TURN 1 - Player Count
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[Music]
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Welcome to Whose Turn It Anyway, your board gaming podcast where we cover even more ball gaming conventions. And of
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course, we're talking about Essence Spiel 2025. And we return in part two where we cover gaming coverage. So
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without further ado, let's jump back into the Essen chat.
DAY 2: FRIDAY
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So yeah, Friday Friday. Let's get into Friday. Day two. Friday 2.5
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2.5. Um I started uh my first shift on Friday
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at M Clash Games and I had Trarion and little
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which I laughed at every time you demoing that. You're demoing Tracarion. Good luck with that. I was like, "Ah, stop saying that
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now. I'm mounting the pressure." Um, Traera and I I've played I don't know how many times. Loads of times. Um, so
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teaching Traera and I'm used to it. I've got the spiel in my head. I can just do
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it. But I was there to demo the expansion, the Arcane Arts expansion, which looks great,
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which looks cool. And that's the bit I didn't know. But luckily, the rule set isn't as as crazy as Traceran or its
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expansion of Dow God's Academy. It's not of the same level. Um, so when I arrived, um, there's a friend of mine,
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Henry, who, uh, is, uh, also demos at Mine Cash. He's been doing it for years.
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And I quickly caught up with him and said, "Right, cuz he'd been demoing the the the day before." And I said, "Right,
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are they sending people that know Traceron to do this expansion?" And he just laughed at me. He went, "No." I was
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like, "Right, okay." So, I had to kind of recalibrate how I was going to attack this demo. Um, because I thought, "Well,
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if everyone has to play, I all I've got to do is show off the expansion." And off they go. They can play with it. Which would have been an easier teach
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for sure than the reality which is uh the four people that sat at my table. Have you played? Have you play? No. No.
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No. No. Okay. So, really difficult to then teach an expansion to a game like
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Tracarion without them having to play the base game. So, I've kind of just put that to the side for the minute and
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explain it at the end because it's the only way to do it. But other than that, once I kind of recalibrated, it was absolutely fine. But you've also
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probably sold four copies of Trarion to people, right? Potentially. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's all
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about building that world up. It's not a new game. It's not. It's 10 years old. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a lot of 10
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years old. 10th anniversary. Yeah. They're doing a special version, aren't they? Yeah. So, it was actually kind of a privilege
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to do it cuz it'll probably be the last time they'll demo Trarion at any convention cuz it is an older game.
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They Yeah. It was like a special thing they were doing for the 10th anniversary. So, yeah. nice privilege to
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be able to to show it off. But the demo went really well. Um, but quickly for those that are like, "Yeah, whatever JP
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Tracer, old news 10 years. What about the Arcane Arts expansion? What does it actually do?" Well, the expansion adds
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the Arcanist um to the board. So, on the board sits like a a wagon token, and
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that wagon token will move between dark the dark alley, market row, and and um downtown.
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Okay. Every round. Wait a minute. the like arcane arts like what?
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Yes. I know the irony here which if when that got announced I could
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just see you and Curly going so the we were right there are wizards aren't we?
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We are casting spells and like starting to add this like no I thought it was magic tricks. Well,
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it is magic tricks. It's meant to be kind of pigeon crushed in the box kind of thing.
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But now they've added this arcanist which has added an element of of mystery. Spells. Spells. Not really
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spells, but yeah. Anyway, so you got the arc. I like to think they listen to the podcast and thought, "Yeah, spells would really work in it."
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Make them tricks. Um, so yeah, so this this thing moves around on the board every round. Um, so if you go to that
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area with your worker, not only can you spend your action points in the location, you can spend it on the
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arcanis board. Oh, okay. So, it's like a moving It's like a moving location. Oh, wow. If that makes sense. So, the things that
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you can do, it's like the merchant in Resident Evil the village. Exactly. He's like, "Hello, stranger." Oh, that's
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all these words. What do you want? Do you want some Tracarion shards? Um, but what you can do talking about
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Tracarion shards, you can soup them up. So you can spend money, which is tight,
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um to supercharge your Tracarion shards to these nice like luminous blue
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versions of them. And they give you two action points rather than one. Oh, nice. And you can spend them in the um
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theater, but they only give you one in the theater. So it's like it just gives a bit more flexibility with those.
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They're really very nice. That's cool. I like that. Yeah, it gives you a bit of bit of this, a bit of that. Um, you can also um buy
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enhanced components uh from the arcaneist and an enhanced component can match a two uh point
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component from the base game. Okay. So, if you don't have the pigeon that you I want the pigeon, you can get one
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of these enhanced components to replace it. Cut my throat dibler. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I sold you a pigeon dead
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which is fine. which will kind of like with with Traceron, you can get yourself in a culde-sac quite easily and go crap.
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Yeah. But with this, it allows you to get out of that cord sack and into different
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cord sacks in the game. And what happens if you prepare your trick with the enhanced um component, that component or
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one of them moves onto the trick card. And when you perform that trick, there's a couple of dice that you roll at the
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beginning of the round if it's the right component will give you extra things when you perform it. So they they are
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finite because they will move to the trick. So you can't just keep spamming them for other things, but it allow you to get out of a jam.
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The other cool thing is you can buy special workers that do different things. You've got
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like a spectre that doesn't take a worker placement spot. It just sits in the back. Okay. And allows you to to take some actions.
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Oh, good. And you can do a golem, which you can only place on your first or last a uh turn of the round. So again, they just
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twist some things up. Um but they they're quite expensive. They're like getting paid in Tracarian shards, not money.
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Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, exactly. So, it's like Can you overspend with the souped up ones or
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Oh, possibly. Yes. I think they'll take any Trickaran shard will be accepted um on from wireless contact. So, but yeah,
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I just added a few little things. Uh I think there's probably other things on there, but yeah, generally it's not a
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massive expansion. They've designed it so it fits in the uh the big collector's box. Yep.
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Which I really like the fact that this comes in a tray. The tray matches the the color of the insert if you've got
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the um big box collector's edition. Just slots right in. Bada bada.
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Nice. So, how does it can it be played with the other expansion? Yeah, it it fits in. Yeah.
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Lovely. Yeah, it sounds like it fits in cuz it doesn't add too much. It adds enough
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variation to help people. Yeah. Without adding too many rules.
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It loosens up the jam. It loosens up the game. Yeah. which is going to be really interesting to play actually because it
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is a very tight game. Have you played? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I played it. Yeah. Couple. So, yeah. Yeah. I played it a lot a lot more solo
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cuz I did a review for Mine Clash. Loved it. Absolutely blew my mind. It
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makes me so tired after have to lie down. Yeah. So, having said that might loosen up a
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little bit. It might be quite nice to just be like I didn't back it. I'm I'm frustrated because that sounds great. Like really
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really good. So, yeah. Yeah. speak speak to our friends at Mine Clash. And I'll speak to you. Yeah.
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Hello. He was wearing his Mind Clash and every time I saw someone that passed him at
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the show, he'd be like, "Mine Clash friend." Yeah. The secret nod there.
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Yeah. Little little wink. I I tried it and they looked at me funny. But that was pretty much my morning. So
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I was literally demoing that. What's next? Um so uh we me and Taz went to play Ants
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straight away. and get a demo of Ants, which if you don't know what Ants is, it's a new game
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by Cranio. Um, and the developer is uh Renato
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Seo and Andrea Robani. And um
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Nice. Yeah, I tried it. I think I got You had a go, didn't you? Yeah, I had a go just like I did earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Um and we got this demo.
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It it was kind of a good demo, but there were some like rules, clarifications
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that obviously needed to be done and the designer did pop in now and again just to confirm
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some of them while we were playing. Um, when we were playing, me and Taz were playing against two games developers
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themselves. So right from the go they basically cordoned off the map and
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Taz had been dealt a horrible hand to start with. I don't think some of the rules kind of made sense that to to him
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right at the start which they didn't to a lot of people right Paul was talking about this himself
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but I played the game and I thought you know what I see a really good game here
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and I liked it so much that basically I went and had a chat with Roberta
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um and she basically um gave us a little discount on the game. So got a
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discounted game version of it. I was picked it up and I was like, "Right, I'm going to show Taz that this is a
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good game because he came he came he basically came from it. I was like, "No, not for me. Not for me. Don't like it.
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Let's talk about it cuz like we played it that evening, didn't we?" Yeah, we played it that evening. Let's get into it. So I'll get stuck into it.
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So the theme is you are a colony of ants and you want to basically spread out and
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explore and survive and make as many VPs as possible. The may the way to make VPs
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is you've got stars that come out which remind me of uh Nucle.
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The way that the tracker comes out and these stars are kind of like your endgame timer. So certain goals you got
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to get. Um, you have a rotating like hatchery which are your action spaces
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which are meant to be your ants. So they kind of go from puper to lava to ants.
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You then have this board which you can manipulate to your income to obviously
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so you can get more of these, but you got to remember to feed them. So that's feeding the ants.
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That's the resource that's out is is food to feed your puper to then turn them into ants. So you got the actions.
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The strength of the action you were doing was the ant that was there. So if you had two ants on one space at the
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top, that's a strength action of two. If you had three is three and four and four
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and so on. You could also spend food to buff it to strengthen the action. But
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right at the start, you're starting with a onelevel action. These actions are you can dig and
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digging is done on your own little board and it's digging down and basically creating rooms in your uh burrow which
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you you can cover and when you cover they have little bonuses off on and when you cover you get it instantly.
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Mhm. So that's the dig action. Um once you've done that you select a card you pick it
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up from that road from that rose from the dig pro. Then you've got explore um where you get to
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go out and explore. And this is the middle tile out on the like a hex grid
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which is meant to be like the the outside world and the explorers kind of think of it
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you're tunneling underneath and you're popping up and you put that that disc there depending it's got pips on it. So,
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one, two, three, uh, and there were fours, which are request ones, and you
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pop out there, you get the bonus. Um, and then there's the loot. And loot is
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kind of where you're moving your ants around where your antill is. So, the
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explore explored antill. And you can go anywhere any space around that to then
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pick up the loot that's dropped around those spaces that those hex's. So if
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there was uh a grass and a food and you went in the the space in between, you'd
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get one of both. But it happens retroactively as well. So if you had one
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in between three, no one had explored, suddenly three people explore, you suddenly have three resources coming.
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But what do we do with these resources? Well, grass is mainly used to play cards.
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Yeah. And so is digging thematically. You're digging down into
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your burrow. You now have a burrow of three. I can now create a room in it. So you
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had these little house cards, but I might spend some grass to build this little room in there. this little
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research lab or something over which an known to do but it would be cool.
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There was an adventure party. There was an adventure party which would give you a little bonus and usually
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usually those are your engine building cards. Um then you had a research card which usually also required you um spending
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different resources. And then you had the quest cards. And the quest cards
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usually required you to have a certain amount of something, not really to spend
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anything. And you get to pay those quest cards. That was one of your end game.
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The goal markers have three flags. And these flags can be done via upgrading
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your um rotating u what's the word for a hatchery? Um, or they could be from um,
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killing bugs, which is another thing I I'll go over in a second. Um, or they could be done through playing cards.
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This is the other action is play two cards. Play the cards, spend the cost, have the
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things. That's an action. Another action is play one card and then
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defeat an enemy. And to defeat enemies, there's the tag system, which is very
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similar or akin to terraforming Mars, where when you're playing cards, getting
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tokens, you have like one time spend tokens, which is kind of like any tag,
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but also by playing cards, you're getting tokens, which means you can kill enemies. You put the enemy down into
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your B into onto your board, get the instant effect, get the bonus. Then uh
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the the very last action was recall which basically you're continually
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taking actions in this game. And the recall action is really cool because it's when a lot of your engine kind of
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procs and you get your income. It's like your income trigger. So what you do is you slot out your first t your first uh
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rectangle which is your ants top one. There's a goal on the bottom of it. If
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you've done that goal you get to flip it and you instantly get an income bonus. So, you get to move one of your income
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markers up anyone you want. Then, next thing to do is you can discard a card
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and go up on the uh swarm track. And this there's this this little track
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where basically if you can keep pushing your way up of it, you get benefits or you can slot to the side and get in VPs
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at the end. Then you go through your income which when um grass food or food grass um your
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type of ants. So you have uh three columns. So you've got like your dig
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ants uh your uh explore ants and then your um loot ants. And then you get
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those out. You don't. Luckily, these are only eggs, so you don't have to pay for them. But then you have to pay the food
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for all your lava. It's in the middle, right? Which is the middle. If you can't, there is a backup supply, but they are minus
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VPs, and you can never refill that from your queen. Mhm. We did the asymmetric version, which
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also gave us queen powers, which was pretty cool. Um, and we did the drafting
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thing right at the start where we get given eight cards, pick four. So you get to kind of pick your what your end game
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bonus will be and what you're moving towards. Amazing game. It It's It reminds me of
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Terraforming Mars so much, but in such a way that I would I would play it
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as well as play Ter like I would keep both. It's not so like terraforming Mars that you don't need terapform Mars, but
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it's got so many. It's taken all the good bits out of terraformis.
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Yeah, wispy notes. Wispy notes. Wispy notes of terraforming Mars and Arnova as well because of the room
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the way the rooms work like the pens and the sizes. So, it's kind of like you flip the room over when you put the you
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build the room. So, yeah, it's very it's very clever. Again, it's one I I looked at at the
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press and I was like and then we play We saw another one that we thought looked good, didn't we?
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March of the Yes, there's lot I say there's a lot of ants games there. I saw a third one, a roll invite as well.
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The theme this year was bugs. Was bugs and ants. Um but yeah, this was the a more Euro
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version rather than a 4X which is March of the Ants. But no, I was impressed by ants. I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed it.
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I thought it was great. Um because I had I had a a fantastic engine for
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generating resources where I every time I took a particular action, I would get these battle tokens and I could then at
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the end of my round I could trade them in for resources and I can then trade these resources for your um as akin to
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terraform like the bacteria you stick on cards for end game victory points. Um but I was spending these resources like
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they're going out of fashion. Not once did I dip into my um my reserves. And at one point I ran out of cubes and I was
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just trying to trying to find these multipliers, but when everyone was doing their scoring at the end of the game, I
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think you had 29 points for your cards. Yeah. So, um my total, well, my cards
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look like binary code cuz they were all zer like the Matrix. And I looked and was
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like, "Oh, all my cards are worth zeros and ones." And I've only got on my end game victory points. I had to get a
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ridiculous amount of tokens to get like one point. So I think I had five in total. Um
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you got too carried away with doing your engine. Yeah, it was a great engine though. Fantastic. It was it was really good engine.
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I was like the uh the dawn of of money, wasn't I? Just rich man. Yeah, I kept looking at him thinking, "How did you get that much food? I'm
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always struggling here." Like VP giving it away. He was just laundering money in the ants
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world but not putting it anywhere. Basically, it was just going round and round and round. It was great. Yeah, but it was really good. And I liked
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I was buffing up my actions quite a lot cuz I got hemmed in at the beginning, not realizing you needed. It's a trail,
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wasn't it? It's a trail of ants. That's what your your loot markers when they go out. It represents your trail of ants
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going out finding the, you know, um and I then I got hemmed in. I was like,
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actually, no, you can dig and then go from there. But it had a nice mechanic with the pherommones. Yeah. Which I haven't mentioned.
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Yes. Yeah, that's another one. So if a area runs out of resources,
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um this is like the slight area control bit is the person with the most color
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around that area gets to put a pheromone marker out. And if they've got the most,
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if it's a draw, it's the last person to place one down, but you place it down of that color and you get that benefit.
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Everyone else doesn't get the benefit, but they get to place it out if they're around there. That's another endgame
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scoring marker is getting all your pherommones out. Yeah. It was also one of the objectives midame
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to flip a tile or something, wasn't it? Uh for you. Yeah.
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Yeah. Um and then the very last one is uh ro
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getting rows in your own little nest. uh colony for every row that you got the
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rooms. Yeah, that's the one I was going for. Little Tetris things put out and then depending on how many
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markers you you put out, I think it went like 4, 10, 20 for putting these markers
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out. So, if you were able to get all three of a certain marker out, then you
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got a big injection of points. So, it it probably is really good to like knuckle down and go down one strategy. M
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um but I was kind of just pressing bones and doing a bit of everything. But great Taz won that one as well, didn't
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he? Yeah. Yeah, he did. Yeah. Yeah. He did well this week. He did. Yeah. Old Taz. Yeah. Yeah. He just stonked us.
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Just made us look really at games. In the in the morning I demoed Oranges and Lemons this time, uh which is a work
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placement um from Medusa Games. Again, I I really like that. It's It's got a nice
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um really tight on resources which I like. Um but it's got a nice mechanic to
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mitigate that. So you have 16 locations. You take it in turns putting your workers down, but you don't carry out
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the action. You then do the actions in numerical order. And then whatever order you took them in, that becomes the order
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for the next round. And there are certain actions that you bump the queue, which I thought was quite good. But you
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reveal tiles and as a as a stock market that can go up or down. And if you if you're able to buy one of these tiles,
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they'll give you loads of resources, but you can't store them. So, if you've put your worker mele after that location,
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you can then use those resources at that location if you're clever, which I thought was really good. And they've just included an expansion that I really
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liked that adds event cards. And it's called here comes the candle. So, an event card will come over and it says at
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location 12, it's going to cost you more and only two people can go there. and it
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will last a number of rounds. And you have this deck of cards with a candles in it that are lit and one of them's
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snuffed out. You at the end of each round, one that's activated, you shuffle the card, you reveal it. If it's a snuff
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card, that event stops and a new one comes into play. Yeah, it's quite good. You never know how long.
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It will give you a limit. It will say one to three or one to two or even one. But if it's multiplied, then yeah, it's
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going to be random each each round. And you've got um and you've got objectives which they've included and a solo mode as well.
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Yeah. Yeah. So I did that all morning. I had some really good demos of that. Um
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and what did I do in the afternoon? I went to Dead Live Games. So Hungry Gamers best mate Bernie Lynn.
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Yeah. Went there. Uh played a trick taken game called Luna Skyline where it's um based
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on Luna Rush that was released a while back. played a trick taking game with him and he has to you have to like guess
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how many tricks you're going to get each round by playing these cards and it was quite clever. Um and I think I won but I
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can't remember how I think I did I think I won. Uh I think that was Yeah, that was my my
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Friday. Okay. Yeah. Well, I uh I'll I'll talk about it very briefly, but you can see on our socials
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about Taz and his his mystery box. Dave did a very good job at presenting Taz
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and his mystery box about what was in it. So, I won't go into that. Watch it cuz it's funny. Um, but what was funnier is the fact
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that he had he hadn't kind of thought the whole thing through in the fact he'd have to carry this box for pretty much
24:12
most of Friday, which gave me and Davey a lot of lot of laugh. Exhausted.
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He looked absolutely knackered lugging this heavy box of cardboard around. Um
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and bless him, he had to lug it to the van whilst we were doing something else later. No, we went to we played um Don't
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Starve, didn't we? Yes, we did. Yes. Yeah. But before that, before we did Don't Starve is in in
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mid-transit of him putting the uh the box around, we actually got a game or demo rather of Arkrite anniversary
24:43
edition. And that was I've always been intrigued by Arkrite. I've heard of it
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before. Shut up and sit down. Did a a video on it. I don't know. Six, seven years ago. 67. There we go.
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67. Uh, yeah. Apologies. Um, we've got kids.
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And, uh, yeah, it it's like a set in the 1800s. Uh, economic game about making
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bread and uh, cutlery and all sorts of stuff. Is there canals in it? No. Is there not canals?
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There are boats. There's boats, which Okay, maybe that's what I saw. I saw that. Yeah. It's kind of like uh you've
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got this board and it's modular now cuz the old one was massive board all all in one place but they've kind of made it
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all modular. Um and the I mean the demo that we got all it it didn't show it off
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in the best light because it was kind of everywhere and the the boards were warped as well which you know I think
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look like bananas some of them which it's not great but hey who knows where these things have been kept. All you've
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got to do is leave some cardboard out in the sunlight and it will it will start bowing and warping. So, I'm not mentioning the quality of the game cuz
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who knows? Um, but kind of how it works for if you haven't um played or heard of
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Arkrite, you kind of start off with your um kind of playerboard where you you
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build your factories and your factories is this strip of cardboard tells you how much it costs at the top and it kind of
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goes into a track where you've got a price for for like your bread and there's four um spaces for this um in
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your B or five. I can't bloody remember now, but there's there's a few. Uh, and you can set your price. What I like
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about this, you can set your price of whatever you want. So, if you you want to set your bread at like really expensive, you can. Um, but what it does
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is there on the market board there's the um you have your kind of strip and your
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color um and your factory. Basically, your product is represented on the market. So, if you put your your price
26:37
really high, it it will kind of work out the the difference between your price and the factory price. And the
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difference is your market value. So if your if your factory was8 dollars or pounds and I put my bread at £8, my
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market value for that product would be zero. Okay. Y meaning not much demand there.
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Whereas Dave goes, you know what, I'm going to put my bread at four, right? He's got a market value of four. So
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suddenly he's got more of a demand coming to him. Um, and you can kind of do different things in the game where
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you can slot these action tiles in to to basically do different things like I
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want to enhance my quality of my product, which is a die that you kind of set as a counter. If you enhance your
27:21
quality of the product, it's going to make your market value better without you having to adjust the price. Or you can do advertising where it will
27:26
temporarily boost up um the market value for your product without you actually doing anything. Um, so it might be that
27:33
you want it quite expensive, but you're just doing heavy aggressive marketing to to bump up the market value. Um, and we
27:40
didn't get like a long way through this demo. It wasn't the best demo. Um, we
27:46
had we had a lady who started to teach us, which was fine. We started to get going. She had to unfortunately finish
27:51
her shift. And then we had another guy who came. He was managing then two tables and we just didn't get him.
27:58
I think we just asked the question. He was like, "Oh, you guys right? Do you need a question? I was like, oh, yeah, we do. I do. And then he turned around
28:04
and walked away. And then I was like, uh, and I was like, no, no, no, no. Did he just want to know if you wanted a
28:10
question? Yeah, that was it. I was like, no, no, no. I still do have a question. And then asked the question and he still didn't
28:16
really know the answer. And we're coming through a rule book. And this game's heavy, right? This game's like a 4 point something on on
28:21
BG. I'm trying to find it. Um, he's just taught Tracarium. I know. got no mental processing power,
28:29
but you can kind of do other things in the game where you can upgrade your action tiles so that it makes them
28:34
better in the future. Um, you can upgrade your factories and you can slot some things above them. Again, makes
28:39
them more efficient or do stuff. But you you can hire workers, put them into your factory so that you can run um basically
28:46
get more product out so you can sell and you can export your your product and away you go. But the whole premise of
28:52
the game really is about getting the most shares um or having the most share
28:58
price value um in in your your your company having the most shares as well as it
29:04
being high value a high value and you can sell your shares to get money which you'll need early in the
29:11
game. You start off with 15 shares and you got no money so you're going to have to start selling to then speculate to
29:17
accumulate. very economic. Um, with the crap demo, shall we say, I actually see
29:23
a lot of promise in that game. Weirdly, weirdly kind of sold it. It's an upgraded version of its
29:29
predecessor. Is that right? Yeah. It's just rules haven't changed. I don't believe so. They have updated rules.
29:34
Have they streamlined them? Yes. Okay. So, there's a bit cuz I saw it at the press event and you
29:40
know, I saw Pilgrims as well and I thought Pilgrims not my type of game to look at. Um, but you get two 18th
29:46
century men looking over a clipboard in a factory. That gets me. Yeah. Yeah.
29:52
And uh you showed it. You said, "Oh, there's it's alite. They've they've looking like they've um updated it." And
29:57
it just looked great. Yeah. So, they've um they've added in all the extra bits. Um
30:04
they Yeah. Uh they've streamlined the rules um and they've separated the boards to help it
30:11
fit on people's tables, I think. Um, so yeah, it was one of those where I got a
30:17
feel of the game and I thought, "Yeah, this is my game." Yeah, this is my game. I was like, "This is nice."
30:22
I went to buy it and then it was like over €100. It was over €100. No,
30:28
I I'll I'll wait till it I'll find it somewhere else. I probably would have bought it if I didn't have um my copy of Chicago City
30:36
of the Big Shoulders literally arriving soon. And it kind of fitting in the same space because in that game you're
30:43
instead of managing one company, you're managing multiple companies or you can or you can invest shares into um like
30:49
say your your company Mark um where you're managing your own money as an investor and the company's uh kitty just
30:56
like a real company from QuinnD Games. And it's it's got that 18XX feel, but
31:03
it's not about trains, which normally 18XX games are, but it's about company management. And cuz cuz I do personally
31:10
own a company. It kind is weirdly interesting. Do you know what I mean? But it's based on companies like um
31:17
the old Quaker Oats. Oh yeah. Like they're real companies from the 1800s in Chicago. And it's just Yeah.
31:23
It's got a lot of worker placement elements. And I just thought, you know what, that's coming. That might scratch an itch.
31:29
But I still think there's something in Arkrite that looks and feels cool if you
31:34
like that economic vibe. So yeah, it's like a nice food chain magnet.
31:39
Yes. Yeah. I prefer this to food chain magnet, but it's doing similar things.
31:44
Yeah. But rather than playing your cards and your workers, it's playing your
31:50
board and playing the actions into slots. And basically the cost of the action, it had to match or equal the
31:58
action you're slotting into it. So, but then you only pay the value of the
32:03
action you're slotting into it. So, your little $2 action down here, you couldn't do a like a, you know, a big $20 action
32:12
down there. So, but yeah, I got a really good feel for it even though it was a bad demo. It's like I know kind of know
32:19
what this game's about now. And when it clicked, I was like, "Ooh, this is well up my street." I think we're in a privileged position
32:26
to be able to see through a bad demo to understand the mechanics of the game to know whether it's actually right for us.
32:33
If we were coming out that new and fresh, that' probably be an awful experience and it
32:40
would say, "No, not even interested in this." So, I think we're in a unity position with that cuz you can kind of
32:46
go, "Yeah, that demo wasn't great, but I can see potential. I can see the potential in the game. I can see what it's trying to do and it
32:52
hits the notes." But yeah, that's right. Well, while you were playing that, I actually I forgot I went to Littlest
32:58
Lanterns and played a game called Sea Beasts. So, you are a Viking warrior and you're
33:03
on this boat and the boat has only got like six areas you can you can move to
33:08
and it represents which side of the boat you're on. So, it's, you know, um, port, starboard, and and whatnot. That's the
33:15
only two I know. Um, and you you you represent your position in the
33:23
sea is represented by a tiny little token on a board. Yeah. Uh, and then if there's any more
33:28
players, the other two will be on another boat and their token will be represented as well. So, if you are on
33:33
the spaces next to each other, you are adjacent in the sea and you can actually hop over the boats and things. Um, but
33:40
you it's it's a campaign game and you can make it as long or as short as you want depending on how far you want to
33:45
go. Yeah. So, we just did the first to get to the island or let's all get to the island which was like three or four turns each.
33:52
Um, but each turn you'll depending on where you land. It's a bit like deep regrets where if you go onto a dark blue
33:57
space, you'll you'll draw an abyss card. If it's a light blue space, it will be shallows. But the monsters you draw are
34:03
like these zombie sharks or or huge krakens and they're they're amaz they look amazing. I love a zombie shark. Yeah, they they
34:10
look they look incredible and then they'll sit on your boat. Um they have health points and each health point they
34:16
may have an ability that activates if you injure it. So I had a shark that if I injured it, it actually would then
34:22
dive from under the boat and come up the other side. Nice. Um or it attack your back or something.
34:28
Um so you could you four actions and you put this little token into a a space to
34:33
carry out an action which would be build or or um attack. And if you damage something, you'd get a blood token that
34:40
could go into another action spot so you could take another action. Uh, it's not released yet, but it just was really
34:45
cool. And we had a couple of laughs and you had big spears. You could throw my my ability was I could jump onto the
34:52
animals in the sea and start hitting them like riding them like like worms in June and attack them. But then if they
34:58
died, I'd fall into the water and I'd have to lose an action to get back on the boat again. Yeah, it was really good. Really
35:04
good fun. Loved it. Cool. Sea beasts. Yeah. Yeah. Sea Beasts. Nice. Check that one out.
35:10
But yeah, I think we then shambled our way over to Glass Cannon, right? Yep. Yep. Don't starve.
35:16
And Taz still had his box. And then he bought Oh, you're right. You're right. This is made it heavier.
35:22
This is brilliant. So he ended up with two copies of Apex Legends and he bought all the
35:28
expansions, the labor expansion, the mat, everything with it. Um so much so
35:35
that um Yakob chucked in a bag as well for for Taz to carry it back and
35:42
he kind of felt sorry for him. He saw saw this big box and then he's got more boxes of Apex like hing when I met him.
35:50
Yeah, we weren't I wasn't meant to play um don't staff.
35:55
No, we had a game that Mark and also Mark Dy had organized, right? Yeah. And we but then there was a space for free
36:03
and he said, "Oh, do you want to play?" So I said, "Oh, Taz, do you mind?" And I was like, like just wait for me and you
36:10
know, I'll I'll come give you a hand afterwards. And he just like, "No, no, no. I'll carry it to the van. Give me
36:16
the keys. I'll take them." So I said, "As long as you're sure, mate." He said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." I said, "Okay,
36:21
cool." So we sat down to play Don't Starve. We were in hall one. Was that hall one?
36:27
Hall one. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And the exit was in hall eight. furthest one pretty much away.
36:32
And he had to walk from hall one to hall 8 and then to the van which is in parking lot 2.
36:38
Good 10 minutes in. Yeah. And the rest. You can't go fast, can you? So it's
36:43
probably No, a good 10 minutes from Essen to the car park. 10 minute walk. Yes. From the front of the uh the the
36:49
building. Yeah. And it's probably about 40 minutes to get to the front of the building. His arms looked longer when he returned
36:56
about 4 in dragging his knuckles on the floor. He he said the the bins were the
37:01
worst because when he was carrying the boxes, you can't see the bins cuz they're stuck in the middle of like the
37:07
Essen Hall height as well. Yeah. Yeah. And he said people just like ignorant as
37:14
well when they're walking around. But there is like 250,000 people there. So a lot of people you're in your own world
37:20
when you're walking around cuz of the noise and everything else. So he said the amount of times like people bumped
37:26
into him and like nearly took him out. He said, "Never again. He's never doing that again." And I I don't blame him.
37:34
So, we sat down and played um Don't Starve. We did. So, yeah. Mark, what?
37:39
Well, yes. So, I organized uh a demo cuz I'm doing a a campaign overview, even
37:45
though the campaign probably finished by the time I get my video out. I thank Mark. I think it's already finished. Done. Thank Mark Dy for that. For not
37:51
sending it and then going to America. There's always late pledging. Yes. We done for that. It's fine. I don't know anything about
37:57
the IP. Um, so I booked us a demo just so I could learn the rules. Um,
38:05
it's not a particular game that I would look at first. The the the art didn't appeal to me. Um, it's you you've got
38:14
these I mean I don't really know what it's based on. You know more about the IP than I do. So the IP is based on you you're washed
38:21
up on shore. uh you're somewhere you don't know and the characters at the
38:26
start there were I think there were only four to start with but they've added loads now but you you washed up and the
38:36
aim of the game is to survive off you go then so off you go then and you
38:42
go along and you quickly learn in the computer game that certain things you do not do so you'll see a pig man you think
38:49
oh I'll go and smack him with this this this axe And then he'll start hitting you back and kill you. And then you're like, "Oh, I've got to restart the whole
38:56
whole thing again." So you restart the whole thing again. And then you go, "Right, so that pigman, if I don't smack
39:01
him, he doesn't attack me. Okay, leave him alone. Oh, leave him alone. I'll chop the tree down, get some wood. Oh, I can build a
39:08
shelter now. Oh, I'm going to survive the cold at night." And then it's it's a very much a game about trial and
39:15
experimentation. And the more you play, you start learning different bits about the game.
39:20
explore different areas that produce different resources. So, the biomes all have different
39:26
resources and different enemies. You can craft a lot of items that they either needed to build something else or
39:32
attack something or help you survive the night. And I think the problem with the demo,
39:38
and it's not glass cannon's fault really, is it doesn't show you the puzzle that you're trying to get
39:45
through. you don't have enough time to go, we need to survive this long and get
39:52
through this puzzle. Um like with your um Frost Punk or something like that,
39:59
you there's a real hard puzzle where you always have to like band together and
40:06
get through this puzzle. And it's really hard to show that in a demo. I think
40:11
they missed that a part as well, didn't they? The blueprints that they meant to have. Well, the the blueprints are are
40:17
kind of representing you off this world back into your real world, but they they
40:22
they're kind of there as as something you can progress with over game from game from game, which will help you
40:28
build your shelter. It might help you protect you from the cold or or whatever it might be. So, yeah, you kind of invest on that to to make things a bit
40:35
easier. But and the game's just constantly trying to kill you. That's as that's as that's to Davey's point. Like if if it's the monsters,
40:42
they might be trying to kill you. Sometimes you might walk into somewhere and the spider goes and you're um if it's not that it's like
40:50
I need a light source cuz if I don't have enough light then I start to go you know my insanity got the cold.
40:55
Yeah. You got the cold cuz we were playing in a winter scenario. So you got the weather to contend with and you know
41:00
sometimes it's really freezing. Sometimes it's uh super freezing. Sometimes it's too hot. Yeah. Sometimes it's too hot and you've
41:06
got food and the food will spoil quick if it's hot and you know won't be preserved. And there's a lot of these
41:12
little elements which we didn't see in the demo because let's face it in the demo environment they're just trying to
41:18
give you an element of the game and even the scenario we were doing wasn't the proper scenario. It was like just kill a
41:24
monsters. I was a bit lost on the combat. Yeah. It was a lot of dice rolling and and
41:29
they were saying okay you can do this this or this. And I was I don't know. I'll do what the first thing you said. Are you sure? No. The second thing you
41:35
said. Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of a bit lost on the combat. It's because they're using because we talked about this with Jakob
41:40
on on a expansion pack episode is that originally they had a lot of dice doing
41:46
different things. I think had different levels of dice you could use, but they've streamlined all basically onto to one set of dice.
41:53
So that evasion, for example, meant different things depending on what you were doing. Okay. All right. That makes So that that's kind of what
42:00
I kind of figured out. I didn't get it at first. Oh, I can understand now. So, if you're going in exploring and then
42:06
something hits you, you're deciding whether you're evading it. But if you're attacking it, you've got to get more
42:12
hits than it gets evasions, which is the same symbol on the dice. So, it's it's
42:18
yeah, trying to figure out. I think what they've done is clever cuz it streamlines the fact they don't need to to roll out and manufacture crap loads
42:26
of dice for a game. Um, but yeah, I I think to get the best out of that game,
42:31
you need to play the scenario in full to get a sense of what it's trying to do, which is hard to do when you're having a
42:36
demo at Essen, you know, cuz I think it's a really good game in there. Um, as Davey said in
42:42
I I liked you could you at the end of the round, you're all trying to get to the same area to distribute all your
42:47
stuff. I haven't got this. You need to get that. You got to go and get that. That was quite cool. You get you you make a big ham hammer.
42:53
That's it. Yeah. Like you do that gavvel. Yeah. you do that gavl reject it. Um yeah,
42:59
and there's more of that. And the demo I got, which was the basic prototype, we
43:05
kind of got that feeling cuz we got to play through all of it with me, Marcus, and Paul. But um
43:12
yeah, we didn't we didn't get that with the demo, unfortunately. No. Did you get Ember? Is that is that like
43:17
a little track that was I think from a different game at the bottom of your playerboard? Depends on your character. was another.
43:23
Yeah, I think I had a Yeah, you you were either Willow or
43:29
I was the dead girl, wasn't I? No, no. You were the one that has lights fire. You're the arsonist, basically.
43:35
Annie or No, you're you played Abigail. Abigail. Yeah. Um or Abigail was your sister. Abigail was my sister.
43:42
I could spend these. Sophia. No, I don't know. They all begin with W. Yeah. Yeah. I got these ember Ember track and I
43:49
could spend it to get light or Yeah. Yeah. cuz you're a pyromaniac. Yeah, you you love setting things on
43:55
fire. I was Weber. I was just a spider creature that can befriend spiders and
44:00
use them to attack. But everyone was killing spiders like no. Um but pigmen just absolutely kept hitting me. And
44:07
that's all I saw was lots of pigmen beating me up beam me up. Pig beat me up. And I think
44:13
Mr. Dainty was Wilson who grows his beard. And if his beard gets long
44:18
enough, he can keep him warm at night. Or we can cut it off for resources. Yeah. Cut it off like hay or something.
44:26
So different things. So I really think I don't think we even scratched the surface at all. I think we just sat on
44:31
top of the surface of what that game can and will offer. It hasn't put me off of it, but I do
44:37
understand how you could you might not be able to see the depth of it or understand the puzzle
44:43
from what we saw of it. Yeah, there's a lot in that. I've followed the campaign. There's a hell of a lot of content coming. Lot of
44:50
variability, lots of scenarios, and also like an endless mode, just like the game
44:56
would play digitally, which is off you go then, and try and survive as long as you can. So, they kind of have different
45:01
bases covered. So, yeah, it's definitely one to watch. Definitely one to watch. I I I'm of the weird opinion that I
45:08
actually weirdly prefer the retail version cuz of the acrylic standes, the mini. They do look nice. Yeah. Um
45:13
because I think having a lot of plastic sometimes on on the mat's alo a bit confusing of who's the hero and who's
45:21
the the monster. Especially when one of my heroes was a spider thing and then a spider on the board. Yeah. Uh which one's which? So yeah,
45:29
don't starve. Check it out. Um it I'm sure it's a lot of fun and I'd like to
45:35
to try out properly and have a proper proper game. So maybe Gridcon's a chance to to do that. Yeah. And I didn't really get to see
45:41
myself die cuz I had a important phone call come right in at the end. But I died mortgage advisor.
45:48
I know. Yeah. So what happened? Uh the cold got you in the end. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cuz you got literally
45:54
being on one health was a little bit risky. So that's pretty much Friday as uh we
46:00
obviously played Ants in the evening which we talked about and then there we go. So then leads us on to Saturday, day
DAY 3: SATURDAY
46:06
three. Um what do we play Friday night? for nothing. Oh, Ants. Ants. Oh, Ants. Yeah, we just spoke about it
46:13
when about we were doing the demo. Might as well. So, yeah, Saturday we started uh we had
46:20
a basically a demo at Mine Clash. I already had my demo set for midday. So,
46:25
it pretty much for me was a day at Mine Clash. Perfect timing there, wasn't it? Yeah. So, we did Ember Heart.
46:30
Yeah. I was bleeding tonsils, Tony. Oh, you were? Yeah. You came down and went swallowing me throat.
46:37
Yeah. I can't swallow properly. Yeah. Um where where the shower seal
46:44
hadn't basically sealed properly and I had had a shower. I came out and
46:50
basically the nearly like the whole room was flooded and I was like, "Oh my god."
46:55
Atlantis. Yeah. It was it was I was I was definitely Ariel and I started mermaid.
47:01
Yeah. Yeah. And um I went downstairs and told them and said like I think you need
47:07
to fix it. And what he said was it he said room floor
47:13
wet wet everywhere and then went you need to seal the doors
47:19
and then start telling them how to fix it like I know someone who can do that for you like like a maintenance man.
47:26
Um but basically they said they okay yeah we'll send someone to sort it out. got back on the Friday and someone had
47:34
sort it fine. Got into bed, went to sleep. What I didn't realize is when
47:39
there was when they had sorted it, they had turned the radiator off and I was obviously sleeping right next to the
47:44
window. So I think where the cold had got in like my throat was extra sore,
47:52
not only of all the interviews and shouting, but it the the the cold had got into my throat. So we came to
47:58
Emberart um and I was uh I was Barry White.
48:04
You were but Dora came to your rescue. Dorker saved me and uh basically many a time basically she was Dora cough
48:11
sweets. Yeah. That's basically sorting you out. But this was one of the the hotness wasn't it of the
48:16
It was of the convention. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us all about it. So it's one of their uh one of the
48:22
that's the third one in their play series isn't it? Yes. Cuz they had Astra. Yep. Um, iron wood.
48:28
Mhm. And then Yes. Yeah. So, it's a two to four player worker placement where you are a dragon keeper
48:35
or Yeah. Dragon Wrangler. Wrangler. Yeah. Tamer. Yeah. And um you've got these these worker
48:42
spots that you can buff with. They they were companions, weren't they? Heroes.
48:47
What? Your um grunts. Grunts and things. Yeah, your work is going to be buffed
48:53
with uh grunts and different types of workers. So, you can go to a worker spot, add some grunts, and it gives you a strength
48:59
value at that spot, which can then limit where someone else goes, which is quite nice. Um, and particular workers can go to
49:07
certain locations. So, grunts can go anywhere, but you'll then lose them and have to find ways to get them back. And
49:13
then you'll have uh I think there's three different colors, yellow, blue, and pink. Mhm. And they can do, you know, they're
49:19
better at different actions, so they can only go to certain spots, but you will get them back at the end of the round. Um, and you could get heroes that have
49:26
really good abilities, but they're only activated if you can capture dragons and link them, and they'll be of particular
49:31
colors that you need to link. You can get wild dragons, uh, sort of ones that
49:36
are in ones that are being poached, so you can save them, and you can put your dragons into sanctuaries if they're not
49:42
going to be attached to heroes. And there was a nice little sort of not combat but a nice little sort of um
49:48
where you're trying to fight for those three tiers of dragons where you would lose workers. Yeah. You'd lose workers because they
49:55
the wild dragons workers. Yeah. Uh and then you had a you could then get
50:00
objectives which were stacked and they would then become more difficult throughout the game where you'd have to have a certain number of dragons and
50:05
heroes. For example, um one of the you had you could get more grunts, you could get to battle token,
50:13
no token. Yeah. Gear to upgrade your grunts or or um you could change grunts to different types at the cost of a
50:19
gear, couldn't you? That's it. And yeah, a nice little way to end the round where you had four tokens that you
50:24
could take as a free action really. Um and then when once they were gone, that
50:30
was the end of the round. And these would let you become first player or switch positions on the map. Um, what
50:35
the other ones do? The one was a tiebreaker for the mountain. Oh, yeah. And there were two that tie
50:40
two evil events that were drawn every round. The poachers raised the bastards called them.
50:46
They would um they would say right at the end of the round you would lose men or or or something based or your grunts,
50:54
sorry. Based on the number of other things you had, could be red dragons. Yeah. Or or number of objectives you had. And
51:01
these would there'd be two of them every round. you could lose quite a lot of stuff if you weren't careful. But this let you choose which one and a couple of
51:09
times you're like, "Please pick that one. Please pick that one." And they did and you were safe for the round. They were really clever that that those
51:15
I think they're called ambassadors aid tiles. I might be wrong, but the the shields, it was clever the fact that you you
51:22
could go into actions, do a thing, but also you kind of go actually I'll take that tile as my action,
51:28
which will sort of save me having that negative. Let's say we took that card. That'll save me that. But now I'm an action down on the board where someone
51:36
goes snipe. You're like, "Oh, so it's a really interesting just a simple thing
51:41
of having that in there was a really interesting decision space of do I what do I really want here? Do I really want
51:47
that blue dragons the only blue dragon on the mountain? If I don't go for that, then Davey's going to snipe it from me.
51:53
I need that for my objective or something which were quite high scoring. They're like they quite high, didn't they? Yeah. And Mark and brought down some
52:00
nice dark cherry rum. He did. Which you kept plying me with. That was in the evening when we played
52:06
in full. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. We're still in the morning.
52:11
How much fun did you have? Yeah. Uh they had this this really cool flame track. So if you took powerful dragons
52:19
such as ones that um uh ones that were wild, you would gain a few um you would
52:26
gain flame. where if you when you went to get your grunts, you would gain flame. And having flame is bad because
52:31
at the end of the round, end of the game, you would get victory points if you were below the highest person. So,
52:37
the person that was in, you know, had the least flame, we get a lot of victory points based on the distance that the other person's token was.
52:43
Yeah. Um so, the person that had the most would get nothing. Um I thought I thought it was quite good.
52:48
Yeah. Yeah. It was a really cool catch-up mechanic, wasn't it? Little tugof-war that you got to keep your eye on and Yeah. You think, "Oh, I
52:54
don't like this. I'm too far out and I've got to even your dragons then had special abilities, didn't they? So, you had a
52:59
track on your board, three different tracks. And if you could increase these tracks, your dragons can mele could be
53:05
placed on your workers to to buff the effect or if you place it at a particular place, you would
53:11
um what you get if you if you place on number three, you would get something. That's it. Yeah, you get um equipment.
53:17
Yeah, you get gear. Yeah. And then if you first place Yeah. you would get another bonus there.
53:23
You get like minus flame. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah, these would increase based on the level of your tracks as well.
53:28
It had scoring on as well. So, yeah. So, I I had this in my top 10 and I had it quite high. I think it was number nine
53:34
um cuz I thought it looked it looked really good but um quite light for me. It's a really good game in there. I
53:40
really liked it. I like the bidding mechanic with the workers putting them out and then you could be like, "Oh,
53:47
he's going to have to go and get more workers this turn, so I
53:52
can actually snipe this space this turn instead." And then or it was basically
53:59
he hasn't got enough workers to contend me, so I can go to the cheaper spot and he won't be able to go to that more
54:06
expensive spot. Three was the benchmark, wasn't it? If you if you if it's three, you're guaranteed to take an action. Yeah, if you go to two, it depends on what
54:13
other people do. If you go all in at five, you know, it's expensive. Really expensive.
54:18
It's one to five. Yeah, it's only three actions. But it feels good when you just get on a one
54:24
and get what you want. So much more because you get to choose the card based in strength order as well, which was
54:30
important. Resolves five to one. Cuz I had really powerful dragon, so I could use just my base token and the
54:36
dragon and still have a strength of three. Yeah. So, I was saving on grunts and workers, which was handy.
54:41
Yeah, it was a a great I mean, I think the BGG was coming in in somewhere between two and three. Um, the weight.
54:48
Yeah. And it was just a great another great surprise. It's one I wasn't really interested in because Mine Cash Play. I
54:56
like Mine Clash heavy bastard games rather than Mash Play games. Ironwood's
55:02
the exception. I do enjoy Ironwood. Um, but yeah, this this was fun and we played it in the evening as well. Yeah,
55:08
you got it instantly. Yeah, it's simple to teach. The rule set again is simple. You kind of know what
55:14
it's doing. Um but the again it's all about the decision space was interesting. Yeah. And that's the one we played later
55:20
in we played there while Dave was getting more pissed on rum. More pissed on rum. Sharing sharing all
55:26
my deepest darkest secrets to everyone. Yes. It's harrowing. Yeah. My only problem with the game, and
55:32
it's not the game's fault, is that the rounds just took longer and longer.
55:37
Loads of longer. Dave, it's your turn. Like, yeah, I'm middle of a story.
55:43
Some rum. And eventually, we got to get got it done. And then um and then I thought, oh,
55:49
I thought I was like, oh, Mark's won. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. And then I was like, wait, I've got two points cuz of
55:54
my dragon's ability here. Then JP went, oh, that means you win. And I went, "Oh,
56:00
cool." Devastated. Yeah. Yeah. Took my bum back. Half cut.
56:05
That's it. Yeah. That was pretty much the morning. I mean, I went on to demo Revenant. I
56:11
was It was good fun. Yeah. My my I'm not going to lie, my first demo of it was a
56:16
bit, oh god, these rules are just not in my head. Cuz I know the old rule set,
56:21
they've changed a few things. They streamlined a few things and I needed to just kind of get over with it again. And
56:28
my first demo wasn't as good as my second demo. It was fine. Got got through it and I had a nice patient
56:34
group. I think for the first few minutes of it. So yeah, but all in all demo was
56:40
fine. Um I won't I won't talk about Revenant cuz that was kind of last year's thing. Um that was a kind of a a
56:46
reveal there. So yeah, but I did four hours of that which went fine. So I was literally at Mine Clash for most of the
56:51
day for six hours. Not a bad thing. No, it was great. Well, you lot did stuff. While you're
56:57
doing that, me and Taz were like, "We're going to have a wonder." We haven't actually had a wonder and had a look at
57:02
everything. So, we're not going to demo many games. We're just going to wander.
57:08
It didn't last too long before we started like I was like, "Oh, Taz, interview me over here and do this and
57:15
let's do this." But basically bumped into Sonia again. She pointed me towards
57:20
um Stephen of the Spiel podcast. Um and basically they've started a charity and
57:27
they're donating ball you can donate ball gates to them and they give them to prisons, libraries
57:34
um and schools um which is really cool thing. And then any of the profit they make it's a nonprofit organization they
57:41
use for developing countries um they use it for people that might not um have the
57:49
means to actually develop a game and and produce it and sell it. So, we got to talk to then talk to Elijah um who had
57:56
made Finn Master um which is a cool little stock uh mark get market game.
58:02
Definitely towards the lighter end, but it was like really really good fun. And one of the big things he wanted, you
58:08
know, to to bring out of it was to educate about money while also playing the game. So, it was meant to be like an
58:15
educational game as well. So, um yeah, that was a really nice interview. Um, we
58:20
then walked around and I got we bumped into Beatric at the Banttom saloon who
58:28
uh booked us in and I got to talk to Max and they booked us in for the next day. So, I'll talk about that on for for the
58:35
Sunday. Um, and then by this time we had walked to Apex, we had walked round to
58:42
by Apex Carnival for Taz. Um, by um,
58:48
Echoes of Time for Taz. And then we went and played a game of compile the new
58:54
expansion. Um, which was good, but we got bad teach where they taught you the rules wrong.
59:00
Oh, they taught us the rules wrong. where basically Taz had a deck that made me discard cards. I had a deck that I
59:07
needed to discard cards to do stuff. Um, but he said one of the actions was to to
59:13
draw a card. But apparently that action refresh is actually you draw up to your hand size. So Taz was making me discard
59:20
all my cards and then I kept just drawing one card and being like you'll go.
59:28
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You go. But um it it was cool. I liked what it it's very
59:33
unique game where you compile in a line and have to flip it. And then if you get a double compile, you actually get one
59:39
of their cards from their deck, which is quite cool. And you can combine lots of
59:44
three different decks into one to make a deck as well. So that was a cool game.
59:49
Yeah, I did a a let's talk about Hexon compile. I don't know what episode it's on, but it's definitely in there.
59:55
It's in there. I won't talk about it. But basically, I started walking around like
1:00:00
legs like jellies. So I was like, "Oh, it's about 3:00." I remember Mark mentioning the ball game meet and greet.
1:00:08
So I was like, "Oh, we're going to go there." So we walked there and it was only just
1:00:15
to sit down and play ball games because I was just like, "I can't walk any further and I need to sit down." And the
1:00:22
only bad thing about Essen is there's no real places other than I did see in the
1:00:27
corner one day there's a but like a London school bus
1:00:33
there's a sit down area where you could it's it's a library and you can sit down and play games. You book it in. Okay.
1:00:38
But it's tiny. It is tiny for for the whole of Essen. That space is tiny to do. Over 200,000 people.
1:00:45
Yeah. There's not a lot. So we went up to meet and greet and we didn't really meet and greet anyone. We
1:00:50
just sat down and played Apex Carnival. So, I'll go through this quickly. I got a copy of that.
1:00:56
Uh, Apex Carnival is a quick 20 to 30 minute game where you both start with
1:01:01
the same deck. You play your five cards out um at the same time. Um, you
1:01:08
activate your cards by rolling dice at the start. They're all zeros, so you can activate all of them. And then you buy a
1:01:14
card in the middle depending on who's got more uh blue initiative dice. Um and
1:01:21
then the other person buys one and then you burn one when or they burn one. And you can do that in any order. But then
1:01:28
slowly the decks start getting the numbers start getting higher and higher and then to activate them you've got to
1:01:34
start rolling numbers higher and higher and you can get cool combos off but it's all on the roll rather than mana. And
1:01:41
you play this. It's 20 health. So, exactly like magic, 20 health to hit into each other. And there's like red's
1:01:49
damage, blue's draw, and um yellow is like buff. Was it yellow or green? Uh
1:01:57
green is like um buff your dice rolls. So, it had very cool theme. And yeah, it
1:02:04
was really it was a really fun game. Good little fun game. Played that. Then we played Echoes of Time. got that out.
1:02:11
And X of Time has a very unique mechanism which is a conveyor belt. Um
1:02:17
you you the cost of a card is cards in your hand plus when you play out you play it to the time on that conveyor
1:02:24
belt. This is not part of your journey uh journeyman until it gets to the very
1:02:31
end, falls off, and then goes over. Yeah. to get everything out. You've got
1:02:37
actions, um, which you get two of each, and you've only got two actions, so you
1:02:42
could do one action twice if you wanted. Um, one of them is to play a card. Uh,
1:02:49
one of them is to draw two cards. One of them is to move two cards
1:02:56
once or one card twice to the right so you can knock them off. Um, and one of
1:03:01
them was to do an attack. And there's these things called sources that are out
1:03:07
which if you have creatures, you can go and attack them and lay claim. You can
1:03:12
conquer them and put them over towards your side. And it has that um
1:03:20
uh old king's crown thing of if someone comes in with a high of attack value of
1:03:25
what you've just attacked, they can take it off of you. Yeah. But then there's also fortify,
1:03:31
which is a much higher number, much harder to get to. If you fortify, it's yours and you get the endame points for
1:03:37
that. Endgame condition is a set amount of points on the table that you get from
1:03:42
doing stuff. You pick from that pool. Once that pool's empty, the game ends. But they still, if the game ends,
1:03:49
there's no nothing left, they'll still get the extra points. Yeah. It's just a trigger. It's just a trigger. Okay. Um
1:03:56
then you've got free actions. And this is where your kind of board comes into
1:04:01
it as well is there's always one tile that's off the board, which is the one that's going to push your board and
1:04:07
trigger the conveyor belt. What symbol is on that tile is the symbol that can
1:04:13
activate your free actions on some of your cards and you can then basically
1:04:19
say this is activated and you just get some like insane combos going off and
1:04:24
some cool stuff going on. And yeah, ended up I think it's like two points in it in the end between me and Taz. Really
1:04:31
tight little game. Nice little engine builder. Um does something a little bit different which is always nice. Um yeah,
1:04:39
I think four player is where that's going to shine because the source um the
1:04:44
source was like basically Taz was doing this real cool engine with his artifacts doing his stuff out and there but I was
1:04:51
claiming source and I claimed the two sources and there's quite a lot of points that sit on those sources and I I
1:04:59
had more of a creature like place creature down get something. Yeah. Whereas his was more artifacty
1:05:05
like do this stuff, get VPs for doing this stuff. Nice. But does look cool. Yeah, it's cool.
1:05:10
Yeah, it looks the artwork on it is incredible. Yeah, really good. It's like dark fantasy, isn't it? With
1:05:16
animals. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, looks fun. That's exactly it. How about you, Mark? Uh so whilst we're at Mine Clash, I
1:05:23
bought the voidfall uh triple layered. I kept them double layered
1:05:30
layered. M. Um, so I'm looking forward to the quadruple ones next year. Yeah. Um, I
1:05:37
You like that? I did like that. Yeah. Level up. Level up. Level up. I I spent most of the Saturday
1:05:42
afternoon just um trying to network and get a few little demos. So I went to
1:05:49
uh publisher called Fallank and they had this little cool two-player game called
1:05:55
Punic, which was Romans v the Carthag. You saw that. You like the look of that, didn't you? Yeah. Um just a really light skirmish. I
1:06:02
think the board's the size of A4 paper. You just got big sea in the middle and you move your men around. You jump them
1:06:08
over um over boats and you've got asymmetric cards that you play during battle that can boost or or or um give
1:06:17
you more ships and things. I think when your when your army's gone, they can't replenish them, but your boats can keep
1:06:22
coming back in. So, you got to try and move your men, your soldiers around. but it's based on uh not real events but
1:06:30
history. Yeah. So I thought I thought that looked quite good. So I'm actually doing a a learn to play video for them.
1:06:37
Very simple game but they just wanted a learn to play video. So I'm doing that. I went to um Arona to look at Pest.
1:06:45
They've got they did a Kickstarter for a second edition and they've got a first edition out. Uh so I'm going to review
1:06:51
that. I like that that theme that sort of like the you it's uh there's a plague
1:06:56
and you're one of the play doctors. Yeah. Play doctors with the the big sort of like chrome. Yeah. They were stuffed
1:07:03
with herbs, weren't they? And you're running around trying to build buildings and um so it's got a little bit worker
1:07:08
placement. A little bit euro. Yeah. I've saw that at UKG. Yeah.
1:07:13
The prototype of it. Yeah. So that looks I'm really intrigued about it. So if you if you're going to do a multiplayer, let
1:07:19
me know. Yeah, definitely definitely do that. That's why I looked at them. Um, and I went to Nuts Publishing. So, I got given
1:07:27
the Tabletop Gaming. Yep. I know. It's a great name, isn't it? Is it with a Z?
1:07:32
It is. Uh, I went to Tabletop Gaming sent me a advent calendar last year. And one of
1:07:38
the games that I opened up was called Port Arthur, and it's a historical game based on the a World War I battle, I
1:07:46
think, between uh Japan and Russia. Yeah. Yeah. Uh it's a really really good game. I
1:07:52
played it for the first time a few months ago and loved it. Really tactical, completely asymmetric, two
1:07:57
different winning conditions. Uh so I loved it. And they've got 300, the version of the Spartan version.
1:08:03
Oh wow. So I was like, "Oh my god, this is going to be great." So I had to get that. And then when I was looking at that, they
1:08:09
took me around and they showed me their next version, which is a World War I uh set in 19 14 um going over France. So
1:08:17
you've got the Axis and allies and it shows you where Britain owns parts of what is running part of France and and
1:08:23
the French are there and Germans trying to invade. So that looks really good. That comes out next year. So I'm really
1:08:29
looking forward to that. Uh what did I do? I look I got Apex as well. Nice. So I'm going to I'm going to do they
1:08:35
wanted a playthrough. So I'm going to do a solo playthrough for that. And uh I took you on a trip to Modifius,
1:08:42
didn't I? You did. And I got my time wrong. You did? Yeah. Yeah. So, I booked a time
1:08:48
for 4 and when we got to Germany, my calendar altered to 5 cuz of the time difference.
1:08:53
Yeah. So, we turned up at 5 hour late. Yeah. And there was nobody there. No. But we had a look at We're going to look
1:08:59
at Doom Arena Battles. Doom Arena. Yeah. So, Modifius, they did Skyrim. They've
1:09:05
done Fallout. Uh like a skirmish Fallout and a Skyrim fall uh skirmish game as
1:09:10
well. Yeah, they did. Avenger game. Yeah. Doom is a it looks
1:09:16
better as a two-player I think if you're going to play it because they it's one no two to four they said didn't they? Yeah.
1:09:21
Uh but I think it' be better as two where one of you is the demons the other one is the uh what you call him?
1:09:26
Well the doom guy it's a doom guy. The slayer. That's it. And you're just chucking dice chopping
1:09:32
things in half. Yeah. Yeah. I got him running it. Yeah. And
1:09:37
you start with a number of weapons that you can they've all got different um based on hex's I think it was the board
1:09:43
and you your weapons fire in different arcs and then if you every time you do something you get like a power up when
1:09:48
you've got enough power ups you can shoot your BFG. Yeah. Which stands for big flipping gun. Is
1:09:54
that right? Yeah. Big flipping big gun. Fbomb.
1:09:59
Uh yeah. It just looked like a good glorified dice chucker beer and pretzels game. I don't think it's going to be the
1:10:04
most tactical game in the world. No. Uh, but they're doing two versions. One of the the the one you know and love
1:10:10
from the ' 90s and the other one is the medieval Dark Ages. Dark Ages. Dark Ages.
1:10:15
Very good game. And it arrived today. The prototype. Oh, really? Oh, nice. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, I got the prototype at home.
1:10:21
I'm going to take a look at that. Yeah. I bet I bet your wife was like, "Oh, more ball games.
1:10:27
Love you move. Got more space." I was hoping I could just slip it into the pile of my boards. You never know.
1:10:33
Yeah, but it looks fun. You see JP's head in the in the board games, right? We'll
1:10:39
talk about that in a minute with the ET. But I I think it will I think Doom fans
1:10:44
will love it. Yeah. For me, when I looked at it, I don't know, there's something about the
1:10:51
the the old version. I mean, I I love Doom. Doom Doom. It's fantastic. But yeah, I did didn't
1:10:57
pop out that says, "Oh, this for me didn't hit the note that I I was kind of expecting." I don't know what it is.
1:11:03
It's just probably my You said you you you would have looked at it longer if it was the the remake of
1:11:09
Doom. Yeah. I mean, nostalgia is the thing, right? But if you're looking at the old
1:11:14
Doom from pixelated one. Yeah. From whenever it came out. I can't even remember when it came out, but you
1:11:20
know, 94, something like that. Yeah. Like playing it on a on an old PC or whatever is one
1:11:25
thing, but if I want a board game adaptation, I'd probably want the artwork from the remastered Doom that
1:11:32
came out not so long back. Well, the player cards weren't even the artwork, were they? The clay models that they used.
1:11:38
And you learned the facts, didn't you? I did learn a fact cuz the clay models were used back in the day to help them
1:11:43
shape the pixels for the the characters that you shoot. So, they're kind of those. So, I think
1:11:48
some people might be like, "Oh, that's cool." But for me it was like I'd just rather see the the the cool artwork. The
1:11:54
cool artwork of what an imp looks like rather than the big like poo looking monster.
1:12:00
I read the fact about the two bum holes. Yes. But the car demon. The car. That's it. The car demon. Yeah.
1:12:05
So they were obviously to get them to float they were sat on two stands. Uh and then when they
1:12:12
made the um images on Doom they took away the stands but when the monster turns round the hole is ourselves. Yeah,
1:12:20
it's still there. It's amazing. But it's just it's just a beer and pretzels game, I think, isn't it? Yeah, it could have combined the two. Like
1:12:26
there's And the I think it was Doom uh with the is the remake. I think it
1:12:33
was the first or the second one. There was basically always a secret level you could find where you would find the
1:12:39
secret bit and then it would go as if it was the old school Doom, but you're playing on the new school version. Okay.
1:12:45
And you'd go through that map as if it was on the old school version. So, those those imps doing that pig sound.
1:12:51
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of love for Doom. And yeah, you're right. I think this
1:12:57
game is, like you say, it's beer and pretzels. And we didn't play it, so I
1:13:03
can't even tell you how it was to play or anything. I'll tell you later. I'll I'll have a go and let you know what I think.
1:13:09
It's probably like amazing fun. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's probably like Yeah.
1:13:14
Shoot them up. Whatever happens, see what happens. So yeah, learned a lot. But that was my Saturday.
1:13:20
Fair enough. I think that was all our Saturdays because I didn't do much other than demo and demo.
1:13:26
We went back and played Ember Heart and I got pissed. At the meet and greet, I played Pawnscape with James Wilkinson.
1:13:31
Oh, yeah. Uh first game I didn't know the endame scoring conditions, so I knew
1:13:38
how to play the game and I didn't I didn't realize how important certain things were. Um so I played again and
1:13:44
actually quite liked it. Mark Dainty tapped out halfway through because I love that he was nope.
1:13:50
Well, he we didn't get it at first and I thought I'm I'm gonna just power through and I think Mark was was wanted to see
1:13:56
people as well. But when I played it again, it was really good. You got your deck of cards and this frog moves around
1:14:01
and then you can place a frog or turn it over into the pond and that will let you finish get your your scoring objectives
1:14:08
depending on what frogs you've placed in your pond. And he he had this like I think it was three 5 by3 grid. It was
1:14:15
Yeah, it was quite good. Uh and he he bought over so many snacks. James did. Oh, he had mele cookies
1:14:22
like these these little Milky Way type things. And then Stella came over from Mele University and sat with us and it
1:14:29
was really funny because I was like, "Oh, oh, I like your stuff. I watch your play through video, your lens play videos. They're really good. Can I have
1:14:35
a photo, please?" And she said, "Yeah, no problem." and then got out her own phone and took a photo of me.
1:14:42
It's not quite what I meant, but thanks. I just like the fact that she gone like, "Can can you take a photo of me on your
1:14:49
phone, please?" Like, "Yeah, yeah, sure." It's just Yeah. And I was like, "Okay." Cuz I'm famous.
1:14:54
Can I can I now take one of me and you? Is that okay? Did she go Oh, she just went, "Yeah, okay."
1:15:00
Yeah. Yeah, sure. We'll do both. It's fine. Yeah. Just very That's nice. That's cuz you're famous, Mark. Yeah. Yeah. I bet you she couldn't tell
1:15:06
me who I was. Who's that guy? I got no idea. It's just very funny. It made me chuckle.
1:15:11
Yeah. Amazing. So, yeah, that was Saturday. That was Saturday. And then we get to the final day.
1:15:17
The final day. The um I am just going to mention Saturday evening though. Um we met some great
1:15:24
people at the hotel. Oh, we did? Yeah. Loads of great people. Loads of great people. Um
1:15:29
I'm really bad with names, so I'm very sorry that I don't actually remember. Do them by nationality. Then
1:15:34
do them by nationality. So there was um there was a London guy hanging out with
1:15:41
uh two uh German or Berlin um people. Were they the ones that played
1:15:46
but he was actually Irish but lives in Epson. Yes. He was Irish lived in Epson. Yeah. Irish lives in Epson. He played the night soil game.
1:15:53
He played the night soil game. Yeah. And explained that. I got one in. I got one in.
1:16:00
Nice. Um, which actually sounded really interesting because that night S game is
1:16:05
in the day you do all your actions. Um, but it puts poo out and then at night
1:16:11
you try to move this poo about. But then if it ends up in your space where your worker is and it gets daytime because
1:16:16
there's too much crap everywhere, you don't get him back. Whereas everyone else who's cleaned all
1:16:22
their spaces out get their worker back and get the resource that they put so they get a double action on it.
1:16:29
I'd love to see the really like screw each other over with to see the brainstorming board.
1:16:34
Yeah. Yeah. Of night soil. Yeah. Night soil. But um that actually looked really interesting. But yeah, these guys were
1:16:41
were great. We had loads of conversations with them. Um uh yeah, and
1:16:47
just we saw them every day. Had with them every day. What did you buy? We bought this. What did you get? We got this. It was just
1:16:53
nice. Nice. Very nice. So we also met three lovely Norwegians. Mhm. Um, and they, yeah, we got talking
1:17:03
to them a lot. They, you know, they went out, they from a recommendation, did we
1:17:08
recommend their pizza or did we just say it was good? Yeah. No, no, I think they had a booking and they was expecting some like rough pizza
1:17:15
joint. So, no, it's actually really good. Actually, get this pizza. Um, but they were lovely. Um, so that
1:17:21
that was um, so thank you, Crystal. Crystal. Um then we met a lovely
1:17:28
Austrian couple. Um who are great. Um they come to UK GE now and again I think
1:17:35
he said. So the ones that had the blo Yes. Oro. Yeah. He said he was going to go play again tonight. And I said I'm
1:17:42
going to hold him to it. If if they don't then percussions. Yeah. Yeah. Dave Dav
1:17:50
chatting to everyone. Yeah. I think it was mid rum. It was a Saturday night. Yeah. Um but
1:17:57
yeah, I just wanted to make give him a little shout out. That's fair. That's fair. Cool. Sunday.
DAY 4: SUNDAY
1:18:04
Day four. Sunday. Day four. So, the first thing I did um on Sunday
1:18:09
was I literally had no plans. I had no bookings. Do you know we we said we were just
1:18:14
going to do half a day, didn't we? We did. Yeah. But we did the full day. Yeah. We did it. We saw it and was having so
1:18:20
much fun. So I had a sec I had like a second wind. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Kind of like right, let's let's
1:18:26
just explore. It's because we got a good night's sleep because we didn't have to be up too early for anything.
1:18:31
Yeah. Which is so a much And we got an extra hour. We did. Went back. Yeah. That's probably why actually
1:18:38
that's a massive that's a massive part of it. I woke up actually. I woke up
1:18:43
going I feel great. Looked over and and JP's in bed on his phone. Looks me. Is that morning?
1:18:49
Morning. I've been up for an hour cuz he can understand why his alarm was. I did. I woke up. I went, "Why have I
1:18:54
got up earlier?" And I couldn't figure it out. And I couldn't like my alarm was telling
1:19:00
me I had x amount of hours to sleep and I went, "That's wrong." Yeah. Yeah. But obviously it's figured it out. And
1:19:06
I'm like, "No, it's cuz we got an extra hour. Silly phone. Go to sleep." Yeah. So there we go.
1:19:12
But in the morning, I rushed over to Dilla and booked in Covenant.
1:19:17
Yeah. Uh cuz I had wanted to play Governant and it was sold out and there
1:19:22
was loads of bus and I thought, you know, we can't leave without playing. We we already didn't play Or
1:19:28
Yeah. or Theosaurus. I don't want to miss out on Covenant. So
1:19:35
went and play. So I booked that in for us. Let's talk about it. Yeah. And then we played it. What was
1:19:42
good is is the what it was so popular that we were waiting for a game to
1:19:47
finish and there was who was in playing Candice from Board Game Geeks. She was a podcast. She was a part of that group.
1:19:53
I'm not quite sure the other three but there's a press table wasn't it? Yeah basically and there were people around I thought
1:19:59
they were watching the table because of who was at the table and when they stood up to go and we went to get in loads of
1:20:04
people just dived in and Dave's likeh don't say the magic word. Yeah. You just
1:20:11
see the their faces dropping. It was quite sad because, you know, they had obviously play the game.
1:20:16
Yeah. I mean, it had sold out by this point. You couldn't buy a copy. It's uh it's very popular.
1:20:21
The demo tables had reduced. Did you notice as well the what? Sorry. The demo tables. So, they used they had
1:20:28
more demo tables for Covenant while they had it in stock and then they reduced it down to two tables for the very on the
1:20:34
Sunday because they had run out of stock. They're more white castle jewel about
1:20:39
because they can sell it. Clever business. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Um so Covenant, uh why don't you run
1:20:47
through this JP? Oh, sure. Dan do. Um so Covenant is a game where
1:20:52
you all play as dwarves or basically clan of dwarves. Um and
1:20:58
you had me at dwarfs. Yeah. And you look at the cover on this this box and it's sexy. It's stunning.
1:21:04
like you're looking at it and go, "God, dwarves. This is going to be awesome." Never been turned on by dwarfs before.
1:21:09
And I did I didn't know what to expect with this game, but when you look at the board, you've kind of got like tracks going everywhere and there's a big
1:21:16
section in the middle with hex's like a load of icons on there and some
1:21:21
hex's already revealed with little monster tokens on there. I have to say the components in this look amazing.
1:21:27
Top acrylic always do that though, right? just top-notch components like acrylic pieces
1:21:33
for the tracks and your workers are these nice um uh kind of wooden cylinders with like cute dwarf pictures
1:21:40
on um but basically you have four dwarves all start at level one and uh
1:21:46
and you typically have four kind of core action spaces on on the board which I'll have to try and remember them all but
1:21:52
you can um distribute resources that you get all these gems and things that you would mine at some point you can
1:21:58
distribute them to different areas of the world to get abil and and and benefits. Um, and any kind of leftover
1:22:04
can kind of go to the king. So, gives you some good favor at the end of the game if you got area majority there. You
1:22:10
can go fighting. I like doing the fighting. Um, but the monsters on the the main kind of map area and uh
1:22:17
depending on what you're going for, goblins or or trolls, you can kind of get them and put them in your prison,
1:22:22
which has a capacity um which you can expand in the game uh later in the game. And that obviously gives you kind of
1:22:29
rewards for for killing or capturing. I don't think you kill them, but you capture them. I think you kill anything, do you? You shook them in a prison.
1:22:36
Um, which is probably undwarvenly. I think dwarves are like to, I'm sure, cleave heads off off the
1:22:42
I think it's more bragging rights to the other clans being like, how many can catch the troll?
1:22:47
Yeah. More orcs than the others. Exactly. So, you can do that. Um, you can go digging um which pretty dwarvenly
1:22:54
thing to do. So, there's a like a row of tiles that you can kind of um mine for
1:23:00
for gems and then you'll pick one or or multiples depending on how how strong
1:23:05
your your dwarf is and I'll explain that in a second. And you can that's how you one way of getting resources. And you
1:23:11
can also um then start to reveal the map. So, as you dig, you're digging more
1:23:17
out of the the underground which then gives you more resources and different things that happen. More monsters spawn out, etc. And then you can build little
1:23:25
houses or forges or different things. And depending on what you build will depend on whether you're getting resources or whether you're triggering
1:23:32
like a blacksmith action depend on what tile you build on as well.
1:23:37
Yeah, the color of the tile or the gem on the tile depend on what you're getting, which is the bit I had to kind of kept referencing the guy. What does
1:23:43
that mean? What does that mean? Um, but what was cool is if you did a certain tile that give you a blacksmith action,
1:23:49
you can then uh if you got the resources by an action tile which goes into your
1:23:54
board and unlocks a space in your board which might expand your prison um or
1:24:00
give you different things and suddenly you've got this extra action you can use now. And I I think I bought a wild one which is very useful. Um but to use
1:24:07
these action spaces you would uh put your level one dwarf on to a space and that'll give you a strength of one for
1:24:13
the action. If you want to boost them, you got beer. Basically, they start off in the pub, you get them pissed up, the
1:24:19
more beer you you can spend, you can temporarily level them up to do a stronger action. There are tracks in the
1:24:26
game that can start to permanently level up your dwarfs. You can actually make them two, three, four, etc. Um, and uh,
1:24:33
yeah, pretty much away you go. Very euro. Lots of interlocking mechanisms
1:24:38
all over the place. Combos. Yeah, very clever. you can figure out because
1:24:44
at one point I was scuppered and I was thinking what am I going to do and I just went oh if I do that that gets me there and I my turn went on for ages. It
1:24:51
was great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they surprised me this one. But you had um as well as getting extra
1:24:57
action spaces, you could get upgrades to get a bonus for those action spaces as well. So I got a dig a second dig
1:25:04
action. So if I used it, I then went up on any track and got a beer token which was great. Yeah. Um,
1:25:10
yeah, you everything was upgradeable which was great. So, the action space was upgradeable. You can upgrade. You
1:25:17
got powers down the side which are upgradeable. The dwarfs were upgradable.
1:25:22
Your um um you you had a top section so income was upgradable. So, you can then
1:25:28
get income. Um the the bit that I kind of missed at the start and there's maybe
1:25:35
cuz there's so much the teacher's great by the way. It's cuz D was petrified. Yeah. Yeah.
1:25:42
A stern lady. Yeah. Um which is fun. She's great. Was the scoring which is very
1:25:48
terrammystica. Yeah. With the council. The council. Yeah. So with the council
1:25:53
scoring it had like a little fireplace which is your your income and then afterwards it had a scoring of how many
1:26:00
like house tiles on this color tile gains x amount of VP. But the difference
1:26:06
with this rather than terrammystica you would flip it do the next one they stay do all of them
1:26:12
and you and you start doing all of them as they go down. So placing that there is actually a really big decision and
1:26:20
there's going to be a lot more contention now once you know the get like the rules of the game a little bit
1:26:26
more. It's going to be fought over at the start, right? So you're going to be fighting over these spaces a lot more
1:26:32
and then suddenly you' be like, "Oh well, there's none there and I'm gonna have to dig further in or then I'm gonna
1:26:37
have to deliver goods to get the buildings so then I can then put those buildings out." Yeah.
1:26:43
Um and are they variable? But the with each game were they printed? They're variable. They were variable. Variable. Yeah.
1:26:50
Um and then with the deliver action to get those different buildings, if you had extra act like stuff to spend, you
1:26:56
could deliver to the the dwarf king, you would then gain you extra VP at the end,
1:27:01
which is kind of like a area control um mechanic. Cool.
1:27:06
Yeah, it's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Not probably done it justice in the speech cuz it's it's just clever. There's a lot going on with that game
1:27:13
and I was like I want to play a full game of this. It was Yeah. I I I think I have to get that this No. Is this solo mode?
1:27:20
I have no idea. Don't know. Don't I can't Ember Heart didn't. I know that. Definitely didn't that one.
1:27:25
I don't. But it was just absolutely brilliant. I was blown away cuz I knew it would be okayish.
1:27:31
Um cuz obviously Trans Galactica come out last year which wasn't for me.
1:27:36
No. And then I thought, okay, I'm going to, you know, take this with a pinch of salt. played it and I was just like,
1:27:41
"Oh, I just want to keep playing. I just want to keep playing this." Yeah, that's uh one I definitely want to
1:27:46
get to the table. And it it didn't bother me that it sold out cuz it's already in print. So, I'll be coming to
1:27:53
the shops literally in weeks. Christmas is coming soon. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Games are plenty.
1:27:59
Yeah. Yeah. So, sounds covenant. But yeah, really good. Um, the lady also
1:28:05
told me because I made a joke about um the fact that we'll oh, we'll take the
1:28:11
this version that you're playing. We'll just buy the demo copy at the end. Deonate all of those games to charity called
1:28:19
H2O. Yeah. At the end, which is a place where everyone can congregate and go and play
1:28:25
games, which I thought was a pretty cool thing and I really liked. Yeah. which is a we just wanted to shout
1:28:31
that out because you do wonder what happens to these things at the end of the do they just chuck them in a big skip or
1:28:38
or actually but actually go into a proper charity made me urge then I know you'll be hanging by the skip
1:28:44
wouldn't you catch it catch it um the other thing we did in the morning I went back to glass
1:28:50
cannon unplugged because we uh saw March of Empires the previous day and I was
1:28:56
like oh I was intrigued by that really wanted to see that I've heard this cuz when again did the episode with Yakob, he explained uh
1:29:03
explained it. So they were demoing but they only had it on one table but luckily early morning we got there
1:29:09
straight away and had and had a little cheeky game and uh yeah really fun. Um I
1:29:14
won't labor it cuz I did literally did a a mini overview on on the social so you can kind of watch it. But really real
1:29:22
time strategy vibes uh come through in this game where you're all playing simultaneously building buildings,
1:29:29
putting egg timers on buildings to simulate the fact that it's being built. Um using buildings again simulate the
1:29:35
the fact that these things are being kind of processed to get resources and even moving units around which are are
1:29:41
chips like a chip theory game. Put an egg timer on top to simulate the fact that they've been moving. So you're kind
1:29:46
of just putting these things on egg timers on waiting looking at everyone else going what's going on over here.
1:29:52
Hang on a minute. Davey's coming to inch ever closer. So do I need to build more units to shore up the fact he might
1:29:58
attack me and and it had like a little research track on the side where you can also put the egg timer to get better com
1:30:04
combat cards. You can upgrade those or you can upgrade your your um kind of base so it could give you more and more.
1:30:11
And it's quite simplistic in the way it was working. Um, and obviously a prototype, so it's not finished. And
1:30:18
definitely could probably look look better as it goes through its campaign. It's very, very early days. And I'm pleased they got to kind of show off
1:30:24
what it was trying to do. And there going to be many, many different scenarios in in the box as we're told.
1:30:30
But I just really enjoyed that. It was just such a nice 20, 30 minute experience of, you know, we did a short
1:30:37
well get eight victory points. So for every unit we killed got eight v uh got a victory point and we just just twatted
1:30:44
each other. It looked really clever. Is it based on any IP or was it RTS? Yeah.
1:30:49
Yeah. RTS game. That's great. It was just fun. Just fun. Yeah, it was. is unique in the way that
1:30:57
when I thought it was going to be like when you did the ax when you started doing the movement you would put the
1:31:03
timer on to signify how much time you got to move everything about but it is
1:31:09
clever that you put the timer on the unit so it locks it there until that timer is done
1:31:15
and that means people can react to it and yeah it's just very clever the way they've done it
1:31:21
actually works mind And it's a real time game I would
1:31:26
play. Yeah. Like it's not normally a thing I want in my board games. Real time. Oh, it's just pressure and stress and
1:31:32
but you're right. It's like I can see visually what you're doing and have time to react to what you're doing. It's not
1:31:38
like move move attack. Yeah. And it makes sense thematically, right? Cuz that army moving over there is going
1:31:45
to take some time to get there. So that's the time it's taking for them to go there and
1:31:50
then build something maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but the the the real time stops when you get into a combat. So if
1:31:57
I move a unit into a hex, put my egg timer on. When that finishes,
1:32:02
you can yell stop and everyone has to stop basically. And then you resolve the combat dice chucking, which is good cuz
1:32:09
if that was all real time, it would be chaotic. Yeah, combat dice chucking is very simple. Is rock paper scissor. You've
1:32:15
got inf infantry, spearman, and knights. Can you
1:32:21
and the dice, but you you play a card and it tells you how many dice you can chuck,
1:32:26
but it's also got an initiative. Um, so usually the lower initiative is
1:32:32
low is less dice. Um, uh, the higher initiative, i.e. you're going to go
1:32:38
last, is more dice. Um, and you only can ever have killed the amount of units as
1:32:44
units you've got in there. Yes. So you could suddenly take in a load a load of them would get killed
1:32:50
because you played a high initiative and even though it says you're rolling five dice, you're rolling five dice, but
1:32:55
you're only ever going to kill two people cuz you got two people. Got two left. So yeah. Yeah, it works.
1:33:01
Oh, good. So I think for me, we had fun. I'd like to see what they're going to do with the
1:33:06
system. Are they going to add more complexity in there? Uh more options and things like that um for me to be like
1:33:13
super interested in there. Again, early demo, early prototype, but worth checking out.
1:33:19
What about you guys? I went to table topper. Yes. Had a look at some some of their lovely uh tabletops. Uh managed to do some
1:33:27
collaboration there. Mhm. Um which was nice. They're really nice stands. Uh while I was there, luckily
1:33:33
bumped into Luke Lori, designer of Andromeda's Edge and Peter Vaughn. Now,
1:33:39
Peter knows me through the socials. Yes. And Luke Lori looked at me and he pointed at me and he's like, "I know you
1:33:46
from He just couldn't." And I went, "I did the Andromeda's Edge video and your Genesis." And he's like, "I got to put
1:33:52
two and two together." Uh, but it was great. Yeah. I got his autograph for me and you. Yeah. I appreciate that. Thank you.
1:33:57
Yeah. And then we we ran down there with you later and he'd gone. Yeah. I thought I I need to meet Peter and uh again I've met him at UKG uh
1:34:05
couple of years ago and I've never met Luke and Yeah. thought I'll go and see if I can swing by. Just missed I think
1:34:10
they want lunch. Yeah. Well, they they didn't they didn't have a stand demoing Andromeda's Edge. It was just there in all its glory being
1:34:17
being collaborating with table toppers, showing what it looks like on the nice table. Yeah.
1:34:23
And then we went to Syndicate Foundations, didn't we? We did. And had an absolute blast with designer.
1:34:29
So, this is a looks like a big heavy uh It's not a war game. It's not political
1:34:36
game. It's not an area control game. It's like a mixture of all, isn't it? And it's crossed with June, uh, as I
1:34:43
said, Game of Thrones, dark fantasy, and it just looks beautiful, doesn't it?
1:34:48
The components look amazing. And, uh, I'll let you talk about the the interview you had with him cuz I I just
1:34:54
couldn't stop laughing. I was holding the camera, doing my best to keep it steady, while this this guy just went
1:35:00
into super nuts mode. And passion coming out of this guy was incredible. as we said like at the beginning um the guy
1:35:07
you know we met Timone um right at the press event had so much energy and he he
1:35:13
equaled that energy even on the Sunday and basically said look talk talk to us about your game and go
1:35:19
and watch it on on our socials just go and watch it end to end
1:35:24
and let him in all his passionate German glory bring to life this game and it we
1:35:31
had so much fun just watching him just just like relish in like I've got to do
1:35:36
this and and when he pulled the gavels out I'd lost I lost it really. I loved
1:35:41
it. I thought this is he pulled a bigger one then he got the bigger gavvel out. What is going on? I loved it. Um but I'm I'm
1:35:48
more intrigued about this game actually. It's probably one I wouldn't have kind of got jumped in at first glance,
1:35:55
but the more I kind of look at it, the more I learn about it, I think yeah, I think this could be could be a lot of
1:36:01
fun. The real interesting mechanic for me is the fact that the wind con changes
1:36:06
via some cards that can be played. That's really interesting. Very different. Yeah, exactly. And the fact that I think
1:36:12
when you um like Welch on deals, you have to lose the chance of a certain
1:36:19
victory type. So if the more dicky you are, the more penalized you will be to win at
1:36:25
certain avenues of victory. I think that's quite interesting. Yeah, cuz normally if people just do stuff and
1:36:31
dick, it's just kind of there's no consequence. There is a consequence, which might be okay if it's
1:36:36
a victory line you don't care about. Yeah. You know, but yeah, I haven't played it. I don't know much about it, but you've
1:36:41
got a copy. So, yeah, I have. And I'm I'm really hoping that as well as being a good game that it brings out what we discussed was the
1:36:48
table talk at the end of of why you did something, what your motives were, and
1:36:54
and so I'm just makes a story. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's going to be a really engaging game.
1:36:59
Yeah. So, I went on my own little mission and started chatting to a load
1:37:04
of random people. So, I spoke to Yeah. a little venture. I spoke to uh
1:37:10
cuz well, Taz wanted to go around on his own and try and get some deals and have a look around and just kind of cuz it is
1:37:17
when if you're together we you miss a lot cuz you're chatting to each other and sometimes you're not looking at everything, you know.
1:37:23
Mhm. So he went along and I was like, "Okay, great. This gives me a chance to go and and chat to well a lot of
1:37:30
different designers." So, I spoke to Piscolori um about Not Enough Mana, which is um a
1:37:39
drinking game, which we would normally look at or play, but I'm definitely going to I'm definitely up for playing
1:37:45
it and give it a go sometime where basically you have like potions, which is your drinks down, and then when you
1:37:52
cast these cards or spells, you have to drink your potion. Sounds terrible.
1:37:58
Yeah. To to do it is potion rum. Yeah. That's why my room's gone. And then obviously to fill it up you
1:38:05
Yeah. Yeah. solo mode. Um and then you have to obviously fill it up and you
1:38:11
know keep doing them. There's little card combos and there's actually different decks and the game mechanics
1:38:16
are actually good. So it's a drinking game that's actually has some depth there. And
1:38:22
I better still lose to my kids.
1:38:27
Yeah. You probably couldn't play with your kids. They doing squash. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
1:38:32
Bongo or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so then I went and spoke to Themebor
1:38:38
um games about the the Last of Us um adaptation they have done of uh Escape
1:38:45
the Dark series um because I spoke about UK UKG. So I was really interested um so
1:38:53
went and had a chat with them which was really good. Um, and hopefully they're going to send us a game to play, which
1:38:59
will be really fun because I'm looking forward to getting that to the table. And then the last one was Liars and
1:39:05
Lutters, which was um shown off by Julian. Um, and this is a resource game.
1:39:12
Not very good if you're not good at lying because it's each one of us is given a certain combination of resources
1:39:19
that you need to get. Yeah. you have this deck of cards and in that in that deck of cards there won't be what you
1:39:27
need. Um and you'll draw a card, you'll look at it and you'll go, "Okay, this is
1:39:33
this um you're not allowed to keep it anyway." So, even if that in that deck
1:39:39
of cards, it is what you need, you can't keep it. You tell everyone what resource
1:39:44
it is or you lie to everyone what resource it is. And then you choose
1:39:50
someone who you think is telling the truth and you trade with them. And then
1:39:56
you put that one to the side. They've lied to you. You're going to start going, "Oh, they keep lying. I'm not
1:40:01
going to trade with them anymore." And then no one's going to trade. So you got to pick and choose the right moments to
1:40:07
lie. So that's the basic version. Quite quite basic, but seems like quite a fun
1:40:13
little bluffing game, right? There's then the expansion which there's chucked in which is the madness expansion which
1:40:20
adds in event cards. It adds in as a asymmetric powers like oneoff game
1:40:26
abilities to to do on someone. So it' be like you two can't lie this turn.
1:40:31
So when you put out your resource, you both can't lie. You have to say what it is and then other people trade with you.
1:40:39
Um so they've put a little bit more to it and put a spin to it. Um and yeah, so
1:40:46
got got given a copy of that. So looking forward to getting that to the table. Um and then comes to my favorite my
1:40:54
favorite part of the expo. So I I randomly randomly I know I
1:41:01
randomly bumped into uh as you said Max and Beatric the the day before and they
1:41:06
were like, "Oh, do you want to book in a slot at three? What we'll do is we'll get our own professional uh videographer
1:41:13
to come over, do a video, we'll have a chat about the game, we'll cut up and give it to you. You earn the right.
1:41:20
And I said, "Sign me up." And they had the best booth there, didn't they? Yeah. They had the best. It was It was
1:41:26
amazing. It's like walking into an area of Disney like the Wild West, wasn't it? The only thing was missing is that we weren't wearing chaps.
1:41:32
Yeah. Yeah. Asless chaps. As chapsless chaps. Yeah. And um
1:41:39
Max gave us all a bit even Taz um who basically had to go sit with our stuff
1:41:45
because it was you two and I wasn't going to join cuz I was just going to leave you to it and go and you were like oh now come and join us and I'm so glad
1:41:51
I did. It was fantastic. Yeah, Max is real nice guy. Um we got
1:41:56
sit down and talk about Banttom West. So, if you don't know about Banton West, Banton West is Westworld mixed with
1:42:04
Fallout mixed with Nemesis as a board game kind of that's the way best way to
1:42:10
of to describe it really. Um, along with Firefly. Um, so you have a character,
1:42:17
you have a little backstory on the card of the character. Um, your character will have set stats because of that and
1:42:23
maybe some items. Um, and then off you go. How do you want to become the most
1:42:28
notorious? You can do this by going around and becoming a tycoon by building loads of bars everywhere. You can come
1:42:35
You can do it by going around burning those bar those tycoon bars that people
1:42:41
keep putting up. You can do it by fighting uh the the the wolves and the bears and uh maybe joining a cult with
1:42:49
the cards that come out. Um there's there's so much to it with this. Um,
1:42:56
it's the second edition because the first edition that people had with line of sight, um, with some of the event
1:43:03
cards, um, and with some of the the weapon cards and basically streamlined
1:43:08
it, made combat better, has made, um, there more to do and improved it. Didn't
1:43:16
need to, but they have. and him talking about it, the passion you you get off of
1:43:22
him about this game because Banttom is set in a different world. Yeah. Planet of it.
1:43:28
It's a planet of its own right. So, this is like the Westworld thing, but it's more towards the Lovecrafty inside. So,
1:43:37
there is eventually going to be an expansion where in the mountains you'll go down and you'll fight like beasts and
1:43:44
stuff like that to get you in authority. So, it's another way of of going down and gaining uh you know your VPs. But um
1:43:52
yeah, just great. I just he was playing us with booze. Um got some gentleman
1:43:59
Jack which was which was great as well. Whiskey had some saki. Yeah. We were we were all talking about what
1:44:04
we do for our content and um you mentioned Oh, Mark does some Tik Toks as
1:44:10
well and he said do one now. Do one right now. Do it now. Can I be in it? to think on
1:44:16
my feet and I was like, "What the hell can I do?" Oh, I know what I'll do actually. So, I did this really funny video. I'll plug it now. You have to
1:44:23
watch. But, um, and he was great. He got right into it and it's really it's a really funny video and he was just super keen,
1:44:29
wasn't he? I think he was just genuinely um, like pleased to to get our enthusiasm of of
1:44:36
being there, you know, ask me anything. I want you to ask me anything like and yeah, we just I
1:44:41
think we just chilled and relaxed and just talked about the game. I don't know how long we were there, you know. Felt like a while, didn't it?
1:44:47
Felt like a while, but it also flew by cuz it just was a lot of fun. Yeah. And And it's like, "Oh, okay. That's that's done now."
1:44:52
There's a big camera stuck on our table, wasn't there? Like this big pro camera on a gimbal. Yeah. Just there filming and we had mics
1:45:00
and stuff and yeah, just chat. It's really good fun. Really good experience. So yeah, next year when he's down at UK
1:45:06
GE, um, we're going to have to go sell. Is he going to be at UK Games Expo? Yeah, I think he said that.
1:45:12
I think so. I don't know. I can't remember. Yeah, you did. Yeah. So, but yeah, Western.
1:45:17
Doesn't it come out Western? I think I think the retail's out next week, a couple of weeks
1:45:23
when this episode is released. It'll be very shortly. It should be out.
1:45:28
Should be out. Yeah. So, there you go. Coming soon. Yeah, I'm I'm buying it.
1:45:33
Yeah. I really enjoy like I've always wanted a game like that anyway because of Zia and Firefly, but they're always
1:45:42
so big and so expensive whereas this looked a little bit more accessible and
1:45:47
it's set in a western world which isn't done enough really. Just not enough. Not like that. Yeah. Not like not like
1:45:52
that. They're usually Euro like with a spinny thing.
1:45:58
Yeah. Great Western trailer. Yeah. Yeah. The only other one I know is Western Legends, which is a sandbox.
1:46:03
Oh, yes. Sandbox game. Western Legends stories, but I think it's I don't know cuz I've
1:46:08
not played it, so don't shoot me everyone, but I think it seems shallower than what Bantam West was offering terms
1:46:15
of its um variations and stuff, and the stories that you're going to get from it. Yeah. I mean, I um I thought it looked
1:46:22
good. I think my only criticism if I had one is I didn't quite like the artwork on the boards. I thought the boards were
1:46:28
very, very shiny. Yeah. Um, and then where the white lines joining the areas
1:46:33
where your your your mini minis move like an unmatched. Yeah, it looked like unmatched and it
1:46:39
just looked a bit odd on the board and the the white lines on the town looked like a road like a modern
1:46:46
day town. Um, but I did like the car. That was amazing. Um, and then I even said, "Oh,
1:46:53
cuz it's based It sounds like a computer game, doesn't it?" And you should have like your characters saying things when you go and visit them. You know, it
1:46:58
does. literally there the on the cards cuz you had a little market for your weapons and things. Yeah. And it did
1:47:04
Hello, stranger. I can help you. What brings you here? But it looked really good fun.
1:47:10
And it it's weird though cuz they added those lines because people were
1:47:15
struggling with line of sight with weapons. Yeah. So they added those lines to basically
1:47:21
be like Yeah. You can this this is the line of sight to to make it,
1:47:27
you know, it's black and white. It's obvious. It's black and white. It's obvious. Yeah. So, I think it ended up being this
1:47:33
is functionality over kind of aesthetics. So, yeah, it wasn't terrible. I just thought
1:47:38
if I had to, you know, say something. No, no, no. And I agree with I agree with you, but it's one of those where
1:47:43
those um those event cards, some of them were dark. I was flicking through them and I was like, "Oh, there's there's dead cowboys. There's a there's a frozen
1:47:49
guy. There's someone on fire. What do you want to do? Just want to watch them burn. Sure. So, yeah. So, that was the
1:47:56
the kind of last thing we did before we jettisoned out of um the Ashen Spiel uh
1:48:01
big big buildings and then we went back and we had to pick a game to play
1:48:06
and debating which game should we play? Something light, you know, we're all a
1:48:12
bit tired. Uh we ended up settling on Decas. So, Decas I picked up a copy. Uh, thank
1:48:20
you, uh, Ricky Royal, Richard Wilkins, the designer, who basically said,
1:48:26
"Mention my name at the deep print booth and we'll sort you out." So, we got our
1:48:31
copy and we wanted to kind of play it throughout the week, but like everything, there's about a thousand
1:48:37
games to choose from, so which one are you going to pick? And we thought, "No, Sunday's the night to do it." It was the wrong night to play Deckers. Um because
1:48:45
I had to basically go through the rules and and it if you want to play Decas
1:48:50
just have someone learn it properly. Maybe play a solo game quickly, get get your head around it and then teach it.
1:48:56
Don't do what I did, which is try and learn from the rule book and teach it out. How many times did you teach it?
1:49:03
Yeah, I had to uh we played a game, played it wrong, reset, and uh played another game. We still some rules
1:49:09
up along the way. We just kind of modeled through and pretended they didn't exist just to kind of get a flow of the game. But anyway, what is this
1:49:15
game? Decas is a uh kind of set in um a
1:49:21
kind of futuristic um world where you're all hackers or deckers in in this case
1:49:27
where super super massive computers or SMC's have kind of taken over things and
1:49:32
we're basically pissed off. if we want to, you know, stick it to the man and the the governments and the corporations
1:49:38
and take down this SMC. Um, so in the game you get a bunch of different SMC's
1:49:44
um that all do different things. They'll bend and twist the rules up and you all play as a decker of different color and
1:49:50
abilities. So yeah, you've got red, blue, green, yellow, and and a purple. And it's quite abstracted. So the board
1:49:57
is is made up of different servers which are actually six hexagons arranged in like a like an arc. It's
1:50:03
the only best way to explain it. And you assemble those together. So it kind of forms your your network and each server
1:50:11
represents different colors. So you'll start the board on your own kind of home server which is the color of your decker
1:50:16
and away you go. You've got a hand of um five cards. You've got a 15 card deck.
1:50:22
All of your starting cards which are naf, which is the best way to say naf. And
1:50:29
there's a shop where you can upgrade your cards by spending the command symbols on your cards to get the better
1:50:34
ones. And those cards are cool. They do all sorts of cool abilities. And yeah, like I say, it's abstracted in the fact
1:50:40
that you're um installing or uploading programs to the network. And the
1:50:45
programs of color do different things. So, for example, blue programs allow you to traverse the network quicker, more
1:50:51
efficiently, and green ones allow you to push uh other programs or uh the SMC's
1:50:58
counter measures, which are called sparks, uh out the way. Um, yellow ones allow you to modify and convert them
1:51:04
into other programs of your color, and red ones are the infection viruses that will eradicate the SMC's stuff off off
1:51:11
the board and fight them off. Um, and it is a real intricate puzzle.
1:51:16
Puzzle. Yeah, what a puzzle. So, you When I first looked at this, I looked at the cards and I thought, "This looks
1:51:23
very, very basic." You'll look at your hand and it'll be yellow, green, red,
1:51:30
yellow with a purple on it and that'll be your hand and you'll think, "What? What the hell am I meant
1:51:36
to do with these? What is this?" And it's like, "Well, it depends." Yeah. So, do you want to spend those
1:51:42
commands as this or do you want to spend them as that? And yeah, you can spend commands to upload programs, but you can
1:51:48
also spend commands to move around the board if they're blue ones, or you can spend the red symbols to fight as long
1:51:54
as there's a red program. But everything feels expensive, doesn't it? Because you are limited by your hand. So you're like, "Oh, I really need
1:52:01
to make this count." So it it's broken into like three cycles in the game of which it's got a
1:52:06
objective for you to do a copper, silver, and a gold. Um, the idea is that
1:52:11
to win you need to basically do the gold. It's not you don't have to worry. so much as the copper and silver, although if you don't do them, the game
1:52:17
will kick you in the nuts or kick you in the nuts more in certain cases, but the gold one's the one you need to finish by
1:52:23
the end of the game. Now, if a spark goes onto the board or a guardian or any of the SMC's countermeasures and you
1:52:31
can't put a token on there, they win. They basically lock you out, kick you
1:52:36
off the the the network, and you're basically a hacker. They spiral out of control. And it's
1:52:42
kind of got that pandemic vibe of yeah we got this we got oh we haven't got this like
1:52:49
and it really gets out of hand very quickly it did because if ever three spark share of the same hex they turn
1:52:55
into a guardian and a guardian is harder to get rid of and they buff others don't they buff others for attacking and all sorts
1:53:02
of stuff. So it's I I think once we kind of start to get into a groove of how
1:53:07
this was playing I was like I'm really enjoying this. I kind of really uh I'm
1:53:12
looking forward to diving deep in this um cuz I play a lot of solo games and I know the the this was a
1:53:19
re-implementation of Renegade which is uh Ricky's design from from way back and
1:53:25
it is a well-known and liked solo game generally. So I'm keen to to dive deep
1:53:31
into this to try and really figure some of these puzzles out. But the variability in the game is not only in
1:53:37
the way that the board's set up, but the objectives that you use, which will be different every time. The SMC that you
1:53:42
want to fight against. You can put upgrades on there if you think the game's too easy. I don't think the game's too easy yet. Um, and yeah, it
1:53:49
was just it just interesting. All the deckers have got different abilities that can help. And I I really enjoyed it. Really
1:53:56
enjoyed it. It was it was great. I thought um couple of things. One is
1:54:01
doing a co-op. I think you've got the um the worry of the alpha gamer, but I don't think that can come through here
1:54:08
because you have your own you can't show your cards to everyone every time. It's just the game will take forever. So you
1:54:14
and it's a pure game of efficiency where everyone can do anything but you're better at doing something
1:54:20
than I am. So I'm going right if I can do my thing, you can do your thing better. So why don't you do that thing? And it's
1:54:26
obvious because of the color you are. Yeah. But it's not always easy. No. And I was going I can't do it. I just my
1:54:32
hand is so bad. And I went, but I can use these cards to buy those cards cuz you always have 15 in your
1:54:39
deck, don't you? Regardless. And I was like, ah, now I can do it because this card now gives me that one extra icon I
1:54:44
needed or an ability to do something. And I thought that was absolutely brilliant. Really clever. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely want to spend
1:54:50
some more time with it. Um, we had two moments where we I think we could have won, but we just rolled
1:54:56
unlucky. Um so very close game but um
1:55:02
yeah um it's it's a great puzzle really. Yeah cuz to look at it you look and go
1:55:08
bit bland. It's it's cuz it's like abstract squares isn't it black? It's very abstracted but then you know
1:55:14
what he's hacking you know but you look and go what is this game but when you start to get it you're like Christ it's
1:55:20
actually it's very clever lot in a small box. It's very Yeah. And the box is tiny. Yeah, this is really tiny box. And
1:55:28
what's even surprising when you open the box, it's got a storage solution already in it as well. Little tray tokens and everything, which
1:55:35
is they didn't need to do it. No, but they did. So good. It's a good production. The
1:55:40
artwork on the car. Oh, they're amazing. Looks awesome. And uh my favorite was the Jack in the Box.
1:55:46
It's a little Jack in the Box like floating around in this like server. It's great. Yeah, it's cool. It's also like um like cyber punk, isn't
1:55:52
it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a cyberpunk kind of theme which ticks my box.
1:55:58
Oh, and each character is double-sided. Oh, yeah. You got an advanced side. So, I could have you played as two characters, two twins that on the board,
1:56:05
which look cool. Yeah. I don't know what they do, but want to find out. Anyway, that's that's
1:56:10
Decers. Yeah, great. It sounds interesting. Check it out. Do you know I played all the game apart from setting? I mean, it had the
1:56:16
expansion. Every other game I played was completely brand new to me. Even Roth. Yeah. Yeah. So, I played a Every game was new.
1:56:23
It was great. That's what you kind of want from me, isn't it? Like it's like the perfect week. It's like New Games City.
1:56:30
Yeah. So, um it reminded me of Shadow Run. Yeah. Yes, that's the one I was thinking of.
1:56:35
Yes. Yeah, cuz that was an RPG. Was it cyber punky? But it weirdly had dwarves
1:56:41
and things in there. It's a definitely unique IP. Shadow Run, but it's good fun. That's what it reminded me of.
1:56:47
Cool. But um yeah, that kind of brings us up to the end really. Um the only
1:56:54
weird thing that kind of happened the next day was when I was going down the elevator.
1:57:00
Um the lifts never stopped. The lift the elevators never I never had anyone else
1:57:05
in this about this. Never had anyone else in the elevator and got on the elevator. It stopped at
1:57:13
floor one door. The doors opened. There are three exact tables in front of me
1:57:19
and a woman polishing the middle one. She looks up at me. I look at her and
1:57:25
then the doors close and then it goes back down. It was like something like through the scary door. Was that the old
1:57:32
Futurama through the scary door? Through the scary door. What's going to happen through the scary
1:57:38
door? Dave that was the ghost of the the dead maid. Yeah. Yeah.
1:57:43
Brenda, the vaporized uh body from upstairs and the on the carpet.
1:57:49
Brenda offering you another grad. Yeah. I just found it really weird like where
1:57:54
they were positioned. Why was she polishing them there? It was
1:58:00
just it was a very weird start to my morning and I thought, "Oh, that was Did that happen?
1:58:06
Did that happen? Am I getting essen madness?" Yeah, the Essen madness.
1:58:12
Just one question then, just any any any regrets? Anything you didn't do that you wanted to? Any game you didn't buy you
1:58:19
wanted to? Yeah, I don't think I didn't buy anything I wanted to, but I definitely wanted to check out Oro or however you
1:58:26
want to pronounce it. The astronomical clock or Yeah, that's the one thing I don't know
1:58:31
anything about the game. I've not played it. So, it's kind of like this thing that's sitting there going that was high on my list to look at.
1:58:37
Yeah. And it's like ah and every time I went there, it was always bit busy. all the games are sold out and stuff like
1:58:43
that. So, I think that's the main one for me. For me, it's all League of Legends and
1:58:50
um Covenant to buy Covenant. Yeah. Uh for me, I was looking at that Arkham
1:58:57
Horror game. Um Tales of Mis. Yeah. Miscatonic.
1:59:03
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That looked really big huge box, like 5 kilo box, but it was only like 70
1:59:09
or 80. Yeah. And it had hours and hours and hours of gameplay. Apparently, there's a
1:59:14
lot of narrative where you're reading a lot of narrative just to open a box to find there's nothing in there. Yeah. But the game play is meant to be quite
1:59:20
quite good. So, Mark Dainty's got a copy, so I'm going to watch his video for solo play.
1:59:25
Okay. Um, and then when he gets bored of it, he'll bust on to you. Yes. But I was I was tempted by I picked it
1:59:31
up a few times, went back a couple of times and I just thought, you know, 60 70 hours of gameplay. I've got time for
1:59:38
what I bought. Yeah. Yeah, but that was probably my biggest regret. The other one that jumped into my head
1:59:44
was the March of the Ants one. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did swing by there on on Sunday, but sold out. Done.
1:59:51
The same as with UK GE, March of Ants as well. It's sold out. Just I need I need to just I want to try
1:59:57
it. I want to see if a Forex game gives me the same good feels as if it's spaceships flying around or if it's ants
2:00:05
flying. You get flying ants, don't you? You do. and I just want to kind of see how it works and I like the the look of
2:00:11
being able to evolve the queen and different things. Pervy ants. Um, so yeah, that that's the other
2:00:18
one that just kind of jumped in my head. Anyway, yeah, that was it. That was it was a hell of an ess, wasn't
2:00:24
it? It was a big bumper pack. It was the Bessen, right? The Besson of Essen. The Besson of Essen.
2:00:30
This is my third essence. My third and this is by far my favorite by a landslide. Don't get me wrong, I've had great times
2:00:36
of all of them, but the first essence just felt more prepped what to do. 100%. The first was underprepared,
2:00:43
overwhelmed, and uh crying in a corner. What the hell is this? Second Essence, better prepared,
2:00:50
still demo. I demo too much for what my balance on what I wanted. So, I did kind
2:00:55
of more demoing than I saw the show. So, this one I felt like I got it right. I thought
2:01:01
we left. We left before the big rush at the end. So, we didn't stay to the right to the end.
2:01:06
Didn't feel as busy on a couple of the days. I felt busy, but it was comfortable.
2:01:11
Yeah. It wasn't awful. It wasn't awful, which was great. Which was Saturday, Sunday, weirdly. Um Yeah, it was.
2:01:17
And um Yeah. And we then got games in in the evening and had a laugh in the evening
2:01:23
and actually got time to experience the games that we got at Essen and play them
2:01:29
rather than have to wait till Gridcon to talk about them properly. Yeah, it's nice to be able to talk about them now.
2:01:35
And we bonded real good, too. We did a good bonding. We did bonding.
2:01:40
More bonding required. But that's for me that that's one of the main reasons why I like that's one of the cards of Deca. Surely
2:01:48
that's one of the main reasons why I like this trip is you get to spend more time with people.
2:01:54
Like we I did it last year with Adrian like cuz you share a room with someone,
2:01:59
you get to know them better anyway. And just when you hang out with them or you get to know them better and it's just
2:02:05
nice. You don't get the opportunity when you're playing games around the table in an evening and everyone buggers off home
2:02:10
at the end of the night just to chat and have food together and what do you do
2:02:16
this and it's just nice. What I thought was really funny is that it was Taz's first one
2:02:23
and I said to him mate first essence I said slippery slope mate it's a slippery slope and he's like no I'll be all
2:02:28
right. literally had armfuls of gates and then said something that I just laughed at. I was like, "Yeah, I'm never
2:02:34
selling them. Never selling. You will." He's like, "No, I'm never going to sell
2:02:40
him." And I just went, "Oh, I used to say that he's in that honeymoon stage,
2:02:45
you know, but I want to collect everything. I want them all." I called him my sweet summer child.
2:02:51
My sweet, sweet prince. Bless him. No, he had a good time. Um, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, he's a
2:02:58
good companion, old Taz. I enjoyed getting to know him better as well. So, so there we go. I think that about wraps
2:03:05
it up. We're all ready for bed. Yeah, it's been a long one.
TURN 2 - The Final Turn
2:03:12
[Music] So, there we have it, folks. This has
2:03:18
been Harrison 2025 coverage, and we're all going to bed cuz we're tired little
2:03:25
board gamers. And uh we're we're ready for it to be honest. But no, thank you for listening this epic bumper episode.
2:03:32
Um and if you like the show, as always, please like and subscribe and share us with your friends, with your board game
2:03:38
crew. Word of mouth helps us keep going and we love it. So, and if you really
2:03:43
like the show and you want to throw us a few pennies, we have coffee and that helps us to to basically keep going,
2:03:49
helps us run the podcast, helps us to grow and do the things we love and cover Essen and talk about Essen and and other
2:03:56
conventions as well. But yeah, I'm off to bed and that's been me Davey
2:04:01
and me Mark and me JP. And until next time, whose turn is it?
2:04:08
[Music]