TURN 1 - Player Count
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[Music]
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Welcome to Whose Turn is It Anyway, your board gaming podcast where we cover the biggest conventions of the entire
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planet. This is the Essen Spill 2025 episode and I am joined by none other
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than the the sultry Davey. Hello. Who always introduces himself as this.
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Hello. You were higher. You had a higher pitch on the uh the vlogs we did. You Hello. Was I Hello.
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I quite liked it. Seeing where Seeing where you go with that. But we also have a special guest with us
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which is a bit farther, isn't it? The Hello. It is a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it is a bet. But we have a special guest. We
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don't have anyone else from the Who's Turn Crew on this podcast. So, we've got someone else in. We've got none other
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than Mark Monk from Ninja Geek Games. Hello, Mark. Hello. Shall I Should I do my my hook?
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Yo, what is up? Yes, please. I just did it. Oh, okay.
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When you did that hello thing, I just got Mrs. Doubtfire.
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Hello, children. Let's see. I'm on the way. That pretty much sums up the week we've
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had. We're knackered. I think that's the first thing to say. Anyone who does uh Essen or big
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convention, which is a long time, like Essence's 4-day convention, but you got to add the travel and you got to add,
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you know, bits and bobs around the event. And I think in total we we was away for 6 days, something like that.
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Nearly seven. Seven. Yeah, technically seven. Yeah, technically a week. So, yeah. What a
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week. Yeah, what a week. So, we'll try and keep the energy levels as high as possibly can, but bear with us.
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We're flagging. We are absolutely flagging. It's It's like a what 13 hour travel
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there. Yep. Yeah. Uh and then we get straight to it the next day. So, it's all go.
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There's no rest. There's no rest. There's no rest. No, it's it's full on. But I wouldn't have it any other way.
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It's fine. No. Exactly. It is what we go for. If there was another week, I would still be there. I'd probably be like proper
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zombie, but I'd still be there. We'd be three husks around
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games. Just give me more games. But there we go. So, we are I mean, if
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those have listened to our coverage before, we're just going to kind of break it down our journey there. Um, you
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know, all the things we got up to and more importantly, the games we played and experienced and try to capture a
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little bit of that Essic for you listeners. um to you know feel like you were a part of it. That's the purpose of
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this. So should we get straight into it cuz we got a lot to cover, right? Loads. Got loads. So let's you know we need to
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sleep at some point. Um and we record this the day after we got back. Just so everybody knows this is the day
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after we got back and we're committed, right? Yeah. We we want to get this stuff. We are committed.
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We want to get this stuff done. So let's talk about the journey. The journey over. So this year last year
TURN 2 - Welcome to Essen SPIEL 2025
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we had a kind of split journey experience with trains and planes and this year we all assembled into Mark's
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van 18 van. Yeah, the 18 van. And that was a solid choice I think because
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that van was roomy. We had space. Um not only in the back which was helpful on
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the way home, right? Um but even on the way there we we had the space and that was great. But we traveled together was
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myself, obviously Mark and Davey. We had Taz, friend of the pod, who joined us. Also known as Terrence,
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but we call him Taz. So Taz, if you're listening, he was doing our camera work. He was being cameraman. Um, pack mule.
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Yeah, we'll more more about that later. And we also traveled with Paul Groen
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from Gaming Rules. We did indeed. Who? I know. Yeah, some guy in the car. He he traveled with us.
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Thumbs up and we gave him a lift. Yeah, it just happened. He was going to Essen just happened. Can you Can you give me a lift to Essen? Yes, please jump in.
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With the biggest bags you've ever seen. Yeah. He preempted his trip with how many suitcases? He had two suitcases had
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no nothing in them. No, they were empty. Yeah. And he's like, "Right, I'm preempting what I'm going to get back."
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And I still don't think it was enough. Well, on his on the way back, I thought he brought his lucky anvil back with him,
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suck it into his suitcase. It was so heavy. So heavy. I think I nearly kind of
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pulled my back out trying to get that thing out the van. But anyway, so we did a safe lift. We counted.
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We did. One, two, three, lift and we lifted it in. Dave made us do a safe lift. He He's used to this with um his old job.
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Boilers. My old job. Boilers. Moving boilers around. Yeah. Um which aren't light things. So yeah. So we drove over um I mean at on the way
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there we obviously took a pit stop. Um people are getting a bit hungry, all that kind of stuff. So we stopped at I
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can't remember what services it was. A services somewhere. It doesn't really matter,
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does it? It was not far from Where was it? It was not far from older shop. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I've been there
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before. Yeah, fair enough. For those service geeks that like to know which services we write down. Yeah. Great. Yeah. What's
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your favorite service station? Um, so yeah. And we all kind of stopped toilets
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and stuff like that. Davey went to Greg's, popped in, and then walked out and had a weird face on him. And we were
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going, "What the hell's happened to you?" So Davey, explain. I think I rolled a natural 20. Um,
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charisma check. Yeah, that's it. I walked in and I just started chatting to the lady behind the
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Greg's counter and I was like, um, cuz I got Monza. I was like, oh, I've got the
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Monza app here. And she was just like, oh, you know how to woo the ladies, don't you? Yeah, I know. I know. Got my Monzo.
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Got my Monzo out. And um she said, "Oh, we're not doing the hot chocolate." And
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I said, "Okay, I'll just have a chicken bake just to keep me keep myself going in the morning." And then she like
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winked at me and then slipped in two chicken bakes into a a bag, looked
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around loads to like not to make sure she wasn't getting caught and then just kind of gave them to me and then like
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ushered me away. And I was just like, "What is happening here? This is this is
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just a weird occasion to be happening here at Craigslist at whatever time it was in the morning. So yeah, I came out
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to you guys looking perplexed and a bit happy. Yeah, it's all ambivalent, isn't it? Like his
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face didn't know what to do. He's like, I've got two pasties when I actually only bought one. But also, I kind of
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feel violated so I don't quite know what happened. That's weird. Yeah. Just for the listeners, there are other
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baked good cafes out there. Yeah. Yeah. We we don't we're not sponsored by Gregs. Uh maybe if you want
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to sponsor, but we're happy to be sponsored by Gregs if they've got the marketing budget to
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do so. You going to tell them what you've named her? Yes. Uh go on. I'll let Davey tell her.
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What? Double baked Brenda. Yeah. Double baked Brenda. Um was that a nickname from now on? That was the nickname. Yeah.
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Uh thank you Brenda. Thank you Brenda. Even though that's probably not your name. And if anyone in Yeah. Greg's listening
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to this podcast, she's probably been fired. No, I think it's a slim chance.
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Yeah, there's a the people very slim chance, right? The board gamers that work at that
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particular Greg on this particular service station on an early morning of um Tuesday
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of last week. But there it just made me laugh. So that kind of set the mood up really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. David with his double past the
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windfall and off we went to the the tunnel. I actually thought we'd peaked there the
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weekend. It can't get any better, man. I thought Davey's done. He's his
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weekend's going to be crap now. Oh, little did you know?
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So, yeah. Hit the train. Got over and done the train. Easy peasy. Drive on. Easy peasy.
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Half hour in Calala and then off we went. Off we went. Yeah. So, basically you switched.
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Yeah. You split, right? Hey, we did a switcheroo. You did a switcheroo. We did do a switcheroo.
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Me and you. Yeah. Into France. Yeah. I was sat in the driving seat as we were leaving France. You were sat in
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the driving seat. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Shared the privileges of the driver. We did, which I'm quite glad of. It
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definitely helped a lot. It's a long way. I mean, I did the long way. You did the full hall. I did the full lot in 23.
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Yeah. And 600 miles. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like to to hit it in one go. I
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remember getting to Germany last time and I was just Thank god we're here. Advertised Gregs. You might as well
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advertise how good a car a Citroen is with its fuel economy. I I cannot get over it. I'm still
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astounded by the economy of the uh what is it? A space Citron Space Tour.
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A space tourer. Like holy I think it's fuel tank is like the TARDIS, isn't it? Just
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Well, we got we got to Kent and it was still like over 3/4 full.
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Yeah. Yeah. And like bearing in mind it's a good 3 to 4 hour drive at whatever. I don't know how many miles it was. And
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then we actually got all the way to to Germany and it still had over a quarter of a tank. And I was like,
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what is going on? Like is this got some alternate power source that it's just driving it? Just the power of diesel and
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long long brilliant like not straight but long journeys where you don't have
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to go up and down hills and stuff. You're cruising. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Good old Citroen. Well
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done. Yeah, bottom your efficiency of of engine stuff. So anyway, we got there.
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We did get there. We got to the hotel. We stayed this year in Durburg. Um, which as is not in Essen because
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anyone who tried to get hotels last year quickly realized that actually most of the hotels were hiking up prices like
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there were no tomorrow. And and I think we found speaking to a lot of people uh they they were doing the same thing. I
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don't know of anyone that was staying in the city unless unless a publisher was forking out for the uh
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hundreds hundreds of pounds for the deals. Um so we were outside 20 minutes away for those that don't know
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the German geography. Huge hotel, wasn't it? It was huge. Huge. Little bit dated
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areas. One grumpy man behind the desk. Yeah. Another happy
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man behind the desk. Love the happy man. He'll do anything for you. Yeah. The other one was No.
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No. Yeah, that was it, wasn't it? And they shut their bar. So, we basically had to game in the like the
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actual lobby area because they shut their bar, which had enough big tables for everyone.
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Uh, stupid o'clock. I mean, we only Yeah, I think it was 6:00. It says on
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the thing it should start at 10:00, but we only got there once and that was on the Wednesday. So, this kind of leads us
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on to the Wednesday. Um well after we talk about we played Tuesday night but
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after press event Wednesday. That's the only time we got there back. We got back uh uh there early and we used the bar to
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walk through to breakfast. Yeah. The only time we saw it. So weird that I think that was the only
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major complaint about But their bar was a help yourself fridge. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, so they did have uh
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drinks and alcohol you could get, but it was literally Yeah. Just open the fridge and pay at the reception. Kind of weird,
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wasn't it? It was like a vending machine could do that. But they had the bottle opener as well, didn't they? They did.
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They did. Yeah. I think they were just trying to be efficient. It's like, we don't need all this staff. We just have the reception
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guy who was also the barman, car park attendant. Yeah. And he probably cleans the room as
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well. Who knows? Um, but other than that, I mean, the hotel's great. Uh, it did what it needed to do. I was a bit
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kind of concerned being out of the city this year. I thought it might be a massive pain in the ass and actually it wasn't. I mean, we never took the train
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in, did we? No. But we could have done cuz we're right next to it. Yeah. And um it actually worked out because there
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were four of us. It worked out more expensive than an Uber. So once we didn't drive in, we Ubered in.
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Mhm. So yeah, that's kind of the hotel. But we sat down, we chilled, we got some beers, and uh Dave had brought his copy
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of Rough. And we thought we needed a nice quick game cuz we're all knackered. Yeah. And rolled down the near preach. We play
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Rough. I mean, we've talked about Rough on the podcast quite a few times. First time for me, but it's your first time. So, let's hear
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about your experiences. I coming from Chip Theory, I thought it was going to be a long complex game.
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You thought you were in for a too many bones. I did. Yes. Yeah. I was really surprised. Uh really quick, really quite
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brutal. Yeah. Um lots of swearing at each other. Yeah. Um yeah, I thought it was great. Absolutely brilliant. Um
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uh the faction abilities were great. Um once I just figured out how mine worked, it was slightly too late
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where I had to get people spread across cuz I could you I was the undead was Oh, the orc kind of faction. Yeah.
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So I get a lot of VPs for um winning areas. Yeah. So I was It was really good. Yeah.
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Yeah. You were that I think David you were the olden the elf kind people to shoot people from around here
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there everywhere and then I can't even remember who I played uh a oh the shadow stealthy
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shadow stealthy dealt a lot of damage cuz I was quite far behind for the last one or two rounds and I made a good
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comeback and you actually all thought I was going to win. Oh, you've done it here and I was like I've done it. I've done it and nope.
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The good old sneaky boy, sneaky Taz who who's not here to to explain his uh victory. He just kept quiet and uh what
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us agreed with you, didn't he? Yeah, that he's going to win. Mark. Yeah, Mark. Watch Mark. So, basically us
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three were just each other over and then Taz just did his thing and went boom, have some of that, And uh
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snuck out a load of like alter things. I think that had gave him a lot of VPs into spaces.
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He was the ruining the dwarves. The ruining dwarfs. Yeah. Really cool powers. So, yeah. Really enjoyed Rough
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as always. Yeah. Davey's got the nice metal pieces. So we we got to play with those. Well, you actually need them. They're
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nice pieces anyway. Don't need them at all. No, but take them out and put them back and play
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the game, didn't they? Yeah. Yeah. But they're nice to have. They are nice to have and they look really pretty.
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Yeah. I mean, that's rough. We won't go into massive detail. I've done it before. So, check the earlier episodes if you want to learn more about the area
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control dice drafting game. That is rough. But, uh, that's pretty much Tuesday. Hit the sack, went to sleep.
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Um, nice rooms. Yeah, nice rooms. Uh we kind of had our our twin rooms where the beds were
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literally together. So we had to we had to create we had to create a courtesy chasm between the beds
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every time JP moved it away when he went to the when he went out of the room. I moved it closer again.
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Yeah. So me and Mark shared um everything. And uh the toilet and the but the shower really.
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Yeah. Yes. Our toilet was kind of saloon doors, wasn't it? Almost. There's
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like a slim glass door that can open both ways and then you walk in and then there's like another glass door to your
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left where's the um like toilet and then glass doors to the to the shower but
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everything was kind of like parts of it was frosted but everything else was open. So, so there was times where
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during the week, like one of us on the toilet, but if our front uh hotel door was open, you can kind of see straight
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through to someone having a And it's just, you know, you you think it's private, but it's not really,
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man. Our rooms were completely different. We're right next door. Ours was like a refurbished closet.
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Yeah, it was. Yeah. And your door went in. It looked like it looked like like broom cupboard.
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Broom cupboard door. Yeah. It was really weird. And our out of the whole hotel,
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our two doors were the closest I saw out of all the other rooms. It was literally like wallto-wall
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door. It reminded me of the Harry Potter five where the house Sirius Black's house
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hidden, you know, it kind of slides apart and it reveals a whole new house. I think it was that
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hidden room that revealed itself. JP kept banging on the walls to tell you to keep keep it down.
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Keep it down. Keep it down, boys. Trying to sleep. But now other it it was fine. The the runes
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were were pretty good. Slept well in fairness. So yeah. Yeah. It was all good fun. But then we
DAY 0: WEDNESDAY
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got to Wednesday. Raring to go. Press event. Raring to go. So this is my first press event as well.
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Am I? Yeah. Oh, was it? Yeah. Dave did last year. I'm the veteran. He's the vet. So I didn't know what to
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expect on the SM press event. Um, so yeah, we it was quite nice cuz we had a
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little lie in cuz it was 11:00 press event starts. Actually, technically it's half 9, but as David said before,
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they do a lot of awards for for games, but it's all in German. We don't speak German.
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No. So, probably not that helpful for us. Robbing the tables. Yeah. So, he turned up turned up 11 and
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got a load of free drinks from where people hadn't drank their drinks on their tables. So, yeah, they were I did that last year as well. I was
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like, "Why not? They're going to go to waste otherwise, right?" Me and JP went and got the sealed bottle of Cokes, but Dave was just like
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emptying dregs into making his own concoction.
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Um, but for those that haven't been, the all eight they kind of convert into a a
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press event kind of they just the publish not all of the publishers, but a select um number of publishers will be
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there with little stalls showing off what's going to be at the show. I think it's the publishers with the manpower, right? Yeah, the ones that
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they can spare somebody whilst they're set whilst they're setting up the actual booth. But I don't know whether it's because
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Hall 8 is is massive or but the press event at UK Games Expo
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that's pretty big in comparison to the size difference between and UK Games Expo.
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So I was surprised by how not how small it was, but the the size comparison wasn't huge. I thought
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Yeah. You'd think it would be scaled appropriately for the size of this thing, but no. No, you're right. They mainly
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get the bigger um uh producers and designers in, don't
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they, with the SN1? Yeah. UK games. Lots of lots of um
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like indie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get a lot more. That just surprised me. I I imagined it to be sort of like, you know, two or
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three halls put together. And when I came in, I was like, "Oh, actually, it's just it's like being at UK Games."
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Pretty much the same same sort of thing, isn't it? I wonder if you have to pay more for the SN1 and then the UKG
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they're just kind of like come along and then I think the UK GU E1 they're just like come along like show your games off
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so I think good thought was great lots of connections yeah lots of things I'd
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never even seen before lots of cool chats lots of cool games uh
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there was an interesting one which is a bit primal which was called Boss Fighter
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which I saw which was Okay. Um, basically you have to have a tablet down. Um, all the cards have QR codes on
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the back. Um, you scan in your character, which is usually a combination of two different types of
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decks. So, like a a fighter mage. Scan them in. Those are your players. Um, and
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then when you fight the monster, you'll scan the your card that you play to the
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QR code scanner. And then the boss will react to it. And it's about we're finding out a puzzle about oh why did
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the boss suddenly do this attack in this way or why did it react in this way and
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it might be playing cards of certain combinations and you know maybe play melee or maybe play ranged as the
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earlier ones but later on it might be like don't play range range melee and do
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this and then you get better spells and stuff later on. So it looked quite cool. Um they was great. Yeah, the art was
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great. It was a Pegasus spill um game and uh yeah uh I think Peter gave us a
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game which was really nice. You did? Yeah. I punched it out today. Yeah. Cool. So, it's ready to rock when ready to rock. Um
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so yeah, that was the kind of the the the first big chat that I had. I love I love the fact this is what I
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love about Essen is like I'd never heard of this game. No. And they're quite a big publisher as well.
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Pegasus spill. They're a big deal. And then suddenly, oh yeah, we got this game. Oh, okay. Cool.
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Done in a really good booth though. It had its own table. Um, so yeah, it looked quite cool. So,
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we'll we'll give that one a will and talk more about it when we actually play it. Um, but I like the premise of it. I
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think I wonder if it's a family game, but it's it will definitely appeal to
20:49
kind of kids. It's like a middleweight primal is the only thing I could think of. I Yeah, I think it might be slightly
20:56
lighter than midweight. Maybe lighter than midway. It depends how how the upgrade cards work with the deck.
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Yeah, we said like my first primal or something. Yeah, but I don't know whether that's doing it
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justice cuz when you start getting towards the end the end bosses, you might actually have to play quite tight
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combinations and work out the puzzle. By me through all my research for Essen, never even saw that.
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No, no, I think going for the preview list, I don't think I saw it. And if I did, I probably it didn't jump out at me to
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look at it. So, who knows? But yeah, it's why I like going in blind. I did all my research last year. This year I
21:31
went in blind. I'll probably do my research next year, you know. So, so that was one thing. I mean, I I
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popped by Czech Games Edition to get um my copy of Space Agencies Faceti
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Expansion Faceti. We'll talk about that in a bit. Um and uh yeah, so just caught with them
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for a few bits, but yeah, talked to loads of people. Talked to loads of people.
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It was great. Everyone was so nice, friendly, and I know they want to sell their games, but it just was really
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natural, you know, just great. Yeah. I think it set up um a lot of the the conversations for the week cuz it's
22:06
like, "Right, I'm going to come and see you." Yeah. Because we had a really good interaction and it's just nice. And we met up with
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Paper Fork Games um Matt and and Chris and they were the guys that did Terraria. So, it's nice to to kind of
22:19
see Matt again in person. and saw him at Expo um previously and just catch up
22:24
about the the things that we're doing. So yeah, so that that that's quite nice caught up with the Mind Clash and I'd kind of ask them about what the
22:31
expectations are for the demo cuz for those that don't know, I was demoing for Mine Clash this year again. Um I'll talk
22:38
more about that in a bit, but yeah, I mean that's pretty much my press experience chatting to loads of people,
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designers, great. I'd happily do it again. I thought it was a great day. Yeah. Well, I saw a game I'd never seen
22:49
as well at Syncite Foundations. That's where I first first met. Timone. Timone. Yeah. What a legend.
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Yeah. Most dapper dressed person at the event, I reckon. Yes. He looked like Tom Hanks from Big when
23:02
he wears that. It's exactly who it is.
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Yeah. He he had the energy of 10,000 men and he did that when he demoed it to me
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and Mark at a start and the Wednesday. So the fact he was still doing that on the Sunday is something else. the energy
23:20
on Sunday was unparallel if not maybe even more like so yeah for those that don't know like check our socials you'll
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see a guy in a white suit um gave in hand likes to to smash that around and
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it's one of the interviews that we did and yeah he he was a legend he's bonkers
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but he's so much fun and passionate I think that's the word he's passionate about
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the his company and the game and it really just sells through and I love it
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when you've got people who are passionate about their products because it's his love child. He's he's got books about it. Um
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but they're not out yet. They're out next year, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And uh yeah, he's made a game about it as well. So, it's kind of based
24:03
on um the political landscape that we've got, but it's in its own world and it's got its
24:10
own spin and yeah, it looked like it was a lot of knobbery. Not
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Game of Thrones cost with Dune cost with fantas more fantasy. Yeah,
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it looks like up our street. But yeah, you got a copy of this, didn't you, Mark? So, we're keen we're keen to to
24:28
try this one out and uh be dicks together. But while while you were at the event, I
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went to the trade hall to find out where Medusa games were. Yeah, you slipped in. Yeah. And I went
24:38
to see where they were, check them out, say hello, and you know what time we'll meet up and what am I doing the next
24:44
day. And as I was walking back, I met Flavian from Hashet dressed up in all his glory. And he was like, "Do you want
24:50
to come into this little special area and look at all these games we've got on, you know, and I said, yeah, great,
24:55
thanks." And he goes, "I've just got to get someone else." And then I said, "Okay." So I waited for 30 seconds and he came
25:01
back and it was Z Garcia. Yeah. And so I was just hanging out with Z Garcia for like 20 minutes looking at
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these games. Yeah. It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Now, if Adrian hasn't got FOMO
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and he'd be listening to this, he will now. He'll be like, "Oh, God." Yeah. But, you know, he would he would
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have been like blah blah blah, you see, how's it going?
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He told a story where he went up to to meet Z and he just like he was proper fanboying and he couldn't get his words
25:30
out. Oh, no. I know. I think you're really good. So yeah, the fact that you just, you
25:37
know, casually just went, "Yeah, I'll just go and see some games with Z." I love that. I love that. Well, he said to me, "All right, I
25:43
recognize you." And I was thinking, "You don't. You don't. No, you don't.
25:48
Maybe you see me on Paul's channel. I don't know if he's watched Paul's channel. He might have seen me doing some of some of the videos for him." Um,
25:54
but I was like, "This is great." And I said to him, I can't believe I'm hanging out with Z Garcia. And just to make Adrian more jealous, he put his arm
26:00
around me. Oh, he touched me. Yeah. So I'm not washing this shoulder again.
26:07
Brilliant. That's so good. Yeah. So chats with the press event as well. I just want to give out a shout
26:13
out to Brian who as well as one of the divi uh the designers of Company of Heroes. Yes. Because we had a great chat
26:20
with him. He is obviously a massive fan of the old computer game as well because they've done so much justice to the
26:27
game. Um, from everything I've seen and from what everyone's been talking about,
26:34
Company of Heroes looks amazing. So, yeah, that was cool. Um,
26:39
Peter or Peter from Yeah, that's it from D and Dust. Yeah,
26:45
we had a good chat with him and could have kind of led off of like being like
26:51
he was a he was in a bit of a a somber mood cuz he was a bit gutted about the
26:57
fact that he didn't know who he who his game would appeal to because it's a rally game but it's also really kind of
27:04
like a solitire euro but you person you know the person with the most points wins. Um, but at the end of the event
27:14
when I did look at BGG, it's sitting at a nice 7.4 cuz it was a lot lower when
27:19
it first released. So, I think people have actually started talking about it and realizing what it is. It's a rally
27:25
game. It's a time trial. Of course, you're kind of solitire person with the quickest time,
27:32
but it's got real nice puzzle and like um tight elements in there. So, no racetrack.
27:38
No racetrack. No, it's literally like like rallying is an efficiency game,
27:43
isn't it? Yeah. You got to, you know, approach the corners and plan for it with a little bit of push of luck with some stuff, right?
27:48
Yeah, it looks like it. You got a you got a nice conveyor belt mechanism for activating your cards. Yeah.
27:53
Uh which is quite clever with dice that activate when they hit the dice levels and then you can manipulate them or add
27:58
dice to have more actions. So, your powerful cards will stay on for longer. Yeah. And your your crappy cards you get, you just
28:04
stick them at the end of the conveyor belt, take them once and they pop off again. Yeah. Yeah, book's fun. I I'd like to to try it.
28:11
He signed my copy. He did. Nice. It's a running theme with signatures and uh board games.
28:16
Want to tell him what I did for you? What? It was romantic, wasn't it? With your seti box. Oh, my seti box.
28:22
So, um I uh we got Seti, we played it and because we used my base game, we just
28:27
chucked everything in. I said, "You have this expansion because for us to fish it all out would be a nightmare." Yeah. So I went to SETI the next day,
28:35
had a meeting with them and got my copy of SETI. And just as I turned up, Thomas was there, the designer.
28:41
And so I got him to sign the box uh to JP and sign it, but JP didn't know
28:46
this. So when I gave him the box, I said to him, "Oh, as I was opening it to put your promo card in, someone
28:52
knocked me and they've spilled something on the inside of the box." And he was like, "What?" And he looked in and he, "Oh, you."
28:58
You know what I've done, though? Because I basically I spent today popping everything including the expansion. I
29:04
realized I don't keep expansion boxes ever. Makes a photo frame. So you spend it.
29:10
No. No. So this morning it's the first time I've done this. I have cut out the front
29:15
cover. Yeah. Cuz that's where the on the reverse the signature is. I've cut out the front cover. So I have like a card.
29:21
Oh of space agencies and that's currently in the rule book just somewhere cuz I can't throw that
29:28
away. frame it. Yeah. Or I could frame it. I could do something with it. But it's in it's in now all my main set.
29:34
But as I walked away, I just went idiot. Why don't I just get my name and just change the box? I would have had it.
29:42
Yeah, that's true. You just put the lid over and swap it. But I got you Luke Lor's signature as well, didn't I? Edge card.
29:48
Yeah. You just keep giving me all these signatures and stuff. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So, anything else on the press? So, got
29:55
to speak to Roberto, who runs Rockstone Dice. Uh, really friendly chap. Um, and
30:02
basically he showed us this game. He's self-published. Showed us this little stock market, like midweight stock
30:09
market game about manipulating dice and flipping tiles to go along and basically
30:15
manipulate trying to sell high um, buy low. Um, as well as having cool little
30:22
combos cards on the side. Um, as well as then trying to match this stuff you're
30:27
mining to artifact cards to get the most VPs. What's it called, David? What's it called?
30:34
Uh, gems of reysia. He's nailed it. Nailed it.
30:40
There you go. It's a running gag. Running gag. Yeah. Going to do the
30:45
interview and then being like, I've got to say the board game name. Whereas I should have said, "Oh, this is Roberto
30:51
and he he's here to tell us about his game." And then pass over, you know.
30:57
But he sold out, didn't he? He sold out in the end. Yeah. Which was really good to see cuz he was just such
31:03
a good like nice chap. Um, and yeah, gave us a copy. Um, and we we did get to play it, but
31:11
we'll get to that. Yeah, we'll have a proper deep dive on that. We'll get to that in a second. So basically Wednesday was all about um
31:18
getting back midafter afternoon. We thought let's get back to the hotel. We've just got the seti expansion.
31:24
Mark's brought his core box of seti. Let's try this thing out. So again mentioned the bar. That was the first
31:30
and only time we got in the bar area. And we thought we were going to have free beers. Nearly.
31:35
We nearly did. We nearly did. We didn't know there was a running tub cuz they just come in and out, didn't they?
31:40
Yeah. And uh yeah, we thought we might. Not that we're trying to get away with stealing beer, but no, not at all. That's true. We don't condone that, but
31:46
we will always have free beer if it's on offer. Um, so what does space agencies do? Well, SETI um, well, sorry, the the
31:55
expansion comes with three new aliens. We played with two of them because we thought, well, why not? Cuz we've played
32:01
all of them before. So, we put the new uh two new aliens in. Um, and one's kind of a an amoeba
32:08
related one. I think it probably is called spoil. I'm not going to spoil him. Um, that's what I'm going to say.
32:14
Yeah. What are you going to say? Don't spoil. Yeah. And there's another one that has a ship on it.
32:19
Yeah. Yeah. I can't tell you. Actually, I think I do, but I'm going to not mention it cuz you're right. Davey's absolutely right.
32:25
The whole premise of the game is that you start with the alien face down. So therefore, you uncover it during the game and go, "Ooh."
32:31
And actually, that's quite They could keep doing this forever with these aliens. Keep throwing new alien packs out,
32:36
couldn't they? And wrap it up. Very clever, weren't they? Yeah, they were very good. The two that we played, I was impressed with the
32:43
simplicity of them, but also the fact that they were fun to play and they're very different.
32:48
Yeah, exactly. So, came with those. But the the bit that I was actually most excited for and the game basically like
32:57
met my expectations on what this expansion was going to do is that you had asymmetric um corporations and there
33:05
are 11 in the box. Weird number. I don't know why there's 11, but there's 11. Um, so you basically dish out, deal out two
33:11
to everyone. You pick one and off you go. So Dave, you you can liken it to Prelude, right, for
33:18
it's the closest thing and it was one of the one of the expansions where I didn't know it needed this.
33:23
It didn't need it, but now I won't. But I did I didn't know it needed it, but it did. Yeah. Right. Like everyone knew it was an
33:30
amazing game as it is, but when they added that in, suddenly it's like, oh, this has made this game somehow even
33:37
better. Yeah. So, I was playing the probes probe guys and basically my power was to um I could
33:44
have an extra probe out and at the start I got to put two probes out and as a free action during my turn
33:51
once around Taz Taz once around
33:56
not every turn I got to move my probes um either each
34:02
well each one yeah each one different one so I could have three probes by the end. Yeah.
34:07
So, I was exploring the galaxy and probing everywhere I could.
34:13
And he did that. Yeah. Yeah. Did it well. He definitely did that. I I had a corporation which is every time you play
34:20
a card which either had a red, blue, or yellow um signal on it. You get to mark
34:27
off a little benefit. And my once per round was I I could clear those tokens and then do that again if I want to in
34:33
the same round. Simple. But as anyone who's played SETI before, just getting a
34:38
credit means everything world is cuz it's really tight. So yeah,
34:43
it was quite nice to to play with that. Who did you play? M I can't remember the name of them, but they the purple ones, weren't they?
34:49
Yeah. So I um so when my data gets placed on my playerboard, I could take that action for free.
34:54
Yeah. So I was spamming uh anytime any get data tokens, I was spamming it and getting those blue signals tra. It was
35:02
um really good. And then my special uh once around ability was I could trade cards with the market.
35:08
So when I was trying to look for signals, I could choose the card or move my or select one that had a bonus that I
35:15
wanted. Yeah. Yeah. So it was quite good. But I think I did the scan action like twice in the game.
35:21
Yeah. But you you were landing and orbiting. I was landing got the moon. Obviously I
35:26
got the moon upgrade. So I was cuz I was out there doing all of that and landing on the moons and
35:32
Yeah. and doing all the probing stuff. So, but you get but you get um quick start
35:37
cards with it. So, when you pick your uh your corp, you also have a bunch of
35:42
quick start cards that you pick. Um a number of them, I can't remember exactly. And uh also then you have your
35:48
your starting hand. And the the main change that it does is that you ignore round one. Round one doesn't exist
35:54
anymore in this game. You start on round two. So you actually have four full rounds, but your starting position is so
36:02
much more stronger. You have more money, more things. So the whole thing's kind of open. All right. So basically, I
36:08
liken it to like you having a a nitrous oxide boost to the game. Yeah. And
36:13
you start deep in you have components out, don't you? Yeah. You have orbiters or um signals um
36:20
uh kind of scanned or whatever. Yeah. You start with bits out there just to give you a leg up on something. You expect this to shorten the game.
36:27
Exactly what I thought. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't. It doesn't at all. Makes it still meaty, doesn't it?
36:32
It does. Still meaty. And it still it probably lasts a similar time. I mean, our game did last long. I'm not going to
36:38
lie. But we were we had a beer and we were leisure like we were taking our time. Yeah. It was It was the first game of
36:45
like of the afternoon. Well, the only game of the afternoon in the end, but
36:50
No, we played something else after did we? Yeah. Oh, right. Yeah. What I like about it as well is that if you introduced it to new
36:56
players, they probably wouldn't know the difference because you you're not adding
37:01
in extra rules. No, it's it's you I mean they'll only need to know why you might need to want to place a satellite, an orbiter out or
37:08
something, but there's no new rules in the game. It just it's the same, isn't it? Yeah. So, I have a theory on this and I
37:16
don't know if people will agree with me or not, but I actually think when a lot of games tell you not to do they say
37:23
don't you do the everyone be the same, no ace symmetry or like no mission cards, stuff like this. I actually think
37:30
sometimes it makes the game harder for people because they don't have an avenue that they can pick and maybe think this
37:37
is what my strategy should be. Whereas when you have that in there, those mission cards and those special powers,
37:43
like I knew to go for probes, that's what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be going for the probes and going for
37:48
the probe stuff. So, as a new player, that's what I I would have been doing. Yeah. Um, but maybe not everyone sees it
37:56
that way, but yeah, I I'm I'm of that mindset where I think actually
38:05
asymmetry and sometimes mission cards help the game and help push you in that
38:10
direction. Yeah, I I largely agree with you in SETI. I absolutely agree with you. I
38:16
think SETI is a game and I've seen it happen where players get lost. They kind
38:22
of don't know what to to do too much a little bit of everything and they they they have to pass really early and then they watch all of the
38:28
other players take another six turns and they go, "Oh, this feels shit." Um, and it can happen. Um, I think Rob's
38:34
experience of SEI was exactly that and he just thought, "Well, it just doesn't make you feel good." No. But you're right with with the corpse,
38:42
they just give you a direction nudge and you nudge in there. Like for you, you nudge to orange, right? Which means
38:48
you're going for orange tech. You want the orange technologies. you want to be probing as it were. You want to be out
38:54
there and it's like okay I'll kind of go in that direction. So I had some amazing program uh probing
38:59
cards come out as well. So I was a great gamer. I thought I'd like absolutely smashed my
39:06
best score but apparently not. I was mine bit disappointed afterwards with myself but
39:13
yeah you thought he got beat his personal best. He didn't. Um but you get more project cards you get more of this
39:18
you get scan tokens. Look, I think if you love Seti, buy it. I think it's going to make this game a lot better.
39:25
If you don't like Seti, this this expansion isn't going to possibly convert it to you. Um, it's just more of
39:31
the same kind of stuff. And yeah, if that sounds interesting, check it out. Yeah. So, we I'm the Seti Sensei, right?
39:38
I played it the most. You're the pioneer of Exactly. Yeah. Grandmaster. Yeah, cuz
39:45
you played it three times on on that year, previous year on the on the day
39:50
I played five times over the whole expo. That's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy.
39:56
So then we retired for uh a lighter game and uh we did
40:01
cuz we needed we had a bit of time. I can't remember what game we It's gone. It's gone. So out out of nowhere
40:07
um we had a little collection of Paul's games that we brought back from the press event. from the press event.
40:13
Um, and Whiswood. Whisper
40:18
crackouts on Whisperwood. See, I didn't play that one, did I? You came down a bit a little bit later. That's right.
40:24
Yeah. Yes. Mark had to go do his narrations. Yeah. It became a daily task for Mark,
40:29
which is just got off to do my narrations. Yeah. Um, which is just him sitting in the toilet
40:35
cuz he wants a nice echo. Yeah, that's it. No. So, I was doing um tabletop gaming
40:40
magazine asked me to do some it was cheaper to get me to do it than send one of their own. Uh
40:46
your prices, mate. Which was really good. So, I I mean I I got to go to behind the
40:52
behind the tables and stuff where people couldn't go to do videos and things. So, I had to do some narration and things
40:57
for them. So, I I said, "Right, you play Whisp." Cuz I thought it'd be a light game. And uh and then came down and
41:04
Yeah. Jeez, it it basically Whiswood is you start by having a 4x4
41:11
grid which isn't a set 4x4 grid player map. It's indicate you get like a little
41:17
indicator and then you have a cat. And the cat has two sides. The cat has a
41:22
side where you can play actions to do stuff which you flip it. Um and then
41:28
there's a way of resetting it, but I'll go over that in a second. And then out on the um on this rondle
41:36
are uh spirits wisps. And each one of these
41:42
wisps next to it. So you've got different colors. So you we've had uh orange, which were your jacko'lanterns.
41:49
You had um green, which are your witches. Um you had blue, which were
41:55
they were like little stars, like little stars, like constellations things. Um and then we had um it was
42:02
like is it purple? Red and purple I think. Red and purple. Um and each one has its
42:08
own. So, this reminds me of like bit of cgraphers or um
42:15
some any of those goals games where these each have their own different type of goal or a little bit like um
42:23
uh what's the the game you you you get the tokens out of the bag where you build a shop and they have different
42:29
effects. Oh, uh quacks. Quacks. Yeah, I like quacks. You have these little cards that give you uh in
42:35
an indication of what each one of these wisps will do on your board or how it will score
42:41
or how it will score at the end. Right. And so on the board there is the wisps.
42:47
Either side is the shape you have to make once you pick up that wisp. Once you pick up that wisp, say it's in an L
42:54
shape, you can put the wisp in any space of the L shape, but the rest of it is going to be trees, forests. Um, you can
43:02
rotate it and you can put that wisp anywhere as long as it's uh adhering to the rules because witches have rules
43:08
where the one we had was you you have to place it next to your cat. Yeah. And all eight squares that
43:14
surround your cat, the same place a whis a witch could go and then you place it and then from that
43:20
then on you have to kind of go off of what you've already placed. Um, and you
43:26
take that action and then it goes to the next person. Yeah, the cat actions were you can reset the
43:33
shop, flip it to reset the shop. Um, I say shop, reset the the the rond, the
43:38
the wispy wispy forest and the wispy market. I think it's called the pond
43:44
Audi. Um, and then the Audi middle aisle. Um, the middle of little
43:50
middle of there a deck chair in the middle. It's always a stereo system that looks
43:56
Um, and then the other action was to um
44:01
basically change the shape that you of the of the wisp that you picked up, you couldn't be like, actually, I need it to
44:07
be this shape instead. Yeah. And then when you place it, cuz that's the limitation, right? Because you take the wisp, there's two
44:13
shapes either side of it, and you have to do that one. So either way, you're like, "Ah, I want red, but the red's near a
44:20
square. I can't fit a bloody square in. Can you choose which shape to do then with that? Only if you do the cat action. Only if
44:27
you do the cat action. Okay. The rondle doesn't fill up in between turns.
44:32
Yeah. Until it gets to down to three if of the same of the same color. You can have
44:38
choose to reset the shop or obviously all all of them gone. Reset the shop.
44:45
The other action that you could do is you could do one, two, two forest tiles,
44:52
place them out, and then flip your cat back over to its action side. So, you generally want to put these forests out
44:58
only after you' flipped your cat action and done your cat action. And that is to try and fill up your 4x4 because the
45:04
first person to fill it up gets extra points. Um, and then it ends that round.
45:10
And then next round you remove all your forest icons, turns into a 5x5, and then off you go.
45:16
And all your wisps are all in the same places. You do actually have a choice to move your cat over anything over a wisp
45:23
or anywhere else. So because of the wisps, um because of the restrictions of
45:28
the witches with the cat, you might have surrounded it, but next round you can
45:34
move your cat over there and then suddenly try and surround it with witches. But I was doing a witch
45:39
strategy and then after everyone saw how many points I scored the first round, everyone went no, not letting him have
45:45
any more witches. I came down. So that out went out the window. That did. But um yeah,
45:51
so I came down about 2/3 into the game and I went away when you were setting up. Yeah, just a nice light game just to
45:58
finish off the evening. I came down 2/3 later. They all had their head in their hands looking at the board. I think I
46:03
said something in a witch. Yeah, trying to think here, Mark. Trying to think. Rejected.
46:12
But um yeah, it was it was really crunchy and it was really good. I enjoy
46:17
photographers with the puzzle making and obviously that's you're drawing it on your own little sheet and you have to make certain combinations and you got
46:24
your goals that you have to hit which is this is that but with an actual kind of
46:30
board that you're making out in front of you and it was a real surprise. I I'm ashamed to have said that I would
46:37
I had already written this game off in my head. I already had like I just thought nah this is going to be for kids
46:43
or something. I did. I just thought it's going to be light. I don't tend to do light games that much, but because we
46:50
did seti and it was such a heavy game and we didn't really want another heavy game to take us into the early hours of the morning. Yeah, why not? Whatever.
46:57
And for me, it's one of the most surprising games of the whole lesson is how thinky that was. The puzzle that
47:04
evolved and layers over the rounds and that's actually really good.
47:10
It was really satisfying. Really satisfying game. satisfying game, man. Like I think I think you won JP in
47:15
the end. I did the jacko'lanterns. I went crazy cuz no one else was me and Taz ended up
47:21
fighting over the witches. So, and he had this free jacko'lanterns. But it was just
47:27
really satisfying game. It It played didn't didn't take us too long to play. Probably a couple hours
47:33
for free player first play. Yeah, that was probably just punching out the trees. Yeah, to be honest.
47:38
Yeah. Yeah. Hour and a half. And yeah, it's one that
47:44
I might get another one I might get to play with the family. Yeah, it defin I could see that being
47:50
played at Christmas. So, what about people that Cuz it looks like a cute cozy game, doesn't it? Yes.
47:55
And people are going to go and get it thinking it's a light family game and then take it home and go, "Oh, oh my
48:00
god, this is really crunchy." Do you think that's going to happen? See, it's it's not The rules are simple.
48:06
Crunchy. The rules are simple. simple rule set like a page or two is it? Yeah, it's just it's not it's not it's
48:13
not that the rules are complicated. It's really not like Dave read it out and we went okay
48:18
like literally just read okay just the the it's the puzzle that's behind it. It's just trying to get an efficient use
48:25
of space and tessillating things in in into the space so you can score like to
48:30
play the game. A kid could play this game. They might not do super great at it with the high score,
48:36
but because you know what we're like, we're like, how do we get the best score, you know, we're quite competitive
48:41
in that that they could have fun just building out their set in front of them.
48:46
Yeah. And you can there's there's also I I picked the poor two goals to start
48:51
rather than the poor one. So there's also an easier set of goals. Oh, okay. All right.
48:57
So you can choose difficult. Yeah, it does look good and you know you come back as soon as you finish you're like that was great.
49:03
Surprise surprise hit for me completely and I love it when games do that. I wrote it off.
49:09
I wrote it off and I like shouldn't have done that. JP never write off a game till you play. Yeah, we went ghost hunting and found.
49:16
We did. But that was pretty much the games of uh of the Wednesday and then hit the sack
DAY 1: THURSDAY
49:22
Thursday. Yeah. Day one. Day one. It's day two. No, it's day one.
49:28
It's day one. Yeah, we've had this constant argument with with Dave. He's like, "No, no, we've been here two days and we don't count
49:34
the press day. It's not the official day of the the tus one. It's like day zero." It's like the pre
49:40
I like I would I would accept it if it was like.5. So if if it was like.5,
49:45
that's fine. So then the like this is 1.5, right? This isn't day one. This is
49:51
1.5. But when you do D and D, right? Then you do a day zero or session zero.
49:56
What session zero? Yeah. Yeah. I don't care what they call it then, though, cuz there's no like buy you in session 20. I don't know what
50:02
session we're on anyway. All right then. Yeah. Cleared it up. So, all right. Day one
50:09
slash Thursday. How's that? Day 1.5. Yeah. So, whatever.
50:16
Rejected. Rejected. Uh, again, thanks. Thanks, Tom. Um,
50:22
let's talk about Gems of Irere then because you talk about Roberto. It was the first game we demoed. What I loved
50:29
about Thursday was within minutes we're demoing and he's like, "Right, bang. We're
50:34
getting on with this." And I love that. It's like, "Right, no time to mess around. Let's play a game." So, I saw it and I spoke to him and I was
50:42
like, "This is where I want to go. Let's go speak to him and book in a demo."
50:47
Did you play a full game? Um, we didn't play a full game. We played like three rounds. Yeah. Probably we got just over halfway
50:54
up. Dave, I'm sure we'll explain what that actually means, but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,
51:00
we went there and he was like um he was
51:05
talking to someone else uh who was like, "Oh, I'm really glad to be down here." Um cuz I think he's from some part of
51:12
America or Canada. Um sorry, Roberto, cuz I know Canadians and Americans hate getting mixed up. But um he was talking
51:19
to another American or Canadian who had come over to Essen as well. Um she had
51:25
bought the game the the deluxe version and then we got chatting and I was like oh yeah can we sit down for a demo and
51:32
he and he just basically went full in mo just like yeah come sit down come we'll
51:38
we'll demo this out and then you can have a copy and I was like before even
51:43
asked anything I was like okay great. So, we sat down and we played it. The
51:48
main concept is you start from the very bottom of the board, like kind of
51:53
outside the the board, and you have to flip a tile that's adjacent. Adjacency
51:59
is kind of um orthogonal, um horizontal,
52:04
like orthogonal, right? Yeah. Well, they're hexagons, so it's kind of like anything that's not behind you.
52:09
Yeah. Anything side or forward. Yeah. Yeah. So, first action is always a flag action if you
52:16
got a card with a flag and then flip two tiles. You flip two tiles and then pick
52:23
one to move on to. Soon as you move on to it, you get the gem of that color
52:28
and then you also will get a list of actions that you can do. So, three three
52:34
coins to mine, which means you're going to mine colors of that gem. To mine, you
52:40
have two mining dice. At the moment, the cost of the gem, they all start at two, I think. Yeah, all
52:47
started at two. So, say I went on to a sapphire. At the moment, I know it's a cost of
52:54
two. I'm more than likely going to get it. So, I'm going to spend three out of the five coins I start out with to mine.
53:02
Mine each dice is individual. So, I roll both dice. If I rolled a one, I wouldn't get
53:10
the sapphire. And then if I then rolled a five, I'd only get one sapphire. If I
53:15
rolled both over two, I'll get two s extra sapphires. But my game is not over. I could then use those two coins
53:23
to buy a card from the market. Or I could sell these sapphires I've just
53:29
mined, but only at two. But say there was a card for two coins, which there
53:35
is, that can increase the value of a dice. Not only can that increase the value of the dice you roll, but it can
53:42
also increase the dice value of the market. And these flip over as well. So one goes
53:47
to six and six goes to one. So it becomes a little stock market game of I
53:53
need to get this low. This is this is in one. Oh, I'll play this to then sell and
54:00
then I might be able to mine again cuz you can mine unlimited amount of times as much money as you've got. But you've
54:06
only got a limited amount of spaces where you can also keep these resources. Seven is now something. If you go over, you have to give them to
54:14
to your your opponents. Yeah. So, it's I like that as well. It forces you then you might have to
54:19
sell it really low. Oh, I really need those and I've got this red one and it's worth one. So, I'm you know, do I sell it or give
54:26
it away? give just give it away so I can then mine the the better gems. Um, and
54:33
it creates this nice decision space. There's a little bit of luck. Obviously, you're rolling dice. There's always
54:39
going to be luck, but there's mitigation. You know, your odds going in. Um, and the main like concept of the
54:48
game is to then use combinations of these gems that you're out mining to buy
54:53
artifact cards at the top which not which give you VPs but also have little
54:59
symbols on for set bonuses at the end. The other part of your end turn is you
55:06
take the tile and whatever color tile that is, so I said sapphire earlier, that stock market then goes up one. So
55:13
suddenly that they're worth three. So you might want to hold on to that K that card which increases it by one and hold
55:20
on to that. And then the sapphire tile pulls out. Next turn it's going to be four, right? So you'll have three a
55:28
value four. You can get 12 coins and do what you will. There's loads of little cool abilities. And the game ends when
55:35
everyone gets to the end cuz you obviously can't go backwards. You can go sideways or forwards. Um, and then you
55:42
kind of toss up the points. You get point set bonuses for the tiles you take
55:47
that are underneath you, for your artifacts, and for coins, but not not
55:53
much for coins. Um, so yeah, it was just a really fun game. I like stock games
55:58
anyway and market manipulation, but this was again towards the lighter side. Yeah, streamline, wasn't it? But in a
56:04
quite a satisfying way. Yeah, I like the um when you flip a tile and you just you
56:10
can decide to go onto that tile and you look and go, "Oh, Davey wants that. I might want it, but I don't want it." So,
56:17
you can flip another tile and then you've got a choice and then you could reveal something for somebody else. So,
56:23
you don't have to do both, but it's it's a you know, you can be a tough decision depending if you want to screw
56:29
someone over or you're desperately looking for something. And you get little bonuses, don't you? They get more powerful as you've moved up the the
56:35
mine. VPs or money or other things that come properly. There's little black dice that mean you
56:40
get more mining dice which you can hold. So you can hold up the market of the mining dice. So suddenly you're just
56:47
like, "Oh, I need to mine like six of these. I'm going to roll all these six dice when it's low and
56:53
suddenly get them." So, uh, but this was very thought out and for a luck based
56:59
game, I'm going to put this in commas because you you knew your odds going in.
57:04
Mit. Yeah, I like that. I don't mind looking games. If you can mitigate it or you know you
57:12
know that if a market dice is on six and you go for it, you're going to have to roll a six. So, you you know what your
57:19
odds are. It's like, well, it's probably not going to happen, mate. And it's up to you if you want to spend three coins. And you know, sometimes you can, you
57:25
know what, I'll take the punt. I've got money. Um, but that's why you have the mining dice. So, more dice means more
57:31
opportunity, right? Get it. It's cool. Those market cards as well, if they if you stack them with multiple cards of
57:37
the same type, they would clear. So, you get a new refresh of market cards, which I thought was good,
57:42
which uh barely any games do, which I like really like as a mechanic cuz
57:49
markets clogging up can really stagnate a game, get stale. Yeah. And it's usually an afterthought
57:55
with a lot of games like Dune Dune added a little tile in which there's a token
58:01
to flip Yeah. kill the market because stuff would would stagnate. So the fact that he had already thought of that was
58:08
uh quite a good conscious design. The art was cool as well. I was like a little robot that looked like Bender
58:13
from Future Armor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was really It's really really pretty game. Cute game even for the basic deluxe
58:21
version looked amazing. Really good iridescent edition. So they called it
58:26
Yeah. Well, the tiles did they look like the foil cards when you flip them. So
58:31
each tile was like it look like a foil card. that each resource piece was like
58:37
um like a poly plastic but like nice one. Um you know each player mele was
58:44
wooden print screen printed. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good. Nice. Um one I'll
58:50
talk about next then is forestry. Um, so we got a demo kind of later in
58:56
the afternoon with with the game and they were in hall four and we had a
59:02
basically kind of a a two round scripted demo uh and then pretty much training wheels off do what you want kind of
59:08
demo. So at this particular moment um at this particular hour I don't know what
59:13
was going on around hall for but it was loud. It was proper uh a loud den that
59:19
you get at this convention or any conventions but I don't know it just seems to be loud and the guy teaching us
59:25
for me his his voice not his fault but his voice kind of blended into the the noise of the the room so it's really
59:31
difficult to to hear um it was like
59:38
um but like Charlie Brown's mother yeah it was it was a bit like that and it's like I had to really struggle to to
59:45
hear and I I think I had a banging headache um that day just from traveling and and you know that kind of stuff.
59:51
Dehydration probably u but probably thank god it was scripted because if it
59:56
wasn't I don't know what the hell I'd be doing. So he basically took us round and then we kind of followed through and
1:00:03
then after that having looked at the player raid it kind of kind of made sense. But anyway, so forestry is um
1:00:10
it's got a nice circular board with large hex's with kind of two rivers kind
1:00:15
of cutting the the whole board into three sections. And you kind of got a uh three colored forest areas. And on there
1:00:22
you've got tiles of of trees um like uh yeah, basically different tree colors
1:00:27
that you can have and different um areas and pickups that you can kind of do from the river and and tiles and stuff like
1:00:33
that. And each player's got this little uh forest. Well, I don't know what the official term is, but the the forestry
1:00:39
wagon thing that will go around the excavator. The excavator. Yeah. It goes around and
1:00:44
picks up all the logs and and and sort I don't know if it is an excavator. It's those machines. I think that they
1:00:50
basically go around the tree and it cuts its gra it and pulls it out. Yeah, that's probably exactly what it is. So,
1:00:56
let's Yeah. Forest loggy excavating machine. Yeah. Yeah. You get what I mean? You get what I
1:01:02
mean? So you kind of have um that as one of your kind of main action uh
1:01:08
mechanisms in the game and you've also got your kind of manager who sits on on the outside. So it's kind of like a
1:01:13
rondle which has worker placement spots uh to do different things or different
1:01:19
offices and and buildings that can activate different actions. And ultimately what you're doing in the game
1:01:24
is you're harvesting uh trees of certain colors that you want to fulfill
1:01:30
contracts that you've got. The contracts will be to process the the wood into the
1:01:36
different manufactured items like toys or or board games or because they did have a board game contract and uh
1:01:42
yeah, it's quite nice little nod. We had a Galileo Galile on on the on the art
1:01:47
cuz it's the same publisher, but they um they have to be matched with
1:01:53
conservational projects. So like one of them was water, one of them was was like
1:01:58
sunlight. So your tree those types of trees needed sunlight or so there was there was a little bit of match like set
1:02:05
matching to do the contract. Yeah, you can't it wasn't just get red tree, sell red tree. It was a bit more
1:02:10
complex than that and the different combinations that you need to do. So yeah, you can kind of move your excavator around the board and you can
1:02:17
do different actions. You can harvest and like you know forestry in general, if everyone's harvesting trees, there
1:02:23
ain't going to be many trees for you to deal with. So you got to also plant and uh plant new trees in there which gives
1:02:29
you seedlings and put the seedlings in so that they will then grow into trees that can be uh
1:02:34
harvested in the future. Um and your player board has got a lot going on on
1:02:41
it. um you've got this nice wheel which is kind of linked to they look like achievement stars but every time you get
1:02:47
stars you move um this this kind of um token around the track and once you go
1:02:52
all the way around you're able to kind of level up some of your technology which will give you more actions. So how
1:02:58
you take your actions in the game there's a little disc on the side and I think you start with three and you'll
1:03:03
spend action points to do different things in the game. So, every action either has a a pip or two pips is how
1:03:08
many action points it costs. And you do as many as you can. Um, and you can always buy more actions to to get a bit
1:03:14
more squeezy efficiency. But yeah, if you're going all this technology, you're basically getting more actions per round, get more efficient. I really like
1:03:21
this. Not just more actions though. You couldn't do the same one twice, right? One one of them was more actions,
1:03:28
right? One of them was gain resources and and basically um contract
1:03:34
in the wheel. Yeah. It's divided. Yes. So, the wheel within the wheel, it was
1:03:39
broken up into Yeah. three sections. One of them was like upgrade your action tree. One of them was like I can't
1:03:45
remember what one of one of them did. And then the other one was like do one of the building actions. But
1:03:51
yeah, that's what you got from spinning around the the wheel. So yeah, if you go around once, you can do the tech. If you go around again, you
1:03:57
can't do the tech cuz your cubes on it. So you got to move somewhere else. So that I like that. It's like where am I going? What am I doing? And I like the
1:04:04
the sense of progression in the game. So I think once we saw him the majority of the actions being scripted out. I think
1:04:11
you were in a similar position, Dave. It was like, "Oh, right. I kind of get what this is doing now." I basically when he was talking and
1:04:17
pointing, I just had to look where he was pointing and I was just had the player action sheet in front of me. There was like, "Well, I think that's
1:04:24
that action. So that's what that does, right? That's what that does." Yeah. Yeah.
1:04:30
Just trying to work. just sat there trying to work out cuz I couldn't hear him at all. No, no, exactly. And uh I think by the
1:04:36
time the demo is kind of over, I was enjoyed. I was like, I kind of see where this game's going. And then he said,
1:04:42
"Oh, by the way, there's an advanced mode where every player has asymmetric abilities." And the one my one had like
1:04:48
drones on. And uh and I was wondering where's my drones? But that's on the other side. That's on the B side.
1:04:55
And I think I think yours had the separate board with the line. Mine was like a little puzzle. Yeah, it
1:05:01
was a it was the biologist. Yeah. Um and it was all about
1:05:07
um like micro tree biology and doing of this separate little puzzle. So
1:05:14
I don't know. We don't know how those play. So but I was like actually enjoyed that. So I kind of want to learn more about it.
1:05:20
We haven't played a full game of it. Um it's it's a weirdly like it's not it's
1:05:25
not area management. It's not area control. It's contract completion with
1:05:31
with some worker placement. There's like three spots of worker placement, but then you had the
1:05:37
which reminded me of the robot from um on Mars where that you would do the
1:05:42
different little actions with that. Um, but yeah, there was just three spots for
1:05:48
work placement and then the rest of it was kind of doing other actions because there on
1:05:54
each spot on of the of one of the worker placements, there was like four different actions. Yeah.
1:06:00
And then you could upgrade it, but only only one person can upgrade it,
1:06:06
but then when anyone else did that action, you'd be getting a nice little bit of benefits from it. Yeah. I wanted to play it um cuz I I
1:06:12
wasn't able to go to the demo with you and one of you got it, didn't you? I picked it up. You picked it up? Yeah. And I was I was
1:06:18
like a little bit disappointed we didn't get to play it cuz we had so many games to choose from. That was one of the ones that I would have wanted to play, I
1:06:24
think, over the course of the week. It would definitely come into GridCon. Um if I don't get to play it before, so
1:06:29
I I will be bringing it. But as I went to buy it, I had a chat with the um the person behind the desk cuz it was a Pink
1:06:36
Troopor as the publisher. Yeah. Um, and little did I know it was actually the designer of the game
1:06:42
actually a chap called, and I'm going to butcher his name, but Muel P, something
1:06:47
like that. So, apologies if I've butchered your name. Um, but yeah, he was the designer. And I was like, oh,
1:06:53
you designed the game. Yeah. Said, wicked. Would you sign my copy? Said that third one you had.
1:06:58
And he went, "Absolutely. I'll sign your copy." And uh, then I had to take it out of the cellophane. And then off we go.
1:07:04
Signed it. And I thought, I'm chuffed with that. That's awesome. So we had a little chat with him and and it was all good and then meanwhile Davey was like
1:07:11
ooh what's this other game that's on the table and very intrigued. So while we were playing um gems of
1:07:21
um Sonia came over who was a patron of
1:07:26
Paul's and said oh I recognize you and I thought oh it's going to be from the podcast. It was like
1:07:32
infamous. It was like oh you're on Paul's channel you did all the primal stuff. I was like, "Yeah, that's me."
1:07:38
I was like, "Yeah, yeah, that's me." Um, but she basically said, "Oh, um, yeah, I
1:07:44
want to go over and try out forestry." Cuz we're chatting about what games you wanted to try. And she said, "It's a
1:07:50
shame Pilgrims only has one table because it looks really good and I've heard loads of good things." So, I I saw
1:07:56
it there and I thought, "You know what? I'll just pick it up." So yeah, I picked up Pilgrims and then I got the developer
1:08:04
to sign it because I was jealous of JP getting everything signed, but they said, "Oh, he's just lit. He's
1:08:09
the one that teaching it." Yeah. And you went, "I don't want to bother him cuz he's in the middle of a demo." And went, "He will love it."
1:08:14
Yeah. They said he would love it. So I said, "Okay, cool." So I went over and got the box signed and then he like did
1:08:20
an illustration on the box as well of like he did the artwork as well, which is really cool. So yeah, um it was um uh
1:08:29
Radam Judah who did the the designer and the artist. So uh yeah, we we we got to
1:08:37
play that later as well. We did. Yeah. Which we'll talk about in a bit. Talking in a bit. What about you, Mark?
1:08:43
I did no demos that day. The morning I did demoing uh Medusa Games. So uh I
1:08:50
thought I was going to do Oranges and Lemons, which is a game I do like. It's a nice worker placement. Uh, but I ended
1:08:56
up doing one of their prototypes for a game that comes out in two years called The Great Fire of Chicago, which is sort
1:09:01
of like a standalone um, not even an expansion really, just another version of The Great Fire of London that they
1:09:07
did a few years ago. I think that was Medusa Games' first game they did, right? Um, so set in Chicago and the premise is
1:09:13
is really good. It's uh, Chicago had a very good fire alarm system in the 1800s
1:09:19
or Yeah. 1800s and the night of the fire, uh, either the fire alarms didn't
1:09:25
work or the person controlling them was an idiot and all the firemen were going all around Chicago except to the fire.
1:09:32
And it was only when it got so big that someone went, "Ah, I I think it's over there." And then they all congregated.
1:09:39
You see that glow over in the corner of the city? Yeah, I think it might be there. So, uh, you likened the the
1:09:45
appearance to the cones of Dunshshire, which made me laugh. Yeah, I just walked
1:09:51
past just saw a load of cones and my brain just went, "Looks like cones of Dunshshire." You cracked me up. As soon as you said
1:09:58
that, I thought that's so spot on. I love that. Like, for those that don't know what I'm talking about, cones of
1:10:03
Dunshshire, it's a reference to Parks and Wreck. um where one of the I think it ends up becoming the city manager,
1:10:10
Ben Wyatt, a character who invented this board game ages ago and this board game
1:10:15
is just like loads of cones stacked up on cones and it's just
1:10:20
ridiculous rules. The most nonsense game just just YouTube just putting cones of
1:10:26
Dunshshire and you'll see the clip and it's brilliant. So it was um so the yeah the fire is
1:10:31
represented by these cones and and then they're centralized into the center of the board where the fire started. I
1:10:37
think it was a a barn. Um and you draw a wind card and whoever's turn it is they
1:10:43
will move fire to an adjacent building. Now, what's cool here is that um each building each sort of main street or
1:10:50
building has buildings of your color on and there I think uh there are six
1:10:55
colors in the game and you are trying to protect one of those colors. So, I was I think yellow so I'd want all my yellow
1:11:02
ones to survive but I want all yours to burn because when a building burns it goes over your victory point score. So,
1:11:08
each building of yours that burns you lose victory points. You start off with 50 and you can end up with none. Um, you
1:11:15
have a number of actions then where you can you can move firemen to the fire and these little black cones sit on top of
1:11:21
the fire cones and if your meeple is in the same place you can put the fire out and then you get uh you get the fire
1:11:28
cone. Um, and it's a bit like longest road in Katan where if you have the most fire tokens you you get points and
1:11:34
someone could then take over. Um, you also have resources that you can take to a boat and some point during the game,
1:11:40
these two boats will start to move down the river. So, you've got limited time to get your resources and they give you victory points. Um, and over the course
1:11:47
of the time, the the um fire will spread, um, burn down, you can put it
1:11:53
out, it'll go elsewhere. Uh, so I was deming that for most of the morning. It was good fun. Had a lot of, um, people come over and they said they enjoyed it.
1:11:59
Um, I hadn't played it before. I got taught that day, so it's very simple to pick up. I think I had one minor teach.
1:12:05
Um, it seems like it's going to be good fun. The only thing is I found it a bit long. Yeah. So, I don't know whether they need to
1:12:11
look at stacking the cards because the the game runs out when the the wind cards run out. Okay. It just it just I think just went on a
1:12:17
bit too long. So, for the demos, I kind of half the cards so that we could get more people playing the game.
1:12:23
Yeah. Okay. Cool. Which is what you want. Yeah. Exactly. Just just get people having a taste of the game.
1:12:28
What is it? Is this something I enjoy? Cool. That's enough. That's all you need. You need you need a taste. And
1:12:34
it's a bit like that forestry demo. It's like for all the the the faults of the noise and everything, the demo did what
1:12:40
exactly what it needed to do is to wet your appetite and go, "Will I like this?" Yeah. Yes, I will. Off we go.
1:12:46
It's something I don't usually agree. Paul's like a avid avid uh Yeah. scripted teach guy. Yeah.
1:12:52
Scripted teach guy. Um believer of it. And um I'm not. I like being like left
1:12:59
to my own devices, but actually if I was left to my own devices in the forestry, I just probably wouldn't have ever had a
1:13:05
clue because I couldn't hear him teach it. So, um, it definitely does has its uses. And
1:13:10
I used my Brian Blessed voice voice for it. Did you? Oh, did you? Yeah. Yeah. Don't do
1:13:17
Oh, I could do mine. Well, in the afternoon then I just
1:13:22
planned picking up um all my pre-orders and I had a meeting with CGE. Um so I
1:13:29
got like SETI and Whiswood and Ara expansion and I got recall.
1:13:35
Yes. And oh I went to Crowd D games cuz I saw Paul Grogan had done a playthrough of
1:13:41
In's mouth travel guide. Little dice rolling rolling right where
1:13:46
you have to take uh your your um what are they called? Not visitors, uh,
1:13:52
cultists. No, it's like a saga. You're on a trip and you're going through in rooms, taking people through. No, sightseeing.
1:13:58
Uh, going through Yeah, the sightseeing through through In's mouth. Yeah, tour.
1:14:04
Tourist. Yeah, tourists. We're tired. They go through In's mouth and you you roll dice and you got to take them to certain buildings and
1:14:10
things and at the end I think there's a fight with one of the ancient ones. Okay. But it looks it's very light and just
1:14:16
rub it off and do it again. Oh, nice. Yeah. So nice. That was my day. Okay. Yeah. Well, so me, Taz, and JP, uh,
1:14:25
while Mark was demoing went over to, uh, the Titan Forge stand, and we saw Eve, a
1:14:33
war for New Eden uh, there, which B is based on the
1:14:39
online computer game. If you don't know, Eve Online, like people have lost lives to it. Not physically, but because it
1:14:47
becomes a new like job to them, you can pretty much become like a mafia lord or an emperor or just a little pirate or,
1:14:55
you know, hand solo in it, which is what draws everyone into this MMO. But it's a
1:15:01
4X and I really wanted to try it. It said it could be played in two hours and
1:15:08
it wasn't too complicated. So, we sat down for this demo. We got taught the
1:15:13
actions and then pretty much went the actions are really simple. You have a board. It
1:15:21
says what actions you can do out in front of you. Where the complexity comes in is with your tech deck which is like
1:15:28
a like a it's thicker than a deck of cards. Obviously it was smaller but
1:15:33
huge. It was huge tech deck and the ships. Loads of different ships.
1:15:38
Yeah. Um they do two versions. There was the version we were playing and then the big
1:15:44
version. The big version I think it's called like Nexon version which is the ships are like massive and it was and
1:15:51
the tiles are all massive. Um and but yeah, we got a demo of this game. You
1:15:57
basically do an action, do your thing, goes over to the new next person, they do an action. You get three
1:16:04
three actions and then the next two if you want to use them cost money. Um, you
1:16:11
have build, move, re, research,
1:16:16
um, extract, extract, um,
1:16:21
and that was the the core concept really, wasn't it? There are more that I'm missing. There are a lot of like
1:16:27
basic actions, but they were simple. These your 4X tropes, so it's kind of what you'd expect from a 4X game, right?
1:16:33
the little picker upper that they have of the this ship which has like a little sucker on the end. So to pick up the
1:16:39
tiles, you just plon it down and then take the tile off and flip it. Oh no. Yeah, cuz it's all set out, isn't it? All the tiles are out before the
1:16:45
game. Yeah, that's it. It should be really easy to to peel the tiles off it. D I got a bit gun with it. I was like,
1:16:52
yeah. And then and then I couldn't get the tile off and I was just uh luckily
1:16:58
he was talking to someone else and I was just like, oh my god, push a button. There's no button. It's a ship.
1:17:04
Well, that's that that's that you're talking about that pickup like that though. No, it's like a model with a sucker on
1:17:10
the end. Yeah. And then Taz used it straight after me just to be like, "This is how you use it." And he very lightly
1:17:17
did it. Took the tile off, flipped it over in front of me. I was like, "You bastard. You ejected."
1:17:22
Yeah. It doesn't have one of those like lips on on the sucker. So, you know, sometimes you can you can peel it.
1:17:29
No, it didn't have one. No, he's just he's trying to do it. Gives it peeling the back of the board off.
1:17:35
But what's unique in it is from this research deck, you have four research slots and you can just pick any and put
1:17:43
them there. And then you research in your research phase, you put it there. And depending on how many research
1:17:49
buildings you build out, you'll get more tokens obviously. But anything, anything you want. There's no tree. It's just all
1:17:56
linear. This is this is your research. Where where do you want to go? Oh, right. And then your ships, your
1:18:02
starter ships, you have four different ones. So, and then they each have different abilities and strengths and everything.
1:18:09
So, the one that's better at fighting slower. You got your scout ships you want to send out there. And you've got
1:18:16
the kind of the ones which are the in between and then like your faction special ones which usually have cool
1:18:22
little upgrades that make it do different things. Um, and that's pretty much you go out,
1:18:27
you flip it over, you might get a resources on the belt which then you can extract. Um, you then can build a
1:18:34
refiner there which will then do it for you as an income.
1:18:39
And then there's combat. Yeah. Uh, and in combat it was very unique. Um, you have uh an attack value um and
1:18:47
you have an evasion value. And basically what type of dice is white or black? Um
1:18:55
the whites have um less uh damages but
1:19:01
more hits on them. Yeah. More more targets. More targets. And the black have more damage but less targets on them.
1:19:07
Yeah. Uh you choose what combination if if it's if it's both. Um but otherwise if
1:19:13
it's just one color, you roll that color. You roll those dice and then you have to match or beat the evasion value
1:19:22
to actually hit it. Target, but then okay, you've you don't know how much damage you do. You might you might be like,
1:19:27
"Oh, I've hit it." Oh, I haven't rolled any damage. That happened all the time.
1:19:32
Just you. It's like target target. There's no missiles. I killed you to a stormtrooper.
1:19:38
Or the opposite was just firing everything and not hitting a solid thing. So six damage, but I haven't got
1:19:44
any targets. It was quick, clean, and easy. And that's great. Off you go. And it was just done really
1:19:50
well. And if there's multiple ships, you just choose your ship to do and who it's targeting.
1:19:56
And then you roll and then next player chooses a ship. And it's all done via
1:20:01
initiative as well. So I said, next player chooses a ship. It's actually done on initiative. But um
1:20:06
yeah, you have a lead ship in the conflict and you can have others that support it behind. Okay. So you kind of have like a what you call
1:20:14
it? um formation. Yeah. In a in a way. It's not a strict formation, but yeah, certain ones will support the the
1:20:20
attack and then you can kind of mix that around. So, very clean system. Which is good cuz sometimes these games
1:20:26
live or die by their attack combat mechanism. So, yeah, that's why I think they said you can
1:20:32
play in two hours. And then the VPs, it's not just VPs for killing. So, like
1:20:38
you you blow up a ship, you get VP. Um but you can get VPs from um trading at
1:20:45
the market for getting certain materials. You go to the the market as a trade action, trade there, sell those
1:20:52
materials, get VPs. There's VPs in tech by doing the research in certain tech.
1:20:58
Every faction was asymmetric. Mine seemed like the more war faction. Like one of my research cards literally was
1:21:05
we picked four random ones cuz it was a demo. But one of mine was every time you won a combat you gain an extra VP. So it
1:21:12
was it was like very my my guys seemed very very war aggressive.
1:21:17
Yeah. But I think they each have their own um benefits. Tazes was more like tersly and basically wanted to build
1:21:24
these um uh like the Citadel city things um and like farm VPs that way. But yeah,
1:21:33
really interesting game. I I really enjoyed it. Um and hopefully we can get in contact with
1:21:39
um uh with Titan Forge and get a copy sent out and we can get a play and
1:21:46
yeah, we'll demo that. saw it at the press event. Yeah. It looked amazing. And then they had
1:21:52
these giant ships that were magnetic cuz you those ships you build in stages.
1:21:58
Is that right? Yeah. So, there's a different that's a variation. That's the expansion. Yeah. And it's you can build the ship in the
1:22:05
middle and gain VP to it, don't they? And then Yeah. It's magnetic. That's it. Yeah. And then you also gain it as a ship to
1:22:12
like fly around and do stuff with as well. Yeah. They look great. And then they had an expansion for a pirate faction. They
1:22:18
did. And they start off in the center of the board. Okay. Yeah. And I think fighting everyone off. Yeah. But but then if no one else, they
1:22:26
win. So if no one Yeah. So they're So they're literally scuppering everyone. Keep you all at bay. I quite like
1:22:33
the center of the board as well. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. No one wins cuz I win hard. Yeah. So they try they'll just go around
1:22:39
trying to mess everything up instead. Fair enough. But it look cool. It it's quite exciting to talk about a 4X game
1:22:46
that um especially a space one that's new cuz usually you go down the same is
1:22:51
it TI is it Eclipse is it this or that and yeah I'm looking forward to hopefully trying that out and having a
1:22:57
proper session on it and it one that actually hits the time the the the time allotment
1:23:04
that it says and is unique and
1:23:10
it's fun to play. Yeah, it's been a while since we've had one of those. So, exactly.
1:23:15
Anything else before we we headed out on the Thursday evening? I I think that was our Thursday.
1:23:21
Yeah, I think that's enough for our Thursday. A long day. Yeah. I mean, we in the evening we we
1:23:27
went to Fritz Patrick's um for Gaming Walls Patreon and we met up with a bunch
1:23:32
of people um that we did. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You had your schnitles first? Oh, we we had our schnitles.
1:23:39
Oh, yeah. Yes, we did. Sorry. My first one. Your first ever. How was it? It was beautiful. I had the same as you,
1:23:45
didn't I? Cuz I cuz I was a bit late cuz I'd been there and I'd looked at your plate and waited. Maybe I want that. I want I want what he has. That big meat
1:23:51
slab. Beautiful. Covered in breadcrumbs. Yeah, you're right. Deep fried. We had the schnitles. Dave had a curry
1:23:58
first. So, I wanted a curry verse, which wasn't the first. Yeah, that's my plan.
1:24:04
Stole it. I stole it. Nice. Love it. Yeah, we did. We did all that and then everyone started to arrive. So Paul has
1:24:10
a kind of room off to the side of this um this pub and uh yeah, loads of people come in and we got to meet uh the
1:24:17
celebrities of the board gaming world. Some of these uh guys and girls that we know already, but first one I met that I
1:24:24
had not met before was Jeremy Howard. Yeah, I met him before. He's lovely. Really nice guy. What a nice guy. So yeah, he was looking
1:24:31
over the table going, "What the hell is this that you're playing?" And he went, "Oh." And then Dave was explaining
1:24:36
Pilgrims, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a sec, uh, to him. And, uh, yeah. So, we met Jeremy and Mark Dainty
1:24:42
arrived. Yeah. As well from Not Gaming. Mike Dennis from Ready Steady Play was there. I
1:24:48
mean, James Wilkinson was Yeah, James Wilkinson was there. Um, but I met someone that I'd met,
1:24:54
befriended a year before. Yes. So, the year before I stayed in a hotel not far from the premier in an Essen.
1:25:00
Yeah. and Fantasia Games was staying there and one of their demoers called Cody who he really reminds me of Sher
1:25:08
Labuff. Yeah, he does. And well, before or after his uh stages
1:25:14
before. Okay, cool. But he is he is really he's he's loud. He's fast talking. He's very
1:25:19
enthusiastic, passionate about anything you say, wants to know more about you. He's a really great guy. And he was just
1:25:25
there. And you know, I met him every evening last year for like three or four days on the trot and he was there and I
1:25:31
hadn't seen him for a year. It was great. Really good to catch up with him. Great fun. Yeah.
1:25:36
Lots of people, good energy. Yeah, we we had some nice chats and uh we decided to crack out Pilgrim cuz it
1:25:44
looked lightweight and something like light enough to play at a pub while we
1:25:50
could still have chats with, you know, people there around and Yeah. and kind of do what we were doing.
1:25:56
The biggest challenge gaming in Fritz Patrick's is is the table space because you you can't put a big game on like you
1:26:02
just won't have the the footprint. So it's like what do we have that's a small and a footprint and pilgrims fit the bill. Although we were it was edging,
1:26:09
wasn't it? We managed to make it work and bob. So yeah. The premise of
1:26:14
Pilgrims is you're a merry band of or you're trying to build up a merry band
1:26:21
of pilgrims that go along adventuring. Um, and you've got a grid board that
1:26:27
comes out and you've got campfires on it with I think it's like a what is it like
1:26:33
a five how how was it? Five or six by 10
1:26:38
board something like that. I can't remember than that. I think 6.6 or something. Yeah. 6x6.
1:26:44
Yeah. It wasn't big. Okay. I think it was a square, but it didn't look like one cuz it's cards. Yeah, cuz it was cards maybe.
1:26:52
But basically, you place out item cards and then in every
1:26:57
campfire there's a a wanderer, what they call it. And the main aim of the game is
1:27:04
you'll select an action on your card. You get three of them per round. And on that card it has uh a movement icon. So
1:27:13
your your walking icon will be like uh two like two spaces but it will be
1:27:19
either orthogonal or horizontal where you can go and it have a dot on it. That
1:27:26
dot is where you you can end up. And where you can end up you'll get the thing that's underneath it.
1:27:33
Once you've done that, you can place whatever you've gained out. If it's an
1:27:39
item card, it will can slot into one of your um I think they're called the
1:27:46
companions, weren't they? Yeah, it was companions. They had a word for it. Um I think uh but yeah, one of
1:27:54
your journeymen, one of your companions, you slot it onto there and you gain the ability that's underneath them and you
1:28:01
get to do it. This might mean that you get to move again
1:28:06
and pick up another card and that means you get to then play that and you might
1:28:12
get something from that. We did the advanced, of course, the advanced versions with the where it's got like a
1:28:19
little map and if you hit all these points, you get to cash it in for VPs.
1:28:24
Um, but your main point of doing all of this and gaining certain amount of items and these wanderers was to complete
1:28:32
quests which are down on the table as a market above. And once you've done this market,
1:28:38
um you've completed one of them, you there's an ability on your main guy
1:28:43
where you can set it aside or there is um you can just complete it and you slot
1:28:49
it under your board and it it's like a little engine builder, right? So it means you some of your movement actions
1:28:56
are better. Um or you can gain VPs from
1:29:01
doing certain things. And yeah, it's it had a nice amount of depth to it. It was
1:29:08
like a movement puzzle along with set collection um and contract completion.
1:29:15
Um yeah, I was going to say it's not a game that I would have ever looked at to play. No, not just walk past it hundred hund
1:29:23
times in a row and because you had it at the table, I thought it was great. I thought it was really good. And I liked
1:29:29
the where your objective cards were where you cashed in your cards to get those. You either got a special ability
1:29:34
engine or you got endame scoring points, but then then they stacked towards the end of the game. So you then got more
1:29:41
choice of end game scoring points, didn't you? Is that right? Cuz they're green and blue and halfway through they got you got more green than blue.
1:29:46
Yeah. So the harder ones cuz you can spend items from your hand as well as ones that attach to your um companions
1:29:54
and you might have had to get rid of a companion to do that as well. Yes. Yes. They might you might have had to sacrifice them to they're like died
1:30:01
on the adventure fighting a bear or you know doing something. They probably ran away but we like to think they perished.
1:30:06
Yeah. You also had a little uh sort of like whoever gets here first scoring
1:30:11
mechanism for Yeah. on the board, didn't you? Yeah. And that then gave you end game victory
1:30:16
points depending on how you what what you got during the game. I think Yeah. I think what I liked about it was um the four kind of actions you
1:30:24
you do three of them on your board, right? the way that you move. It wasn't case I go where I want. It was
1:30:31
like, well, if I take the the horse, which is on my board, it moves in a certain way. And in this case, it was
1:30:37
like a knight in chess. It did move like a knight in chess. So, it's like I have to go up one and across two or whatever. And then that's
1:30:44
the card I pick is there. And and the knight in chess, the end pip was always at the end of the L. So, you
1:30:50
couldn't stop in between. Exactly. And that's the puzzle in this game. It's how you move, what card you
1:30:56
pick. And it's not just case I'll get that one. It's like no, I need to get myself in a position to be able to use the right move action
1:31:03
to get there. And the fact that these are on your companions as well. Yus as well. Cuz if you took the horse
1:31:09
action, one of your cards might have said you can also do this move after. Ah, that's how I get there.
1:31:15
Or it might have said like you can pick up a card on the way. So you you like ride past and grab a wanderer and chuck
1:31:22
him on your horse as you're as you're riding past. So yeah, it was a really interesting unique
1:31:29
like midweight game that we played and we got to the table. So I'm really really glad we got to play that.
1:31:34
Yeah. And that was it for Thursday. That was it for Thursday. Little soldiers were schnitled out. We
1:31:41
were sch snitled out. So off we went back to the the hotel, got some shot eye, which is probably the only night
1:31:47
that we got to bed early. Yeah, early. Everything else was uh
1:31:53
air quotes there. Yeah, lots of Yeah, you couldn't hear them. Um but they were there.
TURN 3 - The Final Turn
1:32:00
[Music]
1:32:07
Because our SN episode is full of content and jam-packed full of games, we
1:32:12
are splitting this episode into two parts. So, this is the end of part one. And uh if you want to listen to part
1:32:18
two, you can. That'll be uh released shortly. So, hope you enjoyed this episode. And uh until next time, he's
1:32:25
telling you [Music]