know brings me back to the times of you know probably no one will think no one will know this
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but animals of fathering wood I remember animals of fathering wood a bit before if you're I think probably even under 35
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you're probably going to struggle to remember that um yeah see my my thing every time I think of animals being like
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anthropomorph anthropomorphized whatever the term is it's red wool the books of red wool I don't know if you guys ever
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read them I know of them but they were yeah they were basically like that kids version of like I think it's why like I
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ended up moving on to like David Gmel and stuff like that cuz it's these big high fantasy things with like a cool storyline and all that lot and there are
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some lessons I learned in that that mainly from two different only two of the books in that series but there are
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some lessons I learned out of those books that have kind of stuck with me that just I yeah I loved the Red Bull
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books um and I I finally ditched them when I moved house only six years ago but I'd held on to them why did you get
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rid of them from the age of like I never get rid of any of my books eight n or whatever just cuz they were never going to be read again but I kind of flicked
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through them and read the back again and was like I remember that story that's so cool I guess now you've got things like
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Kindles and and you know reading online it's not like you're never going to be able to do that thing but I think there
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is something special still about holding a book especially like a childhood book yeah yeah it's it's just that there's
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something about like when you're a kid having those animals doing things and
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stuff like that and and what I found and it's kind of the same with animals of fathering wood is you then tie a
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personality or a type to a creature and they they kind of do that quite a lot in those kind of books where it's like well
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all of the badgers are stoic sort of thing and all that kind of stuff and you it kind of I don't know as a kid it's
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easier to grasp those kind of things and yet you still get these cool high fantasy stories at the same time so yeah
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I love those but animals of faring wood's a good shout as well i enjoy that yeah definitely but yeah so probably
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Everdale i really like a lot of the mechanics with it i know some people get frustrated with the I guess it's
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probably even more so than over another equivalent a little bit of a a luck what you draw kind of game cuz it's not only
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what you draw but it's also what you pair with i don't Have you played i have i've
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I wasn't in love with it if I'm honest but I think it's just we played the first time I played it they forgot a
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couple of core rules and it kind of pushed the game in one way and then after that I just felt like there was other games doing the similar thing um
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but I did enjoy it i just didn't feel the need to kind of play again i think the expansions add a lot to it yeah
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which I haven't played i played with one of the expansions which was the first one pearl Brook pearl Brook that's the
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worst one so I would recommend trying i'm It's one of those where I'd happily give that another go as long as you
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didn't put the stupid tree in the middle of the table you leave that tree alone sir um but I would happily give it
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another go it didn't wow me but it didn't it wasn't like oh that's dreadful sort of thing so yeah
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I think I should I should want to play it more but I think it's it's a bit more
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of a complex game than it looks like it is with all the very cute kind of crittery artwork which is really lovely
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i It's not complicated by any stretch of the imagination but there's a lot more planning in it than than just the look
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of it I think would infer that's fair so for those of you who don't know it um
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Everell is basically a worker placement game at its heart but it's also a mini
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tableau building the tableau doesn't really matter into where you place it like Earth um but it's collecting sets
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the king goes with the queen and all that kind of stuff and and basically the idea is there's mostly only two different types of cards there's um
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buildings that they live in and then the animals themselves the idea being is the animals you don't have to pay resources
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for if you've already got the building that they live in um if they haven't they can still go into your tableau um
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no problem at all and they function relatively normally um but you have to pay the resources to do it and sometimes
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they add extra benefits if they're in their building as well so yeah so it is
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just if you don't pluck those and you don't see that building type and you've got that animal you've got to pay for it
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and you're not getting the bonus and someone else start in their starting hand gets four cards and they all happen to go together then it can feel a little
26:59
bit like swingy and there's nothing really you could do about it i get that i still really enjoy it it's good fun
27:05
and mostly it doesn't work out that way but the potential's there and I've seen it i think I end up feeling by kind of
27:12
maybe the second or third season I realize like I'm just so far behind because I didn't get the things or I
27:18
didn't prioritize the right things and then you think there's there's not really a catch-up mechanic in that game
27:24
when you go in south you're going south probably not i can't remember enough about it to say if there is or not but yeah I can't I can't remember an obvious
27:31
thing you're not really playing you are playing against other people it's about getting who gets the most points but stuff you do doesn't really affect other
27:38
people other than getting things like before they did perhaps yeah i mean mostly it doesn't it's not really a
27:44
gotcha game but there is a few bits and bobs in there like I forget what they're called but like there essentially
27:49
someone you can send over to the other person's village which gives minus Yes minus 2vp and takes up one of their
27:55
spaces so there are there are ways of you know screwing people over for one of a better term and obviously being a
28:01
worker placement by nature it does um you do get in each other's way but what
28:07
I find quite interesting about the game and and some people don't like it but I found it quite an interesting mechanic
28:13
is that if you're done with the round then you skip one turn where you take all your workers back everyone else just
28:20
keeps playing yeah so like you could be done half hour before everyone else which isn't a good feeling is the
28:26
downside but at the same time it makes it a little bit more tactical cuz as soon as they're done they take all their
28:31
workers back and now all the spaces you've been waiting to go down on you want to get right there we go so sometimes you want to stretch out your
28:37
turn just to wait for that turn where they went where they taken back which is cool but I wish they didn't call it spring summer autumn and winter cuz I
28:43
can be in spring and you're in summer in the same tree it's it's weird it's not very thematic in that way i know why
28:50
they did it yeah but it really I remember it really sort of throwing me cuz I was like "Right so we're all done now." And they're like "No no no." And I
28:56
was like "See I'm going to be in spring and you're going to be in summer." And we were supposedly in the same forest and it was like I don't know why cuz
29:02
there's we abstract loads of things in board games but I remember that really throwing me out and being like I don't love it now as much as I probably would
29:10
that's that's hilarious that that's what it really caught me off guard and I don't know why but I just didn't enjoy
29:15
it if they So you'd have just called it round one two three and four you'd have been happy yeah probably more happy than
29:21
cuz it Well not even rounds cuz they're not really rounds are they cuz a round would suggest something ends and you
29:26
start something new it's not as you say it's just a retrieval action where you gain an extra worker i mean they do it a
29:31
lot in card games right they do it in loads of games where your favorite one Concordia kind of does that yeah yeah
29:37
but they don't call it here's different years so we're all in weird different years sort of thing and it just really
29:42
threw me i remember it really i I can understand that that I by the way I love
29:47
it and a lot of people love it so don't think it's a bad game but I can see there's a couple of things that could
29:53
irritate some people I guess about it it just doesn't irritate me it has the most um edible looking resources look those
30:01
berries are not only edible but like they're actually really good quality even like the little pebbles and stuff they look great yeah they really like
30:08
even the little logs that you can pick up for thematics where you pick them up is actually
30:15
there's a little bit you've got a bush with the little berries on that's where you get the berries down by the water is
30:21
where you get the pebbles and it's great brilliant it really is lovely and that's I think Everdale's a really good one for
30:27
this so I was thinking about what makes a nature themed game now yeah okay obviously it's about things from nature
30:33
such as trees or animals or whatever but Evell is like that so the theme is you
30:40
are a little critter collecting wood trees berries whatever so it's about nature but the actual mechanics although
30:46
Adrian doesn't like it you are using a nature kind of thing so spring summer
30:51
autumn winter you're using those kind of terminology to actually progress the
30:56
game now I I do agree it does feel weird when you're finished you know you're finished spring or what and everyone
31:02
else is in a different season that is that is a bit weird so I think they have kind of shoehorned the fact it's seasons
31:08
yeah it's really just round one two three and four isn't it but I see why they did it it's not even rounds that's that was my biggest thing was if it was
31:14
it made it clearly sound like it's rounds and yet it's not it's just a worker retrieval action but anyway
31:20
totally sidetracked but yes so I think there are there are a lot of games that are the subject matter happens to be
31:26
about natury things so yeah we've just mentioned kind of Everdale there photosynthesis is another one that I've
Nature can be cutthroat & the feel of nature games (Photosynthesis)
31:32
really liked the look of it i bought it in the UK G bring and buy like I bought everything else basically um counted all
31:39
the bits took it all made sure everything was there looked absolutely beautiful watched a run through video
31:45
did I ever play it no it's such a mean game is it yeah cuz it's about blocking
31:51
it's about trees blocking sunlight for other trees and the sun moves around the board so you're thinking about right
31:56
next turn how do I block the other player from getting sunlight to their trees and stuff i don't like the thought
32:01
of that i suppose is meant to be nice but it sounds a bit cutth through but then it is really nice there are quite a few nature themed games that really have
32:08
sort of I think they're quite disarming i think nature games in general are quite disarming because it feels cozy
32:14
and comfy and you can put really mean and really abstract games in there and
32:20
as long as you can tie it to something nature themed where it feels right you
32:25
can get away with them being exceptionally abstract or exceptionally mean or those kind of things in a board
32:31
game and I think photosynthesis is is the perfect example of that is it's ex exceptionally mean very abstract game if
32:37
they hadn't had trees and they had just had different sized rings it bigger monsters and smaller monsters or
32:43
something it would have felt more like well I was thinking more like um not a fellow is it a fellow what are the like the inch and stuff like that where
32:49
they're just very plain rings on a board that make up these very like mean competitive abstract games
32:56
it would look like that if it wasn't for the trees and what the trees are what lift it into this idea that I think loads of people were like "Oh it's about
33:02
growing trees." Yeah it's not it's an area control like denial of area sort of
33:08
space abstract game that's just mean and they've managed to put it a nature theme on it and attract more people to it so
33:15
do you think do you think sometimes people use that as a bit of a a hook yeah animals and nature are universally
33:24
uh what's the term they're a universal language right we can all speak the language of these like you know Ark Nova
33:31
or anything like that or any any sort of zoo or farm game okay well these next to each other you can have multiplication
33:37
mechanics like breeding mechanics and stuff like that you can have and in in trees and forests and stuff like that
33:43
you can have so many different things that just naturally resonate with you as a person because we've all seen them in
33:50
life and so they make games more approachable they make them feel nicer I
33:56
think generally or look nicer and I think you can put some quite complex
34:01
mechanics in there and the nature theme allows you to teach it if it works out
34:07
if it makes sense that it allows you to kind of involve all of those things and I think I think that's the real plus of
34:12
nature games and why we've seen so many where where this industry is moving further away from trolls and princesses
34:18
and not the actual game but you know like the D&D sort of stuff high fantasy kind of space typically or you've either
34:25
had fantasy space or war typically like as board game themes as these have
34:31
become more accessible things like nature games have become more prevalent I think it's because of how approachable
34:36
and how easy to understand they are um so whether they're mean or not it
34:42
doesn't matter as long as you put a nature theme on it sort of thing i don't know if this game would count as a
Nature can be forceful (Spirit Island)
34:47
nature themed game but Spirit Island so it is kind of about protecting your island right so it's it's kind of about
34:54
protecting your island and and you are the nature and you're kind of trying to defeat the horrible plastic invaders but
35:00
if that wasn't about something so appealing I 100% I don't think I'd have
35:05
even given it a look in bet you wish you hadn't now well I I sort of like it to a
35:10
degree and then I just get sick of it i just get so sick of it you get I remember you get headache playing it i
35:17
can only play the ones where they can play the fast and the slow actions at like the same time or or the lightning
35:24
one basically where you play i just can't get my I'm not a thick person I
35:29
don't think should I be but I don't I just I can't get my head around that
35:35
whole concept of what will this look like in a minute so what do I need to do now to make the thing that's going to be
35:41
different in a minute be beneficial to me i just I just can't be asked in my
35:46
brain to do it so I think if Spirit Island hadn't have been so enchanting
35:52
with the tactileness of the all the natury stuff nice wood pieces the
35:58
invaders are plastic and horrible so it's an element yeah and I think absolutely beautiful it's the
36:04
elementalism that sells certainly the beginning gods or spirits whatever you play cuz it's like fire does damage
36:11
stone stands up against things like waves move things all of those kind of
36:16
things you can intrinsically link to that so personally I don't know how much it is nature but it is elementalism and
36:22
it's that similar feel isn't it is at the start especially with those starting spirits it's very much a case of I
36:27
understand this because culturally we've always tied fire to damage and stuff
36:33
like that you know yeah it makes sense yeah it absolutely does i think um artwork like in that game specifically
36:41
is what totally brings you in the the beautifulness of the tiles everything is
36:46
just really I don't know just bring it just absolutely draws me in i can't
36:53
think of any nature games that I don't like the look of i was just trying to think of some there but I I can't think of any that I wouldn't look twice at if
37:01
they were have it being nature based would make me look at them again even if I didn't like
37:07
the thought of it I think yeah that's definitely the case for me i'm a real sucker for nature games it's not saying
37:13
it would be the There's plenty of nature games I haven't got along with but I'll always be willing to try one which kind
37:18
of you know probably says something about me i'm not sure but I do find it quite appealing just just comforting
37:25
almost to play an H game sometimes it shouldn't matter really mechanics is a mechanic as a is a mechanic but yeah I
37:31
don't know just feel better about it i and I think quite often the artwork in
37:36
nature games is quite often better than other games so like if we think about
37:41
any of the spans um obviously worms span isn't really a nature game but if you think of any of the spans they they are
37:48
have beautiful artwork that's kind of um representative and it's the same with
37:53
parks say I played the the game and each park being lovingly sort of transferred
37:59
into a different type of artwork and with a different feel to it and all that kind of stuff really made me look at
38:05
what I was getting like oh that's nice like I can see that and I've visited a couple of them so I was one of them I
38:10
bought I know this I went through this um and that was nice but what also happens with a lot of these games is
38:15
they have facts in them so you are mildly educational at the same time sneaky education into board games
Educational aspects of nature games
38:21
bringing me in beautifully to my next point of board games as like an educational tool they'll have a little fact on it every card or everything or
38:28
sometimes in the rule book it will tell you a bit about the environment or um is it is really good for that yeah yeah
38:34
yeah so wingspan so parks um I think is it Serenetti there's one of them where it tells you about Serenetti it tells
38:40
you about the conservation efforts in the area and stuff like in the rule book i don't know if wild Serengeti does
38:46
there's one of there's one of them I'm sure is like nature reserves or something like that i can't remember and I remember seeing in the rule book I
38:52
just had a quick flick through and it had a whole bit about all the conservation going on um to protect these species and stuff like that and
38:58
they're just sneakily educational and again you don't have to pay attention i think me and one other player were the only two in playing parks or actually
39:05
reading the facts at the bottom but I was kind of like that is cool to know like I like I always read the bird facts
39:10
on Wingspan now that wouldn't have made me buy the game specifically because it's got bird fact cuz I've got the
39:16
internet so I can look at bird facts whenever I want however it I think I
39:21
would use that as a kind of a lure to to show someone that game who
39:28
probably wasn't really interested in gaming but if they were interested in birds Yeah i might kind of use that as a
39:33
way of well this is a game about birds and you can you do I have to explain mechanics to them because they wouldn't know that kind of stuff whereas I think
39:39
like you said if if you have played any kind of tableau building game you they're very sort of similar to grass
39:46
aren't they but I think the fact that it's got those little bits of um yeah fact where it comes from whatever bit
39:53
like Arknova so I had to mention it so I remember when Curly me and you were in
39:59
um Disney World in Florida we were going around uh Animal Kingdom and we were
40:04
talking about some of the animals and we were like kind of saying oh that costs this much in our you know somat and
40:11
tiger and it's I can only put this in a threesiz enclosure or whatever it is so it okay I have played that game to death
40:18
but those things do sink in a little bit don't they you know like in wingspan okay you're maybe not going to remember
40:24
the exact wingspan of a bird but you might remember where it's from you might
40:29
remember what it looks like so I think that I think those this it kind of is like sneaky stealth education is the
40:37
same with like um splitstones games mycelia yes beautifully drawn mushrooms and all that kind of stuff and and
40:44
they're All not all of them but a lot of them are like that a lot of them have very nice artwork or very good pictures
40:50
of what they're showing off that kind of just Yeah just nice to look at quite often in some more in different genre
40:57
games I won't look at the artwork more than like a cursory glance oh yeah cool i get what the artwork is now but with a
41:03
lot of nature games I find myself staring at the art and I have completely forgotten it's my turn and just stared at artwork for a good couple of minutes
41:10
and then someone's been like whatever whose turn is it oh it's mine i was staring at the cool artwork yeah I think
41:17
um Myelia is a really good one well the game is a really good one but um Mycelia a strategic mushroom game i haven't
41:24
played the other one i'm sure the other one is awesome but we're specifically talking about split stones mycelia
41:31
version here um you're using like the tile placement and that represents different um kind of environments
41:37
different kind of nutrients in the soil and okay that could just be red green yellow like it it doesn't really matter
41:44
but I love how they've kind of turned that mechanic into a bit of the theme
41:50
like it doesn't matter that it's red it doesn't matter that it you know but it they've made that mean something and I
41:56
think in nature games it's really nice when they make those sorts of things mean mean something and they use the
42:01
wind and it's just Yeah i think maybe like you said because it's a universal kind of understanding you can get a lot
42:09
of those things in there and I really like that i really like that on a separate note um have you played
An aside with Cascadia and the beauty of nature
42:15
Cascadia i have how did you find it cuz it always appeals theme-wise i really
42:21
enjoyed it so interestingly I played Fool First which is a two-player game which feels very similar that we picked
42:27
that Dave picked up at Essen and we played that and I' I'd been looking at Cascadia for ages and then won it a
42:34
while back and and finally got a game of it in and it is
42:39
very good at that kind of you're drafting two things that are together and so you're trying to make sometimes
42:46
the best choice is just picking one thing that you really need sometimes it's kind of picking two so there the
42:53
two things you pick is there's a bit of landscape and then there's a type of animal and each landscape tells you what kind of animal it can have and then you
43:02
one of the animals you'll pick you'll place on on a landscape like a this hex which is a bit of landscape that can
43:08
take it for instance so bears can't live in rivers and sandy areas they need a
43:15
forest for instance so and it will show you the little symbols that's allowed for it and then at the end of the game
43:20
there is points for having the most of one type of terrain together and there's
43:26
also like points for bears want to be in couples sort of thing so each pair of bears are worth a sliding scale of
43:33
points each salmon along the river might be worth but they change up very
43:38
slightly like you deal a different one out for each animal type um
43:44
you Yeah you deal each animal out type out at the beginning of the game so the goals are normally similar but slightly
43:51
different and so it kind of gives you that little bit i found it it's a really nice game um and strangely doesn't
43:58
really fit into what we talked about cuz there's the artwork isn't the greatest there's a little bit of artwork in there
44:03
it's not the greatest but it is just a nice abstract draft these two things you've got to make a choice of do you
44:09
want a really good thing that you must have or do you want two okay things kind of thing what are you doing or maybe
44:14
they're both fantastic for what you want but that's good at that point and you're just drafting those things together and
44:20
then adding it to this increasing landscape whereas Fall is a two-player game where you're playing a landscape in the center okay and you're competing for
44:27
for trying to get what you want out of it but it's a similar drafting mechanic um is that an old game or Cascadia uh
44:35
yeah it'd be about the same age as Parks I think maybe a year younger than Parks two years younger than Parks it's I
44:41
would say it's at least 5 years old they've got a roll and write version out there now um they've had an expansion so
44:47
yeah it's been around a little while um and full came out two years ago last
44:52
year something like that again that's a little publisher um so probably not as well known but very similar feel if you
44:58
like if you like the idea of a two-player competitive version rather than I'm building my own little landscape sort of thing um yeah but it
45:05
is nice yeah food for thought thank you yeah it sounds I can bring that along at some point yes please i would like to
45:10
play it i like just way you were describing it there just kind of when you were saying the artwork kind of it's
45:16
not spectacular it's just a bit of something it was making me think of Baron Park which is which is kind of into this kind of about that class as a
45:23
nature game yet yeah I was just thinking I hadn't thought of that until just now because Baron Park is basically Tetris
45:29
with bears with bears on it but it it it's only it just I really like it i love Baron Park yeah but it could be
45:35
robots it could be colors it could be it could be any number of things yeah so
45:41
it's only nature because they happened to pick bears but why did they pick bears because people like bears right so
45:47
could have been theme park as well could have been any kind of park as well anything could have been anything it could have been anything like that but
45:52
they picked an animal because people are just drawn to them aren't they it's one game that there's not really very many
45:58
ones that I know of theme parky type games the one that is there theme it's bit off topic I guess but theme park is
46:06
did look a bit dry and looked a bit but it was the same with zoo tycoon zoo
46:12
tycoon looked very dry to me and a load of people said it's basically like a bit of an Excel sheet going on and for some
46:19
reason that one didn't draw me despite the fact that I love tycoon games that's what you're going to say despite the fact I love spreadsheets oh well I do
46:24
love spreadsheets um and I love tycoon games on computers so you think I would love them both but it just didn't quite
46:31
capture me in the same way but yeah no you're right there aren't many theme park games out there but I think there's
46:38
quite a few missing genres and and sort of interests from that kind of Adrian but yeah sure
46:45
they are just undeniably pretty aren't they when you've got trees bears whatever any nature thing I guess
46:52
because there is nothing in my opinion more beautiful than nature like you can't make anything nicer than that so
46:58
maybe maybe that says more about me than it does about game producers but they clearly think that a lot of people think
47:04
that cuz they just keep trottting out nature games yeah like we played atal i'm sure it's
The theme can soften game play experiences
47:10
called atal Essen last year and that suffered from having a few too many types of animals because it's at the
47:17
bottom of the sea and you've kind of got reefs and animals that go with it so you need certain number of reefs around
47:22
animals certain animals prefer more reef or less reef sort of thing and you're just creating a tableau of
47:28
everinccreasing stuff and and there's a little bit of conservation in there because it's do you do something now that will pollute the environment more
47:34
but gives you a bonus sort of short term and or do you clean up the environment which give you bonuses and there's a
47:40
little bit of that in there and that game was great apart from the fact that it was relying on um a little bit like
47:47
Everel I suppose is it was relying on you seeing the symbols you needed to get
47:52
the things you wanted and there just being slightly too many symbols because it was just little bit of
47:58
artwork in there different types of even though I'll be honest
48:04
with it i still found it just quite nice to be sitting there and playing and seeing what animals came up and all that kind of stuff and so I think it can take
48:12
like nature game can also take the edge off not having a great game in a way that other games totally agree don't do
48:18
i think that's why I have managed to become better AROVA because I've played it so many times because even if you
48:25
lose which I do and did and still currently do you're making a nice zoo
48:30
with you know so I'm sitting there thinking "Oh how good would this zoo be oh it's got it's got donkeys in it and
48:36
it's got a mir cat over there." Like I'm sitting there thinking about how nice my zoo is now it is scoring absolutely
48:41
pants but I'm having a nice time cuz I managed to get cocknose monkey cuz you
48:47
know who doesn't want the proboscus monkey cuz he's cool but you know that's not going to get me points but if you
48:53
know you're losing you might as well just go for cute animals right well yeah yeah and the one I thought of then was forest shuffle cuz I really didn't have
48:59
a great time with forest shuffle cuz Becky was to the right of me clearing some cave mechanic and I lost all
49:06
options every single time i was like I've got no options to play with here everyone else has and I haven't but I
49:12
was still like "Oh I could get an elk can I get a" and it was it did the job of kind of distracting me from how
49:19
rubbish a time I was having of that game it it does soften the edges doesn't it i liked it it Yeah it's fine but it does
49:25
it does fall prey to that that there's a It's almost too many different animals and you've got to try and find the
49:31
things you're looking for yeah and not have someone constantly sweep all your options off the board you know they
49:37
should have just not had that mechanic in there but I agree yeah I must admit you um do suffer a little bit from if
49:44
you're going for one particular thing and someone else decides to go for that as well you're screwed so you just need to either continue on with that and just
49:50
accept you're going to have a worse time or you go on to a different one which then someone else could decide they want
49:56
i felt like I'd spent the entire game top decking and I was like this isn't I'm not getting any but anyway it is a
50:02
really bad game to score as well at the end there it's so convoluted there are apps now which is great that you take a
50:08
photo and it does it for you but that's not going to be perfect every time but
50:13
it really does need a you know a bit of an easier time for scoring that game but I do like it still i do like it cuz it's
50:21
pretty would I like it if it was about something that wasn't nature probably not all All of these ab the I tend to
50:28
find I feel it's weird because nature games remind me how abstract a lot of board games are i feel very aware of how
50:36
abstract they can be compared to other games where I think sometimes the theme fits better and yet I also find them
50:44
likable so likable that it's kind of like I can see how abstract this is being because
50:51
quite often this being next to that is just an abstraction i could have turned that I could turn these things into as say like Dungeons and Dragons or I could
50:58
have turned it into any number of other genres this game but I've they've made it a nature game and that makes it nicer
51:06
for some reason just makes it more approachable and yet I'm very much aware with nature games quite often how abstract they are and I think nature
51:12
games lead them lead themselves to more abstract games naturally as well um where you are trying to place things
51:18
next to each other or build up rows of stuff or whatever that is purely an abstraction of a mechanic and so I feel
51:25
more aware of them in nature games and yet you don't mind them almost yeah it's
51:30
a very odd sort of opposing thoughts I have i guess it's a good place to mention the
The Span'verse
51:36
spans so obviously Wingspan came in first and everyone knows how that everyone if you don't know what wingspan
51:44
is just just look it on Google cuz we're not going to talk about it again i do wonder if wingspan hadn't been invented
51:51
would worm span have been as popular no yeah I think if they bought out dragons first I don't think as many
51:57
people would have gone after it and I think if they'd had bought out dragons first they would never ever have done birds after that maybe it's hard to tell
52:05
isn't it like we're not in the we're not in um Elizabeth Harre's mind and Stemmer's mind sort of thing um so it's
52:15
hard to know right i do wonder how popular dragons would have now again I remember when dragons came the the worms
52:21
band came out and loads of people were like dragons thank god not boring birds
52:27
and I was like yeah but I wonder how many people would have said the opposite way round where it's like oh birds not dragons sort of thing because well it
52:33
makes a massive difference doesn't it because like we just said earlier the the very common tropes of board gaming
52:38
D&D type fantasy space maybe nature to a degree but it wouldn't have stood out
52:44
that's kind of the point really no it wouldn't it would have just been another another fantasy kind of game wouldn't it
52:50
and I wonder if the art style might have changed as well because dragon games typically don't have that natury style
52:57
of sort of illustration quite often they're quite bold and fantastic so I do
53:02
wonder if there would have been those changes as well but yeah I I think I think Wingspan has led to people
53:08
clocking on to nature games a little bit more as well and to how useful they are because again it's the this bird can go
53:16
in your like read area or the forest area all that lot really doesn't have much to do with you're supposed to be
53:22
collecting bird photos or birds themselves i couldn't I can't even remember what the actual you're spotting
53:28
them are you spotting i can't I remember there being someone like oh you got to cut and I remember thinking this is like what row it sits on is a little bit
53:34
abstracted again but um it's a thoroughly decent Tableau builder I've
53:40
had my time with it personally and I think there's a lot of people out there like that but it's it is a good solid
53:47
Tableau builder that again is just approachable you can put it in front of so many people who wouldn't normally
53:53
adhere to look at board games or stuff like that and they can just fall in love with the artwork and not care how
53:58
they're doing meanwhile the heavy board gamers will kind of discard the artwork
54:05
and do the engine building bit and therefore it can kind of bridge those two types of games yeah I think that is where it really is a a good a good game
54:11
we've used it like that haven't we with with like friends of ours yeah absolutely aren't really gamers right
54:16
but could see the appeal of this and then found themselves learning sort of
54:22
board game mechanics and and when we spoke sort of shown them other games they're like oh that's a bit like this like yes that's the mechanic of that and
54:29
it's really nice that you can sort of use that as a as a like a hook a lure sort of thing I do wonder how if we
54:36
hadn't have had worm span as like a an alternative version would fin span have ever come out
54:42
cuz I don't think it's different enough really
54:48
but it lends itself perfectly you're just going downwards not acrosswards now cuz it's water you've still got I think
54:55
I think it would have still done well it's not cute though no but some people are different like I think people
55:02
generally have a couple of different types of nature that they love yeah they will love s the sea or they will love
55:10
like uh sort of what's the term like safari or zoo orest or or forest or you know or or
55:19
birds and sky and stuff you know there will be different types of nature that people naturally go towards and so
55:25
people who might not have been so interested in birds might be more interested in fish yeah maybe so I think
55:31
I think it still would have done well obviously it's it's hard to tell how well it would have done without the
55:36
others first but he just needs to bring out the other expansions that he sold a massive box for that haven't come out
55:43
what for Fins for what wingspan oh wingspan yes yeah there is sold a massive box with Oh it'll fit all the
55:48
expansions we haven't heard hide or hair of the last three expansions he's got
55:53
plenty of He's been busy making other spans promised to bring out these ones but I think that's just my my uh what's
56:01
the term cynical yes that's the right one just my cynical feel as to he could
56:07
have finished off Wingspan quicker i don't know it's like the age
56:12
old George RR Martin thing isn't it yeah you know could stop writing other things write the thing write the thing that we
56:18
all fell in love with sort of thing and it's it feels a bit like that anyway that's and again I think if he sold a
56:23
big box and then with promise it would fit all these expansions and then hasn't bought out any more expansions since then no one's getting rid of their box
56:29
yeah no one's getting rid of their big box they're waiting aren't they um but on a separate note I bit controversial
56:36
maybe i I think if you've got one I don't think you need all three
56:42
i personally I'd be perfectly happy with Worms Span i don't need Wingspan or Fins
56:47
Span they're not They're both good games but not different enough for me you'd cash out Wingspan and keep Worms Span
56:55
definitely i can see that people have said that about Pandemic to me like do you really need 12 copies of Pandemic
57:01
cuz you love it though but that's it people will love Wingspan and they will absolutely have Worm Span Fin Span
57:07
whatever else frog span whatever else he brings out in the future they will collect them all because they
57:13
love the core mechanic and there's differences enough that it feel fresh for them like and but they want to kind
57:19
of hone in on that and that's the way I that's the way I feel about certain games is that I will buy all the Pandemics because I love Pandemic and I
57:26
might only play it once and then sell it on but at least I'll have found a different style of a similar game you have to look at my Lord of the Rings
57:32
collection maybe I'm not immune anything that says Lord of the Rings on it do we think Great Western Trail is a
Some games which live on the edge of that nature theme
57:39
nature game no but it's about sheep/cows it's about being a cowboy yeah yeah but
57:45
you can make you could go it depends what route you want to go down i kind of agree but if you do you go down a whole
57:52
separate genre of things like cava a gricula the farming side
57:57
oh where you are sheep in it yeah yeah yeah you are farming and like you know then we go down new Rosenberg kind of
58:04
route and you know where I think we're kind of talking about where the animal
58:10
is the main focus kind of thing rather than being a resource or or an outcome
58:17
of farming type thing which I guess is a different the only way the only reason I asked was because I was looking at the
58:23
um BGG's top games from one and was kind of wanted to know basically how many there were until you get to a nature
58:30
game arknova is obviously up there but Great Western Trail came before um Wingspan or Everddale they were quite
58:37
quite substantially further down the list so I just thought actually I mean it it kind of is a nature game isn't it
58:43
i mean that it's based animals i think it's animals and not the primary it's
58:52
cuz I was wondering whether you'd bring up dog park and I controversially don't know if I think of dog park as a nature
58:57
game that is not an age game in my opinion because it's cuz dogs are an animal but they're not like a they're
59:04
not a wild animal or anything which is where I feel like almost nature lends itself to being about wild animals and
59:11
plants rather than domesticated but again I don't know that there's a hard line there it's just I remember
59:17
when when I knew you were doing this episode I was like I wonder if she'll talk about dog park because you do like dog park yeah I do but I don't know how
59:22
much of I think of it as a nature game and therefore I was like I was kind of in my brain going I wonder if she will or not sort of thing now you brought up
59:28
great I guess when we're sort of looking at um board game nature games being
59:34
either about the mechanics being kind of natury or the themes natury and I guess dog park is the theme is like I say it's
59:42
not really natury but the mechanics are nothing to do with nature are they it could be about any
59:49
thing at all there's not really a an evolution of seasons there's not any
59:54
kind of growth or or any kind of other natural kind of leanings the reality is
1:00:03
is that it's an animal game not an age game that's usually one and the same thing but it's not in this example yeah
1:00:08
yeah I agree but the dogs are cute yeah and again it it fits in that same thing
1:00:14
of of of all of these other games is that it's cute yeah like it is it will it will appeal to people just because
1:00:20
they want to look at pictures of dogs pictures of dogs basically yeah yeah definitely i that's definitely what sort
1:00:25
of lures me in because the the game isn't Yeah the game isn't natury or or
1:00:31
anything about colle Well it's about collecting resources but you don't have to use any kind of special skill for
1:00:37
that or trade things it's not Yeah it it doesn't use any kind of like ecosystems
1:00:43
or or anything like that you're just collecting stuff no it's it's the same as I think Kico Calico um I think that's
1:00:50
sold a lot because there's a cat on the box because actually it's quite a mean drafting game about quilts which is
1:00:57
quite cool but I think if there hadn't been a cute cat on the box I don't know how well it would have sold compared to
1:01:03
I don't think I've played it um I haven't played it just watched um of it because that there's a series of them
1:01:08
there's three different games all in a Sim series and the other two I can't even think of the top of them i remember
1:01:14
looking at that and then going "Oh but what about Calico?" And yeah reading up about it but yeah I think that's I think
1:01:20
that's sold cuz there was a cat on the box more than it did anything else and it is a cute cat but yeah so I think
1:01:25
that just about wraps up Nature Games unless anyone else has got any other stuff to add i'm always going to be a
1:01:30
sucker for them and they will make me look at a game twice even if I wouldn't
1:01:35
have been interested at all yeah I feel the same yep definitely and I'm sure I will continue to buy more when they
1:01:42
bring more out [Music]
TURN 4 - Receive, Sleeve or Leave
1:01:54
so time for sleeve receive or leave these are three of my top favorite nature games and you've got to decide
1:02:01
which one you're doing so Arknova Everell or Wingspan
1:02:06
curly which one are you sleaving receiving and leaving well we're leaving Wing Wingspan cuz I much prefer Worms
1:02:13
Span so that kicks that one out straight away it would be wrong of me to say anything other than Arnova sleing so
1:02:21
yeah I guess I would receive Everdile seems about right to me yeah fair enough
1:02:27
Adrian same to me same for me wow so Wingspan um can go in the bin and as
1:02:32
said I had my time with it i enjoyed it to start with and then it sort of got sy for me and I don't I can't imagine more
1:02:37
of the expansions improving it um as I said Evell um had a bit of a mixed time
1:02:44
with it but would absolutely play it again and ONOVA um I was so impressed
1:02:49
with the first playthrough that I bought it and sold it still in shrink wrap cuz I realized I was never going to get to the table with probably other than you
1:02:55
guys um so sold it within like months of buying it still in shrink wrap um but
1:03:01
yeah thoroughly enjoyed my play of it should play it more i just haven't so yeah exactly the same way around maybe
1:03:07
if we get a time uh there'll be uh good one to get in on the events list yep
1:03:13
always so I'm obviously going to sleeve up Nova there's there's no question with
1:03:18
that i'm going to receive Wingspan i mean I should really sleeve Wingspan
1:03:23
seeing as I threw water all over my copy before i'm going to leave Everdale i know i know we've got the big box and I
1:03:30
know that means I should like and I I do like it maybe we need to sell it then love it no no I don't sell it how very
1:03:37
dare you selling it again i might never play it again but you can't sell it no it takes my whole cal cuz I No you could
1:03:44
keep it as it is no I do like it i think I just wish I liked it better and I think I wish I was better at it but
1:03:51
that's because I don't play it enough because there's always another game that I think I'd rather play but I think
1:03:56
you're right with Belfare expansion it makes all the difference i need to give it probably as well yeah it really does
1:04:03
so yeah keeping ONOVA uh receiving Wingspan and leaving Everddale
1:04:09
so basically that brings us to our penultimate turn and what's coming up around the corner
TURN 5 - Penultimate Turn: What's Coming Up
1:04:23
mr curly Curington what are you looking forward to well this is actually a good one so I've got
1:04:31
Apex Legends coming up at the weekend nick mine what why am I nicking yours
1:04:36
that's what I was going to say but anyway um yeah really looking forward to playing that i don't know much about it i know a little bit about the Apex
1:04:42
Legends universe from the computer game um not an awful lot though but just the way that JP and Rob and everyone else
1:04:49
were loving it when they played it at the UK GE is just like "Okay all right you've sold me let's Let's have a go."
1:04:55
Is it Is it a dudes on a map game what's the It's kind of in an arena and it's um
1:05:01
you know you can play lots of different styles as far as I can tell but it's kind of um different characters with
1:05:06
different abilities in an arena shooting and beating each other up until there's a winner so it's really not your sort of
1:05:12
it's a skirmish game in a board game which I've not seen many of them that I think personally have been done well but
1:05:18
when I played it on Gaming Rules with JP I was blown away with it so my copy I think I might be the last person in the
1:05:24
country to be getting theirs that's what it feels like but my copy is landing on Tuesday um and then on Sunday JP's
1:05:32
already got his and we're going to have a game of that and I'm really looking forward to trying it again because it
1:05:38
was it blew me away with how good it was and how many of the typical skirmish tropes it threw out the door sort of
1:05:44
thing and we're not going to follow those ways of doing things we're going to do things in a completely different fashion um and probably put Glass Cannon
1:05:52
Unplugged on the map for me because having Frost Punk being received so well and now Apex Legends blowing me away I
1:05:58
think it's kind of for me put that publisher on the map yeah that's fair it kind of gives me having not played it by
1:06:05
the way so but it it it's making me feel like Necroanda
1:06:10
i remember that from when I was younger and I don't know have you ever played yeah yeah i played a lot similarities
1:06:17
cuz I was going to say from the way you're describing it it's making me think of Warhammer it's not It's one of
1:06:23
those things if if your only experience of skirmishing games is Necroander then there's I think there's comparisons to
1:06:30
be sort of had if you are aware of a lot of other war like war games and skirmish
1:06:36
games and stuff like that I think there's better comparisons but yes it's just it's four guys or six guys running
1:06:42
around a map trying to shoot each other in teams of two or three sort of thing um and so but I think it does a really
1:06:50
good version of turning it into a board game rather than having a normally sort of skirmish don't have a grid on them
1:06:56
it's kind of measure six inches or whatever in the direction you want and then measure 22 inches to this person and all this kind of stuff it doesn't
1:07:03
have it gets rid of all of that and gets rid of dice as well which I think is really interesting so yeah yeah looking
1:07:10
forward to that yeah my skirmish experience is playing Warhammer one time once with my very first ever boyfriend
1:07:17
about a million years ago yeah and I won actually i was scaven so take that and
1:07:24
um yeah that's it that I think that is my only ever skirmish game of anything so
1:07:30
I've got no comparisons but yeah there you go apex Legends looking forward to it yeah you've everyone's been raving
1:07:37
about it haven't they yeah I love my playthrough i remember I think Tambo and that lot and and Rob played it at Expo I
1:07:43
think it was i can't think who it was cuz me and JP had already played it on Gaming Rules and they played a demo of it I think at Expo and it's just really
1:07:51
good there are some really nice touches in there but I'm sure at some point someone will talk more in depth about it
1:07:57
but yeah really impressed with that on that day that we're playing that in the morning I am trying to get a game played
1:08:04
so I know whether I need to sell it or not all right what's this harry Potter Catch the Snitch oh so it's the
1:08:11
Quidditch board game basically that I was always going to back because it's Harry Potter and it's Quidditch and I've
1:08:16
been waiting for them to do a board game of that for forever and as I've said before Night Models really screwed up
1:08:23
the campaign night Models are well known for not doing the greatest job of keeping their games alive and up to date
1:08:30
and even somehow dropping entire licenses so I am not sure how I'm going
1:08:36
to feel about this game and even if I love it I don't know how often I'm going to get to play it because again it's it's like a
1:08:43
because it's like a sports game right so it's kind of doing that it's almost as similar to a skirmish game or something like that because it's very much about
1:08:49
taking people out and getting the quaffle and all that kind of stuff to the end and then there's a catch the snitch mechanic in there as well so I am
1:08:57
finally hopefully going to get to play that um cuz it's been sat on the shelf for two years I want to say it is wow um
1:09:04
purely to know whether or not I want to keep it or whether I want to sell it because I'm and it's a weird place to
1:09:10
come from right i want to play a game to decide if it's okay or bad yeah but
1:09:17
if you don't think it's going to get to the table much or isn't going to be superseded by a different version of a
1:09:24
similar sort of game then maybe selling it is a good thing and again um sort of seeing as Harry Potter is one of my
1:09:30
favorite IPs let let me know yeah cuz it's
1:09:35
and again it's it's had that thing where the Kickstarter showed one game and everyone gave the feedback that the
1:09:42
basically what you were playing towards was being so far ahead on the tracker that the catch the snitch part was then just a formality so you're trying to
1:09:48
score all the points in the actual game of Quidditch to get the seeker further up this like um this sort of track so
1:09:56
that it made catching the snitch easier and everyone was like that's really boring way to end the game because the the match ends and then this just like
1:10:03
quick card game sits at the end and everyone was a bit like that's a bit rubbish so they changed it up so it was all integrated as it was going um which
1:10:11
sounds better and it has had okay reviews so I might think actually this is good enough to to get a few more
1:10:18
games in it and possibly paint up the miniatures and stuff like that i'm not big miniature painter despite how much how many war
1:10:24
games I play but it might be one that kind of just holds in there sort of thing but yeah it's odd to be playing a
1:10:30
game to be like I want to know if I need to sell this rather than I don't I want to know if I'm going to enjoy it it's an odd place to come from but there you go
1:10:36
that's what I've got coming up so what's coming up for me is actually getting some games in the calendar that are not
1:10:42
um incorrect pictures of a podcast episode like these have all been scheduled as Finsspan because I couldn't
1:10:49
figure out how to do it on after game so it it was just easier to do that so I'm actually going to get some games and I'm
1:10:55
actually going to put them up on the app so there we go nice i'm going to do I'm
1:11:00
going to say five just pulled a number out the air five five yep woo is this by
1:11:06
the end of the year or by the end of the day no um I'm going to say
1:11:12
over the next three months i'm going to do five there we go it's achievable yeah
1:11:17
watch this space for what you played what I've played yeah and with that our
TURN 6 - The Final Turn
1:11:23
final turn is coming to an end thanks to everyone for listening if you've enjoyed the show please like subscribe and
1:11:29
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1:11:36
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1:11:42
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1:11:53
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1:11:58
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1:12:04
your ears really soon so until then whose turn is it