TURN 1 - Player Count
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[Music]
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Welcome to Whose Turn Is It Is It Anyway, your board gaming podcast where we bring you some exciting guest episodes in our latest expansion pack.
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And this is one of those. We're very excited. We're joined by Chip Theory Games with Josh Welgus and Andrew
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Santoro. Let's waste no time and get over and meet the guys.
TURN 1 - CTG's Turn
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[Music]
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Welcome to our one of our expansion pack episodes of the Who's Turn It Anyway podcast. And I am joined by Josh Welgus.
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Hello. And Andrew Santoro. That's me. From none other than Chip Theory Games.
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I'm so excited. The our listeners and all the podcast crew that that we've got
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will know that secretly I'm trying to hold it in together and not kind of fanboy too much uh cuz we've got you on
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the show. So, thank you so much guys for for joining us. It's this is a this is a real treat for me. I can't wait to just
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dive into more chip theory goodness. But yeah, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. It's it's our
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pleasure to be here. No fanboying required. No, fair enough. Just a little bit for me.
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Yeah, just that's that's good. That's good. So Andrew, we talked about Andrew um I think on our UK Games Expo episode
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cuz basically Andrew looked after us very well and we've got to play many games and we had a good game of Fight
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Five and uh I think also uh Neon Rain, we had a little game and and a bit of
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rough and it's all great fun. So So yeah, so thank you for looking after us so well and uh we really appreciate
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that. So firstly, my first question for all guests that we have is basically how
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did you get into the hobby of of tabletop gaming? Was it through the the joist of of chip t games or were you all
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tabletop gamers beforehand? I mean Josh, let's go for you first. Sure. Yeah, I my answer is probably
How did you get into the hobby?
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going to be long long- winded a little bit, but um I go for it.
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Yeah, Andrew's laughing because I tend to be longwinded, but uh Yep. Uh, I didn't grow up super I love board games
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when I was little. Uh, like playing things like Sorry and uh Trouble with my
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with my parents and that kind of thing, but um, in terms of like the hobby gaming stuff,
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I didn't really get into that until much later in life. Um, and my whole story
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with not just Tabletop Games, but even with Chip Theory kind of all ties back to Josh Carlson, our owner, who uh,
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married my sister-in-law. So Josh and I are married to sisters and
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uh he was joining the he was joining the family and uh I I got word that you know
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my my mother-in-law was like yeah Josh Josh Carlson like he's a game maker he makes games and I was like I kind of
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know a lot about nerd culture like what games does he does he make
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and so she was like ah it's she couldn't pronounce it was Huffleachus um but I looked up like you know and they had
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been doing they've been doing Kickstarters you know, back in those days. And I looked them up and it was like, "Oh, cute. They raised $15,000.
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That's really neat." Um, and then they were running the uh they Josh was running a campaign for uh
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Hopkins Origins. Josh and Adam were uh in the early early days of Chip Theory. And I was like, "Well, he's going to be
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my brother-in-law. They're engaged. I should like be a good nerd support and
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back back their their cute little campaign." and um you know and it was
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like $350 which for me at the time was a truckload of money. Uh you know we were
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I being young married and like not I remember those days. Yeah. Um and so uh so yeah so that was
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kind of like that was my start with Chip Theory and then uh you know Josh and Serena ended up getting married and they
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were uh they're going to have their first baby and they needed somebody to fill in at Gen Con and I was like I like
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nerdy stuff. I'm kind of interested in board games. Like I'll go and uh and help out in your booth. And that was
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really like what opened my eyes to like how how expansive and how much the
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tabletop industry was growing. And so this was, you know, this would have been I think eight years ago, nine years ago at this
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point that this was all happening. So that was really how I got into um not just like starting to work for Chip
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Theory in any way, shape or form professionally, but also um really kind of my start into a deeper interest in
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board games uh beyond my video game interest. So yeah. Yeah. Nice nice answer, Andrew. Beat
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that. Um I mean I started with magic like it's
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an answer of magic the gathering, not not magic tricks. um
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like a box of 20 magic tricks. Yeah. Lots of lots of games when I was a kid of just like um you know like Pokemon
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game and you know various monopolies and stuff but then I started playing Magic and then some point I living with people in
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college. I started picking up other stuff like Battlestar Galactica. Yeah.
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Uh but not really picking up that many board games until I started working at Chip Theory. Um and then when I started
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going to conventions, I started buying a lot of games and started playing a lot more games.
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Company really really gave me that addiction. You mentioned Gloom Haven in your interview cuz I was the one that did
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Andrew's interview and I was like, "Okay, he knows Gloom Haven. He can hang with anything." And it's
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I played Gloom Haven once at that point and now I've been here for 3 and 1/2
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years and I've played Gloom Haven twice. Wow. I mean that's a standard Gloom Haven campaign.
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It takes so much setup time. It does. It really does. I had two Gloom Haven
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campaigns on at one time once and it burnt me out. I just couldn't do it
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anymore. It's like I used to get to the night like oh it's Gloom Haven tonight.
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Yay. Not going to set this thing up again, but we had a blast with it. It's
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It Yeah, it was a solid game. I just I've definitely moved on to different things since then, but yeah, there's a
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lot. There's a lot of it. There's just a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So, this is always a hard
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question to answer. Um, so I'll let you I'll let you throw a few in, but like what are your favorite um kind of hobby
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games that you like to play like that hits your table regularly? What what do you Man, I uh for me personally, it feels it
What's Josh's & Andrew's favourite games?
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feels very much like a whatever I I feel like I'm a a little bit in the cult of the new um you know, working in this
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industry, you know, we get we get games traded to us a lot at conventions. I get games handed to me for free sometimes.
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Yeah. Um, and there's always, you know, I'm as the marketing guy primarily here at Chip Theory, I'm also always just
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hyper aware of what the rest of the industry is doing so that I can help, you know, guide Chip Theory through the
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through the rest of the noise of the industry. So, um, that said, my favorite game of all time, which I have played
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maybe like, you know, a total of five to 10 times ever, is Android Netrunner, uh,
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the, uh, the living card game from Fantasy Flight that, uh, you know, rest in peace. But I didn't have enough I
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didn't have enough friends that were into it to really ever give it staying power in my own collection or or to be
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able to play it very often. Um, recently I learned Power Grid, which is
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not a new hotness game. And uh, I'm that is presently occupying a large amount of
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my brain space in terms of what I'm interested in hobby-wise. So, um, that's
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Everdell is probably the game I've played the most of over the last like five or six years. It's not necessarily my favorite, but it's palatable to
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everybody and I do really enjoy it. So, I don't know. I I I don't feel like I play anything
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for very long, which I think is a bummer because there's a lot of great games out there
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that I would really love to like deeply invest in and I just don't necessarily have time in my current stage life.
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No, I'm kind of with you there. I'm definitely call the noob myself. What about you, Andrew? Yeah. I mean, I think
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it's a little impossible not to be with I don't know what we all do. Um,
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I'll sound like a company shill, but like Elder Scrolls is very good and it's a game I enjoy playing a lot. Um,
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I've not heard about that. I like making stuff for it, which is cool. Uh, but yeah, Elder Scrolls very good.
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Uh, that's also one of those Call of the Yeah. Who knows how much of that there's
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going to be. Geez. I mean, you you know, you guys know you have a plan, I'm sure.
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Really liked Arcs. Um is really neat and I think that one will have staying power.
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Have you done the um the campaign for Arcs? Have you done the the Blighted Reach campaign?
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I have not actually even played it with asymmetric leaders yet. Not yet. Okay. Okay.
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Cuz every time I played is with a new group of people. Then you don't want to throw that in. I don't want to be like, "Here's this
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extra thing, guys. Think about this when I just want them to enjoy the game." Yeah, that game has teeth, doesn't it?
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That game has the I like it for that. Um, but if you do get the chance, yeah, do invest some time on that on that
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little free game campaign for for Arcs cuz it's it's a wild ride. It's a wild
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ride. I bought that game a year ago and I just punched it the other night. Yeah. Yeah. And I got halfway through the bladed
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reach campaign before realizing that there were very specific instructions on what you were supposed to do while
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you're punching it. And so now I'm going to dedicate another night of my life to go back and correct
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I did the same my incorrect punching. Yeah, cuz I got you get excited, right? You get a game, you punch it out and go, "Wow, this is great." And then you go,
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"Okay, all these tokens, I don't know what they do." And then you're like, "Oh crap, they got numbers on the punch board. Where were they?"
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Precisely. Precisely. Yeah, it's all good. But yeah, Magic probably all time for me.
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Yeah, it's just the game that got you in. It's really lame answer. Not a lame.
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It's valid. System that stood the test of time. Yeah, it's a is a valid answer. No, that
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that's cool. That's cool. It's just good to get a sense of what games you guys enjoy, you know. Um, Elder Scrolls is a
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valid answer. It's a fantastic game. And uh, you know, I don't know how many copies we got. I think we got a couple
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of copies in in the group. Um Rob who who backed he's one of the backers and
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um Curley who I think picked up a copy at UK Games Expo. He he was telling himself he wasn't going to get it and he
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got it. So and he he played it I think he played it Rob's house the other night and he's like yeah I've got to get this.
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So off off he went. So you definitely sold a copy there to him. Um but no it's fantastic. So I want to know a little
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bit more about CTG. I want to know about how you guys started. So you obviously Josh you mentioned um Hoplo um with
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obviously Adam and Josh and yeah like bring bring me back to the beginning. What what what was it like? How did it
TURN 3 - CTG Culture
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all get to to to be? Well yeah so again I mean company was started by Josh and Adam Carlson. They
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were I mean still are cousins um who uh they were and still are cousins who
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Yeah. Uh you know and it was really uh I think I think it was actually more
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Kickstarter, you know, was a bit in its infancy about, you know, whatever, 10, 12 years
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ago. The board game industry had not really blown up. They were big fans of several different video games. And then
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they would also, uh, in their spare time, just for fun, they would come up with like interesting house rules to make some, uh, board games that they
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determined to not be quite up to snuff, uh, more interesting. I think one of the ones that they came up with a lot of
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house rules for was like the old Pokemon board game from like way back. Oh.
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Um Oh, yeah. Like in the in the uh I don't even know mid like or early 2000s. I'm not even
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sure. Um it's one of my first Yeah. And uh you know Josh Josh Carlson
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is a ridiculously entrepreneurial person and has a ridiculously like
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entrepreneurial spirit. And so he was like this thing Kickstarter was kind of like starting to be a thing and he was
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like we should come up with our own cool game and we should just fund it on Kickstarter and then we could make it.
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And it was always meant to just be like kind of a you know again a loose hobby something that they kind of moonlighted
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with and um and experimented with. And then uh
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Ricky Royal Box with Delight. So, uh, who is not super active in making
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content anymore, but one of the earliest earliest, um, board game, you know,
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vloggers and content creators, picked up Hoplo and named it his number one solo game of all time. So, it's funny, you
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know, everybody assumes now in today's day and age that like Chip Theory was started with this like strong ethos
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about solo gaming and that it was like this company that was all about premium components and all of that stuff really
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happened very organically. It wasn't what the company was started to do, but Ricky picked up on the solo aspect of
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things, which suddenly put us on the map for solo gamers, which we wasn't even really like a subset of the
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community that we were hyper aware of at the time. I'm also saying we I wasn't a part of the company at the time, but we
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, and then like right on the back of that, they were launching the
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Too Many Bones campaign. It was like shortly after Ricky had kind of picked picked up Hoplo and start and put that
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on the map to an extent. Um, not that it ever went mainstream, but then they launched the uh the Too
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Many Bones campaign and for a number of reasons which I don't necessarily need to go into. The Too Many Bones campaign blew up. Um, and blowing up in those
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days meant $2 like $25,000 I think something like that. Yeah. Um,
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which was a big deal in those days, especially for a $100 game. uh which was, you know, $100 games are very
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common place now. In those days, those they were fairly uncommon. So, um and then Too Many Bones released and
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was a huge hit. Again, kind of against all odds because it's a very scrappy game, very, very scrappy game in every
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capacity. And if you ever owned a first edition version of it, it was even it was even scrappier. Um, I think it
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released actually with a whole bunch of issues because it was a massively complicated, very involved game that was
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developed largely by two people. Um, and uh, but for whatever reason, it
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really like captured lightning in a bottle with tons and tons of people. And then from there, um, it's just kind of,
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you know, snowballed. And from there, it's uh, it's become like we've been become very very well known for our
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components. Um and uh and then we've also become like that much more
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ingrained in the solo community. Um to the extent that we're actually trying to like get out of that box a little bit now. Uh where we're like, man, there's
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we have a lot of cool like PvP ideas that we'd really love to explore, but we're so like yeah, locked in with the solo community that
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that's that's even a hard box to break out of uh at times. But um yeah, I mean
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the the story of Chip Theory is really just one of like of you know excited entrepreneurs who you know captured
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lightning in a bottle with a really great game design and then have um you know we've just leaned into every
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everything that's made us successful from there. We've leaned into it really hard. So we've leaned into the components. We've leaned into the solo
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mode. We've leaned into crowdfunding I think in a way that a lot of companies um sort of u where where other companies
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may resent crowdfunding. we have tried to lean into it and really use it to its greatest uh for its greatest good
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um and view it as a privilege to work on crowdfunding as opposed to something that we're just forced to do from a
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industry the way the industry works these days kind of thing and yeah I mean it's been it's been a crazy
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ride it's been a crazy ride I look around every time you know we were just at Gen Con when we go to Essen that kind of thing I look around at our booth and
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sometimes I'm just like man how did we get here how on earth did we get here this was not this was not the plan. Like
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this was never really the plan. Like it just it just kind of happened. So yeah. Yeah. It's amazing, isn't it? It's uh
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and I think you're right. I think your your kind of presence on on crowdfunding it's it's definitely over the years has
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been very different. You've been very open. It's like look, these are the games. This is the price. This will be
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the cheapest that you can ever buy. And and you're right. It's like this is it. And it's and it's just it's there. If
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you want it, it's it's there. If not, it'd be on the web store. But it's like it's all good. Um, and yeah, it's like
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what you see is what you get kind of thing. And I think that's quite a a good philosophy in in that respect. But yeah,
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I always enjoy your campaigns. There's always a lot of buzz. Uh, even if it's certain games that maybe I'm not backing, but I'll always check them out.
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I'm always like cuz it's just the way you do it. It's just like it's a good it's an event. It's like, oh, here we go
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again. There's something else going on. And I love it. It's a good fun. It's funny. I mean, we laugh we we laugh
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a lot because we we make a lot of decisions here that like are, you know, would be viewed by a normal corporation
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or a normal company as like objectively bad business decisions. You know, it's like we we we've jacked the price of our
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products through the roof. We we I mean, our games cost a fortune to produce, too. We don't you know, it's not all profit that we're taking. It's like
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these things are expensive to make. Um, but I think by yeah, by just staying true, staying exactly true to who we
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are, we've had a number of just like small, we've had a lot of small growth
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over a long period of time as opposed to trying to like just put our, you know,
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go all in on some like mega hit that goes really mainstream. We've just stayed true to who we were. And
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yeah, so our community has grown slowly, but now we have this like legion of hyper
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dedicated people who just absolutely adore almost everything that we do. And that's and that's you know that we don't
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take that for granted because that's everything that's what makes us successful. Yeah, you're very good at that that uh
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brand advocates. Um I'm one like you know I will check out every game that
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chip theory do. I will it's just it's going to happen because you know you can see those hoplo behind me um on on the
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shelf here. You know there's the trove chess there's cloud spire somewhere in there as well. Um it it's just I will
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check them out. Like you're one of the the the few kind of publishers I I'll go, "Yep, check check what's what's
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coming up. This is cool." Um and that's a really cool place to be, I think, as a as a publisher to kind of have that
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legion of of kind of followers who who want to check out your games and go, "Oh, what's this is new? This is
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different." And and yeah, give it a go. So, it's all good. I mean I would say to
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like um as as an employee versus as a as a person who who is high up in there,
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you know, the executive guy is uh the company's run by people who are very very much into the company that
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they run and very much into making a quality game, quality product and having the people on
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hand to make that happen. Like I think we are one of the biggest companies as
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far as like full-time employees versus like contract employees just because I think that's a philosophy that maybe
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both Joshes I know Josh Carlson for sure really wants to keep on hand the people
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who are good at the thing that they do. Yeah. Well, we we we value Yeah. I mean, we
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value being able to pivot in a hurry and do the and that gets harder and harder now that we've got language additions and now
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that we're working with the license and so on and so forth, but we value that kind of wild west philosophy of like, hey, I had a great
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idea in the shower this morning. Let's do it. Like we, you know, like we just decide
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like, hey, we're going to we're going to do it. You know, the the automaton of shell popup say the pop-up book. Yeah.
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Whose idea was the pop-up book? Uh, man, I mean, it was kind of a I'm trying I
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can't I I'm afraid of taking credit for something I didn't think. And I I genuinely don't know. I genuinely don't
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remember. I generally don't remember like where it But the idea was that like for for April Fools,
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you know, we would do like the craziest book ever. That was like kind of like the starting point. And then somebody shouted, "What if we
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did a pop-up book? That would be so fun." Uh, and then I think it was Josh Carlson who was like, "Well, we could do
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that. What if we made it a playable pop-up book? And I mean, January, we were, you know, we we we came up with
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that idea. We were taking pre-orders for it like a month later. That's not an exaggeration. Like,
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and we didn't know how to make we didn't know how to make a pop-up book like at the time. You know what I mean?
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Like, you have to hire you have to hire a paper engineer. This is a real thing. Like, you have to find a paper engineer.
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And so, we're like online googling paper engineers. There's like five in the
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world. You know what I mean? like this is not um and that's just who we are and you
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can't do that when you primarily employ contractors. It's just the fact of the matter. Like if you if you have
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contractors, they get hired to do a very specific thing and you need to keep them on that specific thing. When you have full-time employees, it gives you the
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freedom to kind of be like, "Hey, this is going to be uncomfortable, but we're going to pivot on a dime and do
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something completely different, so get on board." That's that's cool. I mean, how do you
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kind of balance the that that kind of innovation and those those ideas as
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novelty ideas that you come up with and and kind of keep it realistic as well?
How do you balance innovation and keep it realistic
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Like how cuz it like you said like I remember you guys talking about the Trove Chest like when it came out and
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you're like, "God, this thing this thing is like you we make next to nothing on this thing." And maybe maybe you do now
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cuz you you you probably figured out the kinks, but even still like this this product, but you do it anyway. And you
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know, I thank you for it cuz it's it's beautiful. I love it. Um but like how do how do you kind of do you kind of
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balance it? Do you have any ideas that you go, "Nah, that's just way too crazy. We're not doing that." Um like Yeah.
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Like how do you do it? Uh man, it's it's getting harder and harder to do that for the record. Like,
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you know, one of one of the things that uh one of the things that Andrew Chzn, our our chief operating officer, reminds
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us of all the time is like, okay, well, now we are a large by board game company standards,
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we are a large company now. Um, we do have, you know, roughly 30 different
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employees. Some of those are contractors, some, you know, most of those are full-time, but whatever. And he's like, you know, we are in a
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position where we do need to kind of feed the beast. like we need to make we need to make decisions that do
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like pay the bills for us now in a way that we didn't necessarily need to back in the day when we were mostly just
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paying ourselves at the top of the company because we didn't have many employees and our rent was very low because we were in a hole in the wall
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office um that calculus has changed. So now what we uh what we've tried to do is
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um and you've seen this in our product offering over the last uh probably two years in in a really meaningful way is
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that we are really trying to diversify our product lines. Yeah. So that we're not um ever putting all of
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our eggs in one basket. Uh it's uh you know I Burn Cycle was kind of our like a
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a wakeup moment for us in that we had put you know twoish two plus years into developing that game. big big box, big
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price tag, and for whatever reason, it just didn't really it didn't set the world on fire. Um, and it didn't sell
23:47
terribly well for us after after release. Um, it got some really good reviews, some bad reviews. Like, it was
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it was just kind of like in the middle ground. And we realized at that moment like, hey, if we're going to keep doing
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the big crazy thing that everybody expects us to do and that we feel like we need to do to keep up the branding,
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we need to have some risk mitigation in place as well. And so, um, so you know,
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products like Roth, uh, Dragons of Echin Stone, even the Neon Night line of games with Fight Five and Neon Rain, uh, all
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of those are are games we're really excited about in in
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uh, in the, you know, kind of space that they occupy, but also they are just pure
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risk mitigation at some level as well, where we're like, okay, if you want to release a $225 game,
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there's a risk there's a deep risk that like that doesn't land for whatever like, you know, whether we didn't
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make it as well as we could have or whether it's just too expensive for people or whatever, we need these other things. And so, um,
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yeah, I don't know. We're just kind of we're just kind of always, you know, like we watch our we watch our books very very closely. We're actually a deeply conservative, uh, fiscally
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speaking company in terms of like the the financial risks that we take are actually I think we're
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less or we're much more riskaverse than maybe a lot of people would think. Yeah. from the way that we budget things, but
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uh we we just look for windows. We look for windows and we uh you know, we we try to find lowcost things we can do uh
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in in weird and interesting ways. Um I don't know, we've got a new uh we've got
25:20
a new initiative coming probably around the holidays. It's going to be promoting a game that we have coming next year uh
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that is uh fairly low cost, but I think it'll be a lot of fun for people and it's got a collectible angle to it. Um,
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we also just look for like whatever. I don't know. We just try to have fun. Everything we do here is about like
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trying to make cool things that people enjoy and have fun doing it. We started putting googly eyes on the boxes of some
25:47
of our products like before we ship them out with a little note that says, you know, your game's been googly and
25:53
because because it looks hilarious and we hope you enjoy it and you know it's just on the outside of the shrink so
25:58
it's not going to damage anyone's box or anything but it's it's those types of things like we're just you know what are we sent people swords in the mail that was
26:05
controversial. Um, oh yeah, I've never seen I've seen Paul Grogan's sword because he he lives half
26:12
hour down. I I go on his stream sometimes. Yeah. So, I've held his his hot sword.
26:17
Yeah. So, we look for and and you know, everybody was like, "Those swords were probably like $1,000 a piece. They were
26:22
$100." Like, they were not they were not expensive. Um, but we're constantly, you
26:28
know, whether it's on the product side or whether it's on the promotional side, we're always trying to like we just have this sort of gorilla mindset where
26:34
as long as we feel comfortable with where our financial looks are sitting at any given moment, we're more than
26:39
willing to do the really crazy wild thing. We just can't do it all the time the way
26:44
we kind of used to in the same way. And that's just a result of growing up and also making sure that people like Andrew
26:50
here maintain their employment. You know, that's an important thing. I'm happily employed employment.
26:58
Yeah. Um I mean we're also lucky too like and I mean it's when we do good stuff for
27:06
people I feel like we're karmically rewarded with good stuff happening to the company of just
27:11
cuz like when tariffs initially hit there was a decision to be made with
27:17
like Roth right where it was like ship it and eat the cost that could happen or
27:23
don't. Mhm. and we just shipped it with the plan to
27:29
eat the cost and then by the time it arrived tariffs had gone down. So like
27:34
this, which was still some cost of course. Yeah, it was still a bad cost, but but not as what as much as you probably
27:40
thought it was going to be at the time. Who knew, right? Who knew what was going to happen? Just like these light bits and pieces
27:46
that line up, but like I don't know. The reason we were put there was we're initially planning to take a large hit
27:54
to fulfill something on time to customers versus later. I don't know.
27:59
Yeah, but you're right. fun fun factor. The fun word is is what I get when chip theory fun.
28:06
It's like you're gonna have a good time. It's gonna be a good time regardless. So, yeah, once you get through the keywords,
28:11
once you get You know what? I'm here for the keywords, though. So, you know, having
A resurgenace of Cloudspire
28:17
kind of mastered Cloudspire and um and too many bones. You mastered Cloudspire. Yeah, you've
28:22
mastered keywords. You're good to go. We've had a good resurgence with Cloudspire this year, right? cuz it's been a game that I I purchased cuz I I
28:29
had too many bones and thought, "Right, Classifier, why not?" And and then I
28:34
played it and I loved it. And obviously you do a fantastic solo mode experience,
28:40
you know, whole set of puzzles and things like that. So, I've been playing a lot of it solo, but I always wanted to kind of get that PvP experience, but
28:46
it's it's been a game where um I just couldn't find the right people for it.
28:51
Do you know what I you need is the right people who going to invest their time in to learn it and and learn what the
28:57
factions do and and how they can combat the other ones. And now we found a little niche of our gaming group to play
29:03
Cloud Spire. And I tell you what, we're having a blast. So, uh I I can't wait for the Harbinger uh new factions to
29:10
arrive cuz Yeah, we're just like it's just it's just crazy. Like we play uh recently a
29:16
four player of it and it was just absolute carnage and it was great. Yeah, it's chaos. Four player is pure chaos.
29:22
It's chaotic, but it was so much fun cuz it's just like, what is going on? Uh, I'm going to attack you. No, you're not.
29:28
I don't know what's happening. But yeah, it's Well, that I mean, that kind of goes back to our earlier conversation about how, you know, Cult of the New. And I
29:35
mean, Cloudspire is ostensibly a game. It's a lifestyle game almost. It's like if you really want to dive into
29:41
everything that that game has, it's I mean, there's enough depth there to last you the rest of your life
29:46
practically. Y and uh and that's not the type of I mean again that's not necessarily where the industry is at right now. So that game
29:53
has of all of our product lines that game has the most passionate fans
29:59
of any you know like we've got tons of people that love Too Many Bones and Love Elders Girls, but the people who love Cloud Spire are obsessed.
30:06
Yeah. And so it is this like hyper hyper hyper passionate niche who will buy anything we put out for it and are hyper
30:12
excited about it. it just doesn't sell that well to anyone other than those people which is the so that's been a
30:19
balancing act waiting to bring it back over the last couple years. We had to again we had to have the right amount of
30:24
time and a space in our in our product line to make sure we could finish it out knowing that after that campaign it's
30:31
probably not going to sell super well. Um but we can at least kind of make a while the sunshine. But that's the thing
30:36
like you because you've been touting that for for years saying you know we we haven't forgotten about Cloud Spy and I
30:42
remember all the video show we still haven't forgotten and you're true to your word you've done it and you you you
30:47
didn't have to like do you know what I mean you didn't have to to finish it as it were but you did and he and he went
30:53
out with a a good solid bang and it really did the campaign did well right I
30:58
think you know way better than we expected way and that's not that's not me being like
31:04
that's not false modesty like we were um yeah it was it was huge. It was huge
31:10
and we were we were very surprised by that and you know who knows maybe it will maybe once this new campaign
31:16
delivers in a few months uh maybe it'll maybe we'll find a brand new uh
31:21
passionate audience that we didn't know we even had built in. I don't know. Looking forward to the graph. That's for
31:26
sure. So uh yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens on that. So I want to ask a kind of a wacky question. So I can see
31:33
there Josh on on your name you've got your gearlock name Gilly right that's your nickname people call you Gilly and
31:38
other chip theory staff have gearlock names I've seen on your support emails and things like that I mean Andrew I
How do you earn the honour of getting your Gearloc names?
31:44
think we had this this conversation you do not have a gearlock name is this like a is this a thing you have to get so
31:50
many years in before you're awarded a gearlock name how does it work how do you get your gearlock name how do you choose it is it chosen for you
31:57
well I'll let Andrew answer why he doesn't have one first and then I'll that I really answer this question.
32:03
Yeah. Um I mean I started I'm one of the last
32:09
I mean not anymore I think but there still hasn't been a lot of people hired since me. I I'm one of the later
32:15
employees. Uh, I think most mainline gearlock names have been accounted for
32:21
within the company because you're again not like a small company. But when I started, I was the fourth
32:30
Andrew. The third Andrew. Fourth. You were the fourth. Yeah. But I'm trying to remember when you started
32:36
if if Andrew Navaro was still here with us or had he had just exited. I can't remember. I think he was like in the process of
32:42
exiting. So I think Andrew Navaro. Yeah. presently with uh Earthborne games
32:47
doing Earthborn Rangers. So yeah, it was a very amicable exit. Just in case in case.
32:54
Yeah, it's all good. It's all good. He's a lovely guy. Yeah, he's nice. Yeah, but when I started uh there were the
33:04
Navaro was leaving, Andrew in our in our dispatch team was
33:10
going by Tink. Mhm. And Andrew Chznney goes by Chznney or Gasket.
33:17
Um, and I was just Andrew and I was just like, you can just call me Andrew.
33:22
That's fine. That's my name. That one's easy. Just do that. I'm not a nickname guy really.
33:28
Um, but now I'm Santoro. Uh, and we just hate saying the name Andrew in the
33:33
office. We just like hiring Andrews is the thing. Yeah. Yes, that's definitely.
33:39
But yeah. No, the secret the secret is that in Too Many Bones, the upcoming Too Many Bones 2, uh, one of the gearlocks
33:46
is just named Andrew. That's the secret. I do have a a Cloudsfire uh unit that
33:52
has my last name worked into it in the upcoming stuff. So, okay. Helicopter, keep your eyes out for that hideous
34:00
thing that has my name attached to it. Um, the way the way that that actually
34:06
started is I will take credit for this. Um, the way that that actually started was just when I got when I got brought
34:12
on um, in a formal capacity, I think I was making a hefty $150 a month uh, for
34:20
Chip Theory. Uh, this was shortly after my first Gen Con that I talked about earlier. It's double that now.
34:27
At least. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh,
34:32
basically there were I mean there were two people in the company formally. There was Josh and Adam and then there was Anthony was our artist. Anthony
34:39
Lerno who done all the art for Cloudspire and still works for us but um
34:44
that was like it that was the whole company pretty much. And so and Josh uh Josh Carlson had been writing all the
34:49
updates for all the Kickstarter campaigns and I that was like my first official task was to take over writing
34:55
Kickstarter updates and do a little bit more community management for uh for the company again for the for the hefty sum
35:02
of $150 a month. Um, which you know, Josh and Adam were not working full-time. It was all just a
35:08
moonlighting thing in those days. Uh, we were selling like one copy of Hoplo a week and that was enough to pay each of
35:15
us, you know, like this much money. Um, but, uh, I think I I forget if it was
35:20
Josh or Adam, but somebody was concerned like, hey, it's going to be confusing for backers if a new Josh comes in and you start signing off as Josh. Uh,
35:27
they'll think that you're talking that you're the old Josh and there'll be confusion and whatever. And I was like, okay, well, cool. I'll just take a I'll
35:34
just take a you know an internet handle basically. I was like too many bonus to popular. I think Gilly looks like the
35:40
coolest character. Uh and so I was just like I'll just take on the name of Gilly.
35:45
That's it. And uh and then from there uh Josh kind of took on the name of patches
35:53
and uh and then that it just sort of like started trickling down across the whole company for whatever reason. And
35:58
now it's it's not as much of a thing anymore. Like we have a lot of new hires that haven't necessarily taken one or whatever. It's like sometimes it
36:06
sometimes it feels forced I think like when you're just you know it's like trying to choose your own nickname and sometimes it works and sometimes it
36:12
just doesn't we always know that nicknames are better when they're given to you rather than when you try to
36:18
choose one. Not necessarily ones that you want. It's just that's what you you're known as.
36:23
I I chose mine and it stuck. So well it works. I know now. Well, and it
36:28
was also funny because then when I started actually working on the games, I had to kind of like work backwards to
36:34
reclaim Josh. Yeah. Like, you know, it was like, right, it's like, you know, designed,
36:40
you know, designed by Josh Carlson, Adam Carlson, and Gilly. Like, that doesn't work, you know. So, then it was like,
36:45
oh, well, we want to give you your real name back a little bit. Now people understand the difference. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. For the longest time, I thought
36:52
Gilly had been somewhat named after you cuz a lot of the same letters are in your last name. There you go.
36:57
That is smart. That is smart. It's not true. I mean, not really cuz it was wrong, but
37:04
that's all good. Um, so in terms of your games then, like your your games, your universes that you build for your games
37:11
are really kind of they they appear like rich and layered and and you put a lot of effort into into them, you know,
37:17
whether it is a burn cycle or a cloud spiral or too many bones and or whatever. So yeah, like how do you kind
CTG World Building vs Gameplay
37:24
of build that lore up for a game without it completely going the other way where
37:29
all I'm doing is reading everything and and getting me out of the gameplay experience? Like I'm always intrigued
37:35
how you balance that so so well like in in the games cuz they they do appear
37:40
rich. They they've got backtories. You've got books of you know all the lore and what's going on with the
37:46
characters and the world and yeah it's fantastic. So how do you how do you keep it all balanced? I mean we start with gameplay first.
37:52
really. And so like you know anytime we add a deep story to our game generally you know we're
37:58
mo most of us in the like design and development side of the company are are interested in like tactical games. And
38:05
so we start with the tactics, we start with the mechanics, we start with the gameplay and then we fill in however much story we can around that. And
38:12
that's why you know um Too Many Bones especially the base game doesn't tell a very compelling
38:18
story on its own as a game. Uh that's one of its criticisms. That's one of even elder scrolls. A lot of people still say there's not a strong enough
38:25
like narrative through line for me. But the reason for that is because we put gameplay above the story and we we find
38:33
what we feel like works best in the gameplay area for any given game and
38:39
then we see how much story we can kind of infuse around that. Um the deeper like the deeper lore stuff, you know,
38:44
when we do the lore books and when we do the, you know, there's the burn cycle lore portfolio and all of that kind of thing. Um, most of that comes from the
38:52
head of uh Ryan Howard who is uh kind of our head of development here uh now in
38:58
our studio and also he started primarily just as a writer for us just just as a
39:05
writer for us. Um but uh sorry Ryan yeah when we were when we were working on uh when we were working on Too Many
39:11
Bones uh I remember I I had called with Josh and Adam like a weekend where we were going to put in 72 hours and we
39:17
were going to finish Too Many Bones. didn't even get anywhere close, by the way. Um, but that was the goal going
39:23
into that weekend. And I had not looked over the encounter cards at all yet. And
39:28
um, so I was like, well, Josh was like, well, you need to like, we need to proof the encounter cards. And so I was like,
39:35
okay, cool. Let me have a look at them. I started reading them, and some of them were just like yikes. Like just absolutely yikes. And I
39:42
was like, well, I'm not like a great proof reader. Um, I I write things in
39:49
the wrong tents and all that kind of thing all the time. So, I had a friend, a mutual friend, an
39:54
acquaintance uh from kind of my college days that I knew was like the head of a local paper and also I knew they like
40:00
board games and that was Ryan. So, I texted Ryan. I was like, "Hey, do you want to come do a weird thing?" And he
40:05
came in and started editing things and like helped us really bring those cards up to snuff. Um
40:12
and then that led into him we gave him the opportunity to basically pitch the story line for Cloud Spire.
40:18
Yeah. And um and we were like, "Okay, here's how Solo could work." And so then we started having conversations around,
40:23
"Okay, well, how can we infuse story into this?" Yeah, that's right. And um yeah, it just kind of goes from there,
40:29
you know, and certain games allow it, certain games don't. You know, Dragons of Echan Stone coming soon has very very low levels of lore because
40:36
it's a little pocket game. But on the bigger on the bigger stuff, um you know, on Elder Scrolls, we
40:41
Ryan has worked tirelessly and very very close with um I can't think of his name,
40:48
uh Michael Zeni, who is like the head of lore over at Zenamax in the Elder Scrolls universe. So like
40:55
um and obviously that game with like quest books and that kind of thing has just way more room for Yeah,
41:00
that kind of thing. But we never want that to get in the way of gameplay. I mean, again, that's the short answer. We're not trying to make a Dungeons and
41:07
Dragons game. We're not trying to make a TTRPG. Um, so it all comes down to gameplay first.
41:12
Yeah, which makes sense. And you know, if you get if your game play is there, it tells its own story anyway, right? In
41:18
in terms of how what you're doing and and kind of the experience you're having. So cool. Okay. Well, let's let's kind of
41:24
move on to um kind of what's coming up down the pipeline then. So the newest
41:29
stuff like we talk about the call to the new, right, Josh? So uh what's what's the call to the new that's coming? So,
41:34
if I don't ask you about Elder Scrolls and what's coming up, um I'll get shot firstly from from the gang. So, let's
TURN 4 - What's Coming Up
41:41
let's start with the uh the small game of Elder Scrolls. What's coming down? Our little pocket game. Yeah. Uh well,
41:48
so Santor actually has probably Santor has actually been like I think doing some play testing and stuff on the new
Elder Scrolls Campaign
41:53
content. I've actually been largely uninvolved with any of the development of the new uh content. So, Santor is a
41:59
better person to ask about the specifics, but I can tell you that it's five new expansions. Um, which sounds crazy, but it is five
42:07
new expansions. Uh, we have Heroes of Tamreel. Yeah. Which is going to be new versions of
42:12
every race in the game. Two new versions of every race. Well, sorry, one new version of every race, but two new skins
42:18
basically also that you can play as. So, change up, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Front and back. Yeah.
42:23
Yep. Um, so completely change uh the way that you can build, you know, a Kajit or
42:30
a Nord or a Breton um or a dark mage. You can uh try a different racial ability uh than the ones that were in
42:36
the base game. I see. Plus some um additional skill lines that are specific to that Heroes of Tamriel
42:42
expansion, including a criminal uh skill line, which I don't think we've formally stated.
42:49
Excuse me. Is that a class? Criminal. There's a class skill. Yeah, I might be wrong. Okay. Well, again,
42:56
case in point. Uh, we've got two new regions. Um, two
43:02
new regions coming. So, Somerset and Elsewhere, which will have their own quest book. They'll have their own clash mats with
43:09
that represents new biomes in Tamreel, new skill lines in those as well, new
43:14
classes and items and enemies. Um, we've got the Shadows of Oblivion expansion,
43:20
which is um a it's it's a uh I don't I don't even
43:26
know. I I I I've been calling it a I've been calling it a challenge modifier, but it's not necessarily that. It's like
43:31
basically you have the opportunity to take on um quests from DRI princes, and they might give you a really
43:37
powerful item, but it also comes with a curse. So, um, it it does generally
43:42
speaking, I think, make the game more challenging, but more than anything, we're trying to change the way you play. Yeah. So, you might build your you might build
43:49
your character very very differently based on these, uh, DRI Prince uh, quests that you're being handed at the
43:54
beginning of the game. That's cool. Um, to kind of make you rethink standard character building and standard
43:59
challenge levels. And then there's also an expansion called Fur and Fang, which is the oft requested werewolf and
44:07
vampire expansion, which will allow uh for you to play uh as a werewolf or
44:13
vampire in Elder Scrolls. And then also, I don't know, I forget if we formally announced this yet, but I'm fine saying
44:19
it, there will be an Elder Scrolls trove chest equivalent.
44:24
Oh, um called the Guild Vault. The guild. So, that is also coming. Uh, and then I
44:30
will also just say in terms of like new hotness, we're putting out an update this week. Uh, we've soft launched it in
44:35
our Discord already, but we're putting out an update this week that also includes a huge variety of challenge
44:41
modifiers for The Elder Scrolls. So, um, the one consistent bit of feedback we've heard, especially from really, really
44:47
experienced CTG and tactical RPG players, is that they find the game to
44:52
be a little bit on the easy side. And so we're releasing basically free DLC that allows you to uh I mean if you want
45:00
these modifiers almost almost impossible um if you add
45:05
enough of them but it's basically a list of I think 12 modifiers. Is that right? 10 12
45:11
12 to 15 I don't remember. Okay. And you can turn on you can turn on as many of them as you want. They add
45:17
things like initiative to the game uh so that enemies aren't always going second.
45:22
Um, there's other just things that just make enemies like a little bit sturdier and harder to take down. So, if you want
45:28
to make The Elder Scrolls uh a really truly hardcore tactical experience, you
45:34
can you can that's not really what the game was designed to be in its inception, but you can turn it into that
45:40
if you want. Nice. What I missed, Santor? What did I miss? Yeah, go on. Fill in the blanks. I mean, I would say too like the the achievement
45:47
thing like I think that's because the initial pitch was people are saying game
45:52
too easy. What can we do to make game hard? And I think Shadows of Oblivion
45:58
was the original pitch. Yes. There. And then
46:03
and then I think I know I certainly said some people
46:08
don't find game too easy. We should also do something for people who find game too hard.
46:15
Um, so I think the achievements are specifically for people who find game too easy. Shadows of Oblivion are for
46:22
new ways to interact with the game. Like yeah, typically I don't remember how many are
46:28
in it or what exactly any of them do, but the bit with those is that you will get a boon
46:34
and with a boon you will get a bad thing. Um, and you can accept one or the
46:39
other or you can accept both. Mhm. So you can make it harder on yourself, you can make it easier on yourself, you can make it just a new
46:45
experience, I I believe is how all those are intended to function. So yeah,
46:50
and they're they're wacky, so they're going to be closer to like, you know, accept quest from talking dog sort of
46:57
sort of thing from Elder Scrolls. So goofier stuff. Yeah. Uh I mean there's some new skill lines.
47:04
I designed some skill lines in the new stuff. Nice. As well as some classes. I don't know
47:10
how many of those I can share at all. So, um I I dain not to say names of
47:16
anything. Talk about one. Talk about one of them. One of them. Hm. Exclusive.
47:22
Let's see. Let's see. One of them. Not that one.
47:28
Well, there's one that might give you two. Wow.
47:34
Um here's one that'll give you one. Uh, I'm doing going to be doing the uh
47:39
there's an assassination skill line. Nice. And that is a damage dealing skill line
47:46
that is not battle form tide. So that's and it doesn't exactly deal
47:52
damage. It involves preparing for assassinations basically. That sounds cool.
47:58
Yeah, that sounds cool. Um, we also at Gen Con, we did also release a mini expansion. Um, our chef class expansion,
48:05
which actually that class was also designed, I think by Santoro. Um, so um,
48:10
so tonight you can become master chef. That's right. Yeah. Uh, so that that released at Gen Con uh,
48:16
in early release form and then we'll be selling that on our website over the holidays and it'll be available on the upcoming campaign that's coming this
48:22
October. So yeah, so lots of cool stuff. Mhm. Yeah. Vampire and Werewolf. I've played
48:29
with them. They're very cool. Yeah, they're cool. They sound really cool. Yeah. Who doesn't want to be a vampire?
48:35
Um, but they also have the the fun uniqueness that you can pick them when you first start out as a starting skill.
48:43
But otherwise, you can't get them at a trainer. You have to get them through a random
48:48
encounter or some bad thing. Yeah. Like you're asleep. Somebody bites you.
48:54
Yeah. You're asleep and you've been bit. What? And now you're a vampire. God damn it.
49:01
That sounds cool. That sounds good. Yeah, I know. I think that's uh So, that's all that in one campaign then. Is
49:06
that going to be all the different campaign? Wow. Yeah. Yep. It's going to be it's going
49:11
to be a lot. It's uh you know, scope scope creep is a thing over here. So, it's uh it's grown into quite a large
49:19
campaign. But yeah, uh the campaign should be launching. I'm pulling up my calendar here because it's Yeah. Yeah. Throw some more in what's
49:25
coming. Um, but it should, uh, the plan right now is to launch that campaign on October 14th.
49:30
Okay. Yep. So, it will run the 14th basically through Halloween. Yeah. So, that's the
49:36
Yeah. Perfect for spooky werewolves and spooky. Yeah. Spooky elder. Spooky. We'll do some Halloween streams.
49:44
Yeah. You'll be dressed up, right? And Yeah. We'll have Oh, yeah. Yeah. vampire and werewolf outfits. We're
49:50
putting them right on the company card. Fake fake fangs. This is what I've always streamed up.
49:56
We'll just whittle down the real ones. Uh, but a follow page should be up for that hopefully by the time you're
50:02
listening to this. Yeah, we can put that in the show notes as well for those that are listening. We can link you straight to that and see if
50:08
you can spot the vampires or all the werewolves if they have any graphics for that. Who knows?
50:14
Just loaded with them. If you can't I haven't seen I our graphic designer is working on it right now and I haven't seen anything. So, I'm not making any
50:20
promises about what it's going to look like. I'll make promises. If you can't see them, you're just not looking hard enough. Just keep looking.
50:26
They're there. That sounds cool. That sounds cool. So, yeah, plenty more Elder Scrolls for those uh who are interested and and want
50:34
more. Our our gang will be jumping at the bit for it. I'm I'm sure. Um what
50:39
else we got down the the pipeline then, guys? What's uh what's coming down? Correct me if I miss any.
50:44
So, go for it. Um fulfilling next Tangle Woods um which is a 20 strong expansion featuring three
50:51
new decks. white, gold, red. Red is our new base deck, so that will be
Tanglewoods & Dragons of Etchinstone
50:58
purchasable with the dice that 20 Strong is known for, minus the smell that 20
51:04
Strong is sometimes known for. Um, and plus some little like ivy on them, which those new dice look really,
51:11
really slick. Okay, somebody has seen them. Yeah, they look great. Cool. U, so those should be available soon.
51:17
Uh, also through that campaign, we had the Baba Yaga expansion, which ties all
51:22
three decks together, and you can play them as like a campaign game basically, which is
51:27
pretty neat. I really like how that one ended up. Uh, and then originally designed for
51:34
Barnes & Noble, couldn't hit specific window. Maybe we mentioned it pre-record, but
51:41
we're mentioning it now. Uh, Tangle Woods Rose is coming out for the holidays. Yeah. um which is a like lane battler
51:49
kind of. It's very new. We'll run some streams on it once there's a way for anyone to do
51:55
anything with this information. But yeah, major major tower defense vibes with that. Nice. Okay.
52:01
20 strong system. So yeah, that one's really neat. Um and I like it. One of the last things Logan
52:07
Gianni did uh before he left to work on Star Wars Unlimited. Uh after that,
52:15
Dragons of Etchinstone is that right in the Yeah, I don't know. Our fulfillment
52:20
timeline's super great right now. So, Dragons of Echin Stone coming up soon after that. Uh and that will have
52:25
Dragons of Etchin Stone, which is a I actually don't know how many cards it ended up being, but I believe it's
52:31
around 18 cards. Mhm. Play out of the palm of your hand. 20. Yeah, I think it ended up being 20
52:37
at the end of the day, but yeah, that sounds it's a micro pocket game. Yep. Yeah. You literally play it out of the palm of your hand.
52:43
Yeah. Adjust the way you hold your hand to to fight stuff. It's pretty cool. I like it
52:49
a lot. I was very skeptical when we first pulled it on and then I was playing it and I was like, "This is very neat and I want to have my PVC copy."
52:57
Yeah. Uh coming with that is Northvil, which lets you swap out cards from the base one to make it more challenging or more
53:04
weird. um cool expansion that already exists as well in a game crafter form
53:09
because Dragons of Vetin was originally on the Gamecfter and we have jujed it up
53:14
and made a very cool looking version of it on PVC. Nice. Uh and then fresh for that campaign was
53:22
the siege expansion which adds tower defense kind of you're defending a
53:27
castle from waves of monsters or you're attacking a castle as a as a bad guy.
53:33
Ah, very very very crunchy. It's that that whole game that whole game line is just like massively more deep
53:40
than you would ever expect a little palm game to be. And that's what we loved so much about it. It's from uh Joe Clipull
53:47
who uh was the co-designer of Gloom Haven Buttons and Bugs. Uh and uh I found out we had a mutual
53:53
friend who was a former college roommate of mine. Oh wow. And then it was like it was just this weird like confluence of things that led
53:59
us to Joe. Yeah. And then my brother had ordered a copy of Dragons Adventure Stone off the Gamecfter and I was like,
54:04
"This is all happening very weirdly, like this is meant to happen." So yeah.
54:10
Yeah. Yeah, it does look cool. It's uh Yeah, I'd have to try it out one day. But yeah, the
54:15
Yeah, the the crunchiness is is always good cuz if it's a small game, I tend to be like, uh, is is there enough in it for
54:21
me? But yeah, I think you guys are like, "No, there is. There might not be many cars, but your brain will be on fire."
54:27
So that's that's always good. It's a great one to keep in your like luggage, too. People just like, "Oh, I go to the
54:32
airport or I ride the bus a lot." Like, it's great. Like, really just plays out of your hand. Not Not me lying saying it
54:39
plays out of your hand. You can actually play it out of just your hand. Yeah. Um, Roth is fresh and out right now. If
54:46
you're interested in Cult of the New, that's the newest that it gets, baby. Pick that one up. Fun.
54:52
So much fun. Love that guy. That guy likes it. Yeah. Roth. Yeah. Roth released at Gen
Wroth, Cloudspire: Harbinger & Fight 5
54:57
Con, we brought more copies than we thought we needed and we were sold out by noon on
55:03
Saturday. So, it was really flying off the shelf, which is great. Yeah. Yeah. We would have been sold out by end
55:08
of day Friday, but we lost 50 copies for for a day. That's true.
55:14
Um, no, that one was moving and I think that one will do good. It's really good. It's a good one. If you haven't played,
55:21
especially in PvP mode. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, the PVP is sick. And I'm not a big dudes on a map guy. It's not my my genre
55:28
at all. I I tend to want to like them and then don't. But that one, I just
55:34
have a blast with it. I think cuz of its play length, right? You're in it. Yeah. It's so snappy about it is super
55:39
snappy. It's your turn before you know it. And look, if it doesn't go well, you can play again. It's literally you're like,
55:45
"Okay, let's have another go. See if it uh see if it changes my luck this time." Yeah. It's so much fun. It's a It's a
55:51
great convention game where you I did a booth play of that game at Gen Con with the guys at Dice Tower and I
55:58
was like teaching new people as well this game and they were like I don't know if it's going to fit in our time
56:03
and we were done in like just under 60 minutes. Nice. Yeah. Uh but then coming up on the horizon or
56:11
do we have any holiday Cloud Cloud? Yeah, Cloud Spire is coming. Uh all the Harbinger campaign stuff which is a lot
56:18
of stuff is all coming. uh should be October fulfillment. So that should be also
56:23
available by the holidays. That also includes 20 strong Cloud Spire. Yeah. So
56:28
make sure to try out your new um Cloud Spire stuff in the dark. Uh because I've heard I read that.
56:35
Yeah. Is it the Oh, what's the f the bat ones? The
56:40
I loved it. He's like you could turn the lights off and it will glow in the dark. I mean it adds no feature ever.
56:46
Yeah. But we'll be doing it. I've been asking, so if you're not if you're not familiar with the Too Too
56:52
many Bones riddles, I've been asking JC to incorporate JC being Josh Carlson. Uh
56:57
I've been asking for him to incorporate glow-in-the-dark Ink somewhere like in a Too Many Bones box
57:04
for years. For years. And he wouldn't do it. He hasn't done it. And we finally got
57:09
glow-in-the-dark something. And I'm so happy. It's so stupid. And I love it. very dumb.
57:15
Uh, Fight Five is also fresh as of Gen Con, which is through Neon Knight. That is, uh, War Good, but also it's um,
57:24
I don't like that comparison because it's better than War, and I don't like saying it's a game that's better than
57:29
another game, but War is bad, so like this one. War is Yeah, War is predetermined at the
57:36
point that the cards are dealt. Like, it's just a matter of resolving a predetermined uh, cuz there's no choice.
57:42
just go for the motions, right? Um, and then holiday season, we have
57:48
Cloudspire, Cloudspire 20 strong deck. You mentioned those. Um, do we have anything else coming in
57:53
the holiday sale? The chef pack. Uh, yeah, the chef, the chef pack for Elder Scrolls. And then moving into next
57:58
year, the only thing that we've announced for next year so far is uh 20 Strong Awakened Realms,
More CTG Goodies in 2026
58:05
uh, which is three new 20 strong decks set in Awaken Realms universes. So, Nemesis being the head headliner and
58:11
then Tainted Grail and Ether Fields are the two. Good choices.
58:16
Um, we will have three more campaigns other than that next year, none of which we've announced formally,
58:24
but we've alluded to the fact that there's a good chance the fall campaign of next year will have something to do
58:30
with Dor and the Too Many Bonus universe. I know you keep saying the sequel and I'm like
58:36
just when you thought you was done, but we we've been having so like we were
58:43
we were having some conversations at Gen Con with like uh some of our translation partners and a lot of them are like
58:49
don't you're not like no don't you're not doing a new version of Bones. Don't ever do a new version of Bones. We're we're not even done translating the old
58:55
version of Bones to release. Um to be clear, we did not release Elder Scrolls
59:01
to replace too many Bones. There's some people that feel like the mechanisms in it do kind of improve the Too Many Bones
59:07
experience enough that they don't want to play Bones anymore. They'd rather play whatever. That's fine. Um, we have no intention of replacing Too Many Bones
59:16
ever. Like that's uh maybe someday we would do a second edition of it just to get the like art more up to the modern
59:22
chip theory standard. But we're talking like years years from now time in the near future. Um, anything that we
59:29
release in the Too Many Bones universe, be it a official sequel or be it a just a different take, will be truly a
59:35
different game. We'll aim to take some of the most beloved things about Too Many Bones, but
59:41
we would want to do something very different with it, like very different and unique. Um because we
59:47
know we know what some people um some people who may even be on this podcast
59:52
right now have invested this guy in the Too many Bones line and we're not about to like just go and
59:59
take a giant you know machete to that and make everybody feel terrible. So yeah. Now that's good to know cuz yeah
1:00:05
you're like I I love that game and you go oh yeah but people might think of it as a second printing it you know an
1:00:12
evolution where you go oh does that mean that's redundant then so that's really
1:00:17
good to know that you're going to do that yeah expanding the the universe of day which is cool
1:00:23
I was going to say the setup for Too Many Bones 2 requires you to feed your tro chest into a wood chipper
1:00:32
yeah you like it's legacy. Yeah. Uh we're also like we love doing new
1:00:39
interesting stuff. Like we don't want to get bored. We don't want to just rehash the same old thing. And that's actually I mean the reason that we kind of closed
1:00:45
off too many bones when we did despite it selling like hotcakes still when we ran that Unbreakable campaign
1:00:52
was because we ourselves were just kind of getting bored with it and we're like, "Okay, we've kind of done everything we want to do
1:00:57
here and there's going to be a point where anything else that we try is going to start feeling stale." Yeah. Yeah. And
1:01:02
so we wanted to, you know, we wanted to go out on top, so to speak, rather than wait for it to really be
1:01:08
That makes sense. Yeah. Well, there you go. Little sneaky peak of of
1:01:14
uh next year's uh semi lineup with some secrets in there, cuz you got to keep some secrets, right? You got to keep
1:01:20
some stuff to reveal, otherwise it'd be boring. We've got lots of secrets. Yeah. I will say the the summer campaign for next
1:01:25
year should be very uh it's not going to be as easy on your wallet as Dragon Veteran Stone, but it's just it's like a
1:01:31
midweight uh it's a midweight game. It's not a big crazy monstrosity. Okay. And then the and then the other
1:01:38
So that's So now you know about two of the campaigns. The midweight one and 20 Strong Awaken Realms u fall possibly
1:01:44
doing something with bones. The other one is uh something in the neon night line that we're actually going to run a
1:01:50
campaign ourselves for and not just cold release like we did with like five. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Listeners,
1:01:56
plenty plenty to look forward to, which is awesome. Cool. Okay. Um well, we're probably
1:02:02
getting towards the end of the episode, guys. I could talk to you guys for forever, but you've got jobs to do and
1:02:07
homes to go to and all that kind of stuff. Um anything else that you're kind of looking forward to like before we
1:02:13
close up or anything you want to ask? I would just say um you know we this
Thanking Josh & Andrew
1:02:20
year has been challenging for the whole board game industry uh because of like the tariff situation and uh and so on
1:02:26
and so forth. Uh but I am so excited. Like I really feel like Chip Theory is
1:02:31
hitting our stride right now. And I think once people see the Tangle Woods products come out,
1:02:37
um I think once people get Dragons of Etchin Stone into their hands, once people see like how how much we're
1:02:42
adding to The Elder Scrolls to really broaden that that game. Um I've never
1:02:49
ever in my entire time here, and I've been here almost 10 years in some capacity now, um I don't think I've ever
1:02:54
been as excited about our like upcoming products and releases as I am right now. like it really feels like we we are
1:03:01
maybe finally through the hard like startup mode stuff and really just starting to like become a welloiled
1:03:08
machine of putting out really cool stuff at a really consistent cadence. So, um
1:03:13
yeah, I'm just I'm just really excited for what's to come. Uh I I think I think the stuff we have coming in the next uh
1:03:20
like year to year and a half is the the best stuff we've done so far. It's amazing.
1:03:25
And I'm not even working on most of it anymore, you Like I worked on I worked on the games a lot in the earlier days. I hardly work on the games at all
1:03:32
anymore. Um and I'm still like yes, this is this is it. So still pumped for it. Yeah. Cool. How
1:03:38
about you, Andrew? Um I just have a question of uh whose turn is it anyway.
1:03:44
Well, it was yours. It was and now you've passed. And now you've passed. But now you've
1:03:51
had your turn and it's someone else's turn at some point. But yeah, it's rarely ours. That's the
1:03:56
thing. Well, thank you so much guys for for uh joining us on on the podcast and
1:04:03
chatting things all all CTG. We loved it. We love you guys. Keep doing what you're doing. Um that's the only advice
1:04:09
that we've got. I think I remember Josh when we played uh Elder Scrolls in Essen
1:04:14
a couple of years ago and we uh you know Andrew looked after us then. It's a common theme and I think you came and
1:04:20
asked us afterwards and you said oh like have you got any notes for it? And we said no it's bloody perfect. keep doing
1:04:25
what you're doing. So that's pretty much our advice. Yeah, it's great.
1:04:31
So thank you so much for for joining us and uh yeah, all the best guys. Oh yeah, thank you so much for having us. Our
1:04:37
pleasure. [Music]
1:04:46
There you go. That's the end of the episode. I really enjoyed catching up with those guys. Obviously, it's a real kind of big thing for me. um you know
TURN 5 - The Final Turn
1:04:53
meeting up with one of my favorite publishers and just talking all things chip theory. So yeah, fantastic. And thank you again Josh and Andrew for
1:05:00
joining me and just talking through all the games and stuff. Um if you like the show, we always encourage you to share
1:05:06
and and tell people about who's doing it anyway podcast and you know get the name out there because it really means a lot
1:05:11
to us and makes a massive difference. If you want to support the show and keep us going, we are on coffee and any pennies
1:05:17
help really guys. It's the keeps the podcast going, keeps us buying new kit and more equipment and yeah, and people
1:05:25
like uh our supporters, we couldn't do what we do. So, thank you again. Um,
1:05:30
we'll be back again on another episode, so stay tuned. And whose turn is it anyway, guys?